In response to the WaPo Saturday story "DC Schools Chief Makes Times Magazine Cover" it is interesting to note that most readers do not favor Rhee's education reform strategies and recent appearance on the cover of Time. Twelve on line posters gave Rhee a thumbs down. This seems to be dramatic shift in public opinion against Rhee as evidenced by not only these posts but other on line comments as well. I have posted a number of the noteworthy ones.(Posted by The Washington Teacher).

DC Schools Chancellor Rhee (AKA The Broom Lady) gets the cover story in the soon to be released Decmber 8th issue of Time titled "How To Fix America's Schools". In the cover picture, Rhee appears with a broom. Sound eerily familiar to a former DC mayor Sharon Pratt Kelly who vowed to clean house with her infamous broom ? Some would argue that Rhee is on a singular mission to get rid of teachers (good and bad) and that she suffers from tunnel vision because she lacks multifaceted solutions to complex problems that plague public education and fails to include all of the stakeholders. Are you 'Yeah' or 'Nay' on Rhee's vision to save DC Public Schools ?

Award winning Ngoma Miezi Kintaudi is the Director of the Sanru Rural Health Program he has been critical in "...helping the people of his homeland gain access to basic health care services, largely unavailable in much of the Democratic Republic of Congo..."In a speech at the Time Magazine Global Health Summit he stated:
"Today, the SANRU team is assisting the Ministry of Health to rebuild Congo’s health system of 515 health zones. We are supporting 75 health zones and providing health care for more than nine million people"

photo courtesy of Time Magazine

Last week on TV I watched for the uncountable time The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. This movie was my favorite out of the three (although The Bridge of Khazad-dûm in one and the Battle of the Pelennor Fields in three rival it). Although I love the movies, just like I loved the original Star Wars, there are some parts of the movie I don't like, and so I was glad to find a LOTR companion to match the excellent piece that the Weekly Standard's Jonathan V. Last put out on the Star Wars called The Case for the Empire. It is high time that the LOTR was analyzed in a similar manner, and I think that this piece by Salon's David Brin does just that. Do I really believe this stuff? Probably not, but it is fun reading. Enjoy!

J.R.R. Tolkien -- enemy of progress: "The Lord of the Rings" is lovingly crafted, seductive -- and profoundly backward-looking. Why not look at things through the Dark Lord's eye for a change? Here are the best parts (only about 1/3 of the whole article)- I highly suggest you read the whole thing here:

Of course there is much more to this work than mere fantasy escapism. J.R.R. Tolkien wrote his epic -- including its prequel, "The Hobbit" -- during the dark middle decades of the 20th century, a time when modernity appeared to have failed in one spectacle of technologically amplified bloodshed after another.

LOTR clearly reflected this era. Only, in contrast to the real world, Tolkien's portrayal of "good" resisting a darkly threatening "evil" offered something sadly lacking in the real struggles against Nazi or Communist tyrannies -- a role for individual champions. His elves and hobbits and über-human warriors performed the same role that Lancelot and Merlin and Odysseus did in older fables, and that superheroes still do in comic books. Through doughty Frodo, noble Aragorn and the ethereal Galadriel, he proclaimed the paramount importance -- above nations and civilizations -- of the indomitable Romantic hero.

Millions of people who live in a time of genuine miracles -- in which the great-grandchildren of illiterate peasants may routinely fly through the sky, roam the Internet, view far-off worlds and elect their own leaders -- slip into delighted wonder at the notion of a wizard hitchhiking a ride from an eagle. Many even find themselves yearning for a society of towering lords and loyal, kowtowing vassals.

Wouldn't life seem richer, finer if we still had kings? If the guardians of wisdom kept their wonders locked up in high wizard towers, instead of rushing onto PBS the way our unseemly "scientists" do today? Weren't miracles more exciting when they were doled out by a precious few, instead of being commercialized, bottled and marketed to the masses for $1.95?

Putting aside cultural superficialities, on every continent society quickly shaped itself into a pyramid with a few well-armed bullies at the top -- accompanied by some fast-talking guys with painted faces or spangled cloaks, who curried favor by weaving stories to explain why the bullies should remain on top.

Only something exceptional started happening. Bit by bit, the elements began taking shape for a new social and intellectual movement, one finally capable of challenging the alliance of warrior lords, priests, bards and secretive magicians.

In this conflict, J.R.R. Tolkien stood firmly for the past. Calling the scientific worldview "soul-less," he joined Keats and Shelley, Sir Walter Scott, Henry James and many European-trained philosophers in spurning the modern emphasis on pragmatic experimentation, production, universal literacy, progress, cooperative enterprise, democracy, city life and flattened social orders.

