At the National Book Festival, they had an entire mobile unit pushing the e-book movement. If you have a DC Public library card, they have a lot of electronic options!

Since our class is a certified green course, I thought this statement was rather appropriate.

Talk about the great equalizer of the future! If this idea goes big and they can produce it for a more mass audience, this has unbelievable potential. You could potentially have access to so much information. The other thing that is slowly grabbing my attention is the fact that it would cut down on back problems. I had to carry around McKinley's AP US history book last week, and I just about died. If schools picked up on this technology they would just buy e-readers and no more carrying around 50 lbs + of textbooks. They would be more likely to read for homework if they didn't have to drag those beasts back and forth everyday.

I found this statistic about hispanic drop-out rates really alarming. Considering that the Hispanic population is quickly growing, education policy makers should be moving this to the forefront of their concerns.

This was something that I personally ran into in my practicum. Better information needs to be distributed regarding college financing. There is a stigma in lower-income areas about taking out college loans and a lot of misinformation. When I taught a lesson on saving and investment for an Economics class, I spent the majority of the lesson answering questions regarding this and reminding students that college is an investment and that it will pay-off in the end. An example that worked really well was the game of Life, since many students have played it. In the board game if you go to college in the beginning, you will end up in the better retirement home in the end.

Both parts struck me. Encouragement is so important, because if your teacher doesn't encourage you, who will after all? Second, a problem we have at McKinley is that students that go to college get distracted and overwhelmed by college and dropout the first year. This is important on two fronts, we need better college prep programs in high school and also the colleges and universities need better support systems for first generation college students.

This is an excellent essential question for an entire unit because you can tie this directly back to prior lessons on the Continental Congress.

This is for Utah, but I would assume a similar objective/standard would be covered in DCPS.

The National Constitution Center has an excellent biographical list of all of those that attended the convention, you can search by interactive map. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams were not at the Constitutional Convention, as they were serving as ambassadors in Europe.

So for the first half of my time at McKinley we had a class called Global Perspectives and nobody knew what we were supposed to teach because it was brand new. My teacher thought it was a pain but I thought it was such a cool opportunity to have a lot of teacher freedom. They had a book that taught them about different contemporary issues around the world but it was really negative. So in order to balance out some of that negativity, particularly regarding developing countries, I think it would be cool to choose a cool travel book about some of the places. Especially if you were in a school that had a English/Social Studies department relationship. Some of the books wouldn't be very good to use but out of 50 titles, there were a few that sparked my interest.

This is one that sparked my interest because it is written by a historian. I think what he did was so cool. He journeyed down the Yangtze river and tied the past and present, which is the only way to truly understand a sense of place and cultures.

I really like this part of the website because it keeps track of current events in economics and gives you related lessons. My understanding is that economic education works best when you give the kids real-life examples. My teacher likes to bring up the healthcare package a lot and it works because the students know that this is a big issue and it puts context to things.

NCEE (National Council on Economic Education) likes to use real life context in their lesson plans. There are simulations, group decision/problem solving solving, etc. They believe in the education principle of learn by doing (Dewey) and I think economics needs real world context even more so than other subjects.

I have to be honest, my students do get kind of annoying with this stuff but you can't not let them go to the bathroom, I like that this maintains control but still gives kids independence.

In these times of standards and high-stakes testing, they want us to accomplish so much, this just might be a simple way of gaining a little edge in more fluid instruction time and I think it is worth trying out.

A teacher could also use it as an opportunity to talk a little bit about deaf culture, which I think is really important. One of my good friends is a CODA (Child of Deaf Adult) and it is a very passionate and strong community.

This sounds really great but I think we all know the reality. Local districts always freak out when they are asked to give up their discretion. Right or wrong, I really don't see things changing on that front.

This seems like a reasonable compromise to me.

Backwards planning, that seems logical, know where you want to end up so you can better understand what it takes to get there, very logical.

The gradual decline of funding priority for education may not be immediately felt but I think the effects later down the road could be bad. I think we take education very much for granted.

I wonder who he is talking about specifically with this statement? European countries? I wonder how much of an impact in that is because many of them have free higher education, or at least highly subsidized. But then again their tax rates are outrageous. The great thing about our system is that we have a lot of choices, so it's hard to compare in many ways too.

I think this is a very interesting example, it always seems to be a question of equity or choice.

This is an important scholarly journal for African American history and a great resource to keep in mind.

The other great thing about having this website, every year they set the official theme. At my after-school program we use the ASALH theme for our own Gallery of Black History every year, this year's theme will be "The history of Black Economic Empowerment." I think the themes are helpful to focus study because there is so many different people and ideas you could potentially cover, it can be overwhelming. Last year I liked that they incorporated Obama and the centennial of the NAACP.

It is always helpful to see what books and other kinds of classroom resources are available. Particularly, these kinds of resources are approved by the organization, so you know that they are quality. Even if you don't want to buy them, getting the names of the books, so you can get them from the library for free is always useful.