Dude! Where's my Map?

The American education system, or at least the people who like to think they run it, seem rather obsessed with not leaving any child behind. However, it seems that some of them might already have been left behind if this video of Miss Teen USA South Carolina is anything to go by…

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OK, so I get it now… it’s obvious why one fifth on US Americans can’t locate the USA on a world map… They don’t have maps! Of course! Forget this idea of not leaving any child behind… US schools don’t need national standards-based, high-stakes testing. They just need to buy everyone maps! Then they can concentrate on getting all those people from South Africa and The Iraq and those other Asian countries properly educated. WTF?!

Seriously though, I have a lot of US American friends, many of them teachers… wonderful, fabulous, dedicated teachers… and I personally believe that when I see video of, like, such as, some people in our nation like that poor girl stumbling over, like, that question, and such as… it makes me realise just how much patience we teachers must have as we persevere with kids like this in our classes.

Reminds me of this clip of The Chaser’s Julian Morrow interviewing Americans in the streets, and asking them about world politics, history and geography. This is just television, right? Right?

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Did You Know? 2.0

Just noticed that Karl Fisch from The Fischbowl blog has had his “Did You Know?” presentation updated to a newly revised version, thanks to some internet collaboration from Scott McLeod and a guy called XPlane who helped with the Flash animation.

Karl originally created this for his own school’s use last year and, as it mentions in the presentation, it was originally destined to be shown only to about 150 people.  However, it was shared on Karls’ blog, the edublogosphere picked up on it and pretty soon it had been distributed to over 5 million people.  Yes, we live in exponential times.  Watch it.  Use it.  Share it.  Go start some conversations…

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/pMcfrLYDm2U" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

The full story on this presentation can be found here.   Thanks for sharing Karl.

do u no ne1 lik dis?

My daughter Kate spotted this rather insightful cartoon in the Sunday paper last week and was quick to show it to me.  She said she thought it was something that might be useful to me in my work with other teachers, so apparently it’s not just the cartoon that is insightful…  I think the cartoon is funny, but would be funnier if only it were not so true…

How many people do you know who refuse to adapt to newer technology because the “old way” still seems to be so much more efficient?

sms cartoon

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