Charles Leadbeater: How the web is changing our world

Charles Leadbeater is, according to his website, a "leading authority on innovation and creativity." He analyzes the role of the web, social networking, and the new collaborative way we are living in our world to determine how these new ways of thinking are changing that world. This is a 4 minute summary of his work:



More info at the website.

Courage: Living Proof

Here's an article from the Chicago Tribune about a man who has the courage to stand up for what is right and continues to expand the range of what one person can do. Should be able to reference this during my Am Rev work this fall.

Owner of Humbolt Park food and liquor store stands up for the community

Title Props

I lifted my title from a great book by the lovely Ruth Vinz that I studied in graduate school. It is called Composing A Teaching Life and it was a thoughtful reflection on teaching and teaching English. I like the title. I used it. Hope Ms. Vinz doesn't mind too much.

Teachers College Reading and Writing Project

Yay! I was just accepted into the August Writing Institute at TC's Reading and Writing Project. I attended the February Institute this year and it was really useful. The Feb Institute was more about the intersection of reading and writing and using that intersection to our advantage. The summer institutes are more about the basics, which I still need. It's equally fun that I will get to work on a lot of my own writing as well.

Using the National Archives with History Day

National History Day uses a theme each year; this year it is "The Individual in History." I attended a session with a woman from the National Archives about using document analysis with our students. We analyzed several documents related to leaders from our history. We looked at documents related to:

James Montgomery Flagg - creator of Uncle Sam image
Irving Berlin - draft card at age 29 and wealthy
Julia McWilliams (Child) - citation for her excellent service to a gov't organization
Fidel Castro - a letter from 12 y.o. Castro to Pres. Roosevelt asking for $10
John Glenn and Ted Williams - in the same fighting squadron during the Korean war [at that time, everyone knew Ted Williams was a famous baseball player but John Glenn hadn't become known yet]
David F. Rogers - regular guy who writes a letter to a chairman about his concern about highways disturbing historic places

The "Digital Vault" at the Archives website sounds like a very cool searchable database; we couldn't access it because of the bandwith problems, but it sounds like documents are tagged and when you look at one resource, several related documents pop up as well. Definitely need to check it out further: Digital Vault.

BLC08

Okay, sign me up. Here I am sitting at the BLC08 Conference in Boston, MA getting inspired to make better use of the technology that I know. I've started a new diigo account to start with; it is not only a bookmarking program but also allows for annotations and social networking. Wondering how to make all this useful in my classroom.