In contrast to these "sterile" pursuits, Romantics extolled the traditional, the personal, the particular, the subjective, the rural, the hierarchical and the metaphorical.

By the turn of the century, Romanticism was fast losing all vestige of its initial empathy for the concerns of common folk. One solitary artist -- or entertainer or lost prince or angry poet -- loomed larger in importance, by far, than a thousand craft workers, teachers or engineers (a value system shared today by the mythic engine of Hollywood). Just as in Homer's time, 10,000 foot soldiers mattered less than Achilles' heel.

This fits the very plot of "Lord of the Rings," in which the good guys strive to preserve and restore as much as they can of an older, graceful and "natural" hierarchy, against the disturbing, quasi-industrial and vaguely technological ambience of Mordor, with its smokestack imagery and manufactured power rings that can be used by anybody, not just an elite few. (Recall the scene where Saruman turns away from the "good" side and immediately starts ripping up trees, replacing them with mining pits and smoky forges. The anti-industrial imagery could not be more explicit.)

Consider the rings. Those man-made wonders are deemed cursed, damning anyone who dares to use them, especially those nine normal humans who tried to rise up, using tools to equalize and then usurp the rightful powers of their betters -- the High Elves.

The nine Ringwraiths aren't just evil henchmen and cardboard monsters. In my opinion, they are among the most important figures of the epic. Tolkien himself calls them tragic figures and dwells on their background. These fallen mortals -- men who were hauled into service to the "dark side" -- can be looked upon as cautionary figures, conveying the universal lesson that "power corrupts."

On that much we can all agree. But I think there's more to the Ringwraiths. To me, they distill the classical Greek notion of hubris -- a concept that Romantics often embrace -- the idea that pain and damnation await any mortal whose ambition aims too high. Don't try putting on the trappings or emblems or powers that rightfully belong to your betters. Above all, don't try to decipher and redistribute mysteries. In other words, exactly the same morality tale preached in "Star Wars." Romanticism has come full circle, now unctuously praising the very same lords -- the über-men -- that it started out bravely opposing.

Were any orcs or "dark men" offered coalition positions in King Aragorn's cabinet, at the end of the War of the Ring? Was Mordor given a benign Marshall Plan? I think not.

In fact, J.R.R. Tolkien was himself far more critical of the situation portrayed in his universe than any but a few of his myriad readers ever chose to notice. Certainly more self-critical than most of his contemporary readers or those watching the new film trilogy.

In several places, Tolkien openly stated his authorial judgment that the elves who made the Three Rings were ultimately to blame, having set the stage for tragedy in Middle Earth. They made their own rings (preceding Sauron's One Ring) in order to control the world, stopping time and preventing change, forbidding anything to die and decay and thus blocking the potential for new growth. In an oft-quoted letter, Tolkien wrote:

"They wanted to have their cake and eat it: to live in the mortal historical Middle Earth because they had become fond of it ... and so tried to stop its change and history, stop its growth, keep it as a pleasaunce." There are moments scattered throughout LOTR when Tolkien seems to be warning that Romanticism can lead one down the road to genocide. He was disturbed to see the Nazis, for example, embrace many of the same Nordic mythic stories and symbols that he used as source material.

In other books, like "The Silmarillion," Tolkien went deeper into this self-exploration, even going so far as to cast an analytical eye upon the elvish hierarchs of Middle Earth, in much the same way that Isaac Asimov reevaluated his Second Foundation and the meddlesome-patronizing robots of his famed science fictional universe. (This is the kind of self-examination the "Star Wars" cosmos desperately needs, alas, while there's still time.)

Indeed, many academics have cited the obvious parallel between the retreat of the High Elves in LOTR -- who abandon Middle Earth to return "west across the sea" -- and the dissolution of the British Empire that began with the emancipation of India about the same time that Tolkien was writing his epic. In fairness, J.R.R.T. did not rail against this change: He saw it as regrettable but inevitable -- like the end of his mythical Third Age, an approaching time of iron, when aloofly noble figures like Elrond and Galadriel must go back whence they came.

But those self-critiques never had the widespread readership or influence of the original LOTR. And ultimately, Tolkien could never bring himself to cross the gap that another Oxbridge don was writing about at roughly the same time -- the infamous "two cultures" gulf that C.P. Snow mapped between the world of science and the world of the arts.

