Welcome to the EC Ning Online Workshop on Nazi Propaganda presented by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Your facilitators are Carol Danks and Laurie Schaefer, both Museum Teacher Fellows and members of the Regional Education Corps for the USHMM.  This workshop will last for 21 days, from January 30-February 19th. So that you can best plan your time, here is the general outline for the workshop: Introduction & Overview: "State of Deception: Nazi Propaganda Online Workshop" January 30-February 1: Orientation to the State of Deception Website and Media Literacy questions February 2nd -7th Module 1: Exploring the concept of Inclusion through the theme: Defining the Enemy, Making a Leader, Rallying the Nation, and Indoctrinating the Youth. February 8th-12th: Module 2: Exploring the concept of Exclusion through the theme: Defining the Enemy February 13th-16th: Module 3: Propagating messages of Inclusion and Exclusion through the themes: Writing the News and Deceiving the Public February 17th: Module 4: Exploring Post Holocaust Propaganda and De-Nazification through the theme: Assessing the Guilt February 18th-19th: Teaching about Propaganda in the classroom: Resources, Lessons, Online Polls  

The civil rights legend has almost become "St. Martin" to schoolchildren, a larger-than-life figure whose sole achievement was delivering a speech about a dream, Winbush said. "It's like we boiled him down to four words - 'I have a dream' - the same way we've boiled Malcolm X down to 'by any means necessary,'" he said. "I think the students are in danger of getting an image of Dr. King … ascending into heaven." That image is inconsistent with how King was viewed before his death in 1968, Winbush said. "Dr. King was a peacemaker but the vast majority of people in this country, black and white, viewed him as a troublemaker because he told this country, 'Let's live up to what's in the Constitution and Declaration of Independence.' I hope that students and teachers go beyond those four words and realize that he lived after the 'I Have a Dream' speech," he said.

King's famous "Letter from Birmingham Jail," published in The Atlantic as "The Negro Is Your Brother," was written in response to a public statement of concern and caution issued by eight white religious leaders of the South. It stands as one of the classic documents of the civil-rights movement

Fascinating article about how the "I Had a Dream" speech came to be.

Rhetorical Figures in Sound is a compendium of  200+ brief audio (mp3) clips illustrating 40 different figures of speech.

A transcript of just the dialogue from the Grapes of Wrath.

full screenplay for Grapes of Wrath

SOMETIME back in 2000, Allen S. Rout, a systems programmer from Gainesville, Fla., posted a few photos of his 5-month-old son, Stephen, on his personal Web site. They were the kind of photos that every parent takes, but one in particular stood out: Stephen wearing a pair of red overalls, smiling in a crib. " The photo had faded from memory until last July, when Mr. Rout, curious about his online reputation, did a Google search of himself. Deep within the results pages, he found the picture of Stephen. Only, it wasn't exactly the same picture. He was surrounded by cartoonish word bubbles filled with Japanese writing: "Don't call me baby!" they read. "Call me Mr. Baby!" And there were other images in which the photo was transformed further: Stephen has a pompadour in one, a head full of snakes in another. His face was pasted onto Kurt Cobain's head, carved into Mount Rushmore and tattooed onto David Beckham's torso. He was an eight-bit video game character. He became a three-dimensional sculpture.

Resources, content and best practices for teaching high school history.

There needs to be massive attention given to early education of children in schools, and in the home, regarding issues of privacy, sharing, new media tools, and those tools' power to expose if not used properly. At the time of Tyler's death, Rutgers was launching its Project Civility campaign to raise awareness and sensitivity within the campus community. This is a noble endeavor to undertake, and it should continue. But it's too late. Creating positive, civil cultures should begin with our youngest students. Schools need to address incidents of bullying and cyberbullying in partnership with parents so that our students receive consistent messages at school and at home. And this work should begin as early as possible.

New Jersey state lawmakers have introduced legislation to make the penalties in cyberbullying cases harsher there. But Palfrey says more laws on cyberbullying aren't going to change bad behavior. Instead, adults need to reach out to young people in the new world they live in that is both virtual and real. "We need education; we need mentoring; we need parenting. We need to have good law enforcement," Palfrey says. "We need to have social workers figure out how to reach out in cyberspace, as well as in real space. ... It's an all-hands-on-deck kind of issue."

Nice lesson plan for movie and poem Howl. Resources for beats.

Review and story of West End Blues