New: 10 of the best Apple and Android apps for education in 2013

Last year we presented “New: 10 of the best Apple apps for education in 2012,” which highlighted some of the best apps for iPhones and iPods. However, with new upgrades in touch technology, and the emphasis on Common Core State Standards and school reform in general, we’ve come up with a new list of the best Apple- and Android-based education apps for 2013.

Name: HMH FUSE Algebra 1
What is it? HMH Fuse Algebra 1 Common Core Edition gives every student a personalized learning experience using video tutorials, MathMotion step-by-step examples, homework help, quizzes, tips, hints, and many other integrated features to teach, review, and assess all concepts. Winner of the “Distinguished Achievement” Award in the category of Mobile Device Application honoring “outstanding resources for teaching and learning” presented by the Association of Educational Publishers.
Best for: Compatible with iPad. Requires iOS 4.3 or later.
Price: FREE
Rated: 4+
Features:

• The ability for students to show their scratch pad work for individual questions on the assessments, student response system (clickers), and Graph It! examples
• An all-in-one app with built-in tools including Algebra Tiles, Linear Explorer, Quadratic Explorer, a graphing calculator, text and audio note-taking, scratchpad, and a student response system for instant learner feedback.
• Teachers can access all assessment results in an on-line Teacher Resource Center and prescribe remediation or intervention as needed.

Links: [Apple] https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/hmh-fuse-algebra-1/id415533582?mt=8
[Android] May soon be available. Keep checking the HMH FUSE website: http://www.hmhco.com/shop/education-curriculum/math/secondary-mathematics/hmh-fuse/android#sthash.Pii6OFSH.dpbs

Is This the Best Education Money Can Buy?

The World School in Chelsea, to learn about what their kids were eating. Ever since the $85 million for-profit start-up opened its doors in September, food had been a divisive issue. After the first week of classes, a group of parents sent a seven-page e-mail detailing concerns: there were not enough snacks, not enough “worldly” snacks like seaweed, zucchini bread with quinoa flour and bean quesadillas (so long as the beans came from BPA-free tin cans). Unlike other New York City private schools, with their decades of institutional wisdom, Avenues was founded on the premise that its parents were partners in building a new community. So it was ready to hear them out.

That was why many of the assembled parents applied in the first place. Avenues, which was founded by the media and education entrepreneur H. Christopher Whittle; Alan Greenberg, a former publisher of Esquire magazine; and the former Yale president Benno C. Schmidt Jr., was designed to be “a new school of thought,” unencumbered by legacy. It hired seasoned teachers and brought in consultants on everything from responsive classroom training to stairwell design. Mandarin or Spanish immersion begins in nursery school; each kindergartner gets an iPad in class. Students will someday have the option of semesters in São Paulo, Beijing or any of the 20 other campuses the school plans to inaugurate around the world. The cost for all this: $43,000 a year.

Private School Goes All In With Tech
Before enrolling at Avenues: The World School, a new for-profit academy in Chelsea, sixth-grader Isabelle Levent had little interest in technology. She wrote her short stories by hand or tapped them out on an Olivetti typewriter she got for her ninth birthday. When her mother bought a flat-screen television, she called it a waste of money.

 All students at the nursery school to 12th grade school have access to iPads, but starting in fifth grade, all are equipped with an iPad and a MacBook Air—an approach that some experts called unprecedented and, perhaps, redundant.

American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC): ‘Stand Your Ground’ group pushes privatization of public education

That group is the American Legislative Exchange Council, better known as ALEC, which likes to call itself a “nonpartisan public-private partnership” but is actually a corporate-backed enterprise that writes “model legislation” that its membership of nearly 2,000 conservative legislators use in states to pass laws that promote privatization in every part of American life: education, health care, the environment, the economy, etc.

The Center for Media and Democracy, a nonprofit investigative group, has done a great deal of research on ALEC’s efforts to push the privatization of public education, attack veteran teachers and their unions. It just released a new analysis of ALEC’s education efforts, which you can read here, saying that “at least 139 bills or state budget provisions reflecting American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) education bills have been introduced in 43 states and the District of Columbia in just the first six months of 2013.” (You can see all of the bills here.)

