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Blogs about: Education

In 1966, the United Nation’s International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights declared that “education is the primary vehicle by which economically and socially marginalized adults and children can lift themselves out of poverty and obtain the means to participate fully in their communities.” That still rings so true, and yet, barriers remain. Even in developed nations,  a good education can be hard to find. But there’s also encouraging news on the horizon, and its name is technology, a realm where classrooms need not be physical spaces.

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An Educator’s Guide to Creating Learning Spaces in Small Places…
Small Potatoes

“If a seed of lettuce will not grow, we do not blame the lettuce. Instead, the fault lies with us for not having nourished the seed properly.”  ~Buddhist Proverb I’ve been teaching and working with young children in some capacity for 21 years. But it wasn’t until just over a year ago that I set up to work professionally in my home. My home is tiny. Just one side of a little duplex in the middle of the city with a postage stamp-sized yard. Setting up a space to accommodate 6 young children within my living space has indeed, been a challenge. After a year of trial and error, I think I’ve about got it! Our days run smoothly, clean-up is relatively simple, and the kids are happy. I’ve been asked a more than a few times to share my secret. And so here it is. I’ve broken it down into a few categories and I’ll go through them in order with you. 1.  THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX… There is no rule that says a ball must be used for bouncing, a garden

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Civica pulls out of libraries bid because of risk to its “brand”
Inside Croydon

And then there were four. Civica, one of the five companies bidding for the Croydon and Wandsworth privatised libraries contract, has pulled out of the process citing “potential risk to the Civica brand of taking on a contract which is outside their core competence”. Sort of prompts the question why they pitched for it in the first place. In total, the Civica group manages more than 1,500 libraries worldwide, including 11 library services that are members of the South East Library Management Services consortium. We have flagged up the all-too-cosy relationship forged by Civica with Croydon Council in the past. The company sponsored one of the back-slapping local authority awards which was won by… Croydon. So, clearly, there was never any nod and a wink towards any preferential treatment. Civica’s withdrawal means it is likely that Wandsworth council’s in-house bid – originally rejected in the shortlisting process – will now be added to the other four

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Essential Passages on “Twelfth Night”
Trippingly on the tongue

Essential Passage 1: Act 1, Scene 1, Lines 1-15 DUKE ORSINO: If music be the food of love, play on; Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting, The appetite may sicken, and so die. That strain again! it had a dying fall: O, it came o’er my ear like the sweet sound, That breathes upon a bank of violets, Stealing and giving odour! Enough; no more; ‘Tis not so sweet now as it was before. O spirit of love! how quick and fresh art thou, That, notwithstanding thy capacity Receiveth as the sea, nought enters there, Of what validity and pitch soe’er, But falls into abatement and low price, Even in a minute: so full of shapes is fancy That it alone is high fantastical. Summary Orsino, Count (or Duke) of Illyria, is sick with love for the lady Olivia. In his chamber, he is listening to the court musicians perform a love song. Bidding them to play on, he hopes the music will increase his feeling of love until he is sick of it. Overindulgence will break the obsession, he believes, an

Portrait of An Economic Illiterate and Obama Kool Aid Drinker: Nick Hanauer’s Hoax at TED Conference—-Videos
Pronk Palisades
A Break to Bond Part 3: Penang
I Can Do It!

We were full of anticipation as we drove from Ipoh to Penang. Our minds were filled with the Penang bridge, the beautiful beaches, the yummy food and the people…I related to the children about my relatives who were still  staying there after my grandparents passed on. We were excited that we could meet with them during our trip. Oooh…look at the clouds! Breathtaking background from the pool deck A family shot Our place of stay was The Northam All Suite. The children had plenty of space to move around – even the bathroom was huge. What’s best was the view – we were grateful to be given rooms facing the sea and since we had wonderful weather, the sight was GREAT although there was construction going on some distance in front of our hotel. There was the baby blue sky, puffy white clouds and the shimmering green sea dotted with ships and boats. Lone boat We took a walk in the Penang National Park with my cousin and aunty. It was rather muddy as it rained the p

