Category — General

Teacher freaks out about National Anthem, with Video:
Schools Superintendent Thomas L. Seidenberger issued a statement that “not all details cited on the Internet regarding this incident are factual.” The statement did not elaborate.

———-

the video stands alone…. this warrants dismissal for misunderstanding the history of the united states and the right of dissent that that history carries.

Calvin and Hobbes:
calvin and hobbes

[Read more →]

SchoolNet Toolkit:
Laid out in four substantive guidebooks, this kit is targeted especially towards policy- and decision-makers, school managers, practitioners, teachers and principals. Guidebook One provides a general overview and discusses how ICTs have been understood to improve the value and quality of education. Guidebook Two looks at planning a schoolnet programme, in terms of infrastructure, professional development, online content, curriculum integration etc, as well as ways in which to integrate change management, the sustainability of schoolnet activities and how can we better institutionalise programmes. Guidebook Three is more hands-on and practical. It is targeted towards the people actually running the projects – looking at the educational and social value of online communities, technological components, the different ways in which technologies can be adapted and so on. Guidebook Four is a practitioners’ guide, setting out the typical processes which they may follow.
http://www.unescobkk.org/education/ict/resources/JFIT/schoolnet/toolkit/wholedoc.pdf

[Read more →]

Magic-Sculp:
Epoxy clay

cooool

[Read more →]

The answer to the student evaluation problem!:
This is beautiful. It’s a simple, elegant solution, the Jedi mind trick:

———–

classic, i’ve actually had similar experience. i explain several time how my grading system is the fairest to everyone, and i always get at the end of the class comments that i’m remarkably fair. but then again… it is fair, uncommon, but fair.

$25,000 for a CMS??? You’ve got to be kidding!:
In Oh, What a Tangled Web…, University Business has a feature describing the need for content management systems on college campuses. Only wait? The feature focuses almost exclusively on expensive proprietary systems. Can’t imagine that any CMS is worth $25,000 plus $5,000 a year in maintenance cost with so many good open source apps out there. Bowling Green’s and Gonzaga’s new websites could easily be done with many open source solutions. I would have built Gonzaga’s expensive site for them with Drupal for 1/10 the cost. ‘Course the open source development communities and consultants aren’t going to come take a dean or IT director out to dinner and give them all kinds of other perks
Disclaimer: I don’t want to suggest that this is what happened at these institutions, but I suspect that open source CMS developers need to do a better marketing job and get their apps out there in the public eye and in whatever trade journals are featuring these needlessly expensive alternatives.

———

seems like a reasonable assumption though… why do we use x vs y, there is a reason…..

Proposed Law on Bankruptcy Has Loophole ….:
Proposed Law on Bankruptcy Has Loophole. A proposed law being debated by the Senate leaves open a loophole that lets wealthy people protect assets from creditors even after filing for bankruptcy. By GRETCHEN MORGENSON. [NYT > Business]

I feel so much better now that I know the wealthy will be protected from adverse effects of the bankruptcy bill! As long as only middle class and poor people can be hurt, and banks, credit card companies, and the rich are protected, I guess it’s a good thing. Yeesh.

———–
it is like people don’t know that others care that they game the system….. or worse, that they don’t care.

New Scientist Breaking News – Maximum pain is aim of new US weapon:
“I am deeply concerned about the ethical aspects of this research,” says Andrew Rice, a consultant in pain medicine at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in London, UK. “Even if the use of temporary severe pain can be justified as a restraining measure, which I do not believe it can, the long-term physical and psychological effects are unknown.”

The Decembrist: How Social Security Phase-Out Makes Republicans:
Now, there is another way that Social Security privatization could create Republicans, and I think this is actually closer to what’s on the mind of the less utopian strategists. (That is, those not named “Gingrich” or “Kemp.”) It’s the negative: they believe Social Security creates Democrats, by fostering a positive sense of government, which in Texas is called “dependence.” They don’t care about the private accounts so much as eroding as much as possible of the guaranteed benefit. I heard Gene Sperling, the head of the National Economic Council under Clinton, make a point related to this the other day: that the reason the White House seemed to be structuring the privatization in the bizarre and awkward way that they are, especially the reduction of the regular benefit by any gains in the private account, rather than just guaranteeing the benefit and making the account smaller, was to make sure that the guaranteed portion of the program appeared to be as trivial as possible.

———-

hmmmph