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Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Monday, June 27, 2011
Computational Thinking across the Curriculum
Computational Thinking
Computer Science for High School
The reference is: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~CompThink/resources/ct_pat_phillips.ppt
http://compthink.cs.depaul.edu/
CSTA International Affiliates
Computer Science for High School
What is computational thinking?
Computational thinking facilitates new ways of seeing existing problems.Computational thinking is the intellectual, reasoning skill that a professional needs to master in order to apply computational techniques or computer applications to the problems and projects in their field, whether the field is economics, art, or a science, or an area within the humanities or social sciences.The reference is: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~CompThink/resources/ct_pat_phillips.ppt
http://compthink.cs.depaul.edu/
CSTA International Affiliates
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Negotiated Meaning
Negotiated Meaning
Meaning is negotiated throught the interchange between texts, culture and audiences:
Meaning is negotiated throught the interchange between texts, culture and audiences:
| TEXTS DENOTATION CONNOTATION CODES & CONVENTIONS PRACTICES OWNERSHIP & CONTROL GENRE NARRATIVE COMMODITY PROMOTION TECHNOLOGY MEDIUM INTERTEXTUALITY e.g. what else is it like? | CULTURE FINANCE DISTRIBUTION LEGALITY TECHNO-CULTURE ECONOMIC CLIMATE IDEOLOGY AND VALUES PUBLIC MOOD MEDIA ENVIRONMENT | AUDIENCES CULTURE e.g. race, class, age, nationality, politics, sub-culture GENDER TEXTUAL COMPETENCE (general & specific) PSYCHOLOGY e.g.pleasure, use SOCIAL FUNCTION SKILL SETS REGIONAL DIFFERENCES |
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| http://digitalliteracy.mwg.org/studies/meaning.html |
Clouding Computing
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| http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cloud_applications.jpg |
N.C. Considers Paying Forced Sterilization Victims
Image via WikipediaWednesday, June 22 2011 09:34 PM
Barely 40 years ago, more than half of U.S. states had eugenics laws that made it legal for states to sterilize people against their will. North Carolina is now considering compensating those victims. On Wednesday, a state panel heard from some who were mostly poor, uneducated — and often just girls when it happened.
Nearly 7,600 men, women and children as young as 10 were sterilized under North Carolina's eugenics laws. While other state sterilization laws focused mainly on criminals and people in mental institutions, North Carolina was one of the few to expand its reach to women who were poor. Sterilization was seen as a way to limit the public cost of welfare. Social workers would coerce women to have the operation under threat of losing their public assistance.
A small collection of photos shows an unsettling part of American history.
What is certainly the most intriguing — and probably the most numerous — collection of eugenics-related photographs can be found in a scrapbook assembled by the members of the American Eugenics Society, now in the holdings of the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia.
The American Eugenics Society promoted ideas of racial betterment and genetic education through public lectures, conferences, publications and exhibits at county and state fairs —
The North Carolina Eugenics Board was created in 1933 and operated for decades with little public scrutiny. It used rudimentary IQ tests and gossip from neighbors to justify sterilization of young girls from poor families who hung around the wrong crowd or didn't do well in school.
In a way, this makes perfect sense. Born out of a society that was still making the transition from agricultural to industrial, much of the eugenics argument was based on the idea that we selectively breed our livestock for desired traits; why not do the same with human society? As one sign asks, "Are you a thoroughbred?
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Explore China's Global Reach
China has been steadily increasing its foreign investments outside of bonds in recent years. Between 2005 and 2010, it made more than $224 billion in overseas investments and also entered into engineering and construction contracts of more than $94 billion, according to data compiled by The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C. The group tracks China's foreign nonbond investments and contracts worth more than $100 million. Before 2005, China had relatively few overseas investments outside of bonds, says Heritage's Derek Scissors. But China's investments are still dwarfed by the United States, he says. (Explore NPR's full series China: Beyond Borders.)
Chinese Reopen Debate Over Chairman Mao's Legacy
 Image via Wikipedia |
| 02/29/1972 |
Daily plans for the first three weeks and commentary about these plans at three grade levels: primary (K–2), middle (3–4), and upper (5–6)
As China prepares to mark the 90th anniversary of its Communist Party on July 1, there are signs of a new ideological struggle over former leader Mao Zedong's legacy.
