TN Student Speaks Out About Common Core, Teacher Evaluations, and Educat...

http://www.youtube.com/v/PprP5TCZBRI?autohide=1&version=3&showinfo=1&attribution_tag=EJkttKZgQWbwnDMXmEPHvw&autohide=1&autoplay=1&feature=share

Changing Assessments, Changing Teaching

The NYTimes reports this morning on awards to 44 states to explore new means of testing. I quite like the idea that students would be given a problem to solve rather than a recall question to answer and that test results would come back quickly to teachers. But there are definitely challenges and, as always, the work is on a fast track. It's nonetheless a story worth following. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/03/education/03testing.html?_r=2&ref=education

Visualizing Data

Recently I've become intrigued by how data can be presented visually. This video joins the crowd in interesting ways. The beat of the soundtrack keeps it moving, and the stats for Internet use are amazing. I was left wanting more context for the stats, though, such as the pie charts and bar graph that show numbers in relation to each other. Nonetheless, this video is worth your time and thought.

Seamus Heaney Reads "Blackberry Picking"

From PBS comes this video of one of my favorite poets reading one of my favorite poems. How lucky we are in the 21st century to have resources like this. Just watch his eyebrows and the rest of his face as he reads. Yes, his is only one interpretation of the poem, not the only one, but I'm glad to be able to see him read.

Words and Images

I'm thinking about an upcoming presentation on imagination and representation in graphic novels so coming across this video (shared by the conference organizer, in fact) was a fine, serendipitous moment. As Gunther Kress says, in what he calls the new media age we need to consider the shifting relationships between words and images--and this video helps us do so, I think. Enjoy.