Try as he might, and even confronted with the blatant Romantic excesses of Nazism, Tolkien could not escape his own deep conviction that democratic enlightenment and modernity made up the greater evil. That hated trend, he feared, would ruin all the beauty that he found in tradition. In aristocratic-mystical hierarchies. In the ways of the past.

The urge to crush some demonized enemy resonates deeply within us, dating from ages far earlier than feudalism. Hence, the vicarious thrill we feel over the slaughter of orc foot soldiers at Helm's Deep. Then again as Ents flatten even more goblin grunts at Saruman's citadel, taking no prisoners, never sparing a thought for all the orphaned orclings and grieving widorcs. And again at Minas Tirith, and again at the Gondor Docks and again ... Well, they're only orcs, after all.

Lev Grossman made a similar point in a recent Time Magazine article, when he asked, "Where are the women? Peter Jackson filled out Liv Tyler's role for the movies (it's much less prominent in Tolkien's version), but the Fellowship is still as much a boys' club as Augusta National."

Let's not ignore but instead openly acknowledge the underlying racism and belief in aristocracy that J.R.R. Tolkien wove into the books, without even much attempt at subtlety. Nor do I much blame him. He couldn't help it, coming from the imperialist and class-ridden culture that raised him.

Moreover, the characters whom the reader comes to know best -- Frodo, Sam and even the king-in-waiting, Aragorn -- are themselves not very snooty or racist. Aragorn has an easygoing, common touch -- much like Luke Skywalker, the only unpatronizing Jedi. The snootiest and most relentlessly aristocratic characters in LOTR stand off in the wings -- for example, the preachy, secretive and patronizing elf-lords Elrond and Galadriel, coaxing maximum effort from their allies while letting others do the fighting for them. (I'd point out endless parallels with a fellow named Yoda, but that would stir up too many hornets at once!)

Obsession with either past or future can almost define a civilization. Worldwide, most cultures believed in some lost golden age when people knew more, mused loftier thoughts and were closer to the gods -- but then fell from grace. Under this dour but recurrent worldview, men and women of a later, coarser era can only look back with envy, hearkening to remnants of ancient wisdom. Recognize this motif? It drenches every page of "Lord of the Rings." It is the old classic, the eternal verity -- the worst of all human clichés.

Only a few societies ever dared to contradict this dogma of nostalgia. Our own scientific West, with its impudent notion of progress, brashly relocated any "golden age" to the future, something we might work toward, a human construct for our grandchildren to achieve with craft, sweat and good will.My point? Well, LOTR is obviously an account written after the Ring War ended, long ago. Right? An account created by the victors.

Through the beauty of wikipedia I recently went on a journey from reading about the movie Top Gun to Val Kilmer to Tombstone to List of Historical Drama's to spotting a movie called Ironclad. It is one of these movies which we in the states might not be able to see but quite honestly is likely better than most of the garbage that will be in the theaters here.

Ironclad is an upcoming historical drama and action film that is soon to be released in the UK.  It is about a ragtag group of Knights Templar who hold out for months against the hard-fought siege of Rochester Castle by King John in the thirteenth Century. Set in the time of signing of the Magna Carta treaty, the group struggles against the King to defend the freedom of their country. Judging from the trailer, it looks like it is going to be a bloody good time! The cast includes includes Paul Giamatti, James Purefoy, Brian Cox, Mackenzie Crook, Jason Flemying, Derek Jacobi and Kate Mara.

Here is the trailer:


The overseas market was also treated to a great movie on Solomon Kane, which I wrote about earlier:

Solomon Kane is a fictional character created by the pulp-era writer Robert E. Howard. A late 16th / early 17th century Puritan, Solomon Kane is a sombre-looking man who wanders the world with no apparent goal other than to vanquish evil in all its forms. His adventures, published mostly in the pulp magazine Weird Tales, often take him from Europe to the jungles of Africa and back.

In the world of Solomon Kane there is Evil. People do evil things (thieves steal and murderers kill), there are evil empires (decadent and peopled by barbarous people), and there are evil spirits present (ghosts and such). Solomon Kane has but one purpose in life, and that is to fight evil, going wherever God's will draws him. A hunger drives him forward, an urge to right all wrongs, to protect those weaker, and to avenge all crimes against right and justice. Wayward and restless, he roams from place to place consistent in one respect only- that he will be true to his ideals of justice and right. Such is Solomon Kane.

