MakeUseOf.com put together a nice compilation of free tools for making infographics. Is anyone doing this with their students? It seems like it would meet many benchmarks/standards of visual literacy, understandings of data, metrics, and more. A combined math art science project is stirring in my mind.
I've recently been engaged in fascinating conversations about evaluating curricular resources for bias and inclusivity. These came out of a conversation on whether To Kill a Mockingbird was an appropriate text for 7th grade students. The books uses the 'n word' many times and portrays black characters are uneducated and poor (yes, I realize I'm being somewhat simplistic in my summary). The book is also a "classic" of "American" literature - I put both of those words in quotation marks because there are real questions as to whose classic and whose America.
THATCamp is a humanities and technology "unconference" at George Mason University near Washington, DC. It seems like a great opportunity to involve history and English teachers in. The applications, however, are due today, March 15, 2010. Even if you can't make this year's conference, keep it on your calendar for next year.
On a side note, have any of you attended before? Do you recommend it?
Wide Web of diversions gets laptops evicted from lecture halls
In an unsurprising article an old media institution which is slowly withering away (the newspaper) discusses how a law school has to ban laptops in their classrooms because students aren't listening to the lectures.
"This is like putting on every student's desk, when you walk into class, five different magazines, several television shows, some shopping opportunities and a phone, and saying, 'Look, if your mind wanders, feel free to pick any of these up and go with it,' " [Professor] Cole said."
I can't see how this is any different than these future-lawyers desks are going to be. They'll be in their offices, having to do work, with a computer, Internet access, cell phones, desk phones, e-mail, instant messenger, Skype, etc, all available for their perusal.
Shouldn't law schools being teaching future lawyers how to minimize distraction, use modern tools to be better lawyers (like writing a collaborative brief via Google Docs), and embrace what modern technology has done for the legal field? Or perhaps the bigger problem is the modern legal field isn't moving to take advantage of the opportunities. My sense is that the field is, but the educational institutions training the new lawyers aren't.
I can't believe how unwilling educators are to change their practice. You've got to get to where your kids are, or you'll be irrelevant.
My rant for the day.