My Beauty Best Teacher

• YouTube - YaleCourses's Channel

  Yale has released several more high def courses hinging upon video posted on youtube. Wither you can use it with students, you could easily learn a lot. There are several videos including one on capitalism that would be great for an economics course.
  Take your students to Yale for a day!
  
  Yale has been busy with 20 something videos posted this week. They are also on itunes U.

  tags: education openeducation opencontent

• Funschool - Fun Blaster - Super Hyper Spider Typer

  super hyper type spider recommended by @fsinfo on Twitter for typing.
  
  "Hungry lizards with words on their backs are after Berry the hairy spider! Save Berry from these colorful, wacky creatures by typing words quickly as they appear on their backs and help her from becoming someone's lunch! Type in the letters or words you see on the lizard's backs as soon as they appear on the screen to clear them away. Some words will be harder than others so type really fast to win! Each round will end when the spider reaches the top of the tree. "

  tags: education typing technology

• "Embedded Librarians: Three Models to Promote the Library and Improve S" by Krista Godfrey, Andrew Colgoni et al.

  Learn about 3 models for embedded librarianship: in a program, virtually and in a centre for teaching and learning
  
  I need to ask some of my library friends about these three models and which they use.

  tags: education library techintegrator

• iPod Touch to help improve student learning - Live5News.com | Charleston, SC | News, Weather, Sports

  I'm not sure how the licensing is working for them. I didn't think you could have one app and share on 40 ipods, but that is what the Charleston County School District says they are doing. After checking with Twitter friends - they confirmed that it is illegal. I wonder how they got this far and didn't know this.
  
  From the article:
  
  ""Everything from vocabulary, to e-book reading, to art, to science," said CCSD Media Services Coordinator Connie Dopierala.
  
  CCSD hopes to invest in a set of 40 iPod Touches for every school in the district, at $150 each. Students can learn math or grammar on inexpensive application programs.
  
  "We can download a 99-cent app and load it on all 40 iPod Touches or however many, and that's very cost-effective with taxpayer dollars," said Dopierala."

  tags: education ipod edu_news edu_trends

• To boost student learning, improve student health, says panel

  "Charles Basch, a professor of health education at Teachers College of Columbia University, presented highlights from his research on the relationship between student health and achievement. Basch’s research identifies major health risks that have a negative impact on learning, including asthma, teen pregnancy, poor vision and a lack of breakfast.
  
  “It’s not a coincidence that children in the 5,000 lowest-performing schools are the same ones that experience the greatest health disparities,” he said."

  tags: education student improvement

• Joliprint | Print friendly & PDF your blogs and websites

  Website that creates printer-friendly copies of articles. (Hat tip Free Tech for Teachers)

  tags: education tool

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

Darren Taylor of VOA reports on the work of Chinwe Uwandu:

A leading legal advisor to the Nigerian government says strong laws and effective implementation thereof must be the basis for Africa’s future progress. Chinwe Uwandu a former Yale fellow...represents Nigeria at various international forums, including the United Nations, and has helped secure Nigerian input into a number of continental and international treaties. In the third part of a series on African fellows at Yale, Darren Taylor reports on some of Uwandu’s achievements.

Every now and then I like to bum around and try to figure out who is ruling us. So I started looking into the Presidential Task Force on the Auto Industry, a group of unelected elites devoid of any constitutional authority that Obama ordered to run large segments of our economy, and while doing so, my interest was caught by a young kid named Brian Deese, who (like Obama) rose from summer intern to most important person in charge of saving the US auto industry. Trying to find out more about him, I stumbled on a great site that I want to promote and encourage you all to explore called WhoRunsGov.com.

WhoRunsGov.com is a moderated wiki that offers a unique look at the world of Washington through its key players and personalities. The site features profiles of prominent government officials, including members of the Obama administration, U.S. lawmakers and governors, senior congressional aides and committee staff, lobbyists and experts at think tanks and interest groups who comprise the world of unofficial Washington. It is an attempt to let us know who these shadowy crooks and criminals and idiots are who are trying to run your life.

According to this website, Brian Deese is currently the Special Assistant to the President for Economic Policy. The Yale law school dropout with no formal economic training became the first member of President Obama's Auto Task Force, which was being run day-to-day by former billionaire investment banker Steven Rattner. Deese was initially the only member of the task force, and remains its most important and influential member. Deese's path to power was to drop out of Yale Law School and join Democratic political campaigns, registering people to vote and following the campaign around as a paid staffer. Thus demonstrating his inability to follow through, his lack of desire to be a productive member of society, and his willingness to abandon knowledge for political power, he rapidly advanced within Democratic insider circles, and now, after getting Obama's ear, he plays a big role in determining the future for all of the major auto companies in the United States.

This disgusts me. I wonder what other stories similar to this one I can find on WhoRunsGov.com

Chris Blattman writes and asks for suggestions:

That's the (informal) course title for my spring undergraduate lecture. Turns out that's too long and rambling a name for a transcript, and so the Yale powers that be had me shorten it to the duller, "African Poverty and Western Aid"...What can the West do? The course has students read the new canon of development: Sachs, Collier, Easterly, Rodrik, etc. Putting it together, I was struck with the preponderance of rich white male academics. Don't get me wrong. I aspire to be a rich white male academic myself (I am 3 for 4--and only held back from that goal by the preponderance of student debt). But it would be nice to have other perspectives.

So the course is now set up to read other points of view--mostly, admittedly, rich black male perspectives--and think critically about the new canon. Ayittey, Ake, Ekeh, Sawyer. Mamdani, Ndulu, Wainaina. Mwenda, Mkandawire and Soludo. And some optional Franz Fanon, just to appease Chris Udry...[continue reading]

Yale Fellow Getachew Alemu perceives intellectual property rights and socioeconomic development as symbiotic in nature.He discusses the approach employed to build Ethiopia's IP framework.Watch him here

Businessweek reports:

Africa is top-of-mind on B-school campuses, too. Schools such as Columbia, Yale, and Dartmouth's Tuck are sending their students to places like Tanzania and South Africa. Meanwhile, B-schools are tweaking their curricula to include Africa-centric case studies. As far as many MBAs are concerned, there's no better emerging economy to explore"There's a huge area of land with a lot to offer in terms of human resources," says Shamik Narotam, a second-year finance student at the London Business School who studied in Cape Town this fall. "You can't ignore it anymore."

"Corruption kicked me out of Nigeria"-Nuhu Ribadu
The Movement of Movements the rise of 'Social Entrepreneurship'-The Yale Globalist
Politics versus the law in South Africa-The Economist
"Africa needs younger leaders"-Kofi Annan
"Yar'Adua administration is corrupt"-Nigerian Bar Association. Really?-via Turenchi
The Congo, too big to fail?