Black History Month Curriculum Resource: The Harlem Renaissance

Black History Month is coming up, and it happens to coincide with the time we are studying the history of the 1920's and 1930's.  So what better topic to combine the two than the Harlem Renaissance?

We have already been working on it some, but I recently found what I think is a fantastic resource.  John Carroll University has created the Harlem Renaissance Multimedia Resource, which pulls so much information about this fascinating period of modern American history into a central site.  

What I love about this website--beside the fact that it is FREE--is that it includes not only the aspects of the Harlem Renaissance that most of us tend to think about, such as the music and the literature, but also the politics, the philosophy, the education, and even the international connections.  There is a whole section on religion as well; in fact, throughout the entire site I saw the predecessors of Martin Luther King Jr's thoughts, philosophies, actions, and words.  It not only has multimedia resources--pictures, audio, and a little video (all that I found was Billie Holiday)--but also lots of links to other websites with even more comprehensive information on that particular topic.  

Particularly helpful to me were the timelines included and the map of Harlem itself.  It has a general timeline of the political and artistic events during that period, which helps me put things in order.  Even more interesting to us right now, however, was the timeline of the music.  My son has been getting more interested in jazz, about which I am not that knowledgable (confessional--even though two of my brothers were performers, students, and aficionados of that musical genre, and my father is at least a long-time fan).  The timeline helped me understand how ragtime gradually morphed into swing, with dates, different jazz styles, artist bios, and short audios of outstanding pieces along the way.

So if you are looking for resources about black musicians, writers, thinkers, educators, or politicians, this  website is a great place to look.

What Happened to Wikipedia and Google?

I'm frequently writing about Google Doodles in this blog.  But today's Google "Doodle" is different than any before, at least as far as I know.  Today the famous logo does not appear at all, but rather is blacked out by a big black box.  However, at least that popular student resource is working.  If students go to the English site of Wikipedia, they will discover that it is down for 24 hours.  In its place is a short protest against two pieces of legislation and a request, complete with links to contact your representatives (according to the zip code you enter) and then tweet about it or post it on your Facebook page, to express your opposition to the bills.

The legislation in question is the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA).  The goals of both these acts is to protect US intellectual property, primarily from foreign sources that are selling it as their own.  The main supporters of the bills have been Hollywood and other entertainment producers who are trying to shut down foreign bootleggers of commercial media, such as illegal downloads or DVDs of US films and TV shows, music, etc.

So the goal is something that I think most of us would support.  People shouldn't be making money by providing us with illegal copies of performances they don't own and that the performers themselves don't make any money for, right?

The issue that many Internet-based companies, and many of their customers, have is that these bills address the problem not by going after the illegal producers themselves, but the sources that give these illegal producers access to American consumers online.  So, rather than suing or arresting the bootleggers, SOPA and PIPA allow the producers to take action against anyone who provides services or even has links to the illegal websites and demand that they block any US access to this site.

Many in the online community have major issues with this approach.  Some consider this approach to be censorship, which they vehemently oppose in any form, despite the reason.  Others argue that the legislation as written is overly broad and would impose onerous burdens on even the smallest Internet companies. Yet others say that this is just the wrong way to address the problem of intellectual privacy.  As Alexis Ohanian, the founder of Reddit (another online resource that has gone dark for the day), says about this legislation, "It's like taking action against Ford (Motor Company) because a Mustang (car) was used in a bank robbery."  Reddit has a lot of educational information about this issue (albeit more anti-legislation than pro) as does the SOPA Strike website.

So as much as we might hate losing our Wikipedia (along with lots of other informational sites) for the day, this is a great opportunity for discussing with your children or students some of these issues, such as the downside of everyone (including criminals) being able to access everyone in the world, and what is the best way to deal with problems like this.  (Besides, only the English site of Wikipedia is down, so you can search in a different language and work on your translation skills along with researching the subject.)

And if you think your students will use this as an excuse to play games rather than do their research on the Internet, don't worry--MineCraft is one of the sites that has joined the blockout.

Curriculum Resource: Dr. King's Original Documents Online

In honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Day 2012, the King Center has opened a new online resource.  With the help of JP Morgan Chase, the organization that continues the work of Dr. King has digitized over one million materials related to King's life and mission and is making them available for free over the Internet.

The collection is organized into themes, such as public opinion, economics, the Vietnam War, and such.  It contains many different kinds of materials, including articles, hand-written drafts or notes, telegrams, photographs, etc.  It is a premier resource for the original source material for one of the most important American thinkers and activists of the 20th century.

To view these documents, go to the Archives of the King Center.

83 Stores That Give Discounts to Educators

I had to take a break from my Newbery book contender reviews to share this great resource I just stumbled upon with those of you who are teachers and/or educators.  A site named Brad's Deals has compiled a list of 83 businesses that give some kind of price break to teachers and educators.  A lot of them I knew about and already use--Barnes & Noble and Apple Computer and Jo Ann's Fabrics and such--but this list is MUCH more extensive than any I've seen before.  It includes not only education-related businesses, like bookstores and craft stores and computers and educational supplies, but stores that sell lots of other things as well--cell phone, clothing, travel, contacts, insurance, vacation sites, and even pizza!

I haven't checked them out, and the article doesn't say, but usually these discounts are also available for homeschoolers, at least in stores around here.  

