Endless postings...

Not everything needs to be included on a status-update:

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/print/200901u/reblock-yourself

Hypocrisy

Everyone who claims Israel is the evil incarnate should consider these numbers:

http://www.opinion.co.uk/Newsroom_details.aspx?NewsId=78

600,000 to 1,000,000 dead Iraqis?

Our country has unleashed Hell on Iraq. Prosecute Bush for war crimes.

Why didn't we hear more about civilian casualties during the initial stages of the Iraq War?

Not for the faint of heart.

Like everyone who cares enough to click on the link and read my blog, I've been reading about the situation in Gaza. I want to look at how the MSM has covered the current war versus the initial stages of the War in Iraq in 2003.

The media didn't seriously question the motives for war in Iraq. Once the bombs started falling the flaccid coverage turned into testicle time. Geraldo was drawing lines in the sand. Bombs were set to rock and roll on Fox.

The Nation had coverage of civilian casualties. I saw some limited coverage on television but the term "collateral damage" comes to mind. My local paper, The Miami Herald, had a tiny box it would update with civilian deaths on page 24A of the front section.

But now I'm seeing images of dead children in Gaza on the 6:30 nightly news. There's real footage showing the human result of war! Has our media found morality? Are they interested in the entire story now? Are we to believe they are now concerned with civilian deaths in 2009 but unconcerned in 2003?

Was the military pressuring the media from reporting on dead Iraqi civilians? It seems that was the case. Most people realize that seeing the death and destruction in Vietnam helped organize resistance to the war. Consider this quote from 2003,

Lt. Col. Rick Long of the U.S. Marine Corps replied, "Frankly, our job is to win the war. Part of that is information warfare. So we are going to attempt to dominate the information environment." [embedded journalists]

Are we content with such a lack of information? How do we go from seeing numbers on a website to real coverage of the human suffering? Shouldn't this still be an issue??

Here's a view from the right:

One story the media isn't telling, because it's impossible to get this story in these circumstances (especially because Israel stupidly won't allow foreign reporters into Gaza) is how much resentment the Hamas policy of using Palestinians as human shields causes among Gaza civilians. Early reports indicate that Hamas mortar teams were firing from the UN School. This shouldn't surprise anyone.

One more thing, speaking of pornography -- we've all seen endless pictures of dead Palestinian children now. It's a terrible, ghastly, horrible thing, the deaths of children, and for the parents it doesn't matter if they were killed by accident or by mistake. But ask yourselves this: Why are these pictures so omnipresent?

I'll tell you why, again from firsthand, and repeated, experience: Hamas (and the Aksa Brigades, and Islamic Jihad, the whole bunch) prevents the burial, or even preparation of the bodies for burial, until the bodies are used as props in the Palestinian Passion Play. Once, in Khan Younis, I actually saw gunmen unwrap a shrouded body, carry it a hundred yards and position it atop a pile of rubble -- and then wait a half-hour until photographers showed. It was one of the more horrible things I've seen in my life. And it's typical of Hamas. If reporters would probe deeper, they'd learn the awful truth of Hamas. But Palestinian moral failings are not of great interest to many people.

Does Africa need God?

Does Africa need Christianity?

I've had this thought many times when faced with amoral students. Some of us need the threat of punishment! All in all, it offers good moral lessons so I'm in favor of religious education. Thinking along the lines of Spore, it's just a step we have to make!

Will Wright's view of education

Thanks to Will Wright and his awesome game "Sim City", I know more about city planning than most people :)

Here's what he thinks about our educational system:


I've always been somewhat disillusioned with the educational system. Some people have said it was originally based on the idea that we're training factory workers, so it was very important to teach them to do some repetitive task for eight hours a day. What's going to be really exciting is when this Nintendo generation gets a little bit older and starts becoming teachers in schools. I think that's going to make a bigger difference than any kind of educational reform ever will. In the future a lot more learning will happen in the home.^[5]

Here I am as a "Nintendo generation" teacher and I'm still trying the same ol' open up your book nonsense! I'm learning more from Spore than from any book! The Sims! It's all about exploring!

