English Education Professor

The video presentation from Fischbowl really gets interesting at the 3:00 Min mark, showing what would happen with economic mergers. Fascinating.

Weblogg-ed.com updates an older blog…a somewhat idealized version of RSSing, but still inspirational and thought-provoking and worth a read.

Who wouldn’t want access to all of them through the Rubric Builder. Warlick is is one smarter dude.

Word Count Journal
- A new blog format is meant for those who want to improve their
writing skills, one step at a time. The site supports private and
public journals. You can create a private group to share journals
between friends, classmates or family. Launching January 2007.

We have a problem maintaining an independent media. Here’s the story.

I hate being political on this blog, but isn’t it the job of English teachers to preserve literacy? And hasn’t literacy been damaged by a “one-question only” presidency?

The video lasts 9 minutes. And it’s hard for me to think of Bush without vast amounts of shame that I am somehow complicit in my country’s actions.

Want more? Here’s Slate’s list of the 10 worst civil rights violations of 2006.

From Edweek Interview with Kati Haycock.

The Power of Influence

Dec. 20, 2006

Guests: Kati Haycock, executive director of The Education Trust, Chester E. Finn Jr., president of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, and Christopher B. Swanson, director of the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center.

Patrick Miller (Moderator):

Kati Haycock:
Research does suggest
the importance of using multiple strategies to meet the needs of
students who learn in different ways. On the other, the rather
dumbed-down version of that research that has been fed to far too many
of our teachers, has resulted in overly-simplistic–indeed
harmful–instructional approaches, especially in high-minority schools.
I can’t tell you how often our staff finds English and Math teachers
(even at the middle and high school) giving more coloring or collage
assignments than writing or math assignments, in the misguided belief
that black children or poor children will learn the content better that
way. At a recent meeting of the Institute for Education Sciences Board,
I asked them to take a look at ways to get high quality versions of
this and other important research out into the field (and go after the
dumbed down stuff), but I can’t say I’m optimistic about fast action.

Crunchgear.com is doing a roundup of ergonomic chairs. Here’s Via Swopper which is $300 and is good for your ab core muscles. My physical therapist has advocated that I use my pilates ball for 20 minutes a day to do my work. I haven’t yet, but it might make it into a New Years Revolution.

My conservative uncle, from Eastern Washington State, engaged in a beautiful example of circular reasoning in the following discussion with my brother:

Uncle:    “We were forced to attack Iraq after 9/11.”
Brother:  “You know, Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11.”
Uncle:    “Sure it did. Sure it did.”
Brother:  “What?”
Uncle:    “If Iraq wasn’t involved, we never would have attacked them.”