A Break to Bond Part 2: Ipoh
I Can Do It!
365 Snap Shots of Life: Day 154
Eva Santiago
Teaching Respectful Titles (Mr, Mrs, etc)
The Light Bulb
Sea Level Bill Would Allow North Carolina to Stick Its Head in the Sand.
STEM - ROBOTICS EDUCATION
Building the STEM Workforce of Tomorrow
Corporate Voices for Working Families
Jazzed by Journaling
Kwil Kids
Christians Teaching Bigotry, Hatred, and Murder To Children in Public Schools–Your Children
Grumpy Lion

In after-school ‘religious clubs’ Christian evangelists are teaching children how to be good little killers of unbelievers. Literally. No metaphor, no figurative intent. From an article in Daily Kos: Paraphrasing the Old Testament scripture I Samuel 15:2-3, the Child Evangelism Fellowship’s new lesson plan teaches, "You are to go and completely destroy the Amalekites (AM-uh-leck-ites) – people, animals, every living thing. Nothing shall be left." The manual then instructs the teacher to tell students, "That was pretty clear, wasn’t it?" Stewart continues, "Even more important, the Good News Club wants the children to know, the Amalakites were targeted for destruction on account of their religion, or lack of it. The instruction manual reads: "The Amalekites had heard about Israel’s true and living God many years before, but they refused to believe in him. The Amalekites refused to believe in God and God had promised punishment." The i

June CIDER Session
Virtual School Meanderings

From Thursday’s inbox…  Not a K-12 thing, but I figured the blended learning aspects would be of interest to folks! Email not displaying correctly? View it in your browser. Dear CIDER Member,We invite you to the next presentation in our spring series of free online CIDER sessions. This session features a presentation and discussion with Dr. Marti Cleveland-Innes from Athabasca University, Alberta. Title: The Blended Teacher as Bricoleur: Diverse and flexible teaching requirements for seamless, engaging blended learning Blending diverse learning experiences have been in existence since humans started thinking about teaching. Recently, the term blended learning emerged to describe the infusion of new technologies into the traditional learning and teaching process. In particular, the Internet provides the opportunity to create, support and/or maintain a community of learners in a blend of place-based and Internet-based environments. Still under discussion are the fine distinct

Themes in “Twelfth Night”
Trippingly on the tongue

Twelfth Night: Themes The essential spirit of Twelfth Night is captured in its title. It refers to the “Twelfth Night” of Christmas, the Feast of the Epiphany celebrating the gift of the Magi to the infant Jesus. Believed by the Elizabethans to also be the day of Jesus’ baptism, the Twelfth Night was an even more important holiday in Shakespeare’s time than Christmas itself. In (partial) contrast to our own domesticated Christmas, this was not only a festive season for the Elizabethans but a time when excess and license were expected to run rampant. It was a time of merry-making, of hard drinking, and of romantic (or lusty) pursuits. The play is unique among Shakespeare’s works in having a second or subtitle, “What You Will.” This second part to the play’s title is an open-ended invitation by Shakespeare to his audiences. They can choose to enjoy the play as a simple, romantic comedy with a happy ending, but they are also free to take not

Video purportedly shows NYC student making out with his teacher
EDUtainment BLOG @ DEVRICK.com

This is a pretty sad story, any way you look at it. If the teacher is guilty of an inappropriate relationship with a student, she’s done. Period. And rightly so. If she’s innocent — as she says, and as the student she’s accused of kissing says — then I find it even more depressing. Not only is it completely reprehensible to drag someone through the mud over a false accusation, but it’s also a slap in the face to all the people who have truly been victimized by predatory authority figures. I could be completely wrong, but my gut tells me that she’s innocent. I think the actions of the students who created a betting pool around hooking up with a teacher have established them to be total sleezebags, and that doesn’t give them a lot of credibility with me. - dEV #     #     # By Becky Bratu, msnbc.com A New York high school senior allegedly won a bet with four friends to see who could hook up first with their 26-year-old global studies teache

