Author Archives: Anthony Iton, MD, JD, MPH

Anthony Iton, M.D., J.D., M.P.H. is the Alameda County Public Health Department director and health officer. Dr. Iton’s primary interest is the health of disadvantaged populations and the contributions of race, class, wealth, education, geography, and employment to health status. He has asserted that in every public health area of endeavor, be it immunizations, chronic disease, HIV/AIDS, STDs, obesity, or even disaster preparedness, local public health departments must recognize that they are confronted with the enduring consequences of structural poverty, institutional racism and other forms of systemic injustice. He further asserts that the only sustainable approach to eliminating health inequities is through the design of intensive, multi-sectoral, place-based interventions that are specifically designed to identify existing assets and build social, political and economic power among a critical mass of community residents in historically under-resourced communities. Dr. Iton received his medical degree at Johns Hopkins Medical School and subsequently trained in internal medicine and preventive medicine at New York Hospital, Yale, and Berkeley and is board certified in both specialties. Dr. Iton has also received a law degree and a Master’s of Public Health from the University of California, Berkeley and is a member of the California Bar. In 2006, he was awarded the prestigious Milton and Ruth Roemer Prize for Creative Public Health Work, awarded by the American Public Health Association to a US local health official in recognition of outstanding creative and innovative public health work.

10 Reasons to Ban Pens and Pencils in the Classroom

November 26, 2010 | 10:01 AM | By

Tina Barseghian

[A PARODY]

By Katie Stansberry

According to a recent MSNBC article, 69% of high school currently ban cell phones. But you’d be hard-pressed to find a school anywhere that has enacted a blanket ban on pens and pencils. Here are 10 reasons to reconsider the widespread acceptance of these distracting and potentially dangerous implements.

  1. Pens and pencils are distracting. The tapping, clicking, flipping and rolling can drive just about any teacher around the bend. I remember a happy indoor recess spent throwing newly sharpened pencils at the classroom ceiling trying to make them stick.
  2. Writing implements are dangerous. I still have a small lump of lead imbedded in the soft, fleshy area between my thumb and pointer finger. It’s a souvenir from a mini-sword fight that occurred between my close friend and I in third grade. She won.
  3. Pens can be used to cheat. Now that I’m at the head of a classroom instead of behind a desk, I’ve seen some ingenious cheating techniques. One student managed to write an entire history of media studies on the bottom of their shoe. I’ve also found forearms covered with vocabulary words, ankles tattooed with definitions, and hands dyed with smeared blue ink.
  4. They are incredibly messy. Dusty pencil shavings litter the floor in many elementary classrooms and pens filled with liquid ink are just disasters waiting to happen. Have you ever tried to clean a child’s backpack after a pen broke at the bottom of the bag? No amount of scrubbing can get the dye completely out. Continue reading →

Digital Distraction or Helpful Classroom tool?

October 11, 2010 | 3:00 PM | By

By U.S. Air Force Master Sgt. Tracy DeMarco

By Katie Stansberry

I was in the middle of a lecture on blogging today when an all-too-familiar sound broke the flow of my presentation – the mechanical music of a ringing cell phone. To make the situation all the more annoying, the phone belonged to me. Despite my daily reminder to students to make sure their phones are silent, I’d forgotten to turn my own ringer off.

The wrath of teachers dealing with mobile technology is well documented. One YouTube video, which shows a professor grabbing a student’s ringing cell phone and smashing it into bits without breaking stride in his lecture, has received more than 4.5 million hits. Although I know many of my colleagues would disagree, I just cannot empathize with their cell phone frustrations. I also have never asked students not to use laptops during class and I fully expect students to email me more often than they come into my office hours. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Technology in Schools

Kno: the iPad Challenger

September 13, 2010 | 5:18 PM | By

Kno

By Katie Stansberry

Kno Inc., a young education technology company out of Santa Clara, CA, announced last week that it had secured $46 million in funding to develop a digital textbook table that is poised to take the education world by storm. According to news reports, the product will combine “digital textbooks, course materials, e-mail, and the web into a dual-screen, notebook-shaped device.”

The Kno tablet was presented with little fanfare at The Wall Street Journal’s D: All Things Digital conference in June. Steve Jobs opened the conference and the Apple iPad dominated conversation at the event. However, the recent influx of funding to Kno may be an indication that industry is moving to differentiation. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: digital textbooks, Technology in Schools