Reflecting on a Year of Blogging

I started blogging in late December, 2005. Initially, I was looking for a replacement for the monthly technology newsletters I used to write. Each month, I would create a two-page newsletter and distribute it to all of my staff members. It included 4-7 short items about current technology happenings in the school district, online resources, [...]

Posted on December 31st, 2006 by John Schinker
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Professional Development

I had an interesting conversation earlier today with Jeff Lebow and Doug Symington as part of the traditional Wordbridges end-of-year webcastathon. Among lots of other things, we discussed professional development for teachers. In our case, we have half a day, twice a year, for professional development. In those two half-days, we have to teach our [...]

Posted on December 30th, 2006 by John Schinker
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Space Exploration (yawn)

CNN reported this week that the youth of today couldn’t care less about space exploration. “Young Americans have high levels of apathy about NASA’s new vision of sending astronauts back to the moon by 2017 and eventually on to Mars, recent surveys show.” I wonder why. Let’s take a couple huge leaps back in space [...]

Posted on December 30th, 2006 by John Schinker
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Logical

A necessary component of critical thinking is the ability to draw logical conclusions. Our students have to be able to draw logical conclusions given a set of rules and circumstances. For example, take this rule: “If it’s raining, then it’s cloudy.” Which of the following conclusions are valid? It’s cloudy outside, therefore it must be [...]

Posted on December 29th, 2006 by John Schinker
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Shakespeare Excites the Brain

A recent study at the University of Liverpool has determined that reading Shakespeare excites positive brain activity. Shakespeare’s writing uses functional shifts, where words are used as different parts of speech. “Thou losest here, a better where to find,” declares Kent to Cordelia in King Lear. In this case “where” becomes a noun. In the [...]

Posted on December 20th, 2006 by John Schinker
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