As education historian and activist Diane Ravitch explained in this ALEC primer, the group, which had been quietly working for years, was put in the spotlight because it crafted “Stand Your Ground” laws, which got attention because of the Trayvon Martin case in Florida. An ALEC spokesperson said in an email that in fact ALEC had nothing to do with Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law but rather “adopted a policy based on Florida’s ‘Stand Your Ground’ in August 2005 and then subsequently sunset that policy in March 2012.”

The Gates Foundation last fall awarded ALEC a grant of $376,635 “to educate and engage its membership on more efficient state budget approaches to drive greater student outcomes, as well as educate them on beneficial ways to recruit, retain, evaluate and compensate effective teaching based upon merit and achievement.”

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said Tuesday that he opposes these laws, which allow people who believe they are being threatened to defend themselves with deadly force.

Mayors Against Illegal Guns
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg to speak the blunt truth about why these laws are dangerous — and why the National Rifle Association keeps pushing them anyway.

The Washington Post and the New York Times reported last week, the idea came from on high, courtesy of the NRA, which worked closely with a right-wing group called the American Legislative Exchange Council. 

What’s insidious about Stand Your Ground laws is that in every jurisdiction that has them, these statutes tilt the balance of power in any street encounter in favor of the person who has a gun. That’s what happened in the Martin case. The law provides a perverse incentive for everyone to be armed.








Florida's 'Stand Your Ground' law could have saved Trayvon Martin's life
"And for those who resist that idea that we should think about something like these 'Stand Your Ground' laws, I just ask people to consider -- if Trayvon Martin was of age and armed, could he have stood his ground on that sidewalk?"

Florida had first Stand Your Ground law, other states followed in 'rapid succession'
 Some of Christie's biggest bills match model legislation from D.C. group called ALEC
Download a full spreadsheet of connections between ALEC models and N.J. bills.
ALEC has quietly made its mark on the political landscape by providing state governments with mock-up bills that academic and political experts say are, for the most part, tailored to fit a conservative agenda. In recent years, states — particularly those with new Republican governors and legislatures — have been flooded with ALEC’s model bills. Nearly 1,000 of them are introduced every year, and roughly one-fifth of those become law, according to ALEC’s own count. ALEC’s bills are especially attractive because they are written so they can virtually be copied and pasted onto legislative proposals across the land.

The School Children First Act, a landmark bill sponsored by Assemblyman Jay Webber, the co-chairman of ALEC’s state chapter and one of six New Jersey legislators who are members of the group, includes the five specific requirements in ALEC’s Great Teachers and Leaders Act.

Meet ALEC’s NJ State Chairman – Senator Oroho

 CHARTS: ALEC's Top Ten Original Corporate Donors

http://www.flickr.com/photos/woe1/9200399565/

 Under pressure from public exposure, some of these corporations have ended their ties to ALEC but the damage has already been done.

Ventriloquist Willie Tyler

Willie Tyler, Lester Keep Ventriloquism Alive
 Official Website
One reason the craft might be lost on conventional comedy fans is that ventriloquism is an art form that goes at least as far back as the lost performance vehicle known as vaudeville, says Tyler.But Tyler says that people still like his particular brand of comedy because "it gets to a point where (the audience is) amazed that something made of wood can be so lifelike.

"I find most of the time when I'm on stage and I can see the audience, as Lester talks, people are looking right at him, and you can see the look in their eyes, how amazed they are that the little character, even though he's made of wood, he's got his own personality and people sort of connect with him." Ventriloquist Dummies

Willie Tyler & Lester at Tommy T's

Vent Haven Museum
Vent Haven Museum is the world's only museum of ventriloquial figures and memorabilia. Its collection contains more than 700 objects from 20 countries related to ventriloquism, including dolls that belonged to Edgar Bergen. Wikipedia

Welcome to PaulWinchell.com
  writer and director Kelly Asbury, author of "Dummy Days"

Chuck Taylor: Nike Sets a Power Brand Free and Reaps Billions

In fact, Chuck Taylor was an amateur basketball player from a much-earlier era and, in addition, a coach and shoe salesman. Born in 1901, Taylor joined a traveling basketball team in 1921 for the Converse Rubber Shoe company, which had introduced its first basketball shoe, the Converse All Star, four years earlier. Taylor made numerous suggestions to improve the shoe, and was such a successful promoter of the sneaker that the company eventually added his name to the ankle patch.

