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Free download of PDF versions of Thomas Paine's Common Sense.

Lots of talk in technology circles about 6th grader Thomas Suarez an iphone programmer.His best selling app is Bustin Jieber a Justin Beiber "Whack a Mole." He shares how he learned how to program an app. How he taught himself the iPhone Software Development kit.  He started an "app club" at school where any kid at school can come and learn how to design an app. He is part of an ipad pilot program. The students are asking teachers to help them design apps for education and the money is going into local education foundation. 

Walk through 3d versions of the famous French and Italian Renaissance inspired villa of Thomas Jefferson.

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

Student created wiki. Thomas Cooper is the teacher behind this project. He teachers at the Walker School in Marietta, GA. Many people believe that child labor and abuse is something of the past, but there could not be more of a false statement. Around the world children are being marginalized, and abused, and forced into labor. Children in Africa are being forced to join the military and kill children and adults alike. Other children are living on the streets because their parents' lives were taken by the AIDS virus. And due to India's class system, young children will live in poverty with no possible way of hope in the future. Children are even forced into prostitution and labor. Childhood deformities and disabilities cause affected children to live in isolation and cause pain and suffering for both them and their families. Be sure to check out the teacher resources in the table of contents.

Excellent tips for SMART blogging!

20,000 plus images of Jefferson's documents.

This seems stuck in the notion of the 'course' as a transferrable, replicable unit of education, without acknowledging all kinds of educational interactions that happen around courses, in one-on-one conversation etc. If a course is a knowledge dump, then it can be replaced with recorded equivalents, it seems to me. But if it is an interactive experience, a conversation among learners with the instructor as lead/expert learner, then reproducing it on a mass scale simply won't work.

Chapter 18 for Hot, Flat and Crowded -- you can contribute your best ideas for clean energy, energy efficience, and what can be done for chapter 18 -- please share. Authors are increasingly willing to communicate and share information in print received online. This would be something great for kids.

Sharing information about environmental best practices for Tom Friedman's new book.

From a tweet by Will Richardson