This book promotion highlights an issue that came up in class Friday. It ignited quite a bit of sidebar discussion during the breaks and in the ensuing days. (The Davidson Institute, by the way, is one of the few organizations in this country that focus on profound giftedness and on how to develop that talent. Their work looks at an educational culture that focuses on differentiation for struggling learners, but not so much for learners who need more, deeper, swifter). Our sidebar discussions sprang from the action research article about the teacher who apparently let much of the class languish while concentrating efforts on the group of below-proficient math students. Someone noted that it looked as if the proficient kids were left hanging for weeks while the others caught up. You can't re-capture lost instructional time. The notable thing for me is how many passionate views and personal stories came out of this. Many people have experienced first-hand--as teachers, curriculum specialists, and parents--that we really only differentiate "down." Differentiation "down" or "up" is hard work, but . . . With all the talk for excellence, many people in the field still believe that we aim for mediocrity--this is what many are seeing, but are afraid to shout out. Then you get into he interesting conversation about the strain in American society that fears intellectual achievement and cries "elitism." It seems to be a form of populism. At the same time, if we repress or under-serve our best and brightest, "Good luck finding those scientists who will make alternative energy, those researchers who will cure cancer, those thinkers who will solve the health care crisis, or those artists and writers who will polish the mirror of human experience for us." This is just one facet of an endlessly interesting conversation!

I have practiced highlighting in this little STEM article from Education Week. How can we ignite science and math for a broader range of kids so that they can fix and shape the world in the 21st century?

Gang, I am probably the last person in the world to learn about this great resource. We are finding that some of our federal grant competitions ask people to disseminate their project through OER

Open courseware from MIT--It is a treasure trove of science and engineering and math education

These are examples of "green" cities that have or are building sustainable energy plans. For science, note that most of them are arctic or sub-arctic cities. They offer diverse combinations of approaches to clean sustainability, using resources at hand. Ref.: ISTE student standards 1, 4, and 5. It is great that the new standards recognize the live-or-die mission of today's students. E.g.: Within their global digital networking environment------- they must enact citizenship that will make a planetary environment that is friendly to human survival (and the survival of many other species, too). This web site shows cities all over the northern hemisphere. Students can actually blog, facebook, or wiki or whatever with other kids in those same cities. Think of the science, economic, and social studies possibilities! Plus you could use Google Earth, a photo sharing site, and whatever (Picassa?) program that San Antonio lesson used to make a virtual tour of these star green cities. And of course you would apply all of that to mega projects here in Anchorage. A student network of kids in all those cities could grow into a network of future engineers, designers, and policy makers whose influence could go viral. Voila--civilization saved!