Can’t draw? Especially, you can’t draw faces?
Want to see how on-line and computer-based education might work best?
Go here, learn to draw faces well, in under ten minutes. (Have some fun — at the entrance page, scroll over each person and read the thought bubbles.)
This piece has been out there for two years. One might wonder what else this team has done, and where one might find it.
From the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. Tip of the old scrub brush to Evangelical Outpost.
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Education, On-line education, On-line learning, Teaching, Technology, Technology in the classroom | 
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Posted by Ed Darrell
Here is a great exercise in applied geography: “The Sweet Tea Line” at Neatorama, with a link to Eight Over Five with a wonderful set of interactive maps — though, if you go to the Eight Over Five site, you don’t find any link to this particular map (can anyone explain?).
One of the maps from Eight Over Five, using data to determine the Sweet Tea Line.
What about regional variations in food, language, customs or commerce in your state? I remember discovering that “regular coffee” in western Massachusetts meant coffee with a lot of cream and sugar. Not so at Boston’s Logan Airport. Where is the line? What about the lines of where a soft drink is “a pop,” versus “a soda pop,” versus “a coke,” versus “a soda?” Read the rest of this entry »
5 Comments | America's founding, Brain learning, Civil War, Geography - Economic, Geography - Physical, Geography - Political, George Washington, History, Lesson plans, Maps | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
That headline was pre-Murdoch, wasn’t it?
It fits this situation, too. Just read. I’m too steamed to comment.
At TexasEd .
Leave a Comment » | Business Ethics, Public education, Public health, Teacher Pay, Teaching | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Anti-environmental long-knives leave the impression that Rachel Carson knew little about science, and had a crabby disposition toward business and life in general.
Go read this: “Rachel Carson: I knew her when.”
She was a poet and a scientist. You won’t learn anything about the controversy, really, other than the fact that Rachel Carson was a genuine woman, a very nice person. But it’s worth the read.
While you’re at Mort Reichek’s site, noodle around and see what else he’s got. He is a retired journalist with a lot to say. Pay attention. [New Jersey history and economics teachers: Do you realize what a resource you could have in this guy? Washington correspondent for Business Week? Hello!!???]
Update: Sadly, Mort passed on in 2011. His blog remains up as a tribute to a great journalist and early blogger.
Leave a Comment » | DDT, Environmental protection, Heroes, Natural history, Public health, Rachel Carson, Research, Science, War on Science | Tagged: DDT, History, Rachel Carson, US Fish and Wildlife Service | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Vicki Thaxton all by herself has saved more water usage in the Dallas area than can be contained in one of our Army Corps of Engineers water projects — say, Joe Pool Lake (yes, it really is named “Joe Pool Lake” — named after Congressman Joe Pool).
How did she do it? How did she save so much water?
Vicki advises Texans on planting their gardens, and for the 20 years or so we’ve known her, she’s been spreading the word, and sometimes spreading the mulch and fertilizer, about xeriscaping with native plants. “Xeriscaping” means landscaping that relies on natural water, rain and dew, instead of irrigation from a hose.
Vicki has been at the same place for all that time, but the establishment’s name has changed — the nursery in Cedar Hill where you find her and get advice is Petal Pushers, on Old Straus Road. (No promotional consideration, by the way.)
Plus, Vicki’s a nice lady. It’s good to see her getting a wider audience for her flower indoctrinations, even if just for a few minutes, on our local NBC affiliate, KXAS-TV, Channel 5. For at least a short while you can view this piece with KXAS’s weatherman, David Finfrock.
Leave a Comment » | Conservation, Education, Environmental protection, Natural history, Texas, Texas history, Video and film | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
The contemptible campaign of hoax and calumny against the work and memory of Rachel Carson continues. You should read more at the sites I cite near the end of this post.
The key false claim of the Carson critics is that, but for the ban on DDT, millions of lives would have been saved over the past 30 years. Chief problem with the claim is that national bans on DDT all preserve DDT use for essential mosquito eradication, especially if there are no other tools to fight the disease. But other problems with the claim include the fact that DDT had stopped being highly effective by the late 1960s; eradication was a pipe dream, and mosquitoes developed resistance to DDT.