Graphemes and blending
A Classroom Journal

Weeks 13 & 14 When I strolled into Mrs As class, it was a little lively, more so than usual. Within ten minutes I gathered that the usual carousel wasn’t happening that week due to staff absences and training. Mrs A went to her chair, grabbed a wad of papers and quickly came over to run through the details. To be honest, I stood their stunned, with my mouth open and an expression of ‘huh?’; she quickly ran through it again but what she said changed slightly so I confirmed a few bits. The children were to tell me what each sound of the letters were from the list: to read the grapheme blend of words listed for the children to tell me what word it made: and then tell them a word for them to break down in to the grapheme blend, sounding them out (am I saying that right? Grapheme blends? or is there a better way of saying it?). I double checked to see if they were supposed to see the words on the list which confused me further as, why would I need to say it if they wer

Free Apps- June 2
nyspecialneedsteacher

StringZ HD (reg .99): http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/stringz-hd/id471468571?mt=8 ReCon Bot (reg .99): http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/reconbot/id517757340?mt=8 Good Manager (reg $1.99): http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/good-manager-+to-do-journal/id498956368?mt=8 Scanner for Draw Something (reg .99): http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/scanner-for-draw-something/id513009537?mt=8 Downloader Elite (reg $1.99): http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/downloader-elite/id504228384?mt=8 Color ID Free: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/color-id-free/id402233600?mt=8 Letter Express (reg .99): http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/letter-express/id488967011?mt=8 Word Capture (reg $2.99 / rate 9+ for infrequent/mild cartoon or fantasy violence): http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/word-capture/id407838202?mt=8 I Hate Washing My Hands (reg .99): http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/tinman-arts-i-hate-washing/id452915027?mt=8 Oscar the Octopus (reg .99): http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/tinman-arts-oscar-octopus/id441071901?mt=8 I Wish

Really cared, really made a difference.
SeanMcP Blogfeast

In the mid 1970s. teaching inerviews in Edinburgh were held in the former Children’s Orphanage known as Dean Centre (Now the Modern Art Gallery). It was a bizarre, almost unfinished building in its interior, with lots of exposed pipes and wires and echoing staircases and basements. The windows were high, allegedly so the original inmates would not be able to see out, and you wouldn’t have been surprised to hear a thin voice carrying down the interminable corridors: “Please sir, I want some more.” You were interviewed for jobs and promotions there, quite often in peculiar little cubbby holes, by education officials and a team of ‘Advisors, whose task it was to support the staff in the Capital’s schools. I was interviewd for my first promotion – as an assistant principal teacher of Guidance – after an unfeasibly short 18 months in the profession. I can’t maintain that I was a driven and ambitious young turk – rather my headteach

Graduations Part 2
The little preschool shelter that can

Yesterday was our first ever graduation!  It was wonderful. And definitely an emotional day. It was held in our class, since the class is in a multipurpose gym. But it was decorated way differently than usual. We went all out for those four children. Caps, gowns, certificates, The whole nine yards. We even got them “kinder-packs”. (more on those later.) The “ceremony” itself was brief. all the pre-k kids  sang the Winnie the Pooh song for the parents, the four graduates were brought to the back of the room and sort of bounced up to the front in a clump.Since  they’re 5, lines don’t quite happen yet. =) . Each child took their certificate, and joined the parents. a total of 15 minutes, I believe. But it’s still one of those moments that you remember for being special. I will probably remember the smiles , the looks of pride that they had done something. (although they may not be clear on exactly what yet.) One child had their cap on sideways. On

<a href='http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/06/01/us-education-vouchers-idUSL1E8H10AG20120601'>Louisianas bold bid to privatize schools</a>
Net News Filter

From Friday’s inbox… Last Call for Presentations: Sloan-C Online Learning Conference (Orlando) Deadline is June 4 18th Annual Sloan Consortium International Conference on Online Learning October 10-12, 2012 Walt Disney World Swan & Dolphin Resort – Orlando, FL Follow us on Twitter@sloanc_aln and #aln12 The deadline to submit a proposal for a presentation and/or workshop for the 18th Annual Sloan-C International Conference on Online Learning is June 4. The theme of this year’s conference is “At a Crossroads: Online Education in a Complex World.” MIT and Harvard recently announced a new partnership to offer free online courses through edX. Princeton, Stanford, Penn and Michigan are making similar plans through Coursera. Changes in the world of online learning occur on a daily basis. Where is it all headed? Our keynote speaker for 2012 is Sebastian Thrun, well known as the founder of Google X (you know – cars that drive themselves, Google glasses, o