This is an experiment

This is an experimental post using Word for Blogger.  Howzabout a picture, too?

(image placeholder)

New Scientist Breaking News - HIV breakthrough raises hopes for a cure

New Scientist Breaking News - HIV breakthrough raises hopes for a cure

“Our findings suggest that eradication of established HIV infection may be achieved in a staged approach,” says Margolis. “This finding, though not definitive, suggests that new approaches will allow the cure of HIV in the future.”

 

Dare we raise our hopes for a cure?  Damn straight we do! It says something about the state of AIDS affairs, that we begin to pin so much hope on the results of three patients, but…hope is the feathered thing.

Cellphone-based pollution sensor being developed at Berkeley - Engadget - www.engadget.com

Cellphone-based pollution sensor being developed at Berkeley - Engadget - www.engadget.com

A team at UC Berkeley is working on a platform to cram even more functionality into your cellphone, but this time instead of adding games, ringtones or other toys, the new functions will be planet-friendly tools like pollution and radiation detectors (hey, it is Berkeley, right?).

Cellphone+Ubiquity=Universality

Cellphone University anyone?

 

Innovation Weblog - Trends, resources, viewpoints from Chuck Frey at InnovationTools

Innovation Weblog - Trends, resources, viewpoints from Chuck Frey at InnovationTools

The habit of innovation at an individual level (personal brilliance) is the differentiator... The American worker for example is more expensive than others so they must determine how to create that much more value."

I know I have a habit of short posts to links, but it doesn’t bother me because I tend to respond to same.  I know I need some longer posts and some essays online as well.  This will do for now because it is a good topic to discuss with students—reality and the world of creativity.   This notion of “personal brilliance” really is a touchstone, or perhaps it might be better described as the steel that sparks off my flint. (Don’t you have a hard head, too?) OK, I know these are, as my son is so fond of saying, “lame sauce”, but SBI (so be it).

 

Open Learning and Large Learning Objects (Courses)

Open Learning and Large Learning Objects (Courses)

…What's the point in getting certification if no HR guy or girl is looking at your CV anymore. It is more likely that you will have to show a record of clients, projects, artifacts etc. instead of Diplomas, Degrees, and so forth. Reputation is built differently in the part of a networked society that lives and operates outside of the big corporate business world.

A lesson to us all in how to make our “services” portable in both senses—easy to carry and easy to hook into. 

New Scientist Premium- Entering a dark age of innovation - Technology

Entering a dark age of innovation - Technology

It may seem like we are living in a technological nirvana, but the rate of technological innovation has been falling for 100 years, a new study reveals… according to a new analysis we are fast approaching a new dark age.

So… which is it Moore’s Law or the Dark Ages.  Competing paradigms duke it out?  Odds on favorite?  I’m going with the new guy cuz I like the underdog.  The article says we average seven innovations per billion people per year.  Are we bumping up against patent office logic here where we get someone who just assumes that nothing more will be invented?  I think that both of these paradigms are probably grossly wrong in many ways and subtly right in others.  I especially love the assumption that innovation is a quantifiable and that it is a predictable quantifiable.  Chaotically speaking, both of those hypotheses are unacceptable.

Improv Visits the Office

Take a look at this and see if there isn't a valid analytical tool for the classroom. Tell me what you think and I will do the same.

Training + Development > Press > Performance of a Lifetime

Training + Development > Press > Performance of a Lifetime

Effective improvisation embraces several basic concepts:
• Pay attention and be present.
• Make your partner look good.
• Don’t censor yourself.
• Say, “Yes, and...” instead of “Yes, but....”
• Listen generously.
• Take risks and embrace failure.
• Say the obvious thing—in other words, the first thing that comes to mind. There are no wrong answers.

 

OK, readers few but fine, let us substitute “learning” for “improvisation” and then play out the rest of the quote.  Does this fit?  Partner=?  Please comment briefly, addressing briefly and then perhaps suggest an implication or two that would arise from this substitution.  Thanks.  I use some improv principles in my teaching, but I need to reinvent myself as a “learner-who-just-happens-to-be-the-teacher”.

Testing the new blogger photo tool. I have used Picasa and Hello in the past. Once set up they are effective, but this only involve one click on the wysiwig tool bar and poof! Pix! Here goeth.

Oops. No pix. Problem with me or them I know not. I will try again later.

Students Say High Schools Let Them Down - New York Times

Students Say High Schools Let Them Down - New York Times

Hmmmm….not hard enough for them, is it?  Easily resolved then.  I think students know something is wrong, but they are grabbing the wrong end of the stick.  Perhaps that is a bit cryptic, but there is plenty of “blame” to go around if you want to play that game.  I would rather point out that the system is broken and no amount of tinkering with it is going to make it better.  You can’t “prepare” people unless you’re a cannibal.  Schools are not humane and students know that.  I need to see the questions that were asked and the sample of students before I can say more.  I read the NYT regularly for the first time in my life last year as part of a freebie program at my university.  I really wasn’t that impressed except for some notable exceptions on the editorial page.  In fact I thought the reason Judith Miller was arrested was because of her horrific writing, not protecting “sources”. 