That doesn’t stop the critics. So, Dear Reader, when you read criticisms of Rachel Carson and hear the pseudo-science whine that Carson alone has condemned millions to death by malaria, I want you to keep in mind this question: If DDT were such an effective tool against malaria, why didn’t the World Health Organization fight to keep it? Why didn’t the manufacturers fight to keep it? Why would more than 150 nations, tens of thousands of scientists, tens of thousands of health workers, and conservative “I-told-you-so” skeptics who hate environmentalists, all simultaneously fall asleep?
The answer is, Dear Reader, they didn’t all fall asleep. DDT stopped being effective, and malaria fighters realized there were other problems — the parasites that the mosquitoes spread also became resistant to anti-malaria drugs, a bigger problem than DDT resistance. People and organizations who fight malaria did ask that use of DDT be preserved for spraying to fight malaria; but they didn’t defend it against bans on other use because those bans help the malaria fighters.
Cover of Saving Lives, Buying Time: Economics of Malaria Drugs in an Age of Resistance (2004), from the National Academies Press
Below the fold, I offer two quotes from Saving Lives, Buying Time: Economics of Malaria Drugs in an Age of Resistance (2004) Board on Global Health (BGH) (available from the National Academy of Sciences). You can see that DDT is not the golden-egg-laying goose, and that consequently Rachel Carson is not the mindless ogre she is made out to be in recent invectives.
Check out these sites:
6 Comments | Accuracy, Africa, Bogus history, DDT, Green Politics, Hoaxes, Public health, Rachel Carson, Research, Science, Voodoo history, Voodoo science | Tagged: Africa, Bogus history, DDT, Green Politics, Hoaxes, Malaria, Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Barry Commoner turned 90 on May 28. He is profiled in The New York Times Science section on June 19, 2007 (if your local newspaper has a science section half as good, I’d love to hear about it). Commoner is a plant physiologist and great eminence at Washington University in St. Louis for 34 years, now at Queens College. He was a key informant of public opinion during the rise of ecological awareness in the 1960s and 1970s, probably the nation’s best known “ecologist.”
In 1980 he helped found the Citizens’ Party, and ran for the presidency their ticket.
The peak of the campaign happened in Albuquerque, where a local reporter said to me, “Dr. Commoner, are you a serious candidate or are you just running on the issues?”
Time Magazine cover from February 2, 1970; Time sells replicas of historic covers.
1 Comment | Accuracy, Business Ethics, Citizenship, Economics, Environmental protection, Ethics, Good Quotes, Natural history, Quotes, Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
I really don’t like assignments to “do a PowerPoint presentation” for kids who are not expert at all on their subjects — there is too much room for too much unintentional mischief when people who know little about a topic are to use a tool designed for people who know too much about a topic.
Among other things, kids who have never had to do a five-page report, nor an outline of a report, do not have the experience to stick to five bullets of less than five words per slide. And don’t get me going on “fireworks” animation of letters to explain things like the death of Medgar Evers, or the evils of child labor.
But if you want some ideas, the Paducah, Kentucky, school system offers some templates for student reports, and a few presentations teachers could use as foundations, here at “Connecting Teachers and Students.” There is advice, too. *
Use these as starting points, please. If you can’t improve on them, you’re not trying (no offense, Paducah — I hope).
A good exercise for you would be to spend an hour reading suggestions from Presentation Zen, and then edit a couple of those presentations from Paducah to make them more, um, zen reflective.
Remember, “template” is just a part of “contemplate.”
(I hope I don’t regret having pointed out that Paducah site to you.)
7 Comments | Accuracy, Classroom technology, Editing, Pedagogy, Presentations, Student projects, Technology, Technology in the classroom | Tagged: PowerPoint, slide templates, student presentations, Technology | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Two Madison quotes today: 
I congratulate you on the foundation thus laid for a general System of Education, and hope it presages a superstructure, worthy of the patriotic forecast which has commenced the Work. The best service that can be rendered to a Country, next to that of giving it liberty, is in diffusing the mental improvement equally essential to the preservation, and the enjoyment of the blessing.