Photo: Converse.com

Today, Converse is a billion dollar brand owned by Nike (NYSE: NKE ) , which acquired the company in 2003 for $305 million. Nike decided, at the time of acquisition, to allow Converse to operate independently, a wise one considering how Chuck Taylor sneakers, lovingly called "Chuck Taylors" by their fans, and the larger Converse brand, have appealed to both athletically minded and fashion-conscious shoe buyers, as well as many subcultures, over the decades.

In the last year, Nike divested itself of its well-known Umbro and Cole Haan brands, in order to focus on just four brands: Nike, Jordan, Converse, and the Hurley surf-wear line. Converse and Hurley, together with Nike Golf, comprise a segment which Nike labels "Other Businesses." This segment accounts for for 9.5% of Nike's revenue, and nearly 14% of Nike's Earnings Before Interest and Taxes, or EBIT. Converse's share of the "Other Businesses" revenue has grown steadily: three years after the acquisition, Converse accounted for 23% of "Other Businesses" revenue. As of year-end 2012, Converse accounted for 43% of the segment's revenue, and this number is likely to have grown once we see the full results for fiscal 2013 later this summer.

Squarespace

Squarespace

Software as a service (SaaS) is considered to be part of the nomenclature of cloud computing,
 is a SaaS-based content management system (CMS) which is composed of a website builder, blogging platform and hosting service. The service allows individuals and businesses to create and maintain websites and blogs.

Squarespace's mission is to provide creative tools that power the future of the web. From designers creating the next generation of web and mobile experiences, to anyone managing their own online presence for the first time, Squarespace provides elegant solutions that set new standards for online publishing. By focusing our efforts on the fusion of design and engineering, we strive to create long-lasting products that delight and surprise our customers.

Since 2004 Squarespace has offered a fully-hosted environment for creating and maintaining a website. Known for its sophisticated yet easy-to-use interfaces, Squarespace's do-it-yourself tools allow creative professionals, businesses, bloggers, and web developers to quickly and easily create and maintain professional, high-quality websites.

The service helps individuals and small businesses build and maintain well-designed websites, starting at $8 a month and scaling up to $50 a month. Through Squarespace’s unique platform—the underlying server code was fully written in-house— a user can manage their entire website, including editing, producing content, inserting photo galleries and manipulating widgets for social platform. In the crowded and fragmented space of web publishing, Squarespace will never be the cheapest, even on the enterprise end, but it’s a valuable tool for customers who want a balance of affordability and strong attention to design.

http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/13/squarespace-raises-38-5-million-from-accel-index-ventures/

Google Glass: what you can and can't do with it.

Google Glass: What You Can and Can't Do With Google's Wearable Computer
Some people whisper, "I think that's Google Glass." Others stop and ask, "How do you like it? How does it even work?" And then some just pull out their phones and snap a picture.

On the front, you have that star of the show -- a small little glass square. That's the screen, and when you put the glasses on you can adjust them so that it sits slightly above the top of your right eye. If worn right it really doesn't obscure your line of vision. No, I haven't been walking into walls. In fact, when I picked up my Glass, a Google employee (or Glass Guide) fit me for them and showed me how to slightly glance up to see the screen. You can also adjust or swivel that screen when you have it on to bring it closer in or out from your eye.

And your voice is one of the two modes of controlling Glass. You can navigate the screen either through voice commands or by using the trackpad on the right arm of the glass. That entire arm is touch-sensitive: sliding your finger on it allows you to move through the Glass interface and tapping once on it lets you make selections.

Doug Engelbart on the Invention of the Mouse

Doug Engelbart (archive interview

See Also: http://www.logitech.com/index.cfm/showcases/family_showcase/5290&cl=US,EN

Three Organizations Launch The Glossary of Education Reform for Journalists

“The education beat can be extraordinarily tricky, given all the jargon used by educators, researchers, and policy makers, and all the myriad complexities entailed in educating students and in trying to educate them more effectively,” said Stephen Abbott, editor of The Glossary of Education Reform for Journalists. “We set out to create a comprehensive, one-stop resource that would help working journalists—particularly those new or reassigned to the education beat—get rapidly up to speed on these complicated, nuanced issues so they can ask the right questions and produce informative stories in the public interest.”

