Valid Online Information

I've been thinking about how we need to teach students to evaluate online information lately. There's so much good content out there along with the inaccurate.

World Digital Libray is an example of very interesting content for researching primary sources from around the world. The project is carefully thought out and user friendly.

Here's a news article from ars technica about a Wikipedia Hoax that points how important it is for journalists to verify sources. The same could be said about academic work at any level.

Map

Here's my map. I used Mindomo. The only disadvantage was that I had to wait a day after signing up before I could use the tool. Then I got busy and .... it's several weeks later.

The Movie

This assignment kept me up nights. A picture may be worth 1000 words but I didn't know how to convey the power of those written words in a video. I know that I had better ideas in my head when I should have been sleeping but I didn't write them down for the waking hours when I needed them.

I managed to get to the library this week and even had time to read the books! Shattered would be a great book to launch discussion of many societal issues. With a 15-year-old priviledged boy as the main character we are taken into a world of street people. He learns about mental illness, alcoholism, the genocide in Rwanda, post-traumatic stress syndrome, and the "Disappeared" in Guatemala. Above all there is the question of what it takes to make a difference in the lives of people who struggle with these issues personally.

The other book that I read was Terror at Turtle Mountain. The Frank Slide was always a stop when we travelled West as a family when I was a child. My Dad had a particular interest in the story. I didn't realize there were so many survivors of the slide. I plan to research some of the references in the considerable bibliograpy during the next week.

Busy Week Again!

Hi Everyone!

Once again I am late getting at this. I am looking forward to getting some reading done this week though. I ordered a couple of the books from the library and got a call that they are in but I was too late getting back to town to pick them up on Friday. Hopefully I make it on Tuesday.

One of the books I ordered was "Shattered" by Eric Walters. I read a couple of his books this summer, "Camp X" and "Royal Ransom", and really enjoyed them. In general, I like books written for middle years because I can get lost for a couple of hours and get the whole story. I certainly would recommend Eric Walters' work for middle years boys in particular.