Lennart Green: Master of the Cards
August 25th, 2008Just for your enjoyment…a master magician doing his thing…
Journey To The Fourth Dimension
August 25th, 2008The video below is chapter one of Dimensions which I found via @edu.
In the past I’ve not had a big interest in mathematics but this has me wanting to hit the library and do some serious reading.
Enjoy…
Sphere: Related ContentSolzhenitsyn Dies at 89
August 3rd, 2008Nobel prize-winning Russian novelist Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who was forced into exile for books strongly critical of the Soviet government, has died at 89.His son said Sunday Solzhenitsyn died of heart failure while Russian news reports said he suffered a stroke.
Solzhenitsyn was an iconic world symbol of censorship and oppression in the Soviet Union.
…
I remember reading One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich in college and that it significantly shaped my views of the Soviet Union and Communism.
Farewell…
Sphere: Related ContentWhat Is It?
August 2nd, 2008Drape’s Takes asks: What is the Edublogosphere?
Go. Read. Offer your answers…
Education Olympics
August 2nd, 2008Not sure what this is really going to be about but is seems worth following to find out on August 8:
The 2008 Education Olympics Start on August 8th! from Education Gadfly on Vimeo.
via Joanne Jacobs
Sphere: Related ContentFifth Grade State Standards Wordle Cloud
July 25th, 2008Ten days and counting until we here in Georgia return to our classrooms and prepare for the new group of cherubs we will be receiving com August 11. While in the middle of beginning my preparations here at home for upcoming field trips (Kennesaw Mountain Battlefield) and all the various reading, math, social studies et. al. units for the year I decided to play around with Wordle. I wrote about it here a while back.
In their own words Wordle is:
…a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.
So while in the midst of planning lessons and reviewing standards tonight I decided to try a little something. I copies all of the fifth grade state standards into wordle and came up with this:
(Click image to enlarge)
Keep in mind that the more occurrences of a given word in a document the larger it appears in a Wordle image. I find this an interesting study in compare this image with a chart of, say, Bloom’s Taxonomy.
Thoughts?
Sphere: Related ContentNew U.S. Poet Laureate
July 22nd, 2008Marin County Poet, Kay Ryan named U.S. Poet Laurete
Sphere: Related ContentNothing Ventured
by Kay RyanNothing exists as a block
and cannot be parceled up.
So if nothing’s ventured
it’s not just talk;
it’s the big wager.
Don’t you wonder
how people think
the banks of space
and time don’t matter?
How they’ll drain
the big tanks down to
slime and salamanders
and want thanks?
Return from Vacation and Last Baseball
July 21st, 2008We have returned from vacation to piles of mail (with a few bills thrown in), a very hot house in need of airing out, and back to routines. It was a wonderful couple of weeks to visit with family and friends and to get out to the coast and enjoy the cool Pacific breezes. In the middle of our Darling Wife surprised me with three days sans children up in Monterey! Without my knowledge she arranged a three day trip as a surprise for our tenth anniversary…visit to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, two nights at the bed and breakfast we stayed at on our honeymoon, and lots of time to spend with each other.
But, as with most vacations, I needed to come home and take a “vacation from my vacation”. Exhausted and relaxed we happily are settling back into routine. Which included baseball.
Our son is involved with a local special needs baseball league that has been great fun for him as well as us. His last game was this past Saturday with a wonderful catered banquet that night with trophies and awards. The video below shows a bit of last Saturday’s games as well as information on the groundbreaking of a special needs ball field for the community.
Special Needs Field Video 11alive News
Note: I had the video embedded however I changed to the link due to the fact that the video started automatically when the page loaded. Didn’t care for that…
Click to find out more about this wonderful project.
Sphere: Related ContentIt’s Independence Day
July 4th, 2008In the midst of barbecues, beaches, and fireworks; amongst the political bickering between left and right; disagree or agree on the state of our nation; let us all this day take time to remember those who defied the status-quo of their day and sought to create a nation where we are free to disagree, free to protest, free to complain without worry of being thrown in prison for our criticisms.
To all of you who come by today…have a thoughtful, restful, and celebratory July 4!
(Just in case you need a little reminder of what started it all…keep reading! 
)
IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of AmericaWhen in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
Sphere: Related Content
Read the rest of this entry »
Off On Vacation
June 30th, 2008Thanks for coming by…regular writing will continue in a couple of weeks (I know I just start this thing and it’s time for our family vacation).
I will “Tweet” as time and thoughts allow (and if the cell phone work proper ) and I do have a post or two to, hopefully, post automatically over the next few days.
On another note, I want to give a plug for you who have not seen it as of yet, for TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design). In short it is a site where you have an opportunity to listen in on some of the top people in these worlds give talks on subjects from creativity and design to Science and Business. From a presentation standpoint it is an incredible study in how to present your material in a tight, concise way as most speakers have only about 18 to 20 minutes to present.
Visit. Watch. Listen. Learn.
I leave you with Benjamin Zander on Music and Passion:
