findingEducation’s Digital Teachers’ LoungeTips and insights from the findingEducation team.

Test your students’ knowledge of the notable events covered in findingDulcinea’s “On This Day” column this week with Quiztory. It makes a fun extra credit assignment.

1. How much money did the Marshall Plan provide in aid to Europe?

2. Who was Martin Luther King Jr. speaking with when he was fatally shot?

3. What disease did Anne Sullivan suffer from as a child?

4. Which U.S. president continued production of the neutron bomb after President Jimmy Carter temporarily halted production?

5. How long did the “Mercury Seven” serve in Project Mercury?

What’s Coming Up?

Next week, “On This Day” will examine Jackie Robinson joining the Brooklyn Dodgers, Napoleon’s exile, the polio vaccination and the Katyn massacre. We’ll also take a look at the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, the sinking of the Titanic and the ammonium nitrate explosion in Texas City in 1947.

Subject: History, Other History, Social Studies, U.S. Government, U.S. History, World History
Tags: Quiztory

Lauren Pressley is the instructional design librarian at the Z. Smith Reynolds Library at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C. In addition to her role as a librarian, Pressley is an author, a blogger and a frequent presenter.

Pressley was named a Mover and Shaker by School Library Journal in 2009, and was sponsored by the Library and Information Technology Association (LITA) Board to participate in the American Library Association (ALA) Emerging Leaders Program in 2007. She also recently developed a very popular toolkit of short videos (two to three minutes long), which answer patrons’ frequent questions.

In a phone interview last week, Pressley told findingEducation about the impact online networks have had on her personally and professionally. “As a quiet person … I’ve been able to find my voice online,” she said. “It’s opened up a lot of doors that wouldn’t have been open to me otherwise.”

Learn more about Lauren Pressley at Lauren’s Library Blog.

fE: This past fall, Michael Porter and David Lee King published a collection of librarian essays for a project they called Library 101. In your essay, you describe the disappointment you felt after taking a personality test that listed librarian as one of the last possible careers for you to consider. What did it suggest you do instead?

LP: It actually said I should practice law or be a “professional philosopher.” I have no idea what that means. So the thing that is sort of interesting to me about that test is that all the qualities that it said that I had that would have made me a poor fit as a librarian were because they were assuming that the person needs to be really rigid and rule-following and not necessarily friendly. But the things that make me good at my job are actually the very things that that test thought would make me bad.

It’s indicative of how the field has changed, that people have such a clear idea of what librarians were and make assumptions based on that.

(more…)

Subject: Uncategorized
Tags: Educator Profiles

Did you take the Quiztory last week? Now it’s time to check your answers:

1. Who did Gov. Dick Thornburgh advise to evacuate after the nuclear meltdown at Three Mile Island? Children and pregnant women

2. From what movie did John Hinckley Jr. get the idea to assassinate President Ronald Reagan? “Taxi Driver”

3. When was the Alaskan territory officially transferred to the United States? Oct. 18, 1867

4. What document issued by King Ferdinand II and Queen Isabella declared that all Jews must leave Spain before the end of July 1492? The Alhambra Decree

5. Who called the Falkland Islands conflict between Argentina and Britain “two bald men fighting over a comb”? Jorge Luis Borges

Subject: History, Other History, Social Studies, U.S. Government, U.S. History, World History
Tags: Quiztory, The Answer Sheet

Test your students’ knowledge of the notable events covered in findingDulcinea’s “On This Day” column this week with Quiztory. It makes a fun extra credit assignment.

1. Who did Gov. Dick Thornburgh advise to evacuate after the nuclear meltdown at Three Mile Island?

2. From what movie did John Hinckley Jr. get the idea to assassinate President Ronald Reagan?

3. When was the Alaskan territory officially transferred to the United States?

4. What document issued by King Ferdinand II and Queen Isabella declared that all Jews must leave Spain before the end of July 1492?

5. Who called the Falkland Islands conflict between Argentina and Britain “two bald men fighting over a comb”?

What’s Coming Up?

Next week, “On This Day” will examine the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., the Marshall Plan, Helen Keller and the Rwandan genocide. We’ll also take a look at President Carter and the neutron bomb, President Truman and the steel industry, and the “Mercury Seven.”

Subject: History, Other History, Social Studies, U.S. Government, U.S. History, World History
Tags: Quiztor

Photo courtesy of UNESCO.
Paul Diamond, center, on the beach outside of Praia, the capital city of the Cape Verde Islands, showing teachers how to use simple tools such as broom sticks to measure wave heights.

This week, findingEducation spoke with Paul Diamond, codirector of the Sandwatch project, a UNESCO project supported in great part by the Denmark Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Sandwatch aims to make communities more aware of their marine and coastal environments.

Dr. Gillian Cambers, a member of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) formally established the Sandwatch program in 2001. Diamond joined a few years later and helped expand the program’s reach by building a Web site, and holding teacher trainings sessions on various island and coastal countries.

Born in Scotland, Diamond was raised in Canada where he studied archeology at the University of Toronto. He then spent several seasons in Belize at dig sites before crossing into the technology field. He helped IBM build computer labs throughout the Caribbean. Recognizing the need for technology instruction, he began teaching on the small island of Virgin Gorda before moving to Saint Kitts and Nevis, south of Puerto Rico.

In his work for Sandwatch, Diamond helps teachers create grassroots environmental projects in their schools and communities. As the senior technical director for the Nevis Historical & Conservation Society, Diamond keeps a watchful eye on the island’s beaches and historical grounds, while teaching students about biodiversity and technology.

fE: What attracted you to teaching?

PD: I did some teaching when I was in Toronto, but I didn’t really get into any teaching until I came here. I came originally to build computer labs for schools and quickly found out that governments would spend a lot of money—millions of dollars—to put in a computer lab, but then they wouldn’t give a few thousand dollars to train teachers how to use them. So very often, modern, state-of-the-art labs sit idle.

(more…)

Subject: Uncategorized
Tags: Educator Profiles