BookPALS (Performing Artists for Literacy in Schools)

BookPALS (Performing Artists for Literacy in Schools) is a signature children’s literacy program of the SAG Foundation designed to provide an opportunity for performers, gifted in the art of storytelling, to help develop a love of reading in children and give back to their local communities. - See more at: http://sagfoundation.org/childrens-literacy/about/#sthash.odNzuH2n.dpuf

Storyline Online

Storyline Online

A to Z Book Directory

Welcome to Zinger Tales!

Activity Guides

City & State: IDNYC

City & State is the only media company devoted solely to covering government and politics in New York. Formed from the merger of City Hall and The Capitol newspapers in 2012, City & State now provides insightful and detailed coverage of the politics, the policies and the people of influential individuals and organizations all over New York.

IDENTITY POLITICS: DE BLASIO UNVEILS ELIGIBILITY REQUIREMENTS FOR IDNYC

Undocumented immigrants are vulnerable to being detained and having to stay overnight in prison because they cannot prove who they are, said Anthony Perez of Faith in New York, a federation of congregations. Future undocumented people stopped by the police will soon be able to show their IDNYC.

Do you see a duck or rabbit below?

http://www.martinshervington.com/what-is-google-plus/

New York to Protest

Hundreds of high school students walked out of class

protests

URGENT | HS STUDENTS RESPONSE TO FERGUSON

http://on.fb.me/1tCjZA5

Injustice anywhere is threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an
inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. What
ever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. *-Martin Luther King Jr.*

Comet Lander Deploys Drill, But Could Lose Power Tonight November 14, 2014

Philae, the lander currently on comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, may not be able to perform its extended mission — scientists at the European Space Agency worry that the probe may have landed in a spot too shadowy for solar panels to recharge its batteries. The ESA says it may not be able to contact the craft after Friday night.


Those problems have somewhat tempered the celebration of a new step in space exploration, after the lander ended its 10-year journey by landing on a comet more than 300 million miles from Earth Wednesday.

Philae lander’s CIVA camera

The fridge-size lander is standing on two of its three legs, and its solar panels are sitting in the shadow of a nearby cliff face forming the edge of a large crater where Philae was supposed to have made a soft touch-down on the comet, the European Space Agency (ESA) said.

Philae lander will travel with the comet as it continues its journey around the Sun. It should witness the plumes of vapourised gases emitted from the icy surface as the comet feels the rising heat of its orbital summer.

http://bcove.me/58njfmjr

In pictures: European Space Agency's Rosetta mission

Alaska Pipeline

Trans-Alaska Pipeline

Oil, carried here by the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, is fundamental to the state's economy. But Alaskans also face the effects of climate change in their daily lives

Scientist Scott Rupp of the University of Alaska, Fairbanks admits that Alaskans tend to avoid talking about the cause.

"You know, that's a tough thing for a place like Alaska," he says. "I mean, there's no way of getting around the pragmatic fact that we depend on fossil fuels for the majority of our state budget. We also experience the highest energy prices anywhere in the country."

25 Years After Spill, Alaska Town Struggles Back From 'Dead Zone'

fishing harbor on Orca Inlet

On March 24, 1989, the tanker Exxon Valdez struck a reef in Prince William Sound, Alaska, spilling 11 million gallons of crude oil into the pristine water. At the time, it was the single biggest spill in U.S. history. In a series of stories, NPR is examining the lasting social and economic impacts of the disaster, as well as the policy, regulation and scientific research that came out of it.

Slideshow

The Truth Behind Lie to Me

The Truth Behind Lie to Me

The Slave Ship "Fredensborg"

Norwegian Slavetrade

Norwegians like to think that slave-trade was 'none of our business'

The remains of one of the Danish slave ships, the Fredensborg, has been found in our days on the Norwegian coast where it was wrecked in 1768 after having sailed almost all the way along the triangular route. After the wreck of the Fredensborg was located and identified in 1974, one of the main tasks was to research the extensive written materials preserved in Danish and Norwegian archives pertaining to the ship’s journey. These texts, together with the items that were retrieved from the wreck – from exotic goods such as elephant tusks and dyewood to the crew’s tobacco cans and shoes with fine buckles – constitute probably the most thorough documentation of a slave ship found as a wreck anywhere in the world. Thus, it is known that on this voyage the Fredensborg took 265 Negro slaves onboard in Africa, 24 of whom died en route across the Atlantic. The survivors were sold at good prices at an auction in Christiansted on Saint Croix.

The Danish-Norwegian slave trade brought approximately 100.000 Africans to the New World as slaves, and according to Mr. Svalesen there is no reason to believe they were better treated than other slaves.