The glossary features more than a hundred entries on K–12 public education and education reform in the United States, in addition to hundreds of related synonyms and abbreviations. Each entry includes a general definition of the term, a discussion about how the concept or strategy intersects with efforts to improve school performance and student achievement, and an overview of related debates, including the major arguments for or against a particular reform. The glossary does not include entries on private schooling, higher education, educational organizations, proprietary reform models, or specific educational policies, proposals, or legal decisions. A detailed overview of the resource can be found on the website: edglossary.org/about.

The Glossary of Education Reform for Journalists is a public, online resource that explicates and contextualizes major terms, strategies, concepts, and issues in public-education reform. The glossary is designed to give journalists and the public an accessible, easily navigated, go-to reference for accurate, factual, and objective information on major education-reform issues in the United States. It is also a work in progress that we will be expanding, improving, and refining it over time.

Block Schedule
Multicultural Education
Learning Loss
At-Risk
Authentic Learning
submit their feedback

Black Ethnics: Race, Immigration, and the Pursuit of the American Dream

Author Christina Greer, assistant professor of political science at Fordham University (Lincoln Center)
seeks to go beyond the monolithic label "Black-Americans" to look at the issues that unite--and divide--the recent immigrants from native-born.


'Disintegration' Of America's Black Neighborhoods, Eugene Robinson works at the Washington Post where he has served as a foreign editor, an associate editor, a columnist and the London bureau chief.

There was a time when there were agreed-upon "black leaders," when there was a clear "black agenda," when we could talk confidently about "the state of black America"-but not anymore. Not after decades of desegregation, affirmative action, and urban decay; not after globalization decimated the working class and trickle-down economics sorted the nation into winners and losers; not after the biggest wave of black immigration from Africa and the Caribbean since slavery; not after most people ceased to notice — much less care — when a black man and a white woman walked down the street hand in hand. These are among the forces and trends that have had the unintended consequence of tearing black America to pieces.

Transcript 

Book Discussion on Disintegration: The Splintering of Black America

Eugene Robinson talked about his book Disintegration: The Splintering of Black America. In his book he argues that, through decades of desegregation, affirmative action, and immigration, the concept of Black America as a single entity with unified interests and needs has shattered into four distinct groups: a “Mainstream” middle-class majority; a large “Abandoned” minority mired in poverty; a small “Transcendent” elite of wealth and power; and newly “Emergent” groups of mixed-race individuals and recent black immigrants who question what “black” even means. Using historical research, reporting, census data, and polling, he shows how these groups have become so distinct that they view each other with mistrust and apprehension. He discusses debates about affirmative action, the importance of race versus social class, and the questions of whether and in what form racism and the black community endure. 

New York, the Vertical City, Kept Rising Under Bloomberg

In short, building boomed during the Bloomberg years, both in terms of sheer numbers and in terms of height. And that is not counting what is yet to come after the mayor leaves office: the millions of square feet of office towers on Manhattan's far West Side, more high rises along the Greenpoint-Williamsburg waterfront, and the other development in areas throughout the city that can now be built due to the mayor's zoning actions.

Francis Morrone, an architectural historian and author of the forthcoming Guide to New York City Urban Landscapes, said he appreciates that Bloomberg is trying to keep pace with London and Shanghai in the competition for global companies. But Morrone said the mayor's growth agenda also has a major downside. He cited a 2009 study by the Center for an Urban Future that argued that tens of thousands of middle-class New Yorkers were leaving the city because of the high cost of living.

Slavery, the Bible, and Our Need for Humility; FREDERICK DOUGLASS, JULY 5TH, 1852.

Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion, I will, in the name of humanity which is outraged, in the name of liberty which is fettered, in the name of the constitution and the Bible, which are disregarded and trampled upon, dare to call in question and to denounce, with all the emphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery--the great sin and shame of America! "I will not equivocate; I will not excuse;" I will use the severest language I can command; and yet not one word shall escape me that any man, whose judgment is not blinded by prejudice, or who is not at heart a slaveholder, shall not confess to be right and just. 

What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than. all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which lie is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy-a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour.
Frederick Douglass

ORATION, DELIVERED IN CORINTHIAN HALL, ROCHESTER, BY FREDERICK DOUGLASS, JULY 5TH, 1852.

