Hot Topics for a New School Year

Critical Thinking:

The Baloney Detection Kit from Skeptic magazine, especially for science teachers.

Social Media:

Did you know that if Facebook were a country it would be the 4th largest? Check out this Youtube video about the "socialnomics" of social media.

Copyright Questions:

The school year is starting and teachers are amassing resources for their students to use. How much of a book can be copied without buying the book? What are the restrictions on showing movies in the classroom? Copyright for Teachers is a very handy resource to answer those thorny questions about fair use.

Creative Commons promotes less restrictive copyright.

Search:

Blogrunner from the NY Times aggregates popular blogs by topic--great for up to the minute commentary.

Hongkiat Here's a list of specialty search engines for finding pdf files, ebooks, music, sound effects and more

Worldcat searches the world's online catalogs for resources by zip code, so you can find what you need close to home.

Network with International Schools:

The International Education and Resource Network offers opportunities for schools and students to connect globally.

Wikipedia Life and Death

There was a fascinating article in the New York Times today about the power of Wikipedia in a life or death situation. A NY Times news reporter and his translator were taken hostage by the Taliban and the editor at the NY Times didn't want this information to go public in order to safeguard the lives of the two men. How did the editors at Wikipedia keep this information private and did taking information off the site conflict with its open access philosophy? http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/29/technology/internet/29wiki.html?_r=1&ref=business

Summer Reading!

This year as always NPR has a great Summer Reading List . Kepler's staff has some great recommendations , and don't forget the Palo Alto Public Library's "Book Letters" for recommended reading . Check out what the librarians are reading and write your own reviews. If you want to cross some great books off your list check out the "100 Best Books" from the critics at Time Magazine.

Students or parents who bug their children about reading should check out the reading lists on the Paly Library's READ! page. Pleasure reading is not only good and good for you, research proves it helps students perform better on those dastardly standardized tests.

Google Books has improved its interface and the ability to search within a book. http://booksearch.blogspot.com/2009/06/new-features-on-google-books.html.

If you shop at Kepler's mention Paly and we'll get 10% of your purchase. Books Inc. Town and Country also gives discounts to teachers and students.

America.gov & Democracy Video Challenge

The new and improved america.gov site created by the State Department Bureau of Information Programs has some interesting articles, eBooks, video, podcasts etc. covering various topics such as global issues and multicultural America.

http://www.america.gov/ http://www.america.gov/amlife/people.html http://www.america.gov/global.html

Check out the Democracy Video Challenge and view the six winners that were selected from 900 videos submitted from over 95 countries. It's interesting viewing.
http://www.videochallenge.america.gov/