The transatlantic slave trade was the most extensive forced transportation of human beings in history. Millions of Africans were carried across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas. The ships are gone, but their tracks remain on the ocean floor.

This Internet exhibit is about the Danish-Norwegian slaver, "Fredensborg". The ship ran aground on the southern coast of Norway on December 1, 1768. 

Education Transatlantic Slave Trade (TST)

The United Nations Organization for Education, Science and Culture (UNESCO)Picture gallery

Add caption

Buried Secrets How an Israeli billionaire wrested control of one of Africa’s biggest prizes.

Guinea is one of the poorest countries on the planet. There is little industry and scarce electricity, and there are few navigable roads. Public institutions hardly function. More than half the population can’t read. “The level of development is equivalent to Liberia or Sierra Leone,” a government adviser in Conakry, Guinea’s ramshackle seaside capital, told me recently. “But in Guinea we haven’t had a civil war.” This dire state of affairs was not inevitable, for the country has a bounty of natural resources. In addition to the iron ore in the Simandou range, Guinea has one of the world’s largest reserves of bauxite—the ore that, twice refined, makes aluminum—and significant quantities of diamonds, gold, uranium, and, off the coast, oil.

As wealthy countries confront the prospect of rapidly depleting natural resources, they are turning, increasingly, to Africa, where oil and minerals worth trillions of dollars remain trapped in the ground. By one estimate, the continent holds thirty per cent of the world’s mineral reserves. Paul Collier, who runs the Center for the Study of African Economies, at Oxford, has suggested that “a new scramble for Africa” is under way. Bilateral trade between China and Africa, which in 2000 stood at ten billion dollars, is projected to top two hundred billion dollars this year. The U.S. now imports more oil from Africa than from the Persian Gulf.

Off the Curb: Animation

http://www.mondomedia.com/shows/off-the-curb/

http://corporate.mondomedia.com

http://www.mondomedia.com

Off The Curb - Mondo

www.mondomedia.com/shows/off-the-curb/

A totally improv show staring some of the biggest voices in animation.

ABOUT G-STAR RAW: Pharrell Williams

http://vimeo.com/86197283

http://rawfortheoceans.g-star.com/#!/tagged/collection/women

raw from the sea

Of all the causes, why the ocean? "The ocean has a lot in common with us; you know the planet's 75 or 85 percent water. So are we, our flesh is 75 or 85 percent water," Williams told Style.com< http://style.com/>. "There's a huge parallel there, so like if you aren't taking care of the water, then you kill the life. The significance of water on a planet sort of tells you that there's life, at least on a microbial level, like when you have no more water, you have no more life." http://www.style.com/trends/industry/2014/pharrell-williams-puts-his-star-pier-behind-parley-for-the-oceans

http://rawfortheoceans.g-star.com

http://www.parley.tv/events/#new-york

https://www.g-star.com/en_us

http://www.style.com/trends/industry/2014/pharrell-williams-puts-his-star-pier-behind-parley-for-the-oceans

http://www.seashepherd.org/news-and-media/2014/02/08/sea-shepherd-bionic-yarn-and-parley-for-the-oceans-launch-the-vortex-project-1552

Happy Oceans! Happy Life! G-Star Raw and Bionic Yarn partner up with Parley for the Oceans. Happy Oceans! Happy Life! G-Star Raw and Bionic Yarn partner up with Parley for the Oceans. http://vimeo.com/86197283

New York Fashion Week, February 8th - Pharrell Williams, Creative Director of Bionic Yarn, announces ‘RAW for the Oceans’, a long-term collaboration between denim brand G-Star RAW and Bionic Yarn. Together they launch the first collection made with recycled plastic from the oceans in stores August 2014. In the setting of the American Museum of Natural History, the partners present The Vortex Project, an initiative by Parley for the Oceans in collaboration with Bionic Yarn and Sea Shepherd Conservation Society to remove plastic from the oceans and recycle it.

RAW for the Oceans is a G-Star collection that will be made with Bionic Yarn created out of plastic recycled from the oceans. The collaboration is a long-term creative exploration, where both parties joined forces to innovate denim and to make a serious impact against plastic pollution. In addition to the joined seasonal collections, G-Star will integrate Bionic Yarn material into its product lines where possible.

http://www.fairplanet.org/story/the-parley-begins-live-blog/

Tim Coombs and Tyson Toussant, founders of Return Textiles (2nd & 4th left), have created a new bionic yarn  that breaks down plastic so that it can be spun into a fabric with uses ranging from denim jeans, through to tough, durable straps for shipping containers.