Anyway, look over the list yourself here, and see if any of these resources can save you some money.

Curriculum Resource: Teaching Evolution

So if you are a family that doesn't believe in and/or doesn't teach evolution, then you want to skip this post.

But for those who do...

I found a great series of lesson plans about teaching evolution on a website hosted by Indiana University.  These lessons were developed for teaching high school biology, but the authors say that, with some modification, they could be adapted to either an advanced middle school or introductory college level class.

There are over 50 lesson plans or mini lessons that are available on line, along with some titles that I suppose they are still developing.  It is broken into two big categories:

• Evolution Patterns
• Evolution Processes

Subcategories under Evolution Patterns are:

• Geological/Paleontological Patterns:  General
• Human Evolution Patterns
• Classification, Hierarchy, Relationships

The subcategories under Evolution Processes are:

• Adaptations, Imperfections, Contrivances
• Variation and Natural Selection
• Speciation
• Macroevolution

So it is a nice, comprehensive approach to the topic, it seems to me.  I haven't looked at all the lessons, but most of the ones I did read had an experiment or hands-on component.  Not all of them are suitable for an at-home science lab, but many of them can be done in a homeschool setting.

So check them out here.

Contest Helps Students Develop Reflective Writing Skills

Now that NaNoWriMo is over, it's time for us to refocus our writing classes on non-fiction writing.  There is a national contest on a wonderful topic that may be just the thing to help us!

The Center for the Book in the Library of Congress, in partnership with Target Stores, is running a reading-writing competition called Letters About Literature.  In it, students write a personal letter to an author of one of their favorite books to tell them why that book changed the way they think about themselves or the world.   The book can be fiction or nonfiction, even poetry, speeches, short stories, or graphic novels, but it can not be a comic strip or song lyric (even if published in a book).  Also, the author can be living or dead.

The competition is divided into three levels.  Level 1 is for 4th-6th grade (students must be at least nine in order to participate) and letters are expected to be 100-400 words long.  Level 2 is 7th-8th grade, with letters that are 300-600 words.  Level 3 is for high schoolers (9th-12th grade) with a recommended 500-800 page length.  Students can enter through their schools or as individuals, and homeschoolers are specifically encouraged to enter (apparently a number of winners have been homeschooled).

While the exercise is worthy just in itself, there are some great prizes for the winner.  Two national winners for each level will get to choose a favorite library (school or community library) to receive a $10,000 grant from Target.  Those winners will also each get a personal Target gift card for $500.  There will also be four national honors awards for each level; the national honor awards come with a $1,000 grant to a favorite library and a personal $50 Target gift card.

The website also has a great 36-page Teacher's Guide with lesson plans and worksheets to help students write an appropriate reflective essay on their chosen book.  The worksheets not only develop generic essay writing skills, such as crafting an engaging opening paragraph, but lead students to see the difference between a reflective essay and other types of writing, such as book reports, literary analysis, or a simple fan letter.

All in all, this looks like a wonderful project to me.  I've already discussed it with my son, and we definitely plan to be working on it this month to be ready to submit something by the deadline, which is January 6, 2012.  It combine something we love (books) with something we need to develop (nonfiction writing) with a focus on appreciation, which is a virtue that we trying to expand on during this holiday season.

We hope lots of you will join us in this competition.  If you do, please enter the book that you (or your child/ren or student/s) choose to write about in the comments below.

Kiplinger Publishes its Annual List of Best Value Colleges

Kiplinger has published its annual report on the colleges that it rates as the best value colleges.  Many of the same colleges are at the top of this list.  For example, the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hills is the number one value among public colleges for the 10th year in a row.  However, that may not be the case next year, since the board is raising in-state tuition by 15.6% for next year, and similar percentages for the next several years.  Part of the justification for raising tuition to that extent is the fact that UNC-Chapel Hill has been recognized by Kiplingers and other as such a great deal, compared to other public colleges.

Among private schools, Princeton University appears to continue to offer the best financial aid program.  According to Kiplingers, the average Princeton grad leaves owing only a little over $5,000 for his/her undergraduate education.  Of course, these kinds of average statistics can be misleading;  if you go to school with nine millionaires who can afford the tuition outright, while you need to borrow $50,000, that averages out to a mean debt of $5,000.  Nonetheless, Princeton is generally regarded as the school among the Ivy League colleges that does the best job in providing sufficient aid to allow anyone who does get in to be able to attend.

There are two things that are interesting to look at between the two lists.  One is the average debt upon graduation.   Graduates of even the #1 bargain public school, UNC-Chapel Hill, owe an average of over $15,000, while quite a few few of the top schools have a significantly lower average debt upon graduation.  Secondly, while Chapel Hill as a four-year graduation rate of nearly 75%, and my alma mater, the College of William and Mary, as well as the University of Virginia, have four-year completion rates of over 80%, most of the other top "bargain" public schools have four-year completion rates in the 50 percentiles, or even the 40's.  Obviously, this is related to the debt burden, because having to extend your education beyond four years increased the years paying tuition and probably the overall debt.  This is one of the reasons that public university may not be quite as much of a bargain as they seem.

Anyway, to see the list of the best values in public education, see this chart.

To see a similar list for the private universities, see this chart.