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Saturday, June 26, 2010

New Oil Spill Links | Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day...

New Oil Spill Links | Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day...

New Oil Spill Links

by Larry Ferlazzo
Here are the newest additions to The Best Sites To Learn About The Gulf Oil Spill:
Ranger Rick from the National Wildlife Federation answers questions about the spill.
Seeking Answers as Questions Mount is a nice New York Times piece that’s in a question/answer format. It’s probably only accessible to Intermediate ELL’s and above.
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Palin decries 'Dumpster divers' at Calif. campus - U.S. news - msnbc.com

Palin decries 'Dumpster divers' at Calif. campus - U.S. news - msnbc.com

Palin decries 'Dumpster divers' at Calif. campus



TURLOCK, Calif. — Sarah Palin leveled criticism at California's attorney general and others raising questions about her visit to a cash-strapped university, telling supporters that students had better things to do than dive through Dumpsters to find out how much she earns speaking.
The former Alaska governor's headline address Friday night at the 50th anniversary celebration at California State University, Stanislaus has drawn criticism and scrutiny since it was first announced. It also attracted



Sarah Palin, Hamid Shirvani
Rich Pedroncelli / AP
Former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin is escorted into a fundraising dinner by California State University, Stanislaus President Hamid Shirvani in Turlock, Calif., Friday, June 25, 2010. Palin's speech has generated intense scrutiny since the nonprofit foundation holding the event first announced her visit in March. University officials have refused to divulge the terms of her contract of her speaking fee.(AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)
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How to get Johnny to study - The Boston Globe

How to get Johnny to study - The Boston Globe

How to get Johnny to study

Surprising insights from the social sciences

By Kevin Lewis
June 27, 2010
Text size – +
How do we motivate kids — especially kids in rough situations — to want education? Researchers at the University of Michigan studied middle school students in Detroit and found that, while almost 90 percent expected to go to college, only half wanted a career that actually required education. And this difference was critical. Students whose career goals did not require education (e.g., sports star, movie star) spent less time on homework and got lower grades. The good news is that the researchers found it was easy to make education more salient, and thereby motivate kids. When students were shown a graph depicting the link between education and earnings, they were much more likely to hand in an extra-credit homework assignment the next day than if they were shown a graph depicting the earnings of superstars.
Destin, M. & Oyserman, D., “Incentivizing Education: Seeing Schoolwork as an Investment, Not a Chore,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (forthcoming)
The spirit of capitalism
One of the classic works of sociology is “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism” by Max Weber, who argues that the former facilitates the latter. Scholars have been trying to test this theory ever since, typically by analyzing economic patterns at the international level. An ideal scientific test of the theory, however, would require randomly indoctrinating one group of people with one


GLOBE EDUCATION NEWS

Focus groups will discuss Boston schools, but some object

The Boston public schools will hold 14 focus groups across the city today and tomorrow to gather advice on school closings, program expansions, and other pressing issues, with participation by invitation only. (By James Vaznis, Globe Staff)

Researchers say sense of touch guides impressions, decisions

Think someone is a tough customer? Maybe it is all in your head — or your fingertips. (By Elizabeth Cooney, Globe Correspondent)


LATEST K-12 EDUCATION NEWS

LATEST HIGHER EDUCATION NEWS

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Violence in Mexico Deters U.S. Universities - NYTimes.com

Violence in Mexico Deters U.S. Universities - NYTimes.com

Violence in Mexico Deters U.S. Universities


Sandy Huffaker for The New York Times
Victor Clark Alfaro, a lecturer at San Diego State University, in Tijuana, Mexico.