Tyson suggested that:

We collect the garbage from the ocean, and turn low grade plastic into high-quality plastic. The process delivers a high-quality texture, and increased durability… turning plastics bottles into fibre, spinning into yarn… from Denim to cargo logistics straps for ships, to boat covers to ski jackets. The design is versatile and has many applications. 

Samsung reveals Gear VR headset and Galaxy Edge smartphone

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-29044863

The VR headset comes with a controller but requires a Galaxy Note 4 handset to work

The Gear VR will be sold with a microSD card containing a small collection of 360-degree videos and virtual reality games.

Why so many college grads are highly-educated, well placed, and going nowhere | The Rundown | PBS NewsHour

Why so many college grads are highly-educated, well placed, and going nowhere | The Rundown | PBS NewsHour

Steven Pinker and Neal Conan | Great Conversations: | KET Video

Steven Pinker and Neal Conan | Great Conversations: | KET Video

Get a Copy of Our 2014-2015 Expeditions Catalog

Get a Copy of Our 2014-2015 Expeditions Catalog

Plankton Chronicles

http://www.planktonchronicles.org/en/episode/photo/160

http://www.planktonchronicles.org/en

http://www.planktonchronicles.org/en/projet

http://www.planktonchronicles.org/en/episode/new-plankton-of-the-riviera

Plankton comes from the Greek word planktos, which means wandering or drifting.  Any living creature carried along by ocean currents is classified as plankton. It ranges in size from the tiniest virus to siphonophores, the longest animals in the world, and also includes microscopic algae, krill or fish larvae.

http://www.planktonchronicles.org/en/episode/plankton

Oyster  Restoration Program

http://nynjbaykeeper.org/resources-programs/oyster-restoration-program/

http://nyctransported.com/2011/01/oyster-restoration-new-york-city-and-new-jersey/

Race, Power and Public Art at the Domino Sugar Factory: Kara Walker

Kara Walker

http://creativetime.org/projects/karawalker/

http://www.nypl.org/events/programs/2014/05/20/kara-walker

Is public art a good way to tackle controversial social issues?  Share your thoughts below and we may share them on the air.

The Subtleties of Kara Walker’s Domino Sugar Sculpture

http://www.thirteen.org/metrofocus/2014/06/subtleties-kara-walkers-domino-sugar-sculpture/

Built in 1865 by the Havemeyer family, the Domino Sugar Factory on Brooklyn’s Williamsburg waterfront was once the largest sugar refinery in the world. But the factory has been shuttered for the past decade and many of the buildings on the abandoned site are being demolished to make way for a $1.5 billion mixed-use development.

The work is formally titled “A Subtlety,” after the sugar sculptures that decorated royal banquets of the Medieval era, when sugar was a luxury commodity. The installation is situated in the refinery’s massive storage shed and consists of a 75-foot long sculpture constructed from 35 tons of sugar.  The massive white figure is shaped like a sphinx and is surrounded by a series of small candy boy sculptures.

Physics4Kids

 http://www.physics4kids.com/files/motion_force.html

WELCOME TO PHYSICS4KIDS.COM

http://www.physics4kids.com/index.html
Thanks for visiting! Right now you're on PHYSICS4KIDS.COM. If you are looking for basic physics information, stay on this site. It's not just physics for kids, it's for everyone. We have information on motion, heat and thermodynamics, electricity & magnetism,light, and modern physics topics. If you're still not sure what to click, try our site mapthat lists all of the topics on the site. If you surf and get lost in all of the information, use the search function on the side of the pages. 

http://www.physicsclassroom.com/Class/estatics/u8l4a.cfm

Ron Capps

How An Army Officer And Diplomat Wrote His Way Through Trauma

In five wars over 10 years, Ron Capps shifted back and forth between being a U.S. Army officer and a State Department foreign service officer in some of the world's deadliest places.

Ron Capps has written book

Seriously Not All Right Five Wars in Ten Years

 Veterans Writing Project 

 

Vevo

Vevo brings a library of 100,000 HD music videos, exclusive original programming and live concert performances to everyone on the planet who loves music.

Viewers can watch on-demand through Vevo.com, the mobile web and apps for mobile/tablets and TVs, or through Vevo TV

VEVO 

Philip Bailey: Earth, Wind & Fire lead Singer

Phillip Bailey interview 

Philip Bailey
Earth, Wind & Fire lead singer, Philip Bailey

Bailey will sing his (falsetto)

timeline

Philip Bailey Duet with Phil Collins - Easy Lover

Earth, Wind & Fire’s singer Philip Bailey has written a memoir called “Shining Star:

Maurice White

Free Plagiarism Checker

Best Plagiarism Checker & Proofreader

Grammarly is an automated proofreader and plagiarism checker. It corrects up to 10 times as many mistakes as other word processors.

