Picked up this little gem via Wes Fryer over at Speed of Creativity, via Lee Ann at The Eight Floor in Tulsa, OK, via Nelson Central School in New Zealand. And here’s a link to the original post.
I’m beat. Its been a heck of a week. Being out of the district at the end of last week and planning on doing some training in NYC for almost all of next week, I had to cram a BUNCH of stuff in the last couple of days. I needed a break and thought I’d do a quick blog on a couple of things I’ve been meaning to post about.
First, I saw a cool map mash-up project on histroic Route 66. This (and other map mash up projects) would be great to integrate into a social studies/geography class. I found this one very interesting. Even inclues video interviews to create an entire oral history of Route 66. Here’s a useful bookmark list related to mashups where I found this as linked from David Warlick’s blog.
Another recent add to my del.icio.us bookmarks is this nifty little experiment by Carl Anderson, who authors a blog called Techno Constructivist (I love that name…I need a catchy title for my blog…..any suggestions?)
Spending the day at a meeting in King of Prussia required of CFF schools. Here’s my notes…
Begins with an activity to encourage discussion regarding success and challenges of the CFF implementation.
Use Rigor/Relevance as a framework for curriculum design and development
Professional learning communities - uses faculty meeting time for professional learning community
Standards in Practice - Instructional Gap Analysis Strategy
1. Discuss the purpose of the assignment.
2. Analyze the demands of the task.
3. Identify the standards that apply to the assignment.
4. Generate a task-specific rubric using the standards and the assignment.
5. Score the student work using the task-specific rubric.
6. Redesign assignment- plan instructional strategies.
Stumbled scross a new gem of a blog called Ideas and Thoughts, put together by Dean Shareski at Prairie South School Division in Moose Jaw, SK, Canada. Good stuff. I wanted to repost some content from a recent post that showcases the following video of Taylor Mali (know for this passionate piece of slam poetry). In this one, Taylor pontificates on the general inability of our student to speak declaratively. Hadn’t really thought about this before, but it rings true with me.
In case you hadn’t realized,
it has somehow become uncool
to sound like you know what you’re talking about?
Or believe strongly in what you’re saying?
Invisible question marks and parenthetical (you know?)’s
have been attaching themselves to the ends of our sentences?
Even when those sentences aren’t, like, questions? You know?
Declarative sentences - so-called
because they used to, like, DECLARE things to be true
as opposed to other things which were, like, not -
have been infected by a totally hip
and tragically cool interrogative tone? You know?
Like, don’t think I’m uncool just because I’ve noticed this;
this is just like the word on the street, you know?
It’s like what I’ve heard?
I have nothing personally invested in my own opinions, okay?
I’m just inviting you to join me in my uncertainty?
What has happened to our conviction?
Where are the limbs out on which we once walked?
Have they been, like, chopped down
with the rest of the rain forest?
Or do we have, like, nothing to say?
Has society become so, like, totally . . .
I mean absolutely . . . You know?
That we’ve just gotten to the point where it’s just, like . . .
whatever!
And so actually our disarticulation . . . ness
is just a clever sort of . . . thing
to disguise the fact that we’ve become
the most aggressively inarticulate generation
to come along since . . .
you know, a long, long time ago!
I entreat you, I implore you, I exhort you,
I challenge you: To speak with conviction.
To say what you believe in a manner that bespeaks
the determination with which you believe it.
Because contrary to the wisdom of the bumper sticker,
it is not enough these days to simply QUESTION AUTHORITY.
You have to speak with it, too.
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