In the News: Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed

Our good friend Zaid Alsagoff has an excellent post based on the concept that “there is at least one excellent free learning tool (or site) for every learning problem (or issue)!” He offers the basics. If you want a free, easy-to-use and secure Internet browser, an e-mail system, or an online community to share and discuss instructional teacher videos, Zaid has the suggestions. If you want the not so basic platform to incorporate all my favorite tools within one environment, the tool to learn languages, the tool to explore the Universe, or the tool to answer all your questions, Zaid has a suggestion for you. Check out his post at ZaidLearn.

Our Finite Planet
For a little lesson on our finite planet, check out “What is the Story of Stuff?“ with Annie Leonard. It is a 20-minute look at both our production and consumption patterns. For those who want to fuel student discussions about the chances for a greener, more sustainable planet, “The Story of Stuff?” is an excellent video and could serve as a great jumping off place to create student dialogue regarding both environmental and social issues.

Education and Technology
A must read is over at I, Cringely, Survival of the Nerdiest. Indeed, Robert Cringley is dead on about schools becoming under siege, probably justifiably so

Here are a couple of nuggets:

“The key word here is ‘empowerment.’ Technologies allow us to overcome limitations of time, distance, and physical capability, but they only empower us when they can be gracefully used by large, productive segments of our society. The telephone was empowering when we all finally got it. Now it is the Internet and digital communications.”

And later, “We’ve reached the point in our (disparate) cultural adaptation to computing and communication technology that the younger technical generations are so empowered they are impatient and ready to jettison institutions most of the rest of us tend to think of as essential, central, even immortal. They are ready to dump our schools.”

If you are interested in technology or schools it is a great read. If you are interested in both, it is a must read.

Expelled
The Ben Stein movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, is receiving a lot of attention, most of it negative. The movie attempts to tackle the evolution/intelligent design debate.

There is a site “ExpelledExposed.com” that takes a detailed look at the movie. The web page contends, “We’ll show you why this movie is not a documentary at all, but anti-science propaganda aimed at creating the appearance of controversy where there is none.”

As a little teaser from the site, we offer this YouTube video on one of the players.

Adding a little fuel to the discussion is an interesting chart at the LiveScience site showing public acceptance of evolution in 34 countries. Check out the position held by the United States.

Children and the World of Make Believe
And further evidence that children need to be children and that means they must be allowed the time for imaginative play is available at NPR. An interesting tid bit involves a recent study of self-regulation, a replication of a study first done in the late 1940s. The experiment involved children ages 3, 5 and 7 and was focused on self-regulation. In 2001, researchers found that 5-year-olds were acting at the level of 3-year-olds 60 years ago, and today’s 7-year-olds were barely approaching the level of a 5-year-old 60 years ago.

Yet another interesting discussion revolves around structure play. In an amazing development, the more structured the play, the more children’s private speech declines.

To learn more about a child’s need for imaginative type play, head to the NPR site - as with all NPR stories you may opt to listen to an audio version of the material.