Should we pay students to learn?

My first instinct is NO!

But...I was raised in a middle class home with many books and two college educated parents. Taking AP courses was no big deal and I had a desire to learn.

According to this research, it seems that paying students WORKS. What is the cut-off? When should we start paying students to learn?

Also, how can we be sure that teachers aren't fudging data to help themselves or their students? We might end up with another layer of bureaucracy?

Vocabulary Quiz!

In order to help students of all ages with their academic success, I have designed a vocabulary quiz with thousands of words (4,996 in total!). Anyone can gain something from a vocabulary refresher!

http://modernpedagogy.org/SATGame1.zip

It's made with Java so you'll need it installed to run. Don't worry, most computers already have it.

Here are the steps to run the vocabulary game:

1. Download the link above.
2. Unzip it.
3. Click on the 'Shortcut to SATGame' icon.
4. Enter your first name.
5. Test your vocabulary knowledge with any of the given categories.

Give me feedback at david.freer@gmail.com after trying it out!

Vocabulary project is coming along....

I've got organization now ! :)

The project is great. I'm happy. Can't wait to release it.

Learning at home

Bill Gates says he likes a geology course from The Teaching Company.

How can we increase curiosity in students? I'd love to see a standardized test do that.

Is there a correlation between curiosity and performance?

Americans trampling each other for Chinese-made goods

Educators, we have a Herculean task in front of us. We have to contend with a culture that glorifies consumption to the point where we will trample our fellow man to get a discount on a DVD or flat-screen television.

I am truley sorry for your lots.

New seats for a new outlook...

Fun memories looking back on Dutton's memories.

"If you don't want to learn about Rome, you can go to hell!"

Throwing batteries! Yelling! Screaming!

At least now my run-ins with disrespect are less intense. Now it's mostly laughing and yelling.

But the new seats are quite positive so far.

Tests went well in the Office class. Attendance in the Java class has been really pathetic though! Don't know why... Most students are learning I think.

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My SAT program is coming along. I'm getting in the habit of working on the categories :)

So life is good.

The end of adolescence?

When does childhood end and adulthood begin?

Honestly, I felt like a child until my second year of teaching. It wasn't until I had my own classroom that I felt like an adult. When I was the beginning teacher, I felt powerless.

Newt Gingrich thinks adolescence is overrated:

http://www.businessweek.com/print/magazine/content/08_45/b4107085289974.htm

The costs of this social experiment have been horrendous. For the poor who most need to make money, learn seriously, and accumulate resources, adolescence has helped crush their future. By trapping poor people in bad schools, with no work opportunities and no culture of responsibility, we have left them in poverty, in gangs, in drugs, and in irresponsible sexual activity. As a result, we have ruined several generations of poor people who might have made it if we had provided a different model of being young.

Two Americas

"We live in two Americas. One America, now the minority, functions in a print-based, literate world. It can cope with complexity and has the intellectual tools to separate illusion from truth. The other America, which constitutes the majority, exists in a non-reality-based belief system. This America, dependent on skillfully manipulated images for information, has severed itself from the literate, print-based culture. It cannot differentiate between lies and truth. It is informed by simplistic, childish narratives and clichés. It is thrown into confusion by ambiguity, nuance and self-reflection. This divide, more than race, class or gender, more than rural or urban, believer or nonbeliever, red state or blue state, has split the country into radically distinct, unbridgeable and antagonistic entities. "

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http://www.truthdig.com/report/print/20081110_america_the_illiterate/

I don't believe this is a new problem. This is more serious now than ever.

But we keep ignoring the role of innate intelligence. Can the lowest 20% read well enough to follow complicated issues?

10,000 hours....

One hundred and eighty questions tomorrow. Students will answer as if their future depended on it.

