Governor Susan Martinez will be on New Mexicos biggest talk radio show today at 11am eastern, 15 minutes from now. There is a Corporal Punishment Ban that passed the house and senate that is just waiting for her to sign... Please call-in and ask her to sign the CP BAN into law! You can listen live to Bob Clark’s show on its web site at http://www.770kkob.com/ The call-in number is (505) 243-3333. We are SO CLOSE to our first big http://LostTheBelt.org/ victory! LETS ROLL!
The Vocab Film Festival Word of the Week is: Bewilder.
Check out this recent filmmaker contest submission to the Vocab Videos Film Festival....
Vocab Videos currently is running a contest where you can submit your own vocab video and photo entries for a chance to win over $20,000 in scholarships and monthly and grand prizes from A-List Education, Zinch, Knewton, & Cerebellum.
Get your students involved for a fun class project opportunity! Support participating nonprofit organizations—Harlem Children’s Zone, Boys & Girls Clubs of Boston, Urban Word, and Year Up—just by voting on your favorite entries. Special prizes and donations go to the nonprofit with the most votes at the close of the Festival.
Superman is here, and his name is Sal Khan. What started as a project to help teach his cousins has turned into what has the potential to completely change the game in education.
Khan has been recording simple video lessons for hundreds of different concepts from math to science to world history. He has made them all available for free online, and he has created some amazing tools that allow parents, teachers, home schoolers and tutors to track with real time fine grain detail the progress of the students.
Currently, teachers get to spend about 5% of their time interacting with students, the rest is spent lecturing, giving exams, etc. This new model completely turns the classroom upside down -- students can be assigned the videos for home work, and then in class they get mentoring from the teacher and each other.
Here is a Sal introducing the platform this month at TED:
Here is a more in depth overview of the features:
The system is FREE, being used in schools now, and is READY FOR YOUR SCHOOL TO ADOPT. We'd love to see some of our readers make an effort to pilot the KHAN program in your district.
Thoughts? Anyone have any direct experience with this?
Our friends at HypeVocal have an interesting article up about how we've been pissing away money on abstinence education -- and how it's actually increased teen pregnancy, STD's and abortions. We've dumped 1.5 billion $$$ over the last 15 years at abstinence only sex education -- which, much like the Dare Program, doesn't seem to work -- AT ALL.
An English teacher was fired after refusing to remove a bumper sticker for her car that read "Have You Drugged Your Kid Today?"
She says it was political commentary on the over medication of students and she never discussed it in class, but some parents complained which led to her being asked to remove it.
She clearly has a right to political expression, and it would be hard to argue the bumper sticker is obscene. The only real question is can the school regulate what is on her car while it is on school property.
The Vocab Film Festival Word of the Week is: Wistful. Check out this video, which is a great resource for helping build vocabulary.
Vocab Videos currently is running a contest where you can submit your own video and get a share of over $20,000 in monthly and grand prizes from A-List Education.
We have a BRAND NEW BLUERAY DVD of the acclaimed Waiting For Superman. This amazing documentary highlights some of the problems with the US education system and proposes some solutions. If you haven't seen this movie, SEE IT!
If you would like a FREE COPY of the Blue Ray DVD, simply leave comments below (make sure to use facebook, so we can message you) and we will select a winner from those who have left comments.
Our good friend Jake Sasseville of Late Night Republic is crowdfunding a cool project..
Watch the video, and check it out here: http://latenightrepublic.com/dustin/