Although Solomon Kane is not my favorite Howard character (my favorite is El Borak), I enjoy the stories, and find myself, as I always do when I read Howard, transported back to some sort of primordial time, some sort of time-before-time, perhaps a time period in my childhood when dreams and reality where closer together, or maybe Howard just awakens some sort of ancient stirring in my soul. All I know is that it is very fun reading, and if you haven't picked up a Solomon Kane book yet, you should.

Thus I was very excited to stumble on this trailer, for the Solomon Kane movie. It came out in Europe back in February of 2010, but has not yet made it to the States yet, and there is no DVD available yet for it, but hopefully there will be soon, because it looks like a sweet movie.

It never got into the theatres here yet, but I did notice that you can buy a DVD of it! Follow these links and buy your copy today of the Soloman Kane movie!  SOLOMON KANE [2009, UK] for the movie, The Savage Tales of Solomon Kane for the book!

Image via Wikipedia
But I've spent the morning captivated. Enraptured. I have a segment of my RSS reader called "hotlist" and into it go the blogs and feeds that I can't ignore - my "media diet" as Mark Hurst of Bit Literacy would say.

Relationship Gem #1: My friend, David Truss
In the first post in my reader -- I had to stop and say - Happy Blogaversary, David Truss - it has been five years and you've given us a heck of a lot more change than a "pair a dimes!" (couldn't resist ;-)

Be part of the lives of your friends. My dear friend Julie Lindsay left a comment on Friday's super-popular Facebook Friending 101 for Schools post - it means a lot for her to fire up her VPN and read my blog sometimes.

RSS Gem #1 from Marshall K + Bookmark #1
I started with Marshall K's post about departing Twitter co-founder Evan Williams. Not only was it touching for Marshall to show what Evan (cofounder of blogger AND Twitter) meant to him but the description of how Marshall K massages and extracts meaning from Twitter was fascinating to me.

Marshall said:

"I’ve used the tool Needlebase to discover patterns and benchmarks in social media activity by leading corporate practitioners around the world by scraping Twitter lists, and to scrape and map people who’ve been listed by other users as Journalists who have more than 2,000 followers and live in the South Eastern US. I used Needlebase to scrape the messages and locations of thousands of Tweets from Twitter staff members and find one needle in the haystack that indicated yes, the rumor that Twitter was opening a data center in Utah may have been correct, since an engineer Tweeted that he had begun work that day and geotagged the tweet from the area."

Led to... Teaching Idea #1
Now, college professors - take that and study it. We're going to look at this one with my tenth grade NetGenEd students today who are studying augmented reality and location based apps.

Led to... Technology #1, Bookmark #2
This led me on a journey into Needlebase and a list of free databases that would be fascinating to use with students. But then, I came across the list of twitter users on Needlebase  that Marshall made in less than an hour. Ok, then I begged for an account on needlebase to understand and test the service.

RSS Gems #2-5 from Stephen Downes
Back to the 30 items in my Google reader widget on my iGoogle start page only to be inhaled by the brilliance of Stephen Downes. Whether he loves me or not, I don't care but he is by far, the most useful and widely read aggregator of education news alive today. If educational blogging had a grandaddy, I think he'd be it. I learn from him every day I hit the reader. Here are the three articles that hit me there:

Led to Bookmark #3

Paul Stacey from BCcampus: Open Education and Policy  - "Paul Stacey is as much an authority as anyone on the subject of open educational resources, and in this interview by Creative Commons he offers a useful resource in the form of a chart cross-referencing OER projects and the licenses they select."

Led to Bookmark #4 and a Comment on the Huffington Post
A link to an article on the Huffington post about Kids Teaching Kids. (The only thing that bothered me is that the writer on Huffington is one of the people who founded Kids Teaching Kids and the article is written very much like a news article - not sure the disclaimer fully discloses there.) Yet, it is a good article that reminds me of the student idea for Aha! (Amateurs Teaching Adults) from Mumbai's Flat Classroom Mini-Conference in 2010. (We'll be back in 2012.)

Led To Teaching Gem #2 for the Digiteen Project

And a useful tool from Media Awareness Network to help kids be safer cybercitizens.

Full of learning, I go back to my reader widget on my iGoogle page.

Vicki, you've got to start writing your post this morning. This is your blogging time, not your learning time, remember?

RSS Gem #3 + Bookmark #5
POW! A post from Edutopia's Betty Ray that aggregates a wealth of writing on Student-Centered Learning. Who needs a textbook when you've got an article like this to read.

Time Elapsed: 25-30 minutes

So, then I came here, to write to you. (My bookmarks will be posted on this blog in the morning automatically by Diigo which aggregates the things I tag for you and posts them automatically around 5:45 am.)

