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A powerful anecdote which speaks to the value of our current silly test-based education trajectory

Adopt A US Soldier is a non-profit organization that seeks volunteers to help show the brave men and women fighting for our freedom that their sacrifices will nott go unnoticed. It connects supportive civilians with deployed troops and offers a channel by which to communicate encouragment and express gratitude to those brave men and women serving in the United States Armed Forces.

we are proposing a year without worksheets. We are going to emphasize a year of personal teaching, original materials, innovative lessons, and imaginative activities. .. in bucking carbon-copied shortcuts, to hone in on layered, dynamic, self-pioneered worksheets that excite students with pictures and appeal. We will hopefully force ourselves to avoid the bluffing that comes with 30 minutes of "silent work at one's desk.

Apple's etextbooks are cool, but are they cool enough? And will iBooks Author be the real driving force behind big changes?

Why I Like Prezi In my life, I have given a *lot* of presentations. In high school, they were presentations on group projects. In university, they were presentations on research projects. At Google, they're presentations on how to use our APIs. When I first started giving presentations, I used Powerpoint, like everyone else. But I kept thinking there must be a better way, and I experimented with other options - flash interfaces, interactive Javascript apps. Then I discovered Prezi, and it has become my presentation tool of choice. Prezi is an online tool for creating presentations - but it's not just a Powerpoint clone, like the Zoho or Google offering. When you first create a Prezi, you're greeted with a blank canvas and a small toolbox. You can write text, insert images, and draw arrows. You can draw frames (visible or hidden) around bits of content, and then you can define a path from one frame to the next frame. That path is your presentation. It's like being able to draw your thoughts on a whiteboard, and then instructing a camera where to go and what to zoom into. It's a simple idea, but I love it. Here's why: It forces me to "shape" my presentation. A slide deck is always linear in form, with no obvious structure of ideas inside of it. Each of my Prezis has a structure, and each structure is different. The structure is visual, but it supports a conceptual structure. One structure might be 3 main ideas, with rows of ideas for each one. Another might be 1 main idea, with a circular branching of subideas. Having a structure helps me to have more of a point to my presentations, and to realize the core ideas of them. It makes it easy to go from brainstorming stage to presentation stage, all in the same tool. I can write a bunch of thoughts, insert some images, and easily move them around, cluster them, re-order them, etc. I can figure out the structure of my presentation by looking at what I have laid out, and seeing how they fit together. Some people do this

'Thousands of protesting school teachers have reached the steps of Parliament, swamping the intersection of Bourke and Spring streets in a sea of red. Up to 25,000 teachers walked off the job today, forcing 54 primary and secondary schools to close, as they went in search of better pay and conditions from the state government."

Ex-army personnel to teach pupils in England

"Essentially, digital (and physical) mind mapping allows students to view the entire forest instead of a single tree. As they create a mind map, they capture the wider ecosystem of information by visually connecting short keywords and phrases rather than writing complete sentences. Upon later review-for retention, exam preparation or papers-the mind map is like a CD. You jump right to the information that interests you. In contrast, linear notes are like audio tapes-you waste time wading line by line through the content in hopes of getting to what you want. This more efficient use of space (and time) lets students see how normally unconnected ideas might fit together. Thus, the mind maps doubles as a store of information and an engine of creativity. Using it in the classroom and even giving mind mapping assignments forces students to break the linearity of their earlier education."

Finally, for Mac now too!... After many weeks of waiting eagerly Adobe Captivate and eLearning Suite users may now download the free trials of Adobe Captivate 5. The release contains many significant enhancements that have Captivate and eLearning Suite users literally chomping at the bit to get their hands on it. You can also download the eLearning Suite here. Mac users are ecstatic as Captivate 5 and eLearning Suite 2 are now both available for the Mac OS, making the products the first major eLearning industry authoring packages to enter full force into support for the Apple Mac OS. Many Mac users have written, called and addressed me in person to wholeheartedly offer both encouragement and enthusiasm as we see Captivate and eLearning Suite move firmly into cross platform eLearning authoring tools. http://blogs.adobe.com/captivate/2010/07/free_downloads_of_adobe_captiv.html

y StoryMaker lets you control characters and objects - and creates sentences for you! Once you are done with your story, you can print it out. You cannot go back and edit a story once you have ended it but, if you click "yes" when asked to share it with others, you can print it out again by entering the magic number it gives you in the box on the right. Since lack of space forces us to delete story files older than 1 month, please save the .pdf file that prints to your own computer.

Teachers need to allow their students more room to creatively use visual design, and at the same time, teach students to be aware. Forcing students to follow exact formatting requirements is counterproductive.

The hard truth about the future of journalism is that nobody knows for sure what will happen; the current system is so brittle, and the alternatives are so speculative, that there's no hope for a simple and orderly transition from State A to State B. Chaos is our lot; the best we can do is identify the various forces at work shaping various possible futures. Two of the most important are the changing natures of the public, and of subsidy.

But how can we identify a potentially good teacher? How can average teachers become better teachers? The secretary's special funding could make a crucial difference by financing a national program exploiting the electronic miracles of the Internet and video. We could escape geography by using the technology to have the best teachers appear in hundreds of thousands of disparate classrooms. This is a force multiplier. The classrooms would be equipped with a large, flat-screen monitor with whiteboards on either side; the monitor would be connected to a school server that contains virtually all of the lessons for every subject taught in the school, from kindergarten through 12th grade. The contents would use animation, video, dramatization, and presentation options to deliver complete lessons, to convey ideas in unique ways that are now unavailable in conventional classrooms. The classroom teachers would play the role of enhancers, answering questions and helping students better understand the material covered electronically; they'd pause the presentation to ask questions and to prompt critical thinking. The whiteboard would be the platform for student involvement.

The scenario: It's 2020 and the world has changed. Some say for the better, for others it is the worst. The internet, the technology that connects us, will be turned off in 60 days. The world leaders, controlled by BIG BUSINESS, have agreed that the internet is making the world worse, and is now too big and too powerful. It must be stopped. The resistance force, always on the move, known as the Wireless Underground will seek to rally others to form their own resistance groups and to eventually form a new www based on connecting rogue sites. Each group will have limited range of access but can extend through connecting with other groups. They say official orders have been given. The Internet is closing down, to be replaced by a single information service called the "Alternet". The underground predict that G8 world leaders will make an the announcement in Feburary 2021, but this could just ne a hoax ... but what if it's true? What will be your story?

MacArthur Foundation Study - Friendship chapter

There is a startling new report just released by the Pan American Development Foundation, reporting that almost 225,000 Haitian children have been forced into child slavery in Haiti as a result of poverty. Most of the children - nearly 2/3 in fact - are young girls, and are subjected to extreme physical, psychological, and sexual abuse.

Brian Silverman says, "It should be required reading for anyone concerned with democracy and long-term viability of public education. I've often said that national standards, even those thinly disguised under mischievous pseudonyms like "common core standards" are not only a destructive force, but a solution in search of a problem. Alfie Kohn makes the case quite effectively. Mr. Kohn once again demonstrates his courage, tenacity and chutzpah by publishing his new article in Education Week's special "Quality Counts" issue. "Quality Counts" is the annual issue sponsored by standardized testing companies who rank each state's educational quality as a function of their reliance on high-stakes testing, teacher-bashing, punitive and anti-democratic education policies. The more draconian the state, the higher their "quality," according to Education Week."