One of my favorite leisure activities is to watch TED talks. For the uninitiated, TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design. The talks are posted online by a media organization, TED Conferences LLC under the slogan “ideas worth spreading.” Which ones are best is purely subjective, but Chris Anderson, the owner of TED Talks (through
A crisis like being in an auto accident or the victim of a crime can be traumatic enough, but what if you’re a child? The solution to calming a child under stress can be as simple as giving them a book. That is the idea behind a charity named Books to the Rescue. Based in
In another example of how the Internet is changing our lives, there are currently more than 10,000 college-level courses available online from over 800 universities that are partially or completely free. They are called MOOCs — Massive Open Online Courses, and the idea has exploded over the past six or so years. Subjects include Computer
It’s true. The academic staple of substitute teaching is showing a video. And after being a substitute for over thirteen years, I can’t tell you how many movies I’ve had to watch. The absent teacher can pick any type of movie, but some subjects are more predictable than others. For science classes, Bill Nye the
Since, I’ve received no complaints (yet) on my last post — The Science of Sex — I’ve found something on this subject that I think is worth adding. In 2011, the state of Mississippi passed a law that placed restrictions on sex education, specifically there could be no instruction or demonstration on the application of
Time magazine’s cover story this week is “The Life of the American Teacher.” (Shown is one of the three cover photos.) Since teaching is my third and current career, this issue got my immediate attention. While I haven’t had time to read it yet, I thought this would be a good opportunity to share my
There is a lot we don’t know about autism. I’ve been in classrooms with autistic kids many times and an as clueless as anyone. But every once in a while there’s a breakthrough story that gives us hope. One such story is Life, Animated, a documentary movie about Ron Suskind and his son Owen. At
I’m going to make this one simple. If you want to know what is wrong with our education system, I would recommend Podcast #562, “The Problem We All Live With” which originally aired July 31, 2015 on the National Public Radio program This American Life (https://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/562/the-problem-we-all-live-with). “Right now, all sorts of people are trying to
When I teach, I think I learn as much from my students as they do from me. Remember how maps of the Earth looked so distorted when you were in school? There was just no good way to portray a three-dimensional globe on a two-dimensional sheet of paper. Not that we haven’t tried. Wikipedia has
The idea of free college surfaced during the recent election. Is it a good idea? It’s generally agreed that college graduates make more money over a lifetime, along with other advantages. (I Googled “benefits of a college education” and got 373,000 hits.) But college isn’t for everybody and such programs are very expensive. So, on