CNBC's Disruptor 50

In the second annual Disruptor 50 list, CNBC features private companies in 27 industries—from aerospace to enterprise software to retail—whose innovations are revolutionizing the business landscape. These forward-thinking upstarts have identified unexploited niches in the marketplace that have the potential to become billion-dollar businesses, and they rushed to fill them. In the process, they are creating new ecosystems for their products and services. Unseating corporate giants is no easy feat. But we ranked those venture capital–backed companies doing the best job. Already it's hard to think of the world without them. Read more about the list ranking and the methodology.

1 SpaceX The company that wants to send you to space and colonize Mars.
2. Warby Parker Taking on the Luxottica eyewear machine.
3 Etsy A big voice for small artisans.
10 Uber The 21st-century taxi service.

18 Quirky Crowdsourcing an idea for basement tinkerers.

32 Pinterest The world's bulletin board.

Five of the companies on our Disruptor 50 are from abroad. These areDropbox (Ireland), Fon (Spain), Nexmo and TransferWise (U.K.) andSpotify (Luxembourg).

Ten of the 2013 Disruptor 50 have "graduated" since the list was published last June, with names likeTwitter and Castlight Health going public; and Tumblr, Nest, WhatsApp and more getting big-dollar buyouts from Yahoo, Google, Facebook and others.

Disruption is the only way to stay relevant, meaningful and profitable over the long run. Very few companies disrupt anything at all, but some companies, like Apple and Google, have disrupted markets time and time again. What do they know about the art of disruption that other companies don't? Here are the principles they follow.

Make meaning. The raison d'etre of disruption is the desire to make meaning. This requires powerful perspectives, like "changing the world" and "making the world a better place." For example, Apple changed the world by democratizing computing, and Google made the world a better place by democratizing information.

Wavebreakmedia Ltd | Getty Images
Hate long lines? Meet a professional line sitter
Same Ole Line Dudes

UNCF: A VISION WORTH INVESTING IN.

"A mind is a terrible thing to waste™." For decades, this galvanizing principle has remained at the heart of the UNCF ideal. And now, more than ever, a mind is also "a wonderful thing to invest in."

WHAT IS THE IMPACT OF YOUR INVESTMENT?

It's more important than ever to invest in students with UNCF because of something called social return. It's the positive impact of education on the world as a whole. College grads earn more, live better lives and contribute more to our communities.

Queen
David 

Brokers use ‘billions’ of data points to profile Americans

The internet has caused a dramatic expansion in individual data; one broker, Acxiom, claims to have files on 10% of the world's population,[1] with about 1500 pieces of information per consumer.[2] Individuals generally cannot find out what data a broker holds on them, how a broker got it, or how it is used.[3]

A growing number of “data brokers” are raking in profits by scouring through the Internet to build profiles of consumers.

By looking at purchasing histories, social media pages and more, the brokers can piece together pictures of individual consumers that can help companies target their advertising with great precision.
Privacy advocates fear the information could be used for more nefarious ends, and the industry has caught the attention of federal regulators.

By looking at purchasing histories, social media pages and more, the brokers can piece together pictures of individual consumers that can help companies target their advertising with great precision.
Privacy advocates fear the information could be used for more nefarious ends, and the industry has caught the attention of federal regulators. Follow us: @thehill on Twitter | TheHill on Facebook

Data brokers Industry
All this information and much, much more is being quietly collected, analyzed and distributed by the nation’s burgeoning data-broker industry, which uses billions of individual data points to produce detailed portraits of virtually every American consumer, the Federal Trade Commission reported
Data brokers’ portraits feature traditional demographics such as age, race and income, as well as political leanings, religious affiliations, Social Security numbers, gun-ownership records, favored movie genres and gambling preferences (casino or state lottery?). Interest in health issues — such as diabetes, HIV infection and depression — can be tracked as well.

With potentially thousands of fields, data brokers segment consumers into dozens of categories such as “Bible Lifestyle,” “Affluent Baby Boomer” or “Biker/Hell’s Angels,” the report said. One category, called “Rural Everlasting,” describes older people with “low educational attainment and low net worths.” Another, “Urban Scramble,” includes concentrations of Latinos and African Americans with low incomes. One company had a field to track buyers of “Novelty Elvis” items.

