In the News – Free Comic Book Day

Our good friend Chris Wilson over at “The Graphic Classroom” has some information about this Saturday’s “Free Comic Book Day (FCBD).” The program began six years ago and the give away is designed to promote comics among those who are not yet comic readers.

According to Wilson, thousands of comic book stores throughout the nation will participate. They will be giving away comics designated and printed especially for FCBD.

Those comics to be given away will have the following logo:

For more details see the Graphic Classroom – Chris has links that will give folks a sense of the comics that will be available.

Earlier this year we interviewed Chris regarding the growing interest in using comic books as an educational tool.

FaceBooking – Unbecoming Teacher Behavior
A recent Washington Post article features the challenges of teachers who choose to create Facebook or MySpace profiles that are risqué and unbecoming of the professional status of those in education. The article asks two enormously important questions: do such “pages matter if teacher performance is not hindered and if students, parents and school officials don’t see them?” And, “at what point are these young teachers judged by the standards for public officials?”

In states including Florida, Colorado, Tennessee and Massachusetts, teachers have been removed or suspended for MySpace postings. While many teachers put social networking sites or personal Web pages to constructive use still others push the limits of good taste.

We forgo the details of these inappropriate postings but the Post article offers many examples. Suffice it to say that for those of us who insist teachers should be role models for children, these saucy profile pages are extremely troubling.

Is a Person’s IQ Fixed?
Over at NewScientist.com is a very interesting article regarding increasing intellect. A group of neuropsychologists claims that there is now a specific task that can add points to a person’s IQ. Most importantly, they contend that the harder a person trains with the task the greater the increase.

The discussion is about the concept of “fluid intelligence”, or Gf. It is defined as the ability to reason, solve new problems and think in the abstract and correlates with professional and educational success. Most importantly, the general thinking is that Gf is largely genetic.

While training helps one get better at a specific task, generally speaking training does not always transfer to improvement in other tasks. Not so in this new study.

The training exercise seems rather innocuous. A person tracks small squares on a screen, squares that appear in a new location every so many seconds. When a square appears in a location that is a duplicate of the position two views earlier, the trainee pushes a button.

Simultaneously, the trainee listens to consonants through headphones and pushes a button if the consonant heard is the same as two plays earlier. As trainees gain skill, the interval moves to three stages apart, then four, etc.

The researchers gave trainees IQ tests before and after specific training intervals. The result, those who did the training scored higher and the more they trained, the higher they scored.

For more on this interesting study, see NewScientist.com.

Great Resource for the College Bound
For those interested in a great resource, a new site we recently discovered has great potential. The site, SparkNotes.com, offers five separate link categories, SparkNotes Study Guides, No Fear Shakespeare, College Search, Spark Charts, Spark Life, and Spark Test Prep.

The test prep link alone contains a wealth of resources regarding preparation for the SAT, the ACT, various AP Exams, the LSAT and even the GRE. The site offers a wealth of free materials as well as additional supplemental materials for purchase.

As an example, for the SAT there is a list of upcoming test dates, a link to take a free SAT mini-test as well as a practice test. The site also offers a link to read a test booklet for free, a resource called Power Tactics, also free, as well as access to a message board.

Once on the site additional test copies can purchased for $4.95. In addition, there are other study links and resources on each of the sub pages.

Clearly the site has a great deal to offer those high schoolers getting near the college choice and the subsequent related testing aspects.