Students Sue Prosecutor in Cellphone Photos Case

Good for the students. When prosecutors, adults, take absurd situations to an extreme, ultimately hurting the people they have a duty to protect, they should be punished.

I was outraged when I first heard about the prosecutors intent while listening to the radio and am glad to hear that the girl involved is taking action. Shame on the prosecutor.

Read about the story here:
NY Times article.

Make a Virtual Kaleidoscope

I stumbled upon this program. It is an early lesson on symmetry and also reminiscent of the toy kaleidoscope of yore.


These designs are made from the same set of 'virtual objects'. As the highlighter rotates, portions of the design are illuminated creating the kaleidoscope effect.























zefrank.com :: kaleidoscope

Alice Waters - The Edible Schoolyard

Watch CBS Videos Online

What Does One Trillion Dollars Look Like?

I posted a link to a site that gave size perspective to collections of pennies. Here is a site, PageTutor.com, that gives us perspective on how big a trillion is in one hundred dollar bills.



Doubling the image, we have 2 trillion dollars. The deficit is at 1.75 trillion dollars. Can you see the little guy in the corner?

Teach a Man to Fish

"Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish; and you have fed him for a lifetime."

—Author unknown

Education is about learning how to think. It is only when a person can truly think and analyze her own process that he or she will become an independent life-long learner with the ability to be skeptical when necessary. We call the ability to analyze one's own thoughts 'meta cognition' in education lingo.

It follows that the emphasis on any education should be about teaching students to think, in a variety of disciplines... the more the better.

If you look at our system, at least in California, you will see that we teach students how to perform on multiple-choice, standardized tests. Thus we will have a generation of students who can perform well on standardized tests. I am fairly certain though, that this type of training is not teaching the students to think.

More on that later.