Meet the Data Brokers Who Help Corporations Sell Your Digital Life

Companies that sell similar info: Datalogix, Acxiom, Epsilon, BlueKai, V12 Group

FTC Recommends Congress Require the Data Broker Industry to be More Transparent and Give Consumers Greater Control Over Their Personal Information

A Review of the Data Broker Industry

The reports from the FTC and the Senate Commerce Committee both said data brokers group consumers together into categories for the use of marketers.

The companies build the profiles based on publicly available information on social media platforms, retailers’ records of offline and online purchases made with credit and debit cards and information that consumers volunteer online, such as online surveys, warranty forms and sweepstakes entries.

"The companies collect and sell information about consumer’s race, religion and ethnicity, which “would raise red flags for most people..."

The report skims over one of the major problems of data brokers—the risk of a data breach that could expose all this data—in spite of the fact that less than a decade ago the FTC fined ChoicePoint $15 million for selling personal data to thieves.

Other Readings
Other Readings

Was Columbus secretly a Jew?

During Columbus' lifetime, Jews became the target of fanatical religious persecution. On March 31, 1492, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella proclaimed that all Jews were to be expelled from Spain. The edict especially targeted the 800,000 Jews who had never converted, and gave them four months to pack up and get out.

Columbus, who was known in Spain as Cristóbal Colón and didn't speak Italian, signed his last will and testament on May 19, 1506, and made five curious -- and revealing -- provisions.

Columbus' voyage was not, as is commonly believed, funded by the deep pockets of Queen Isabella, but rather by two Jewish Conversos and another prominent Jew. Louis de Santangel and Gabriel Sanchez advanced an interest free loan of 17,000 ducats from their own pockets to help pay for the voyage, as did Don Isaac Abrabanel, rabbi and Jewish statesman.

Estelle Irizarry, a linguistics professor at Georgetown University, ...explains that 15th-century Castilian Spanish was the "Yiddish" of Spanish Jewry, known as "Ladino." At the top left-hand corner of all but one of the 13 letters written by Columbus to his son Diego contained the handwritten Hebrew letters bet-hei, meaning b'ezrat Hashem (with God's help). 

"The 'Mudsill' Theory," by James Henry Hammond

 Hammond carefully outlined the number of months women slaves could nurse their babies, the length of time they could spend each day with their infants, the amount of work they were expected to perform, and even the body temperature they should maintain before nursing.

Speech to the U.S. Senate, March 4, 1858

In all social systems there must be a class to do the menial duties, to perform the drudgery of life. That is, a class requiring but a low order of intellect and but little skill. Its requisites are vigor, docility, fidelity. Such a class you must have, or you would not have that other class which leads progress, civilization, and refinement. It constitutes the very mud-sill of society and of political government; and you might as well attempt to build a house in the air, as to build either the one or the other, except on this mud-sill. Fortunately for the South, she found a race adapted to that purpose to her hand. A race inferior to her own, but eminently qualified in temper, in vigor, in docility, in capacity to stand the climate, to answer all her purposes. We use them for our purpose, and call them slaves. We found them slaves by the common "consent of mankind," which, according to Cicero, "lex naturae est." The highest proof of what is Nature's law. We are old-fashioned at the South yet; slave is a word discarded now by "ears polite;" I will not characterize that class at the North by that term; but you have it; it is there; it is everywhere; it is eternal.

James Henry Hammond was a senator and wealthy plantation owner from South Carolina. This excerpt is from a speech he made to the Senate on March 4, 1858, in which he lays out his famous "mudsill theory" and states, "In all societies that must be a class to do the menial duties, to perform the drudgery of life." This class, says Hammond, makes it possible for the higher class to move civilization forward.

In the antebellum period, pro-slavery forces moved from defending slavery as a necessary evil to expounding it as a positive good. Some insisted that African Americans were child-like people in need of protection, and that slavery provided a civilizing influence. Others argued that black people were biologically inferior to white people and were incapable of assimilating in free society. Still others claimed that slaves were necessary to maintain the progress of white society.

Foster deep and thoughtful engagement with high-quality literary and  informational texts 

From Leslie Harris, “Slavery in Colonial New York,” in In the Shadow of Slavery: African
Americans in New York City, 1626-1863 (2003)

African slaves became the most stable element of the New Netherland working class and
population. The Dutch West India Company’s importation and employment of most of the
colony’s slave labor enabled the settlement and survival of the Europeans at New Amsterdam as
well as the limited economic success that the colony experienced. The first eleven African slaves
were imported in 1626. The company, not individuals, owned these slaves who provided labor for
the building and upkeep of the colony’s infrastructure. In addition to aiding in the construction of
Fort Amsterdam, completed in 1635, slaves also built roads, cut timber and firewood, cleared
land, and burned limestone and oyster shells to make the lime used in outhouses and in burying
the dead.