James Madison letter to Littleton Dennis Teackle, March 29, 1826; from the Madison Papers at the University of Virginia
No feature in the aspect of our Country is more gratifying, than the increase and variety of Institutions for educating the several ages and classes of the rising generation, and the meritorious patriotism which improving on their most improved forms extends the benefit of them to the sex heretofore, sharing too little of it. Considered as at once the fruits of our free System of Government, and the true means of sustaining and recommending it, such establishments are entitled to the best praise that can be offered.
James Madison letter to Gulian C. Verplanck, February 14, 1828; from the Madison Papers at the University of Virginia
Both quotes are contained in James Madison’s “Advice to My Country,” edited by David B. Mattern, University Press of Virginia, 1997
Leave a Comment » | America's founding, Education, Famous Battles, James Madison, Public education, Quotes | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
The story could fuel jokes for years. Or it could cause tears, as indeed it did from the woman who organized the festivities around the unearthing of the 50-year-old Plymouth buried at Tulsa’s courthouse.
The headline in The Tulsa World shows pluck, determination and a good sense of humor: Tulsa celebrates anyway, but the Plymouth is a bucket of rust.
“Tarnished gold,” is the headline.
Now we know what 50 years in a hole does to a Plymouth Belvedere.
The tires go flat. The paint fades. Hinges and latches stiffen, upholstery disintegrates, the engine becomes a very large paperweight.
But what the heck. None of us is what we used to be.
1957? Eisenhower sent U.S. Marshalls, and then the U.S. Army, into Little Rock, Arkansas, so 9 African-Americans could register to go to Central High School. That was so long ago that the Little Rock 9 graduated, became doctors, lawyers and businessmen, and even an undersecretary of Labor, and got very gray; Central High is now a National Historic Monument (though still a high school). 
Leave a Comment » | 1957, Archaeology, Cold War, Current History, History blogs, Teaching, Technology, Transportation, Travel | Tagged: 1957, Archaeology, Cold War, Current History, History, Oklahoma, Plymouth Belvedere, Teaching, Technology, Transportation, Travel | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
1968 propelled history in dramatic fashion, much of it tragic. History teachers might await the 40th anniversary stories of 1968’s events, knowing that the newspapers and television specials will provide much richer material than any textbook could hope for.
Was 1967 less momentous? Perhaps. But an anniversary this week only serves to highlight how the entire decade was a series of turning points for the United States. This week marks the 40th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s issuing the decision in Loving v. Virginia. The Lovings had been arrested, convicted and exiled from the state of Virginia for the crime of — brace yourself — getting married.
Photo of Richard and Mildred Loving from Bettman-Corbis Archive.
You see, Virginia in those days prohibited marriage between a black person and a white person. So did 15 other states. In language that is quaint and archaic to all but Biblical literalist creationists, the trial judge said:
“Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.”
The Lovings appealed their conviction. They appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. And on June 12, 1967, the Supreme Court of the United States struck down laws that prohibit a person of one “race” from marrying a person of another. (I put “race” in quotes because, as we have since learned from DNA studies, there is just one race among us, the human race. Science verifies that the Supreme Court got it right, as did the Americans before them who wrote the laws upon which the Supreme Court’s decision was based.)
From 1958 to 1967 — nine years the case wended through the courts. Oral argument was had on April 10 — the decision coming down in just two months seems dramatically quick by today’s standards. This was one of the cases that angered so many Americans against the Court presided over by Chief Justice Earl Warren.
Ed Brayton at Dispatches from Culture Wars points to a statement from Mildred Loving on this anniversary. The statement is below the fold. Read the rest of this entry »
8 Comments | 1968, Citizenship, Civil Rights, Fourteenth Amendment, Freedom - Political, Heroes, History, Human Rights, Jurisprudence, Justice, U.S. Constitution | Tagged: 1967, Civil Rights, Constitution, Loving v Virginia, marriage, Miscegination, Supreme Court | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Educate, Inc., the parent company of Sylvan Learning Centers, traded for the last time on the NASDAQ exchange yesterday.
