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Unnatural Turkeys: A New Marketplace Podcast

Podcast
Specifically, the question is this: of all the commercially raised turkeys in the U.S., what percentage are the product of artificial insemination?

The answer, oddly enough, is 100 percent. Why? Well, it’s a supply-and-demand story. Because Americans particularly love to eat turkey breast meat (a great delivery platform for gravy!), turkeys have been selectively bred over the years to have bigger and bigger breasts. So big, in fact, that when it comes time for a male turkey to naturally reproduce with a female, his massive breast prevents him from getting close enough to complete the act. 

Your Thanksgiving turkey is probably a product of artificial insemination
The modern turkey has quite large turkey breasts, and it actually physically gets in the way when the male and the female try to create offspring.

Visible Learning: John Hattie and Student-Directed Projects

Visible Learning: John Hattie and Student-Directed Projects

The cover of John Hattie's Visible Learning boasts the blurb "Reveals teaching's Holy Grail." Everybody in education needs to get it. If Hattie's subtitle, A Synthesis of Over 800 Meta-Analyses Relating to Achievement, gives you pause, I can assure you it isn't as scary as it sounds.

 Auckland University Professor John Hattie has recently authored a study, based on research into 83 million students, studying effective teachers around the world and has come up with some reassuring results for creative teachers. It's all about trusting relationships and 'oodles of feedback'. Note - it is not about national testing, our government's highly unoriginal plan.   Read Kelvin's full article

The Center for Critical Thinking

Critical thinking is essential if we are to get to the root of our problems and develop reasonable solutions. After all, the quality of everything we do is determined by the quality of our thinking.

The Question of Critical Thinking

"Tools of the Mind"

To successfully function in school and beyond, children need to learn more than a set of facts and skills. They need to master a set of mental tools—tools of the mind.

The concept of "Tools of the Mind" comes from the work of Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky, He believed that just as physical tools extend our physical abilities, mental tools extend our mental abilities to enable us to solve problems and create solutions in the modern world

According to Vygotsky, until children learn to use mental tools, their learning is largely controlled by the environment: they attend only to the things that are the brightest or loudest and they can remember something only if has been repeated many times. AFTER children master mental tools, they can become in charge of their own learning by attending and remembering in an intentional and purposeful way. Similar to how using mental tools transforms children’s cognitive behaviors, they can also transform their physical, social and emotional behaviors. From being "slaves to the environment," children become "masters of their own behavior." As children are taught and practice an increasing number of various mental tools, they transform not only their external behaviors, but also their minds, leading to the emergence of higher mental functions.

Vygotsky, L. (1978). Mind in society: The Development of Higher Mental Processes. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press.

Roscoe Brown: A Tuskegee Airman Speaks

Roscoe Brown: A Tuskegee Airman Speaks

And there were black pilots to look up to, he recalls, including Bessie Coleman, who learned to fly in France and became a great stunt pilot. Before that, there was Julian Boyd, who flew for the Canadian air force in World War I. There was also Albert E. Forsythe, who flew across the country in 1933.

But during World War II, the NAACP, the Pullman Car Porters Union and other civil rights groups forced the U.S. military to create an experimental group called the 99th Fighter Squadron, which was trained at an airfield in Tuskegee, Ala., Brown said. Eventually the military built a $1 million airfield to train blacks under segregated circumstances. An estimated 1,000 pilots were trained, and about 12,000 workers received technical training, Brown said.

Double Victory:
Double Victory: Two Warriors in the Fight for Civil Rights During WWII is 13 years in the making. Many people along the way were of great assistance, from the nameless secretary who gave the first lead, to people who donated their time and resources.

Films