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There is a part near the end of the book  Teach Like a PIRATE  by Dave Burgess where he questions why we’re using the term rigor. (Read also Shawn White's " Let's change R to V: Vigor, not Rigor ") Since rigor means: rig·or /ˈrigər/ Noun The quality of being extremely thorough, exhaustive, or accurate. Severity or strictness: “the full rigor of the law”. Synonyms rigour - severity - austerity - stringency - strictness Being thorough or accurate… that is great. Being severe or strict… I just don’t have to be in my classroom. What I want in my classroom I want my classroom to thoroughly cover my subject. I want every child to learn and be engaged. I want to be engaging, fun, and a force in my classroom that coaches everyone towards excellence. I want to help students learn habits and ways to think about life that will serve them well for the rest of their lives. I want students to be unafraid of technology and just know it cold - particularly how to learn a...

The problem in China's Qinling Mountains is that there are too many brown pandas.  Seven to be exact, in the last twenty five years.  According to Dr. Tiejun Wang, on the Nature News website on January 18t h, it is because of inbreeding. (Hat tip to Physorg.com one of my favorite reads on the Kindle.) You see, brown is a recessive gene for pandas , known for the deceivingly cuddly looking black and white color.  And yet, brown and white pandas are turning up. The probability of this happening in a diverse population are extremely limited, and so seven brown and white pandas seem to be enough to cause a stir. Now, this is not  a blog post about genetics, although this will make a GREAT lesson for those science teachers out there who teach genetics.  Rather, this is a lesson about inbreeding. Inbreeding , or the marrying into one's own family, causes infertility and genetic defects, the most well known of which,the inbreeding in the House of Hapsburg cause...

I am very impressed with how Chris Pirillo does this video. (I love the video and the chat at the bottom.) I know of several people who really like the Drupal and find it interesting. Of course, for me, for now, Ning is perfect and I don't have to do the upgrades behind the scenes, but I can see a great case for Drupal where you have embedded tech support. This video is literally brilliant! (I've always enjoyed Chris, ever since I saw him laugh uncontrollably on live TechTV . It is so funny.) I guess the tough thing is that we all want the newest features. And I want to remind schools that connecting within your school is vital (See my Five Phases of Flattening Your Classroom ) BUT you MUST also connect online with other classrooms. I also like the term he said, "I don't want a social network but a socially relevant network..." tag: Chris Pirillo , drupal , open source

Although the report will officially announced on Monday at Educause in San Antonio, the Horizon 2008 Report is available now for download and the Horizon Project wiki is available for viewing. We're planning some new amazing things for the April/May Horizon Project (see last year's project .) In addition to analyzing the MetaTrends of the last 5 years, this report outlines the major emerging technologies for college level education in the next 5 years including: 1 year or less Grassroots Video Collaboration Webs 2-3 years Mobile Broadband Data Mashups 4-5 years Collective Intelligence Social Operating Systems What I love best is the tagging standard -- you can add examples of your own using delicious. 2008 tagged items http://del.icio.us/tag/hz08 Grassroots Video http://del.icio.us/tag/hz08+video Collaboration Webs http://del.icio.us/tag/hz08+virtualcollab Mobile Broadband http://del.icio.us/tag/hz08+mobile Data Mashups http://del.icio.us/tag/hz08+mashups Collecti...

simulpost with TechLearning The Economist debate on social networking has sparked some interesting discussion between Ewan McIntosh ( the pro side ) and Michael Bugeja ( the con side ) and uber social-networking researcher Danah Boyd has interjected her wisened thoughts into the matter. I'd like to add my thoughts into this debate as I think that there are some things that should be said from a teacher who is USING "social" (I detest that term) educational networking. Danah is right on when she says, "In their current incarnation, social network sites (SNSs) like Facebook and MySpace should not be integrated directly into the classroom. That said, they provide youth with a valuable networked public space to gather with their peers." When I first considered the misguided approach of going into "their space" they told me that... it is "their space." They want their personal and "professional" lives separate as do I. We're h...