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"Posted at 04:30 PM ET, 10/14/2011 STEVE JOBS SMACKDOWN: Matt Bors delivers our Cartoon of the Day By Michael Cavna [comic] Last Sunday night, Comic Riffs first reported on a curious trend we noticed among editorial artists: Despite Steve Jobs's declared Buddhism, obituary cartoons were rendering unto him an afterlife at the gates of an iPad-happy St. Peter. Throughout the week, other cartoonists noted the odd trend, as well. But one artist - Portland's Matt Bors - has now rendered perhaps the most inspired response. ..."

"A simple template allowing you to print on to post-it notes. Includes instructions."

Nice article at edweek about the informational texts versus great works of literature debate and what Common Core will do to lit. The one important, practical issue that all parties to this discussion MUST recognize - the classroom time is FINITE. Teachers would love to cover EVERYTHING but it just isn't practical. So, if one thing is emphasized over another, it may push something out. Unintended consequences are happening as people "align" their curriculum to common core standards. As all of the pundits and advocates argue this, it would be telling to sit down with an actual aligned curriculum to SEE what happens where the standards meet the lesson plans and what is actually pushed out - until then - it is all, rhetoric. Give us practical application, we're teachers, after all. From the edweek article: "Until recently, the closest we'd come to a major speech on the nonfiction-versus-fiction question was a piece in the Huffington Post by the English/language arts standards' co-authors, David Coleman and Sue Pimentel, insisting that literature "is not being left by the wayside." The message to rally the troops must have gone out, however. Because since the Coleman/Pimentel piece appeared, the common core's defenders have stepped up to counterbalance the literature-pushout crowd. The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation's Kathleen Porter-Magee, for instance, posted a piece arguing that it's a misinterpretation of the standards to say that teachers will have to teach less literature. In a recent email blast, the Foundation for Excellence in Education-led by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, one of the common core's biggest backers-declaimed the "misinformation flying around" about what will happen to literature under the common standards. "Contrary to reports," it said, "classic literature will not be lost with the implementation of the new standards." A glance at the standards' own suggested text lists, it noted, "reveals that the common core recognizes the importance of b

Some of my students are signing up to join the Quest2matter as part of their passion projects. Here's a link to the website and the signup. If your child wants to make a difference in the world, you may want to mention this as something they want to do. Very exciting. "The Quest2Matter is a five-week, student-focused initiative that seeks to inspire students to tackle problems that break their heart. This is an unprecedented opportunity to unlock the potential of students to think entrepreneurially and innovatively and use modern tools to solve problems that break their heart. To learn more about the Quest2Matter, read this post. We are looking to recruit 225 students, and teachers to help facilitate them for our DREAM TEAM! They will be helping us launch the Quest2Matter and its parent movement, Choose2Matter. See the general information and qualifications below, followed by the specific duties of each team. At the very bottom of this post, you'll find a link to the sign-up form."

Love the rapid elearning blog. With over 102K subscribers, it is jam packed with great material. This organized blog post has some great information and links to tutorials. "Today I am going to fix that. I have listed every blog post that has a video tutorial that shows how to create something related to online learning. So, if you're just getting started with building online learning courses (or new to the blog), now you have a handy resource with links to all sorts of rapid elearning tutorials."

Disgusting. Via the Washington Post So many things going wrong. "Talk about corporate-based school reform. New high-stakes standardized tests aligned with the Common Core State Standards are featuring plugs for commercial products. And the companies didn't have to pay a penny. Yes, New York state students who this past week took Pearson-designed exams were just treated to plugs for LEGO, Mug Root Beer and more products from at least half a dozen companies, according to  the New York Post."

Twitter is going to "rate" your tweets in the hopes of giving you and developers better content. Again, those late to the game may have trouble being heard, but I'd like to think there is always a way to be valuable. Never assume that because everyone is following someone that they have something worth saying - decide who YOU want to follow and that is enough. Of course, when this happens, expect the usual uproar of those who are valued and not valued, as for me, I hope I can resist the urge to start comparing in sharing and just try to stay helpful. From Mashable..."The value judgements will be assigned to the public metadata of tweeters' posts, and used by Twitter's streaming API to help developers more selectively curate massive amounts of status updates. Designations of "none," "low" and "medium" will most likely debut on Feb. 20, according to a post by developer advocate Arne Roomann-Kurrik on the Twitter developers' blog. A "high" value option will be rolled out sometime after the initial batch."

