“Too much and for too long, we seemed to have surrendered personal excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things … The gross national product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl … Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.” — Robert F. Kennedy
Bigger type is the future of web design.
This is not only because of responsive web design, but also because demographics: Baby Boomers are the fastest-growing segment of the social web.
School: An institution that prepares young people for a life of freedom and democracy without letting them partake in either.
Amazing … this Tumblr now has more than 10,000 followers!
I am honored and humbled that so many total strangers find my idiosyncratic postings to be of interest. I am one of those people who believes that all of humanity is quite closely connected, and this is an inspiring manifestation of that idea.
A special shout to Die Neue Demian for being my first five-digit follower!
I also feel particularly privileged to be a contributor to the truly vibrant #Education community on Tumblr. I greatly admire the passion and commitment Tumblr educators show to your students and your fellow teachers.
Sabbe sattā sukhi hontu.
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Is Your Distance Education Course Actually a Correspondence Course? -
St. Mary-of-the-Woods College should refund $42 million in federal financial aid dollars that it dispersed to students over a five year period. That is the finding of the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of the Inspector General, which found that many “distance education” courses should have been classified as “correspondence” courses.
…
While St. Mary-of-the-Woods courses and faculty had access to a learning management system and online discussions, the Department said that these were rarely used in practice. For distance education (or telecommunications) courses, they also expect “regular and substantive interaction between these students and the instructor.” The Audit found that “instructors did not deliver lectures or initiate discussions with students.” … How do your classes stack up?
How reporters from The New York Times covered the sinking of the Titanic -
There was one key source, and the Times had to get to him. His name was Harold Bride, and he was the wireless operator on the Titanic. It was Bride who sent the messages from the sinking vessel. It was he who would have the full inside story. But the authorities on the Carpathia and the dock were keeping reporters at bay.
[New York Times editor Carr Van Anda] sent a reporter to find Guglielmo Marconi, inventor of the wireless and one of the worlds’ great communications entrepreneurs. The reporter would eventually be mistaken for Marconi’s manager, and the two were escorted aboard the Carpathia, where they milked the exhausted and awe-struck Mr. Bride for the greatest story of its day.
via Poynter
Bold Strokes: New Font Helps Dyslexics Read
Christian Boer, a graphic designer from the Netherlands, has developed a way to help tackle his dyslexia. The 30-year-old created a font called Dyslexie that has proved to decrease the number of errors made by dyslexics while reading.
…One of the first things he did was increase the boldness of letters at their bases, to make them appear weighted, causing readers’ brains to know not to flip them upside down, as can occur with “p” and “d.” Boer also enlarged the openings of various letters, such as “a” and “c,” to make them more distinguishable from one another, and increased the length of “the tail” of other letters, like the “g” and y.” He also put certain letters at a slant so that they would appear to be in italics, like the “j,” a tactic to increase the brain’s ability to distinguish it from the letter “i.” Finally, he boldfaced capital letters and punctuation, and provided ample space between letters and words, to allow the brain more time to compute the letters and begin forming them into words and sentences.
The details of this just totally fascinate me.
(Source: brittq)
World-Shaker: Five Tips for Faculty Working with an Educational Technology Designer -
1) Trust me. I know how to use at least two different learning management systems, including the one at our school. I can train you to use at least a dozen different technologies to help you create interesting multimedia or content for your online course. I’m familiar with all the things that do…
All five … wow, do I relate!
Tackling Literacy Today, Milwaukee Public Library:
This set of three images was taken from Milwaukee Public Library’s recent Internet campaign; it is clearly reaching out to younger uses that use the Internet as a form of social networking. They are trying to get users away from their computers, and into a book – hence ‘Put Your Face in a Book’, ‘You Could Be Reading’ and ‘140 Characters? Try Millions’.
It’s effective because it uses current Internet logos of Facebook, YouTube and Twitter (three powerful, popular sites) and alters them so they show a statement about reading. This method makes their statement instantly relatable, as the logos of these sites are something that most of us see at least once a day.
Photo Timeline
Using Google Images, enter a search term and a year to construct a visual timeline on anything.
(via jonportfolio)
The gamification of education.
“Publishing is not evolving. Publishing is going away. Because the word “publishing” means a cadre of professionals who are taking on the incredible difficulty and complexity and expense of making something public. That’s not a job anymore. That’s a button. There’s a button that says “publish,” and when you press it, it’s done.” — Clay Shirky, How We Will Read
Infographic: Meditation in Schools Across America
As a growing body of research points to positive outcomes from meditation in schools, programs are spreading across the country.
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