thinking about education
Most of us have probably heard Ken Robinson talking about creativity. Yesterday, a story on National Public Radio underscored its importance in the lives of young people. The subject of the story was the creation of “scraper bikes” in Oakland, California. The reporter described how the fad spread because of a YouTube video: “The video [...]
Just read an article in Education Week about this new poll from Common Sense Media that reports that parents are conflicted about the role of digital media in their kids’ lives, particularly in terms of how well it helps them learn to communicate and collaborate. Here’s a sample:
But parents expressed skepticism about the value of [...]
I taught in a small, rural school division where students still called me “ma’am” as a sign of respect. Each year, the community hosted a huge weekend festival that, over the years, had begun to attract thousands of people from all over the region. I never attended but from the stories I heard, it was [...]
This post was supposed to discuss Chester Finn’s editorial about No Child Left Behind, which appeared in The Washington Post on Sunday. He outlines five myths about the law, taking both Republicans and Democrats to task for the way they mischaracterize the law, while providing some insight into the history of national educational reform.
I [...]
Just a quick post as I’m out the door for a digital storytelling workshop. Watched John Adams last night and enjoyed it. It opens with the Boston Massacre and I was reminded of a media literacy lesson that I did with middle schoolers. We took a look at Paul Revere’s famous engraving of the “massacre.” [...]
I am reading Dee Brown’s The American West. It’s a compilation of short, illustrated pieces the Brown wrote in tandem with photo editor Martin F. Schmitt in the 1950s. Despite being pretty familiar with the history of the West, I am still finding some great new tidbits of information as well as new ways of [...]
Students Call Officials’ Homes When School Isn’t Called Off For Snow – News- msnbc.com
So, the MSNBC story and it gives some better detail. The most important piece, probably, that wasn’t covered in the AP story was that this wasn’t the first phone call:
But recently, this role has resulted in dozens of phone calls to his [...]
From a colleague of mine as part of a discussion of protecting privacy:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIGtf_ula8k&rel=1]
Sorry, if you’re offended that I embedded it, but you need the effect before the story. Here’s the AP version. And, here’s Doug Feaver’s take on it at the Washington Post. Feaver reviews comments from readers on the story. He [...]
21st Century Collaborative: The Future of Reading
Sheryl’s thoughtful posts always provide an interesting read. Her essay on reading, in response to Amazon’s much heralded debut of the Kindle, took on a topic I’ve also been thinking about. As she did, I’ll give you my “reading” biography: I LOVE to read anything, analog or digital, but [...]
An interesting abstract from my advisor for an article about the semiotics of multimodality, or texts that utilize a variety of media. I have to get the article from inter-library loan so I haven’t read it but I did visit the D.U.S.T.Y. website to see some of the examples. What a wonderful [...]