No, the company didn’t go out of business. It was taken private by its management, after being a public company for three years. From the Baltimore Sun morning e-mail:
Educate becomes a private company
Educate Inc. has completed its transition into a private company, ending its three-year run on public markets.
Best known for its Sylvan tutoring centers, the Baltimore company, which was purchased in a management-led buyout, traded for the last time on the Nasdaq yesterday.
The investor group that purchased the company is led by chief executive officer R. Christopher Hoehn-Saric, other executives and affiliates of Sterling Capital Partners and Citigroup Private Equity. They paid $8 a share for the company in the deal valued at $535 million.
The company announced this week that more than 75 percent of shareholders approved the deal, which came as the firm has struggled with poor product sales.
Internal reorganization was swift. The company’s website carried this note this morning:
On June 13, 2007, through a merger transaction, Edge Acquisition, LLC became the owner of Educate, Inc. In a related series of simultaneous transactions, the companies which were part of Educate, Inc. have been split into the following independent companies:
- Educate Services, which includes Sylvan Learning, Catapult Learning, and Schulerhilfe;
- Hooked on Phonics, Inc., which includes Hooked on Phonics, Reading Rainbow, and GPN;
- Educate Online, Inc., which includes Catapult Online and eSylvan;
- Progressus, Inc.; and
- Educate Corporate Centers Holdings, Inc., which is a franchisee of various Sylvan Learning and owner of Sylvan Learning Centers.
The companies are now operating independently to better serve students, families and schools across the country. To learn more about the merger and related transactions, click here.
Making a profit delivering education is rare. Milton Friedman notwithstanding, free market rules do not apply to educational enterprises in the same way they do to other services. This is one more example, or set of examples, that should give pause to any rational person considering making public schools “compete” for money to improve education for any child, especially any group of children. Sylvan Learning Centers are considered to be the top of the heap in their niche; Hooked-on-Phonics is a cliché success story. And they “struggle with poor product sales.”
I hope the company finds the education answers, the magic bullets, and can retail them at affordable prices.
The answer, by the way, probably is not 42.
1 Comment | Brain learning, Business, Business Ethics, Education, Education quality, Education spending, Education success, Free market economics, Pedagogy, Teaching, Technology, Technology in the classroom | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
The socks. Just look at the socks.
18 USC Sec. 713 , governing the use of the presidential seal, and others, and Executive Order 11649, governing use of the presidential and vice presidential seals, below the fold.
Leave a Comment » | Executive Orders, Flag etiquette, Presidents | Tagged: Executive Orders, Flag etiquette, George W. Bush, Presidential Seal | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Ran into a website from a Dallas guy who is a practicing historian of a sort. A former oil man, he is involved in preserving and telling the story of the guys who rescued priceless works of art from the Nazis, the Monuments Men.
Robert Edsel’s blog is here; the site for his book, Rescuing DaVinci, is here.
Dallas-area world history and U.S. history teachers — have you called this guy to see if he’ll come visit your school?
Text of Mr. Edsel’s remarks below the fold.
Leave a Comment » | Capturing history, Heroes, History, Lesson plans, World War II | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Just last week I subscribed to Michigan’s service which notifies by e-mail when to fly flags at half-staff, especially since Michigan honors soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan with this simple flag courtesy. Michigan is the first state I’ve found that offers such notification — from the office of Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm. (You may subscribe to Michigan’s service at the Governor’s website.)
It turns out that 28 of our 50 states honor fallen soldiers in this fashion. USA Today carried the full list, compiled by reporters at a couple of Gannett Newspapers.
The entire list is below the fold, quoted exactly from USA Today — is your state one that lowers flags, or not? If you know of a service to notify people of how the flag should be flown, please tell what you know in the comments.
Leave a Comment » | Flag ceremony, Flag etiquette, Patriotism | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
You are currently browsing the Millard Fillmore's Bathtub blog archives for June, 2007.
Ed Darrell on Texas's Colorado River
Come on in, the water's fine. Come often: Cleanliness is next to godliness.
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 