Plantation manual, 1857-58.James Henry Hammond. James Henry Hammond Papers

http://memory.loc.gov/service/pnp/ppmsca/02900/02942v.jpg

National Responsible Fatherhood Clearinghouse | Sharing research, tips & promising practices promoting & supporting responsible fatherhood programs, fathers & families.

National Responsible Fatherhood Clearinghouse | Sharing research, tips & promising practices promoting & supporting responsible fatherhood programs, fathers & families.



The goals of the National Responsible Fatherhood Clearinghouse (NRFC) are to provide, facilitate, and disseminate current research, proven and innovative strategies that will encourage and strengthen fathers and families, and providers of services via the following priorities:

Multimedia
Responsible Fatherhood Toolkit
Introducing the Financial Empowerment Innovation Fund

Take The President's Fatherhood Pledge

President Obama grew up without his dad, and has said that being a father is the most important job he has. That's why the President is joining dads from across the nation in a fatherhood pledge — a pledge that we'll do everything we can to be there for our children and for young people whose fathers are not around.

New York
Across every state there are efforts to help support the positive and engaged involvement of fathers in the lives of their children and families.

• For Dads
  • Tips and Activities
  • Connect with Programs
  • Become a Mentor

Christopher Columbus' lost ship, the Santa Maria, may have been found

A world-renowned explorer believes he’s found Christopher Columbus’ long-lost cargo ship, the Santa Maria, which was wrecked in a storm more than 500 years ago.

“Ideally, if excavations go well, and depending on the state of preservation of any buried timber, it may ultimately be possible to lift any surviving remains of the vessel, fully conserve them and then put them on permanent public exhibition in a museum in Haiti,” Clifford said.

Read more

the ship, the Independent newspaper reported.

:

King’s kids’ private school and the Common Core

State Education Commissioner John King has taken a lot of heat for one particular detail from his family life: The head of New York State’s public education system sends his two young daughters to Woodland Hill Montessori, a private school that describes itself as “nestled in the hills of North Greenbush.”

King’s kids’ private school and the Common Core
Parent Groups in New York Call for Commissioner John King to Resign
The NYS Commissioner of Education sends his own children to a private school, a school that is not legally bound to carry out the same testing and data sharing mandates that he is subjecting thousands of public school children to. He has stated, “I believe that every parent should have the right to choose the school that is right for their child.” 

In the past three years, New York has become a national leader in implementing Common Core standards. The state's educator engagement site, called EngageNY.org, has had over 50 million page views by educators throughout the state and country who want to learn more about Common Core implementation and access the state's Common Core curriculum modules and videos. Through Race to the Top funding, network teams were launched in every region of the state and in every large district to provide training and embedded support to educators around implementation of the Common Core and the resources on EngageNY.org. In 2013, New York became one of the first states in the country to administer exams that measure whether students are meeting Common Core standards.

Civil Rights Project Reports Deepening Segregation and Challenges Educators and Political Leaders to Develop Positive Policies

On May 17, 1954, the Unites States Supreme Court ruled “separate educational facilities are 

inherently unequal,” thereby ending nearly 60 years of de jure racial segregation in seventeen states. 

Despite initial challenges, by 1970, Southern schools were the most integrated schools for black 

students in the country. Beginning in the 1990s, however, a series of Supreme Court decisions 

allowed for the abandonment of desegregation plans in favor of neighborhood schools, and cut 

funding intended to remedy the educational harm caused by segregation. The effect was an almost 

immediate return to segregated schools for many American students. 

The Civil Rights Project today released three new studies showing persistent and serious increases in segregation by race and poverty, with very dramatic results in the South and West, the nation’s two largest regions where students of color now comprise the majority of public school enrollment. 

For decades, the Civil Rights Project has monitored the success of American schools in reaching the goals of integrating schools and equalizing opportunity in a changing society. Segregation is directly linked to severe problems, such as high dropout rates, lack of experienced teachers, and fewer resources. E Pluribus… Separation summarizes the most rigorous research to date showing that segregated schools are systematically linked to these and other unequal educational opportunities.

This new research by the Civil Rights Project includes an extensive report on national trends, “E Pluribus… Separation: Deepening Double Segregation for More Students,” as well as two smaller regional reports, “The Western States: Profound Diversity but Severe Segregation for Latino Students,” and “Southern Slippage: Growing School Segregation in the Most Desegregated Region of the Country.”

