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Wesley Fryer is not only a great educator but a great man. Here He shares how He and otHer men went into tHe Cushing Oklahooma correction facility and Helped dads record messages to tHeir children for FatHer's day. What a great thing to do. Part of my own faith is tHe forgiveness that we can receive and as people we must forgive and encourage those who have made mistakes. If you don't make a mistake ignore this post, if you do, tHen consider bringing something like this to your area. Great work, Wes. I hope our PLN's share this message far and wide. "This is a 14 minute video reflection by Wesley Fryer, who volunteered with Redeeming tHe Family on May 15, 2013, at tHe Cimarron Correctional Facility (prison) in Cushing, Oklahoma. Oklahoma currently has 17 prisons, and Cimarron is one of three which is privately operated. Corrections Corporation of America has owned and operated this prison commercially since 1997. Last week Redeeming tHe Family volunteers assisted 50 incarcerated dads to record video messages of love for tHeir children, which will be mailed to tHeir children before FatHer's Day on Sunday, June 16th."

In 2011 footballer Xabi Alonso gave an interview to the Guardian on his experiences as a young player moving from Spain to Liverpool.  he describes the most significant difference here. I don't think tackling is a quality," he says. "It is a recurso, something you have to resort to, not a characteristic of your game. At Liverpool I used to read the matchday programme and you'd read an interview with a lad from the youth team. They'd ask: age, heroes, strong points, etc. he'd reply: 'Shooting and tackling'. I can't get into my head that football development would educate tackling as a quality, something to learn, to teach, a characteristic of your play...

"The start of a new term and in walks little Johnny! It's his first day in a SEN school. he doesn't bite his nails though but he fidgets, fiddles and drifts off into early morning daydreams. Our quest as teacher and TA then begins. How do we reel him in? How do we get him to be here… with us?"

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!

This company is suing @phonedog (name since changed) since he left the company and changed his userid keeping the twitter followers (some 17k he had accumulated.) Expect increasing scrutiny and debates on who owns the followers of people tweeting on behalf of companies.

mr. Thorne is out of the UK. he has great phonics lessons. Yes, he has a british accent, but you could listen and redo these lessons in your own classroom if you are US. 

Increasingly activists are becoming filmmakers because video is the modern essay - traveling further than pamphlets by Patrick henry, showing people in action fighting for freedom - or, in this case, free education in Chile, tends to cause change. Fascinating read and case study. "Roberto's son Pablo, born and raised in the UK, has worked on several documentaries on Latin America. he produced the documentary 'Inside the Revolution: A Journey Into the heart of Venezuela', released in August 2009 by Alborada Films, and 'The Colombia Connection', released in November 2012. he has covered Latin America for various media outlets, including Al Jazeera English, the Guardian and the BBC. I spoke to Pablo about their forthcoming documentary on Chile's student movement and their crowdfunding campaign."

More science news! A duckbill dinosaur was found with a trex tooth in it. Yes - Trex was a predator, so no rewrite of Jurassic park is needed. "You see 'Jurassic Park,' and you see T. rex as this massive hunter and killer, as incredibly vicious. But scientists have argued for 100 years that he was too big and too slow to hunt prey and that he was probably a scavenger, an animal that feeds only on dead things," University of Kansas paleontologist David Burnham said. Burnham and researcher Robert DePalma got what Burnham described as his "lucky break" when they found the fossil of a duckbill dinosaur's tail with a tooth in it."

If you're dealing with leadership transitions in your district, Miguel Guhlin has penned a pretty epic post. In it, he is blunt about the ups and downs of working with great leaders, and "hatchet men." IN the post, he also includes steps to making staff development actually work and his frustration to be asked to read books that no one else read or implemented. This is a great post and one that leaders should read (so they can be visionary) and staff and teachers should read (so they can find wisdom for making it through tough transitions.) Every transition is tough - I've been through several myself during my 12 years and even when the leader is a very good one, it is hard to do and endure because so many people take their "eye off the ball" and the ball is learning in the classroom. Drama in the front office should be kept at a minimum so classroom learning can be kept at a maximum.

"Spies with surveillance agencies in the United States and United Kingdom may have spent time undercover as orcs and blood elves, infiltrating video games like "World of Warcraft" in a hunt for terrorists "hiding in plain sight" online." I find this very believable for this reason. I had a student in Teen Second life several years a go and he came across a "meeting" of sorts that was obviously something very strange. When he tried to interact with the players they had a way to throw him out and port him other places. It was obviously some sort of strange thing happening. I have no doubt that games are just another way to have "secret" meetings for those who want to hide. That said, it would be hard to tell the difference between those gaming and those doing other things as the games themselves have people plotting and planning so I'm thinking the language used would be hard to separate the real world from the game itself, which, in some ways makes it the perfect way to hide in plain sight.

When Jon Stewart asked Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty last week for some examples of how he intended to administer "limited and effective" government, the Republican governor did not roll out boilerplate rhetoric on welfare or farm subsidies. Instead, he took square aim at traditional higher education. "Do you really think in 20 years somebody's going to put on their backpack, drive a half hour to the University of Minnesota from the suburbs, haul their keister across campus, and sit and listen to some boring person drone on about econ 101 or Spanish 101?" Pawlenty asked Stewart, host of "The Daily Show."

Did you know it took 13 years for television to reach 50 million users? TV has evolved from the time it started with just a few programs airing each day into 24/7 news and hundreds of stations to choose from. People didn't immediately embrace the new technology though. 10 years after its debut in 1936, the head of 20th Century Fox Darryl F. Zanuck (seeing TV as a competitor to movies) famous last words were predicting it would not catch on.  he said he thought "People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night."

Great sessions from Discovery - one is coming up on October 22nd about Bernie Dodge.

Discovery education has the greatest WEbinars. I'm going to attend the one next Wednesday with Bernie Dodge. These are free great sessions. I highly recommend listening to the one with Bernie Dodge - he is doing some great work and came on wow2 last year and talked about webquests and web 2.0 and was getting ready to embark on some really cool work. I"ve GOT to hear what he has to say. This is great for teachers and anyone teaching educators.

Leadership and taking criticism

Another must read motivational post for those in leadership from Doug Johnson. I love the part where he says this time of year he needs to wear iron underwear b/c everyone seems to want to take a bite out of his a*%! Criticism is so tough to deal with, especially when you feel a lone. This is something I've been taking on the chin lately at our school and sometimes it really makes me want to quit. I think it is because as connected as I am with all of these amazing educators, right now in terms of technology, I don't feel very connected with the teachers at our school, largely because my workload barely gives me time to go to the ladies room! I love this post!

A HS chemistry teacher describes how he began teaching w/o a text and why he wouldn't go back.

Michael Torres presented a fascinating Session at BLC today about how he engages students using multimedia. This is his page and it has some great work on it. he used music to introduce algebra. It was very cool.

This is an interesting article from Andrew Hargadon (yes, interestingly he is related to Steve Hargadon who started Classroom 2.0.) he makes a great point that is so salient to many professions: "So here we are, with pressing social and environmental problems, and a system that has undermined science's ability to lead in the changes we desperately need. "

Attention: 4th and 5th Grade Teachers Starting February 1, 2010, join @ewitt43 as he invites you and your class on a reading adventure with classes from around the country. They will be discussing and reading the story "The Invention of Hugo Cabret." It is an amazing story that takes the students on an adventure of over 500 pages of words and illustrations. he does this as a read aloud and the students will be answering the questions on the blog on their own so they can communicate with other students of similar age.