Here are my conclusions.

Questions for You About Your Learning

• Look at your RSS. I've written about selecting your Circle of the Wise and it is even more important today. Who is in your @Hotlist on your RSS reader?
  
  
• Look at those in your Feed. You become like those you are around and mirror those we are around. Who are you around?
  
  
• Look for inspiration. If you're only around yourself. Only writing about yourself. Only thinking your own thoughts - how interesting are you? Dad always told me that there are two things that can influence my life - only two: the people we meet and the books we read.
  
  I tell my children now that there are two things: the people we meet and what we read. (magazines, blogs, Kindle - these things are more than books.
  
  
• Get past "Googling" into Thinking. Are the students I teach prepared to go deeper? Most students expect to type something verbatim in Google and get an answer. What happens when they have pre-processing required to figure out what to search. In Digiteen, we intentionally changed up the words we used to force students into authentic research. We've gotten pushback from kids who say "I can't find anything on global awareness and virtual worlds."
  
  (They are missing that they are studying how various countries are using virtual worlds - HOW do they find information on THAT. It is hard for most students to get to that level of thinking. But if they can't get THAT how on earth are they going to figure out how Marshall K figured out that Twitter was opening a new data center? How could they use something like needlebase.)
  
  
• Take Time to Learn. We need time to amble through learning experiences. We can find meaning and learn a lot.
  
• Are you Set up for Serendipity? John Hagal, John Seely Brown et al in the Power of Pull call what I've had this morning "serendipitous learning experiences." Have you designed your start page to bring serendipitous experiences to you?
  
• Take Time to Learn! (Yes, I repeated myself!) Can you take 15-20 minutes at least 3 times a week to learn something new. This is about lifelong learners. I just became a lifetime member of Weight watchers - I have made a decision to be healthy and live it out every day of my life. You will make a decision to learn and grow or stew in self centeredness. What will it be? Lifelong learner?
  

You can't learn everything but you can learn something. Take time today to amble through your circle of the wise. You'll be glad you did.

• Report calls for investments in STEM education, broadband - The Hill's Hillicon Valley

  New report just released from the US Commerce Department this past Friday. You can expect even more investment in STEM.
  
  “Underinvestment in sectors like STEM education, high-tech research, and 21st century infrastructure has diminished the nation’s competitive edge. Sustained federal investment in these sectors will not just help grow today’s economy, but it will also lay the groundwork for generations to come.”

  tags: education news stem

• Seth's Blog: Simple thoughts about fair use

  Seth Godin writes about fair use. Whether you claim fair use or not, give credit. That is the right thing to do.

  tags: education copyright fairuse news

• Microsoft Research and National Center for Women & IT Announce Winners of Computing Higher Education Seed Fund - Press Release - Digital Journal

  I'm glad all of these organizations have received money to recruit and retain women in computing and technology fields of studies, but I sure would like to see some online initiatives, campaigns, and social media type things being done. This approach seems a bit traditional to me.

  tags: education news

• 35% of Child Sex Abuse Caused by Minors - TIME

  We have a hidden problem. Is it lack of supervision? How is it that 1/3 of sexual abuse of children is by other children?
  
  "Recent high-profile cases of child sex abuse have roused national revulsion against the adults who perpetrated them. Rarely mentioned is the sobering statistic that more than one-third of the sexual abuse of America's children is committed by other minors."
  
  Time Magazine

  tags: education news abuse children

• The Human Anatomy, Animated With 3-D Technology - NYTimes.com

  NYU Medical students wear 3-D glasses and dissect a virtual cadaver projected on a screen. The professor says "it's like a living digital textbook." I do, however, really hope my doctors have experience with the human body and don't do like a kid who has practiced basketball and never played in the game - bumble the ball as they start. No one wants to be a practice dummy - in this case a practice cadaver.
  
  Yet, do you realize that we could now add human dissection to anatomy class? In 3D you could dissect the human body? There are very exciting things coming in this area.

  tags: news science 3d science_health invention

• CBAL ELA Competency Model and Provisional Learning Progressions - home

  This is interesting. ETS has launched a website about:
  
  "Educational Testing Service (ETS), the world's leading measurement and research organization, has launched a new website to stimulate discussion, debate, and promote empirical research to help teachers and students meet the goals of the English language arts (ELA) Common Core State Standards." but this is most definitely a wiki (looks like wikispaces.) I find it fascinating that a company would use a wiki because so many have resisted this. I wonder who can join and who can edit. Interesting.
  