In the reports, the authors underscore the fact that simply sitting next to a white student does not guarantee better educational outcomes for students of color. Instead, the resources including expert and experienced teachers and advanced courses that are consistently linked to predominately white and/or wealthy schools help foster real and serious educational advantages over minority segregated settings.

The Obama Administration, like the Bush Administration before it, has taken no significant action to increase school integration or to help stabilize diverse schools undergoing racial change due to changes in the housing market. Small positive steps in civil rights enforcement by the current administration have, however, been undermined by the strong pressure it used to expand charter schools, the most segregated sector of schools for African American students.

Latino students, who  attend more intensely segregated and impoverished schools than they have for generations. The segregation  increases for Latinos are most dramatic in the West. 

In spite of declining residential segregation for black families, and their large-scale movement to the 

suburbs in most parts of the country, school segregation for black students remains very high and is 

increasing most severely in the South, which led the nation in school integration after the l960s 

desegregation struggles took effect. 

Segregation is directly linked to  severe problems, such as high dropout rates, lack of experienced teachers, and fewer resources. E Pluribus… Separation summarizes the most rigorous research to date showing that segregated schools are systematically linked to these and other unequal educational opportunities.

Founded in 1996 by former Harvard professors Gary Orfield and Christopher Edley, Jr., the Civil Rights 

Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles is now co-directed by Orfield and Patricia Gándara, professors at UCLA. 

Impact of Racially and Socioeconomically Isolated Schools 

Before describing current enrollment trends in the United States, it is important to understand the impact of segregated schools on student outcomes. Racially and socioeconomically isolated schools are strongly related to a range of poor educational outcomes, including less experienced and less qualified teachers, high levels of teacher turnover, less successful peer groups, and inadequate facilities and learning materials. While studies have documented teachers as having the single largest impact on student academic achievement, highly qualified, experienced teachers are less likely to teach in low-income, high minority schools than their less experienced peers. For those who do, overall salaries and advanced training opportunities are lower, and curricula are often less challenging and more reliant on rote skills and memorization than in schools in more affluent neighborhoods. 

Coleman Report.pdf: Equality of Educational Opportunity (COLEMAN) Study

Perhaps the single best-known piece of social science research ever done in this country is the study produced by sociologist James Coleman in 1966 under the authority of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, commonly called “the Coleman Report.” Coleman’s work is the second largest social science research project in history, covering 600,000 children in 4,000 schools nationally. Federal Education Policy and the States, 1945-2009

Facebook buys virtual reality co. Oculus for $2B

Facebook said Tuesday, March 25, 2014, it has agreed to buy Oculus for $2 billion, betting that its virtual reality may be a new way for people to communicate, learn or be entertained.

Irvine, Calif.-based Oculus VR Inc. makes the Oculus Rift, a virtual reality headset that's received a lot of attention from video game developers, though it has yet to be released for consumers. The headsets cover a user's eyes and create an immersive world that reacts to turning one's head or moving back and forth.

Facebook plans to build on Oculus' technology, developing th virtual reality headset for other areas such as communications, education, and entertainment.

What is the Oculus Rift?

Picture a set of ski goggles in which a large cellphone screen replaces the glass. The screen displays two images side by side, one for each eye. A set of lenses is placed on top of the screen, focusing and reshaping the picture for each eye, and creating a stereoscopic 3D image. 

CAREERS

Oculus Rift HD virtual reality head-mounted display

Left Brain Talks To The Right Hand, Study Finds

The finding, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests that our brains are hard-wired to process gestures and speech and language on the same side of the brain. For right-handed people, that's usually the left side.

It also supports the view that speech arose from a combination of short sounds and hand gestures that were intended to communicate something. Those gestures probably would have been carried out by the right hand, since that is usually the dominant hand.

There's lots of other evidence that gestures were involved in early language, says David Armstrong,

Mike Dutton, Doodler

Dorothy Irene Height helped convince President Dwight Eisenhower to desegregate schools, encouraged President Lyndon Johnson to appoint black women to government positions, counseled First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, stood next to Dr. King when he delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech, and sat on the stage for President Barack Obama's first inauguration. Monday marks the 102nd anniversary of her birthday, a moment celebrated by a Google Doodle in her honor.

Over nearly 80 years of service, Ms. Height fought for the rights of African Americans, women, and handicapped people. Yet her vast career was nearly nipped in the bud.

You can watch President Obama’s eulogy of Height below

After growing up in a steel town outside Pittsburgh, she was admitted to Barnard College in New York. However once she arrived on campus in 1929, administrators told her that she needed to leave. The school had an unwritten rule that it would only accept two black students per year. Height was the odd woman out.

