Even if my recent “Politics Around the Web” posts have turned you off, I hope you noticed that they are a model of a very simple activity for any number of classes – current events, politics, science and math news, more – that want students to read and exhibit critical thinking about what they read. [...]

Just kill me. From the Telegraph: Senator John McCain, the Republican presidential candidate, has admitted that he never uses email and that his staff has to show him websites because he is only just “learning to get online myself”. When asked if he went online himself, the Arizona senator responded: “They go on for me. [...]

If I’ve learned anything in this year of blogging, it’s that good ideas need ritual repetition before they gain traction, find support, and become realities. So here goes (and the second point is far more important than the first): Scott McLeod just wrote a very nice post about the launch, and the future, of Students [...]

More and more I wonder: is school a good place for teachers who want to make a difference in the lives of their students, and to the future of the world? Is there a way to leave the daily farce of gradebooks, attendance sheets, tests, corporate and nationalist curriculum, homework assignments, grade-licking college careerist “students” [...]

…the USA is so free? More from Save the Internet dot com (and watch the comments for the corporate lobbyists’ responses – they’re apparently paid to find posts like this, hit reply, and leave a tossed salad of obfuscations, red herrings, and straw men. Logic and debate teachers, help yourself to this real-world example. I’d [...]

[Update: Subscribe to del.icio.us "net neutrality" tag feed here.] Democracy without energy is Tyranny Lite. The irony is, we can now vote with our voices with the most volume in history, while expending the least energy – a single mouse-click and a few paragraphs on a keyboard – but by and large, we don’t find [...]

I’m passing this email from FreePress.net on to all of you in hopes you’ll do your little part to keep web 2.0 growing, instead of passively allow it to be crippled by the US telecommunications industry. Like public transportation’s murder by the auto industry in the first half of the 20th century, the telecommunications industry [...]

We’re reading King Lear in AP Literature. Lear’s Fool breaks taboos and speaks inconvenient truths to power left and right. We talked about how today’s thinking comedians are “fools to Democracy,” since Kings no longer exist. The rub came when I wanted to give a taste of informed “foolery” to my 17-year-olds. They’re too busy [...]

The only thing worth quitting is smoking. (I’m on day 4, by the way.) This project is not worth quitting. It’s growing in a really fun, easy, fascinating way. Here’s an update about developments on the planning Ning (the “Global Cooling Collective,” which is again now open for easy membership or lurking), in our school [...]

[Update: A fuller discussion of Peak Oil and the A Crude Awakening documentary is taking place at Crooks and Liars. Skeptics and believers are listening and debating there.] I wonder if Cassandra, as the Greeks approached Troy, got more silent indifference from those she tried to warn, or instead argumentation and debate? My guess is [...]