  It says you can join. It will be interesting to see what they are doing with this. Perhaps some of you common core experts should join.

  tags: education commoncore engchat news composition

• Mystery Apple event to focus on education, iTunes U, digital publishing? | ZDNet

  The end of this month we'll get a new kind of Apple for the teacher. Apple has a big event planned in New York (publisher central) that is rumored to talk about iTunes University, and textbook publishing. It willbe big news as this is a topic that is said to have been "dear to Steve Jobs."

  tags: news education apple

• Kno Adds 15 Publishers to its Catalogue -- THE Journal

  Textbook app, Kno, adds more publishers to the app.
  
  The publishers include a range of diverging specialties, from humanities publisher Hackett to scholarly publishers such as The MIT Press, University of Nebraska Press, and Indiana University Press as well as more general publishers and Norton Publishing, producers of the long-time campus standby Norton Anthologies. Other recent additions include Morton Publishing, Oklahoma Career Tech, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, and AVA Books.

  tags: education news ebook

• Alfie Kohn: The Risks and Potential of Required Community Service

  Requiring community service. I do this in National Honor Society. They have a certain number of hours to earn, however, they choose what they do. Serving and helping others is part of what we do. However, I see the points he makes in this article, particularly if a competition or reward is put in place.

  tags: education communityservice news

• Tom Vander Ark: How Intelligent Scoring Will Create an Intelligent System

  Yesterday a competition to improve automatic scoring of essays kicked off and computer scientists are invited to join the competition to "best well known testing firms including AIR, CTMMcGraw-Hill, ETS,and Pearson." The Open competition runs through april.
  
  This is an effort to grade essays without a human grader involved.Personally, to me, writing implies audience and to not have a human read the writing of these students is problematic to me.

  tags: education news writing

• Here we go again: Congress considers blocking government's open access policy

  Publishers don't like the Federal government's open access policy that requires that research funded by government-sponsored grants be released to the general public a year after publication. I cannot believe how the publishers are continuing to try to shut down the flow of information. This is as infuriating as SOPA.

  tags: education research news

• Make a Local Backup Of Your Gmail Account - Wired How-To Wiki

  How to make a backup of your gmail account. (I may have to do this to archive old emails as I am beginning to get a full inbox. Just don't know that I need things from 2007.)

  tags: education news

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Home Screen of my Flipboard

Flipboard is a phenomenal reading app for the ipad and was the big reason I begged my family to give me one for my birthday.

However, because so little content is really produced FOR the flipboard, you have to know how to add it. You only get two screens of content (for now) so use it well.

To get Started...
To follow these instructions, you'll need to download Flipboard onto your iPad.

A look at what is on my flipboard....
Before we begin, let's take a look at screenshots of my two Flipboard screens. The sources of information are printed in the top left corner of each board.


 Sharing from Flipboard
Before we get to the reading part, you can share content within Flipboard.  

What you can do depends upon the content source. If you're reading from Facebook, your like and comment buttons show. If you're reading from Twitter, you have retweet, retweet with comment and favorite. Google reader gives the sharing features available in reader.

But, Flipboard's "Button of power" is always in the top right hand corner of any screen. This "share" button lets you send the link to any of the social media sites you have set up. (For me, it is Twitter, Blogger, and Google Reader.)



Adding Content

The Add a section button is shown beside the arrow.

To add content, you just click on the blank gray square on your starting screen that says Add content. Admittedly, I've deleted over half of what I've added as I've played with Flipboard. If the content isn't updated or not quite right, it isn't usable.

For educators, I'll recommend the educator link or item. For non-educators, I'll give pointers on how you can find something similar in your professional arena.


15 Fantastic Use of Flipboard.

1 - Twitter Feed
Subscribe to your own twitter timeline. Flipboard will make the tweets and turn it into a lovely magazine. It is interesting to see the different nature of your twitterstream depending on the time of day. I find more teachers tweet after school hours (understandably so) and admins seem to tweet DURING school hours. (Interesting study waiting to happen on that one.)  

Flipboard from @coolcatteacher Twitter stream (what those I have friended are writing.)

There are many now who are unfollowing on Twitter en masse as they try to improve their "Klout" score, however, I want to follow just about anyone in education and especially teachers. There is a certain random beauty that emerges from this and I "drill down" to my friends by using lists. It is all about why you Twitter but Flipboard makes it easy to read whatever your motivations or reasons. 

 How to add: Click Add and add an account and set up your Twitter Account.