"Too distraught to call home, as she later wrote, Ms. Height did the only thing possible," the New York Times wrote in her 2010 obituary. "Clutching her Barnard acceptance letter, she took the subway downtown to New York University. She was admitted at once, earning a bachelor’s degree in education there in 1933 and a master’s in psychology two years later."

In fact, Barnard turned away another future public servant that same year. Sylva Gelber, who played a role in the women's movement in Canada, was rejected because “the Jewish quota was already filled.”

Her achievements include lobbying first lady Eleanor Roosevelt on civil rights as a YWCA worker during protests in New York's Harlem, helping to convince President Eisenhower to desegregated schools, and helping to organise the 1963 March on Washington.

Dorothy Irene Height: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know
Gay Community Loses Black Civil Rights Ally Dorothy Height
Height told the audience at the 1997 Human Rights Campaign National Dinner, which was honoring her civil rights work: "Civil rights are civil rights. There are no persons who are not entitled to their civil rights. ... We have to recognize that we have a long way to go, but we have to go that way together."

Dorothy I. Height

top: Seen with President Kennedy as he signs the Equal Pay Act. below: President Obama signs a bill in her honor

African Feminism celebrated during Women’s History Month

This year, several Black women’s groups celebrated Women’s History Month with events promoting programs of feminist activism. Barnard College hosted an all-day African Women’s Rights and Resistance Conference on continuing developments in African women’s feminist work. A documentary explored the suffrage movement in the Bahamas and the need to include women’s rights in that island nation’s constitution. And Black Women’s Blueprint took the rape of Black women in the United States to the United Nations.

The conference featured Nobel Laureate Leymah Gbowee who earned global acclaim for her role in leading the mass movement for peace and women’s safety that ended the Liberian 14-year civil war.

THE VULCAN Society: NYC fire department settles discrimination lawsuit

THE VULCAN Society of black firefighters

The court battle began in 2007, when the United States Justice Department filed a lawsuit against the department after the Vulcan Society complained that the entrance exams used by the department were biased against minority applicants.

At the time, the department was over 90 percent white and a federal judge ruled that the entrance examination was in violation of civil rights laws and the United States Constitution.
About 1,500 minorities who took New York City fire department entrance exams that were found to be biased will be eligible to receive back pay totaling $98 million, a black firefighters' group that had sued the city over racial discrimination.

The settlement of the 7-year-old case capped a long and arduous legal fight by the group, the Vulcan Society, over diversity in the fire department. In a city where more than half of residents identify with a racial minority group, black firefighters have never made up more than 4 percent of the department's total. 

The issue of whether the city intentionally discriminated against minority applicants to the FDNY was decided in the Vulcans' favor by Brooklyn Federal Judge Nicholas Garaufis. But the U.S. Court of Appeals threw out the ruling last year and ordered a retrial before a different judge.

As part of the settlement on Tuesday, [March 18, 2014] the Fire Department agreed to create a chief of diversity and inclusion, who will report directly to the fire commissioner, as well as a diversity advocate who will monitor hiring practices and cadet training for discrimination.

Our Time Press: United States of America and Vulcan Society, Inc. v. City of New York

Microsoft charges the FBI millions for access to user data

Microsoft makes loads of money off things other than Windows and Office. You probably know about the millions they make from other companies selling Android devices, but what about the millions they rake in charging the FBI for access to user data?

Microsoft Says: Come Back with a Warrant, Unless You’re Microsoft

EFF has long argued that law enforcement agencies must get a warrant when they ask Internet companies for the content of their users’ communications. In 2013, as part of our annual Who Has Your Back report, we started awarding stars to companies that require warrants for content. It is now unclear whether Microsoft, one of our inaugural “gold star” companies in that category, is willing to live by its own maxim.

This controversy was brought to light by the arrest of an ex-Microsoft employee named Alex Kibkalo. According to a criminal complaint sworn in a Seattle federal court, Kibkalo stole proprietary information from Microsoft, including its Activation Server Software Development Kit (SDK), and passed the code to a French blogger.

violation of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, ECPA

Courts do not issue orders authorizing someone to search themselves, since obviously no such order is needed.  So even when we believe we have probable cause, it’s not feasible to ask a court to order us to search ourselves. 

And according to Section 3.5, one of the ways users can violate the agreement and thus give Microsoft “permission” to access their content is to email content that violates the company’s Code of Conduct. Spoiler alert: the Code of Conduct is ridiculously broad.

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