{lime tree}: What Does Poetry Mean?

{lime tree}: What Does Poetry Mean?

There are contexts, obviously, when it is perfectly sensible to ask what a poem means. For a student reading Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," it is quite reasonable to ask what Frost means by looking into the lovely, dark woods and then saying "But I have promises to keep / And miles to go before I sleep." It is also fairly easy to answer: he means that oblivion is tempting, but there are reponsibilities the living must honor. It is less easy to answer the question "What does the repetition of the phrase 'miles to go before I sleep' mean?" In fact, it may be a meaningless question. More on this later.

Is there anybody out there"

Sometimes I feel like a radio station test broadcasting to folks who don’t know I am here.  It is not a feeling of dismay, but rather one of being dismissed or ignored by all the adults in the room when all you want to do is tell them that the house is on fire.  I can but sigh.  OK, I am over it for now.

The Academy of American Poets - Poems for Weddings

The Academy of American Poets - Poems for Weddings

The epithalamium was employed as a literary form for the first time by Sappho, who wrote:

Raise up the roof-tree--
a wedding song!
High up, carpenters--
a wedding song!
The bridegroom is coming,
the equal of Ares,
much bigger than a big man.

It’s wedding season so go to poets.org and find some good wedding poems.  I can imagine using this in a class.  Assign different occasions to different groups and set them the task of designing a short anthology of poems with introductions to the poems.  Let’s see: weddings, funerals, births, baptisms, bar and bat mitzvahs, graduations.  Can anyone think of others?  Break ups?  I guess I could just go to the card store and check out categories.

Teaching, Wither Thou? I Think Not!

MIT OpenCourseWare | Master Course List

 

In itself an extraordinary attempt at knowledge management, MIT’s attempt to create “open” classrooms for all is democracy in learning.  Check out this Intro to LitTheory.  This all begs the question:  what is the teacher for in this open source learning world?  It is a central question that has attracted us all to teaching.  I think that teaching is more like therapy than any of is quite willing to admit. 

A project to temporarily wipe out ad space on the street-- what would be its effect? Remove all ads for a week and note the effect. I find it a bit daunting to imagine.

Lulu.com - Self Publishing - Free

Lulu.com - Self Publishing - Free

 

Time to get your students to publish in a book form.  8.50 for a 200 page book!  Damn, I am in.

An Index to Creationist Claims

An Index to Creationist Claims

A rather … compulsive, but welcome approach to the creationist ideas in the marketplace these days along with responses to them.  This would be an ideal approach as a wiki in the classroom where the claims are separate pages with a wiki and students have to approach them in writing, challenging them with their own writing and thinking.  I might even use this myself in a freshman comp context.   Plus, it’s nice to see the responses to the more ridiculous arguments, for example:

Claim CA006:

Evolution promotes eugenics.

Source:

DeWitt, David A. 2002. The dark side of evolution. http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2002/0510eugenics.asp

Response:

1. Eugenics is based on genetic principles that are independent of evolution. It is just as compatible with creationism, and in fact at least one young-earth creationist (William J. Tinkle) advocated eugenics and selective human breeding (Numbers 1992, 222-223).
   
   
2. Many eugenics arguments, such as the expected effect of selective sterilization and the results of interracial mating, are based on bad biology. Better biology education, including the teaching of evolution, can only counter the assumptions on which eugenics is based.

Links:

Wilkins, John. 2000. Evolutionists against eugenics; Post of the month: November 2000. http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/postmonth/nov00.html

References:

1. Numbers, Ronald L. 1992. The Creationists. New York: Knopf.

War: Realities and Myths - by Chris Hedges

War: Realities and Myths - by Chris Hedges

"Force," Simon Weil wrote, "is as pitiless to the man who possess it, or thinks he does, as it is to his victim. The second it crushes; the first it intoxicates."

O, my God!  Please read Chris Hedges on war.  Please.  I know this sounds like a hysterical fit, but I reading it right now and for the first time am feeling the horror of this permanent war.  I can feel it and it makes me sick. 

How to Save the World

How to Save the World

Last week I had the rare opportunity to see 'behind the scenes' at Disney World in Florida. They understand the importance of attention, but they have a very different approach to it. It is the job of management to pay attention to the individuals who work for them, and to remove obstacles that prevent them from paying attention to individual customers. Decisions on what to do and what to pay attention to are governed by a simple set of ordered priorities: safety first, courtesy second, the show third, and efficiency fourth. So if someone if behaving recklessly on a ride, safety first, stop the show. And if a child is unhappy, pull out all the stops to cheer them up, even if that cuts into profits. These rules are invariable, and no employee can ever be criticized for following them.

 

Privacy and peace of mind and heart, all relative in our world today, but when we have almost none in our ordinary lives we become—-less than humane.  Pollard comments in his usual, efficient, ordered way. 

a struggle to use

tech

involving teachers and helping others.



SWIFT group

electronic lesson planning

need to make connection w

pre service English teachers