2 -  Twitter Lists
So, if you follow a LOT of people, you can also slice this down to a smaller group by making a twitter list. You'll have to publish it and then subscribe. If it is public, you'll need to know the name of the list but if it is private you can make a list of your closest friends and follow that way.

This is also a great way for those who hate twitter and will not use it to harness the power by finding a list of people from a credible source to follow. (I kind of like chalkstars.)

How to add: Search for the name of the twitter list (it must be public) and then scroll down to the "Twitter Lists" section if it is for someone else. Otherwise, after you've added Twitter, just click on Add Section and click Twitter and then you can add your own lists.

3- Twitter Hashtag - #edchat
My favorite Twitter based flipboard magazine for educators is from #edchat. Just type #edchat in the search and scroll down to follow the hashtag. If you are in another field, you should look at the common hashtags in your field. When you attend conferences, you may want to have a temporary Flipboard "magazine" for that hashtag. (like #iste11).

#edchat hashtag on Twitter is one of the best feeds to compile on Flipboard.

How to add: Type #edchat (or any other hashtag) Scroll down to the Twitter Search Section and subscribe to "tweets mentioning #edchat"

4 - Other Twitter Features
You can follow tweets mentioning you, saved searches, your lists, lists you follow, lists following you, people you follow, and people following you! So many things. My advice is to be strategic. Your Flipboard should meet a need and should evolve.

How to add: After you've added Twitter, click on Twitter after you add a section and then select what you'd like to add.

5 - Google Reader
Subscribing to all of your google reader will bring everything mixed together. It makes for interesting reading and customized magazine of sorts.

How to Add: Click Add Section and then add the network and subscribe to it.

6 - Google Reader Folder
I have a folder called @hotlist that includes the blogs I want to make sure that I read almost every day. This is on my flipboard. I also follow a folder labeled @freecoolstuff that includes some RSS feeds that scrape information about free things for educators and my classroom.

How to add: Click Add section and then click Google Reader (if you added it for #4 above) and then click Subscriptions. You can then pick a folder in your google reader. If you don't have a folder, you'll need to go to http://reader.google.com on your web browser and set them up.

7 - Public Nings
I subscribe to the Flat Classrooms ning to pull out current content. I'm still working on this as I'm not sure how the RSS is coming out of the Ning - sometimes it has older things.

How to add: Click Add Section and then type in the URL - this one is http://flatclassrooms.ning.com - Again, I'm working on this one. You could also use the specific RSS feed for what you want to follow on that topic.

8 - My own Blog
I am learning about how things deploy into Flipboard, so I follow my own blog. If you blog, you follow yours.

How to Add: The fastest way to add this is to type the url in flipboard. Mine is http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com



9 - Any school or classroom blog that is published publicly.
I subscribe to my school's blog at http://westwoodschools.blogspot.com to follow the content and to show parents how it is done. I plan to write a blog post to show them how as it is so easy to read school news that way. I also have http://digiteendreamteam.blogspot.com a blog run by some of my ninth graders.

This is a great tip for administrators who are nervous about their students producing public content as it is easy to read and respond.

How to Add: Type the URL in flipboard and subscribe.

10 - Best of a Diigo Group
The educators group on Diigo is one of my favorite go-to places for information. (See instructions for how to join properly or you will be delayed in the approval process. spammers beware.)

How to Add: To subscribe, I typed in educators and diigo and then it found the diigo group. The group must be public.

11- Education AllTop
The alltop education resource is one of the best. Founded by Guy Kawasaki, if you are in education, this is a must add to your flipboard. There are alltops in many subjects - go to www.alltop.com. Great flipboard content.

How to Add: Type education alltop and find it or http://education.alltop.com

12 - Resource Sharing Blogs (OL Daily)
Frequently updated resource sharing blogs make excellent flipboards. Stephen Downes is in this category for me. I want to read pretty much everything he links to because it is a wide variety and "he can't be bought." I typically don't subscribe to advertising-type blogs in this category because I've found it gets cluttery.

How to Add: Type in the URL or search for the person's name.

13- Your Facebook News Feed
Add Facebook and Follow everything that comes through your network.

How to Add: Add a network and then subscribe.

14  Photos that Tag You
You can subscribe to all photos on Facebook that tag you in them. (Honestly, if you had the userid and password for a person you could subscribe to the photos they are tagged in - like your younger children. You'd just have to promise not to comment. ;-))

How to Add: Add a network and then click Facebook and choose "Photos of You"

15 - Other Important Things in Facebook 
(Groups, Your Wall, Friend Lists, Pages, Friends, News Feed Links, News Feed Photos)
You can drill down facebook in many ways. This is great for school who want to have a Facebook page but need to keep an "eye" on things.