By MARC LACEY

Published: June 26, 2010

MEXICO CITY — From perfecting their use of the subjunctive in colonial Puebla to exploring the anthropological aspects of Tijuana’s gritty underside, American college students have long used Mexico as a learning lab. This summer, however, far fewer will be venturing across the border, as universities and students alike fear the violence tied to drug gangs that have caught some innocents in the cross-fire.
Enlarge This Image
Jennifer Szymaszek for The New York Times
Students Erin Callahan, right, from Berkeley, CA, and Chris Cogburn, from Austin, TX, center, work on an assignment given by their teacher Arturo Torres, left, in their beginners’ Spanish class at International House in Mexico City.
In March, two Mexican university students were killed at the prestigious Tecnológico de Monterrey when fighting broke out between Mexican soldiers and drug traffickers on the streets outside. Universities in the border cities of Ciudad Juárez and Reynosa. have seen violence tread dangerously close to their campuses as well.
A direct result of the attention-getting bloodshed has been the mass cancellation of study-abroad programs throughout the country, including those hundreds of miles from the most dangerous areas. Some educators on both sides of the border consider the reaction to be an exaggerated response.
“To make an analogy,” said Geoffrey E. Braswell, an associate anthropology professor at the University of California, San Diego, “I would not have considered taking students to Mississippi during the early 1960s or to Chicago during the 1968 Democratic convention,
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High School Haiku � Bill Ayers

High School Haiku � Bill Ayers

High School Haiku

by billayers

school—

take out the “sh”

and it’s cool

The great Gwendolyn Brooks, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the early 1950’s and Poet Laureate of Illinois for many years, asked in her Dedication to Picasso, “Does man love art?” Her answer: “Man visits art but cringes. Art hurts. Art urges voyages.”

Exactly. Art, which often begins in pain and horror, when it’s good ends in the imaginable; art embraces the entire territory of possibility. Art stands next to the world as such, the given or the received world, waving a colorful flag gesturing toward a world that should be, or a world that could be but is not yet. So if we believe that the world is perfect and in need of no improvement, or that the world is none of our business, or that we are at the end of history and that this is as good as it gets and that no repair is possible, then we must banish the arts, cuff and gag the artists—remember, they urge voyages. If, on the other hand, we see ourselves as works-in-progress, catapulting through a vibrant history-in-the-making, and if we feel a responsibility to engage and participate, then the arts are our strongest ally. It depends.

Perhaps that’s what Ferlinghetti was thinking when he published a slim volume with the provocative title Poetry

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Gay and Transgender Youth Homelessness by the Numbers

Gay and Transgender Youth Homelessness by the Numbers

Gay and Transgender Youth Homelessness by the Numbers

June 21, 2010
lgbt youth population v. lgbt homeless youth populationThere are approximately 1.6 million to 2.8 million homeless young people in the United States, and estimates suggest that disproportionate numbers of those youth are gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender. These vulnerable gay and transgender youth often run away from home because of family conflict and then face overt discrimination when seeking alternative housing, which is compounded by institutionalized discrimination in federally funded programs.
We do not have to accept this reality. The federal government has the power to reduce and eventually eliminate rates of gay and transgender youth homelessness while addressing youth homelessness overall. Congress can and should make a financial commitment to services directed at these young people. They should join with federal agencies and couple it with an expansion of equal rights and protections to all gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people. As the numbers below show, it’s time we provide these young people with the help they need.

An alarming number of gay and transgender young people are homeless

1.6 million to 2.8 million: The estimated number of homeless youth in the United States.
20 to 40 percent: The portion of the homeless youth population who are gay or transgender, compared to only 5 to 10 percent of the overall youth population.
320,000 to 400,000: A conservative estimate of the number of gay and transgender youth
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Low-Achieving New York Schools to Test New Rules - NYTimes.com

Low-Achieving New York Schools to Test New Rules - NYTimes.com

New Strategy Announced to Improve City Schools


By SHARON OTTERMAN

Published: June 24, 2010

The Education Department on Thursday detailed a new model for turning around some of New York City’s lowest-performing schools, saying that the schools would serve as the first testing ground for new teacher evaluation laws passed by the Legislature in May.
The model, known as transformation, will be put in place beginning in September in 11 of the 34 city schools that the state has identified as “persistently lowest achieving,” a designation covering the lowest-achieving 5 percent of schools in the state. The remaining 23 schools on the list will almost certainly be closed and replaced by smaller schools or charter schools, although that process is not to begin until the start of the 2011-12 school year, officials said.
In an agreement reached Thursday between the city and the United Federation of Teachers, the schools will be permitted to hire two new kinds of teachers: master teachers and turnaround teachers. Those teachers will be paid as much as 30 percent more than
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