It's been nearly 35 years since the death of Chairman Mao, and the official verdict is that Mao was 70 percent right and 30 percent wrong. That assessment is controversial, given the tens of millions of deaths Mao caused through economic mismanagement and political terror.
Now an 82-year-old reform-minded economist, Mao Yushi (no relation to the former leader), has reopened the debate over the chairman inside China. In a bold essay, he wrote that Chairman Mao should not be viewed as a god any longer.
"The three biggest murderers of the 20th century are Hitler, Stalin and Mao Zedong. That's commonly accepted among historians outside China, and Mao killed the most people. They're seen as representatives of evil," he told NPR. "But in China, Mao's portrait is still in Tiananmen Square. If China wants to develop further, it needs to distinguish between basic right and wrong."
Reformist Mao Yushi, 82, has caused a storm with his latest essay criticizing Chairman Mao. But he would welcome a court hearing. "It wouldn't be me on trial, it would be Chairman Mao on trial," he says.
The website's [Utopia]founder, Fan Jinggang, 34, also started a bookshop specializing in the works of Mao, as well as Cu ltural Revolution-era films and biographies of leaders like Hugo Chavez. Fan says Mao Yushi has gone too far.
"[Mao Yushi] represents those Western imperialist powers and China's landlord class that were chased out at the founding of new China," Fan says. "Their common trait is they oppose the People's Republic of China, and China's socialist system."
Using Assessment to Improve Instruction
The Data Wise project at the Harvard Graduate School of Education is designed to help schools turn student assessment data into a tool to improve instruction and turn the act of data analysis into a process that improves the organization, function and climate of schools. A step-by-step guide to this process, for schools and school districts, is described in the authors’ recent book, Data Wise, published by the Harvard Education Press.
- Collective responsibility for learning
In order to re-frame the learner-centered problem as a problem of instruction, teachers must reflect on the link between instructional practice and student learning, rather than attribute learning difficulties to weak students or deficient home lives. - A shared understanding of effective practice
Before they are able to articulate a problem of practice, teachers must come to an understanding of what effective instruction for the identified learning problem would look like. - Classrooms open to teacher colleagues for observation and analysis
In order to articulate a problem of practice teachers must make use of instructional data which they collect through observations of their colleagues’ classrooms and contrast current practice with their shared expectation of effective instruction for the identified learning problem.
"Before schools can respond to external pressure for increased academic performance, they must transform themselves from atomized, incoherent organizations to ones in which faculty share an explicit set of norms and expectations about what good instructional practice looks like." HGSE Professor Richard Elmore
Data Wise: A Step-by-Step Guide to Using Assessment Results to Improve Teaching and Learning, edited by Kathryn Parker Boudett, Elizabeth A. City, and Richard J. Murnane (2005), is published by the Harvard Education Press.
GPS, which stands for Global Positioning System
GPS, which stands for Global Positioning System, is a radio navigation system that allows land, sea, and airborne users to determine their exact location, velocity, and time 24 hours a day, in all weather conditions, anywhere in the world. The capabilities of today’s system render other well-known navigation and positioning “technologies”—namely the magnetic compass, the sextant, the chronometer, and radio-based device —impractical and obsolete. GPS is used to support a broad range of military, commercial, and consumer applications. 24 GPS satellites
Monday, June 20, 2011
Clay Shirky: How social media can make history | Video on TED.com
Clay Shirky: How social media can make history | Video on TED.com
Clay Shirky believes that new technologies enabling loose collaboration — and taking advantage of “spare” brainpower — will change the way society works. Full bio and more links
Dan Gillmor
My life has been in media — music, newspapers, online, books, investing and education. My new book, Mediactive, was recently released. My goal with this project is to help turn passive media consumers into active users — as participants at every step of the process starting with what we read.
Daily Grommet
Daily Grommet
a movement that gives people the information and tools to support products that align with their own values. It's a powerful new way to discover, share, and sell consumer products.
a movement that gives people the information and tools to support products that align with their own values. It's a powerful new way to discover, share, and sell consumer products.
What is a Grommet
It's a wonderful product still waiting in the wings, just ripe for discovery.
It has great utility, or style, or invention. Or, very often it has all three.