Frederick Douglass delivered an incredible speech about slavery, America, and Christianity on this day in 1852. 
This, for the purpose of this celebration, is the 4th of July. It is the birthday of your National Independence, and of your political freedom. This, to you, is what the Passover was to the emancipated people of God. It carries your minds back to the clay, and to the act of your great deliverance; and to the signs, and to the wonders, associated with that act that day. This celebration also marks the beginning of another year of your national life; and reminds you that the Republic of America is now 76 years old. I am glad, fellow-citizens, that your nation is so young. Seventy-six years, though a good old age for a man, is but a mere speck in the life of a nation. 'Three score years and ten is the allotted time for individual men; but nations number their years by thousands. According to this fact, you are, even now only in the beginning of you national career, still ling ering in the period of childhood. I repeat, I am glad this is so. There is hope in the thought, and hope is much needed, under the dark clouds which lower above the horizon.

Oppression makes a wise man mad. Your fathers were wise men, and if they did not go mad, they became restive under this treatment. They felt themselves the victims of grievous wrongs, wholly incurable in their colonial capacity. With brave men there is always a remedy for oppression. Just here, the idea of a total separation of the colonies from the crown was born! It was a startling idea, much more so, than we, at this distance of time, regard it. The timid and the prudent (as has been intimated) of that day, were, of course, shocked and alarmed by it.

But, such is not the state of the case. I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common.-The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak today? If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. And let me warn you that it is dangerous to copy the example of a nation whose crimes, towering up to heaven, were thrown down by the breath of the Almighty, burying that nation in irrecoverable ruin! I can today take up the plaintive lament of a peeled and woe-smitten people!

It’s a momentous week in American history. Not only do Americans celebrate the Fourth of July, but the legacy of the American Civil War looms heavily in the background this week as we mark the 150th anniversaries of the Battle of Gettysburg and the Siege of Vicksburg. Those two military campaigns together comprised the turning point in a war that divided not just a nation, but churches and families.

Fellow citizens; above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions! whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, today, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them. If I do forget, if I do not faithfully remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day, "may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!" To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs, and to chime in with the popular theme, would be treason most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and the world. My subject, then, fellow-citizens, is AMERICAN SLAVERY.

 There are seventy-two crimes in the State of Virginia, which, if committed by a black man, (no matter how ignorant he be,) subject him to the punishment of death; while only two of the same crimes will subject a white man to the like punishment.-What is this but the acknowledgement that the slave is a moral, intellectual and responsible being. The manhood of the slave is conceded. It is admitted in the fact that Southern statute books are covered with enactments forbidding, under severe fines and penalties, the teaching of the slave to read or to write.-When you can point to any such laws, in reference to the beasts of the field, then I may consent to argue the manhood of the slave. When the dogs in your streets, when the fowls of the air, when the cattle on your hills, when the fish of the sea, and the reptiles that crawl, shall be unable to distinguish the slave from a brute, then will I argue with you that the slave is a man?

Would you have me argue that man is entitled to liberty? that he is the rightful owner of his own body? You have already declared it. Must I argue the wrongfulness of slavery? Is that a question for Republicans? Is it to be settled by the rules of logic and argumentation, as a matter beset with great difficulty, involving a doubtful application of the principle of justice, hard to be understood? How should I look today, in the presence of Americans, dividing, and subdividing a discourse, to show that men have a natural right to freedom? speaking of it relatively, and positively, negatively, and affirmatively. To do so, would be to make myself ridiculous, and to offer an insult to your understanding.-There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven, that does not know that slavery is wrong for him.


What, am I to argue that it is wrong to make men brutes, to rob them of their liberty, to work them without wages, to keep them ignorant of their relations to their fellow men, to beat them with sticks, to flay their flesh with the lash, to load their limbs with irons, to hunt them with dogs, to sell them at auction, to sunder their families, to knock out their teeth, to burn their flesh, to starve them into obedience and submission to their masters? Must I argue that a system thus marked with blood, and stained with pollution, is wrong? No I will not. I have better employment for my time and strength, than such arguments would imply.

-----------------------------
I take this law to be one of the grossest infringements of Christian Liberty, and, if the churches and ministers of our country were not stupidly blind, or most wickedly indifferent, they, too, would so regard it.

It esteems sacrifice above mercy; psalm-singing above right doing; solemn meetings above practical righteousness. A worship that can be conducted by persons who refuse to give shelter to the houseless, to give bread to the hungry, clothing to the naked, and who enjoin obedience to a law forbidding these acts of mercy, is a curse, not a blessing to mankind. 

