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February is Black History Month. Here's a word list to add to your lesson plans! This list can be used to play all of the games and activities on our site. http://www.spellingcity.com/view-spelling-list.html?listId=2851114

This powerful infographic shows why it is so hard to find some black boxes in the ocean but also shows the complete and utter power of an infographic. The Washington Post made this one about the downed Korean airliner and the quest to find the black box. Some don't know why it is so hard -- take a dive through this infographic and start to understand. Wow.

n his memoir Dreams from My Father, Obama describes an incident in which he, as a young boy, "came across the picture in Life magazine of the black man who had tried to peel off his skin" (51). Seeing the devastating effect negative messages about being African American had on this man, Obama "began to notice that [Bill] Cosby never got the girl on I Spy, that the black man on Mission Impossible spent all his time underground. [He] noticed that there was nobody like [him] in the Sears, Roebuck Christmas catalog ... and that Santa was a white man" (52).

"Despite the vast array of options when it comes to EdTech, walking around exhibitions you can't help but notice that the technology is converging, and that one black screen looks like all the other black screens, the 'solutions' are solving the same things and the high prices, alas, are also ubiquitous. But what impact is this having on learning? Few educators truly use the full capabilities of the tech available to them, due to a lack of time, training, or ideas for how it can be deployed, and some teachers can allow the technology to take precedence over pedagogy and learning."

WPClipart is a collection of high-quality public domain images specifically tailored for use in word processors and optimized for printing on home/small office inkjet printers. There are thousands of color graphic clips as well as illustrations, photographs and black and white line art. Nearly all are in lossless, PNG format. As of Friday, 12/12/2008 there are 23,907 images.

Outstanding Black History Resource!

Discovery Education has a set of resources covering this topic that will have some things you can use as part of Black History Month including teacher tips and resources.

Languages are important. We teach them to children. But we ignore computer programming languages - perhaps some of the most important fluencies anyone can acquire. Instead, we black box them and hope they MIGHT look at doing this in college, when in fact, many of the best jobs and opportunities lie in languages: both "foreign" languages and computer languages. Thought provoking blog post about a conversation: "Many interesting and stimulating things were said, but one I remember was from Peter Pham over dinner. It was a simple line, "why do we teach languages in junior high and high school but not a computer language?" that had profound meaning to me."

How the tide turns. Just take away wikipedia and blackout google and this is what happens. This was the topic of conversation at school yesterday. Major websites may have just realized the power of those eyeballs on their site. "Three co-sponsors of the SOPA and PIPA antipiracy bills have publicly withdrawn their support as Wikipedia and thousands of other websites blacked out their pages Wednesday to protest the legislation. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) withdrew as a co-sponsor of the Protect IP Act in the Senate, while Reps. Lee Terry (R-Neb.) and Ben Quayle (R-Ariz.) said they were pulling their names from the companion House bill, the Stop Online Piracy Act. Opponents of the legislation, led by large Internet companies, say its broad definitions could lead to censorship of online content and force some websites to shut down.

I love this very real post that includes a term I've never heard before "door knob lesson plan" -- this is as real as it gets and is on an important topic for November. "What am I most grateful for each day at school? My students. Classes are a sanctuary from the black funnel cloud, and let's face it, they are why I wanted to teach in the first place. Not for the paperwork. Not for the technology. Not for the budgets or schedules. Not for the data. For the kids."

" "You are now entering a world filled to the brim with idiots," "Since there are so many idiots out there, you may actually start to think you're crazy. You are not. They are idiots.""

Article discussing how cooled white dwarf stars (i.e. black dwarf stars) are most likely primarily made of diamond.

What a fun way to get middle school kids psyched about reading. I love watching the looks of sheer joy on the students as they participated in this flashmob take-off from the Oprah Black/Eyed Peas show.

History of the Black (Negro) Baseball League. Teacher resources provided.

Newspaper + Marker = Poetry. Grab a marker and a newspaper, black out the words you don't need, and share your poem here.

"The world is changing and that is nothing new. To quote a great prophet, "It was always burning, since the world's been turning." But the rate of change coupled with the explosion of data and media means that information from and about the world around us has turned from a manageable stream to a continual barraging flood. We can either give our pupils the skills to set up a self-sustaining hermitage in a mobile signal black spot, or we can provide them with the managed explosure and then skills to assess and deal with what is being hurled at them."