How to Add: Click Facebook and drill through the menus. There is more there than can be added to a flipboard.

Let it Flow and Evolve
You are a human being bounded by finite time and attention spans. You are not infinite so you must focus your energy in ways that pay powerful dividends.

If a Flipboard isn't useful, delete it. It is better to have 3 useful boards than 2 screens of things that distract you.

Delete What Doesn't Work
For that matter, if you hate Flipboard, delete it. Any device no matter how useful can be a productivity killer if it becomes the master and not the servant.

This is your life. It is your job to have the self discipline to focus your time and energy on what is important to you.

This is Your Life!
When I turned 42 this past Monday, I was running on the track and saw the sprinkler system come on the football practice field. Instead of staying on the track, every time I came close to the sprinkler - I ran through it. It felt great! As I listened to my ipod I heard the words:

"It's my life. Now or never. I ain't gonna live forever. I just gotta live while I'm alive."

Life is changing rapidly as we replace desktops with tablet  and mobile devices faster than most can comprehend.

Look for the tools and things that add to your life. If it doesn't add to it, delete it. This is your life! I think Flipboard adds to mine! Enjoy!

While I was wandering around the internet today I came across this interesting piece in Time Magazine called "The Anti-Obama Campaign that Didn't Happen." You know, to be perfectly honest, I'm still a little stunned that a relative unknown with almost no political experience, no major leadership shown ever, and questionable associations just won the Presidency. The question still needs to be asked- what happened? Well, apparently McCain purposefully ran a bad campaign.

Even after one of his best ads was about how Obama was simply an empty celebrity, McCain still choose not to follow that up with more plays on the celebrity angle. McCain refused to bring up Obama's associations with Ayers, Wright, or Rezko. McCain refused to connect Obama to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. This line from McCain's main advertising advisor Fred Davis in particular annoys me:

"One of the big hands that I felt was tied behind my back was [that] so many things — like [Obama's record on] crime — you would logically do were perceived as 'Oh, we can't do that. That was playing the race card,'"

Next time, play it, and let it be called 'the race card', and deal with that. McCain ran a scared campaign, and got thumped because of it, deservedly so. You've got to want to be President- and Obama wanted it more, apparently.

Davis said:

He says the campaign also agonized over the music in the ads, paying special care not to play drum-heavy tracks that could be seen as an African tribal reference.

You've got to be kidding me. Who was talking to Davis and McCain, telling them this stuff? The article ends on this note- 'Obama won because he was the better guy' or 'Obama won because the stars were aligned'. This is garbage- Obama won because McCain was the wrong candidate and ran a bad campaign where he purposefully avoided attacking his opponent. And America is going to suffer for that.

Solomon Kane is a fictional character created by the pulp-era writer Robert E. Howard. A late 16th / early 17th century Puritan, Solomon Kane is a sombre-looking man who wanders the world with no apparent goal other than to vanquish evil in all its forms. His adventures, published mostly in the pulp magazine Weird Tales, often take him from Europe to the jungles of Africa and back.

In the world of Solomon Kane there is Evil. People do evil things (thieves steal and murderers kill), there are evil empires (decadent and peopled by barbarous people), and there are evil spirits present (ghosts and such). Solomon Kane has but one purpose in life, and that is to fight evil, going wherever God's will draws him. A hunger drives him forward, an urge to right all wrongs, to protect those weaker, and to avenge all crimes against right and justice. Wayward and restless, he roams from place to place consistent in one respect only- that he will be true to his ideals of justice and right. Such is Solomon Kane.

Although Solomon Kane is not my favorite Howard character (my favorite is El Borak), I enjoy the stories, and find myself, as I always do when I read Howard, transported back to some sort of primordial time, some sort of time-before-time, perhaps a time period in my childhood when dreams and reality where closer together, or maybe Howard just awakens some sort of ancient stirring in my soul. All I know is that it is very fun reading, and if you haven't picked up a Solomon Kane book yet, you should.

Thus I was very excited to stumble on this trailer, for the Solomon Kane movie. It came out in Europe back in February of 2010, but has not yet made it to the States yet, and there is no DVD available yet for it, but hopefully there will be soon, because it looks like a sweet movie.

Disclaimer: I am not writing in my official capacity as WTU General Vice President, but rather as an announced candidate in the 2013 WTU elections and WTU member.