Christmas time post

http://www.populistamerica.com/a_gift_for_my_daughter?rta

Very heart touching article about a dad giving the gift of understanding to his daughter.

Hoping that you had a great christmas.

Any crummy teachers out there?

Link

Discussion of why we have crummy teachers and how do we improve our teaching force as a whole.

Good read. Lots of points that are worth discussion. Should teachers act as hired guns or public servants? I guess it is a POV issue.

My goal work enviroment

Found a great post here will we all eventually have a work environment that allows us to collaborate with our peers and students this effortlessly?

I just hope that the establishment will allow learning to evolve to a similar environment as a common occurrence.

The “Dude” abides

Just in case anyone is like me and a a fan of the cult film The Big Lewbowski here is a cool site for like minded individuals. Yes the film is a bit out there but Jeff Bridges gets across the message of “just let it be.”

Enjoy

Socrates was on to something….

Neat study here using the Socratic method one hour a week and studying the long term effects. No surprise here

“the philosophy children showed significant improvements on tests of their verbal, numerical and spatial abilities at the end of the 16-month period relative to their baseline performance before the study.”

So is the Socratic method a verbal form of constructivism? The students are learning how to build their own ideas from the discussion. Neat none the less.

Better living through chemistry?

Inspiring coffee article

As a die hard coffee addict I find the quote of

“It has been said that scientists are merely devices for converting coffee into results. ”

I always have a vision of my college chemistry professor Dr. Hunt walking around with a cup of coffee and looking over the top of his glasses and asking deep probing chemistry questions.

I average 4-5 cups of that elixir of consciousness every morning and bathe in the warm euphoric glow of caffeine, but have my genes set me up to appreciate this wonderful elixir more than the average individual? Who knows, but what I do know is a good cup of coffee and I was amazed that there are unscrupulous individuals out there that would contaminate the holy morning sacrament of coffee with contaminates  such as corn or other filler products.

Just another reason to buy local and fresh. VIVA THE REVOLUTION!!!!!

The blog readibility test

Apparently I need to write at a higher level.

I found this tool that analyses  the level  your blog is written on. This could be a useful tool if you are writing for students at different levels to be sure that you are not writing too far above or below your readers heads.

The test said that I have written this blog at a middle school level.

Apparently I should have used this tool earlier so I could have written by blogs at a higher level. Or should I write at a low level for readability?

Give it a try pretty cool.

Internet Bubble?

So with all of the “new” web 2.0 applications are we getting ready for another internet bubble burst?

Still a very cool youtube video tha brings out some cool ideas.

So is google stock really worth $700 a share? Will they become the new Microsoft?

Science Geeks Unite!!!!!

What do you get if you mix you tube and a bunch of nerds?

This 

I have already used the recrystallization video to teach  separation of mixtures in my chemistry class. This is a useful service since it specializes in the sciences much more than you tube does.

Will this become a trend of specialized areas to post content specific content? Or as bandwidth and hosting becomes more available will google just improve its algorithm to organize it all for us?

Useful none the less.

From the mouth of babes

Linky

Pretty neat read, 4 year old kid asks to dad to “google it”, sometimes children point out things about ourselves that we do not realize.  It is interesting that a company’s name has become that synonymous with a service.

I have never told my mother to “whirlpool my jeans in cold water”  but google has achieved that kind of recognition which is proven by this child quotation.