I tried to think of a different way of titling this post, I wasn't keen on the word 'surviving' but the more I thought about it, the more I realised that actually, you really do feel like you're surviving… Just about. I've been onto Twitter, Instagram and even scrolled through my personal Facebook a few times to discover that Teacher Training Nerves are setting in. Now, I know you've probably (definitely) heard some complete horror stories but let's begin with an open mind. Having just completed the PGCE, I totally understand why you are so nervy and that is why I've created this post… So, sit back, take a deep breath and repeat "I can do this"...

In my first post in this series - Getting students' attention - I mentioned the use of backchannels. This post should give you more information about the use of backchannels within the classroom. If you are working in a classroom where your students have internet connected devices, either through wifi or their mobile phone, using a backchannel can have a transformative impact on the way you can use technology with your students...

The Washington Post has a quite distressing bug common remarks about Common Core exemplars. Is going too much by the common core doing to take us down to a lower common denominator than we are at already? I'm not sure but this type of article is very concerning. "Each teacher read individually through the exemplar lesson on Lincoln's speech. When we began discussing it, we all expressed the same conclusion: Most of it was too scripted. It spelled out what types of questions to ask, what types of questions not to ask, and essentially narrowed any discussion to obvious facts and ideas from the speech.

Extending the school day may not have the benefits that some claim, especially since we're just giving kids more same-old same-old instruction time. This article from the Washington Post is worth a read. "But the extended day approach being implemented in many schools as a result of the department's push to increase instructional time  falls short.  It largely ignores the deep body of research on what makes effective expanded learning.   Instead, too many schools are merely adding another hour or so of regular class time onto the school day.  Not surprisingly, two very recent studies suggest we might not accomplish much with this approach to improving schools. "

A middle school teacher known only as "Seldy" shares his interactive language arts notebook in this blog post. The notebook is truly something special but even more astounding, he acknowledges that many of the pages he found on Pinterest. Pinterest is ideal for teachers and makes it super easy to share. (I have a Pinterest for beginners post for those who want an invite.) if you teach upper elementary into high school language arts, take time to peruse this notebook. Nice work!

Heartwrenching, heartaching, upsetting, but all too true. For those who want to see inside the life of many US public school teachers, Peter Hirzel has a gutsy, edgy post on salon and says many of the things that are often whispered and said in email. But there is a part that I want EVERY teacher to hear because it reflects something I say a lot to teachers: "When we have each others' backs, we are invincible. So I hope all the teachers continue to be kind to one another, because one kind word was very, very often the only thing that got me through the day." BE KIND TO EACH OTHER. Encourage each other. Smile. Say hello. You are fellow journeyman and deserve each other's respect and kindness. Please hear this. Don't be discouraged, but if you're in edreform and don't read this post, you shouldn't be in edreform because you don't get the conflicting emotions plaguing the psyche of so many teachers today.

But the excuses and lead is a great post for administrators to read. Spawned as he watched excuse after excuse scroll past his Twitterfall from a Twitterchat, this excellent post is worth a read. Further proof that when we connect, we put our finger on the pulse of changed and have the conversations that need to happen. Read and respond. Great job, Dave!

Corkboard Me is a great site for posting messages online with virtual post it notes. Share the link to let others see. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/ICT+%26+Web+Tools

I was rereading this old post for some writing I'm doing about filtering and it struck me that although this post was written in 2008 it reads like it was written this morning. I think there are some very valid arguments to share as you discuss content filtering in your school. When asked about how to help kids with allergies, researchers have made the bold statement , "Let them eat dirt! " As I read these articles, I was struck with the parallel to the content filtration debate that rages in education today.

ADHD, medicine abuse, and a video to show you what it "feels like" to have ADHD. This post from Huffington is a great one to share with those who don't understand this disorder. There are still so many questions to ask, especially that of if we've somehow become so desk bound that our physical bodies are crying out for more running and moving, but that is for another post.

Mess around with web pages. This is from David Warlick's post on Educon that I posted as part of the daily news. You're not REALLY changing the page but changing it locally on your machine, but is is still a lot of fun. There are also links to using this site to teach how to make websites.

This blog post provides links to some of the best online collections of information Web 2.0 tools to use in education. It is a not to be missed blog posting, with links to websites, etc. to find excellent information and resources.

Great post from Lifehacker of their 50 apps they are most thankful for with the links to the posts they've written about them. This is my kind of very functional list. I love it!