But the church of this country is not only indifferent to the wrongs of the slave, it actually takes sides with the oppressors. It has made itself the bulwark of American slavery, and the shield of American slave-hunters. Many of its most eloquent Divines, who stand as the very lights of the church, have shamelessly given the sanction of religion, and the bible, to the whole slave system. - They have taught that man may, properly, be a slave; that the relation of master and slave is ordained of God; that to send back an escaped bondman to his master is clearly the duty of all the followers of the Lord Jesus Christ; and this horrible blasphemy is palmed off upon the world for christianity.  Thomas Paine, Voltaire, and Bolingbroke vs The Sharps, the Clarksons, the Wilberforces, the Buxtons, the Burchells and the Knibbs,  Frederick Douglass


Furthermore, if Bible-readers of the South had adhered to three Mosaic laws, slavery wouldn’t have been an issue: (a) Anti-harm laws: The Law of Moses calls for the release of servants maimed by their employers (Ex. 21:26-7). (b) Anti-kidnapping laws: The Mosaic Law also condemns kidnapping a person to sell as a slave—an act punishable by death: “He who kidnaps a man, whether he sells him or he is found in his possession, shall surely be put to death” (Ex. 21:16; cp. Deut. 24:7). (c) Anti-return laws: Unlike the antebellum South, Israel was to offer safe harbor to (foreign) runaway slaves (Deut. 23:15-16)—a marked contrast to the Southern states’ Fugitive Slave Law. This law was also a marked contrast to other law codes in the ancient Near East. In Babylon, harboring a fugitive slave meant the death penalty!

Howard Gardner

The 25th Anniversary of the publication of Howard Gardner’s Frames of Mind (PDF)

A Multiplicity of Intelligences (PDF)
BIOGRAPHY OF HOWARD GARDNER

Technology and Multiple Intelligences (PDF)

Edith Wharton, A Writing Life: Childhood and The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism

The question to be posed is where did Edith Wharton, the great American novelist, come from? How was she formed? What was the source of her creative fire, and how was it ignited? Among the leisured class of old New York, a young woman's intellectual activity was never encouraged and often had to be actively reined in, while the literary life would have been frowned on for anyone, regardless of gender. Still, a boy would have had a proper tutor and eventually gone off to school to seek his place. A girl's education would have been at best makeshift, since her function was to be ornamental, make a good marriage, and devote herself to homemaking, child rearing, and keeping up with the hectic rounds of social life that a position in society demanded.

Edith Wharton's writing career was launched one hundred years ago,

Edith Newbold Jones was born into such wealth and privilege that her family inspired the phrase "keeping up with the Joneses."

The Edith Wharton Society 


.
Edith Wharton and Race

...despite the fact that Wharton lived at a time and led her life in such a way that racial difference was an inescapable part of life. Second, it is about the actual, important presence of race as a category in Wharton's work once we pay attention to her inclusion of color and, even more subtle, her representation of whiteness as racial.

To paraphrase Toni Morrison in Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (1992), my first concern might be expressed: What do we make of Edith Wharton's positing her “writerly self” as “unraced” - without racial signification - in a culture obsessed with racial designation? My second might be phrased: How does our reading of Wharton and of Wharton texts change when we understand whiteness not as nothing, or as an absence, but as the presence of constructed racial meaning?

Invisible Blackness in Edith Wharton’s Old New York
Summaries & Discussion Questions for Wharton's Major Texts

THE PEABODY SISTERS:


The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism  Award-winning author Megan Marshall 
Elizabeth, Mary, and Sophia Peabody were in many ways our American Brontës. The story of these remarkable sisters—and their central role in shaping the thinking of their day—has never before been fully told

Snapshot: College-Age Kids Come Well Equipped

A slightly lower percentage of kids aged 16–18 reported owning a smart phone — 63 percent. All other age groups came in at 60 percent or lower.

Americans of traditional college age are loaded up with personal devices and have the highest rate of ownership of mobile phones among all age groups, according to a new report released this week by the Pew Research Center's Internet; American Life Project.

Campus Technology 

The latest Pew report was based on a survey of 2,252 Americans aged 16 and older. The research was underwritten by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Compete details are available in the Pew Internet library research portal at pewinternet.org.