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10 Electrical Safety Steps for Keeping you and your Family Safe - Professional Electric... - 0 views

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    When it comes to keeping your family safe from harm, you want to do everything in your power. Dealing with electricity can be a dangerous thing if you don't do it correctly. Teaching your family how to properly approach electrical problems can make a world of difference in their safety. Here are our top 10 electrical safety tips to help keep your family safe from harm. 1.) Avoid Overloading An Electrical Outlet And Power Strips Being in the technology age, it can sometimes be difficult to charge all of our mobile items. From your phone to your iPod, to your computer, you need to have a clear outlet space to do so. Many think the best solution is to simply add more temporary outlets to their existing hardwired outlets. This can be done with power strips and multi-outlet plugins. While these may seem convenient at first, they actually can cause major electrical problems. Overloading outlets can cause burnt plugs, and in more severe cases, full-on house fires. You should avoid using multi-outlet plugins as much as possible to reduce your family's risk of danger. 2.) Don't Yank On Electrical Cords It may seem tempting from time to time to pull on a power cord to get it out of the wall. Just because it saves you that short trip back down the hallway to unplug the sweeper, it's actually costing you more in the long run because of the wear it takes. Realize that by yanking power cords, you can damage the cord, the plug, and the actual wall outlet. In the event that your wall outlet has become loose due to being yanked on, we suggest calling a qualified electrician to fix the issue. 3.) Avoid Keeping Power Cords Near Water If you've ever noticed that the outlets in your kitchen and bathroom are shaped differently than the rest, you've seen a GFCI outlet. These are specially made to help decrease the likelihood of electrical shock in the event that water seeps into the outlet. You can do yourself a favor and protect you and your family from electrical shock b
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My School, Meet MySpace: Social Networking at School | Edutopia - 1 views

  • Months before the newly hired teachers at Philadelphia's Science Leadership Academy (SLA) started their jobs, they began the consuming work of creating the high school of their dreams -- without meeting face to face. They articulated a vision, planned curriculum, designed assessment rubrics, debated discipline policies, and even hammered out daily schedules using the sort of networking tools -- messaging, file swapping, idea sharing, and blogging -- kids love on sites such as MySpace.
  • hen, weeks before the first day of school, the incoming students jumped onboard -- or, more precisely, onto the Science Leadership Academy Web site -- to meet, talk with their teachers, and share their hopes for their education. So began a conversation that still perks along 24/7 in SLA classrooms and cyberspace. It's a bold experiment to redefine learning spaces, the roles and relationships of teachers and students, and the mission of the modern high school.
  • When I hear people say it's our job to create the twenty-first-century workforce, it scares the hell out of me," says Chris Lehmann, SLA's founding principal. "Our job is to create twenty-first-century citizens. We need workers, yes, but we also need scholars, activists, parents -- compassionate, engaged people. We're not reinventing schools to create a new version of a trade school. We're reinventing schools to help kids be adaptable in a world that is changing at a blinding rate."
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  • It's the spirit of science rather than hardcore curriculum that permeates SLA. "In science education, inquiry-based learning is the foothold," Lehmann says. "We asked, 'What does it mean to build a school where everything is based on the core values of science: inquiry, research, collaboration, presentation, and reflection?'"
  • It means the first-year curriculum is built around essential questions: Who am I? What influences my identity? How do I interact with my world? In addition to science, math, and engineering, core courses include African American history, Spanish, English, and a basic how-to class in technology that also covers Internet safety and the ethical use of information and software. Classes focus less on facts to be memorized and more on skills and knowledge for students to master independently and incorporate into their lives. Students rarely take tests; they write reflections and do "culminating" projects. Learning doesn't merely cross disciplines -- it shatters outdated departmental divisions. Recently, for instance, kids studied atomic weights in biochemistry (itself a homegrown interdisciplinary course), did mole calculations in algebra, and created Dalton models (diagrams that illustrate molecular structures) in art.
  • This is Dewey for the digital age, old-fashioned progressive education with a technological twist.
  • computers and networking are central to learning at, and shaping the culture of, SLA. "
  • he zest to experiment -- and the determination to use technology to run a school not better, but altogether differently -- began with Lehmann and the teachers last spring when they planned SLA online. Their use of Moodle, an open source course-management system, proved so easy and inspired such productive collaboration that Lehmann adopted it as the school's platform. It's rare to see a dog-eared textbook or pad of paper at SLA; everybody works on iBooks. Students do research on the Internet, post assignments on class Moodle sites, and share information through forums, chat, bookmarks, and new software they seem to discover every day.
  • Teachers continue to use Moodle to plan, dream, and learn, to log attendance and student performance, and to talk about everything -- from the student who shows up each morning without a winter coat to cool new software for tagging research sources. There's also a schoolwide forum called SLA Talk, a combination bulletin board, assembly, PA system, and rap session.
  • Web technology, of course, can do more than get people talking with those they see every day; people can communicate with anyone anywhere. Students at SLA are learning how to use social-networking tools to forge intellectual connections.
  • In October, Lehmann noticed that students were sorting themselves by race in the lunchroom and some clubs. He felt disturbed and started a passionate thread on self-segregation.
  • "Having the conversation changed the way kids looked at themselves," he says.
  • "What I like best about this school is the sense of community," says student Hannah Feldman. "You're not just here to learn, even though you do learn a lot. It's more like a second home."
  • As part of the study of memoirs, for example, Alexa Dunn's English class read Funny in Farsi, Firoozeh Dumas's account of growing up Iranian in the United States -- yes, the students do read books -- and talked with the author in California via Skype. The students also wrote their own memoirs and uploaded them to SLA's network for the teacher and class to read and edit. Then, digital arts teacher Marcie Hull showed the students GarageBand, which they used to turn their memoirs into podcasts. These they posted on the education social-networking site EduSpaces (formerly Elgg); they also posted blogs about the memoirs.
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ConnectSafely - 0 views

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    The forum for parents, teens, experts and more to discuss safe socializing on the fixed and mobile Web.
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