There's a certain wildness and laziness in my last period. Oh well, they won't pass.

Education

I knew Obama was going to win when nearly every car that passed by was honking for him!

It felt great to help out the campaign with phone calls or canvassing. I didn't do all that much, but I did what I could.

We all did what we could. Let's keep up the momentum in our classrooms, in the community, and in the country!

You can learn so much about a student by how they write...

Flamboyant boys often write like girls.

Disturbed students often have strange drawings.

Good students often have neat handwriting.

I'm just offering my generalizations for the future. Nothing scientific, just a teacher noting some things about handwriting.

Picking out the information we all want...

This podcast with Lewis Lapham has a great line from the guest, Tony Judt. Paraphrased:

• With the age of infinite information, we all can pick and choose our points. We don't have a basic "common knowledge" anymore.

How can we get the public to consider alternate points of view? How can we stop all the "preaching to the choir"?

• Without a common culture, we have no chance of understanding one another.

This leads to less control over politics.

Turn off the talking points. At least let's consider the sources:

This comes from one of the biggest brains behind "The Daily Show":

• Chodikoff doesn’t use Google to turn up inconsistencies, preferring news stories on LexisNexis, and he ignores Wikipedia. Explaining why he prefers print over the Web, he cites a scene from the movie “Back to School,” when Rodney Dangerfield asks his son why he’s buying used books. “And he says, ‘Because they’re already underlined, see?’ And Rodney says, ‘But that guy could have been a maniac.’ And that’s the problem with the Internet.”

Yet every maniac now has a voice. Kinda scary. That's why I was a newspaper subscriber.

Why is intelligence such a touchy subject?

When people begin to discuss height, they have no trouble imagining it has a genetic component. When people mention intelligence, they get very nervous.

What I learned while canvassing...

I spent some of the afternoon today canvassing for Barack Obama. From the individuals I talked to, people are sick of the direction this country is going. I mean absolutely SICK of it. They are so disillusioned, they don't even see the possibility of a Barack Obama presidency changing anything.

I tried my best to give them some hope. It's hard when you hear the despair.

It was eye-opening though and I'd like to continue to canvass. It's exciting!

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Closer to home I made this website to help shore up support for less development in South Florida:

http://www.notoparkland.blogspot.com

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Even though I disagree with much of the "right wing", I respect the thoughtful and involved. No one benefits when they feel they have a monopoly on truth. No one benefits from spending all day attacking people over the Internet.

Human contact is effective. Some people really seemed relieved to have someone to talk to on a Sunday afternoon. Besides, the exercise is good for you. I really encourage everyone to get out and canvass.

http://my.barackobama.com/

it's not hard to get started and it's fun!

I'm not going to even attempt bipartisanship here. If you still support McCain after this erratic campaign, eight years of Bush, and disasterous pick Palin...you've got some splainin to do in the comments.

But seriously, chances are if you are reading this that you spent too much time online today preaching to the converted. There are people who have no idea what a blog is or what RSS does. Some have never used YouTube.

So here's my online plea to get you to join me offline before this election is over. See you at the local campaign hq or on the street!

Why Educators Should Vote for Obama

Some of my students are fearful of the standardized test that's looming large in their future. They hold out some naive hope that Obama will remove this obstacle. I explain about "No Child Left Behind" and how education is a combination of local, state, and federal laws.

Still, I think Obama is a better choice for educators. Here's why.

First of all, Obama was a professor at one of the best law schools in the country, the University of Chicago. He appreciates the doors education can open for people. Meanwhile, John McCain graduated at the bottom of his class at the Naval Academy. He used his father and grandfather's influence to get by.

Obama seems to be a deep thinker. He writes his own speeches. He picked a vice presidential candidate who is rational and intelligent. He was a community organizer when he could've been making a fortune on Wall Street. Some things are more important than money.

America needs a new start after the last misreable eight years.

I'd think many scientists would agree.