Every day at noon we launch one inventive consumer product or service and broadcast its story across the web. People all over the world give us suggestions for products. They tell us why they should be Grommets. We test and curate the best ideas, and then create a video review and word of mouth campaign for each product. When a product launches on Daily Grommet, we host a discussion board on our site where people can chat directly with the creator of the product and with us.
... submit an idea for a possible Grommet yourself! Follow the Grommet story as it evolves ...
TEDTalks Steve Keil -Play
Image via WikipediaBeyondTEDTalks-Steve Keil A Manifesto for Play for Bulgaria and Beyond
TEDTalks-Steve Keil A Manifesto for Play for Bulgaria and BeyondSteve Keil fights the "serious meme" that's infected his home of Bulgaria -- and calls for a return to play to revitalize the economy, education and society. A sparkling talk with a universal message for people everywhere.
Originally aired: June 15, 2011
TEDTalks-Steve Keil A Manifesto for Play for Bulgaria and Beyond
Free Technology for Teachers: 77 Web Resources for Teachers to Try This Summer written by Richard Byrne
Free Technology for Teachers: 77 Web Resources for Teachers to Try This Summer
written by Richard Byrne
Open publication - Free publishing - More education
FREE EBOOKS FOR TEACHERS!
What is Docstoc?
Image via CrunchBaseEmbed Documents with Docstoc
You can provide your readers with a unique document viewing experience by embedding your documents. Your readers will have instant access to your document and won’t need to download additional programs. Your documents will also be indexed in search engines and help drive more traffic back to your site.
Getting Started: How to Embed Your Documents
Docstoc provides the platform to upload and share documents with the world, and serves as a vast repository of free and for purchase legal, business, financial, technical, and educational documents that can be easily searched, previewed and downloaded.
Sunday, June 19, 2011
the warhol: and Jean-Michel Basquiat
Image via Wikipediathe warhol:In the late ’70s, Jean-Michel Basquiat was known in the New York underground scene for the graffiti he created under the pseudonym ofSAMO©. But shortly after his participation in a group show in 1980, everything changed. René Ricard published an article about him entitled The Radiant Child in Artforum and he then quickly rose to international stardom. Sadly, he just as quickly lost his life.
ARTFORUM Magazine :: Volume XX No. 4, December 1981. p.35-43 The Radiant Child by Rene Ricard
Image via Wikipedia
Thursday, June 16, 2011
The film, titled “Sex Crimes Unit” director Lisa F. Jackson
The film, titled “Sex Crimes Unit,” is the director Lisa F. Jackson’s take on the historic investigative body that was established in 1974, by Robert M. Morgenthau, the Manhattan district attorney at the time.Lisa F. Jackson, director of the HBO documentary Sex Crimes Unit, which premieres on HBO on June 20th, discusses her work and what she learned through her access to the District Attorney's Sex Crimes Unit.
According to a news release promoting the film’s debut, Mr. Morgenthau — a father of five daughters — said in a statement on the film: “If you’re robbed, you’ll get over it. But if a woman is raped, I don’t think she’ll ever get over it. So they’re entitled to special consideration and special handling in the criminal justice system.”
Jackson studied filmmaking at MIT with Richard Leacock and has directed and/or edited dozens of films for PBS including: Voices and Visions: Emily Dickinson, Jackson Pollock: Portrait, Through Madness (1993 NYC Emmy winner), The Creative Spirit, Storytellers, The Van Cliburn Piano Competition; Bill Moyers' Journal, the prize-winning series The Mind, and segments for Sesame Street and Live from Lincoln Center.
Ms. Jackson herself was the victim of an unsolved gang rape in 1976 in Washington. But while her interest in the subject comes out of her own experience, it was not her motivation, Ms. Jackson said.
Ms. Jackson said she believed she saved her life during the attack, in which she was jumped by three men in a parking lot. Surviving the ordeal let her know there was nothing she could not endure, she said. More than a decade later, after she learned that her rape kit was destroyed because of the statute of limitations, she wrote about her experience in Newsweek, giving voice to other silent rape survivors whom she refers to as “kind of an invisible army of survivors.”
HBO Documentaries
Myth #8: A rape trial is always a traumatic experience for the victim.
A clip from the film Sex Crimes Unit, an unprecedented look inside the New York District Attorney's unit dedicated to the prosecution of rape and sexual assault.
Jackson's Films
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