Archive for October, 2011

What Are You Prepared to Give Up?

Posted October 31, 2011 By Dave Thomer

November 5 is Bank Transfer Day, an unofficial effort to collectively stick it to the large banks by closing accounts and taking business to smaller institutions that, presumably, will not precipitate major credit crises while maintaining a very high salary and bonus structure for top employees. It’s a good example of consumer activism in a […]

Money Magic

Posted October 18, 2011 By Dave Thomer

In World History we’re currently studying the Roman Empire, and today we began the section of the chapter that deals with the fall of the (western) empire. In trying to lay out the problems that plagues Rome, the textbook spends a fair amount of time on the idea of inflation. (Side note: of course, given […]

Don’t Rush a Miracle Man

Posted October 14, 2011 By Dave Thomer

Note: One of the perils of blogging for ten years is that you forget which movie quotes you’ve already used for post titles. Turns out this was not the first attempt to write a post called “Have Fun Storming the Castle.” Pattie beat me to it by four years. Who knew? While I’m on the […]

Punishment and Rehabilitation: Folsom and Shawshank

Posted October 13, 2011 By Dave Thomer

This week in ethics, we’re thinking about the way that society punishes the people who do something that society deems wrong. We may be getting ahead of ourselves a little bit, because even though we’ve discussed a couple of ethical perspectives, we have lots of room left to discuss and evaluate what actually is right […]

A Fringe of Inquiry

Posted October 12, 2011 By Dave Thomer

When I think of different ways to set up a learning institution, I usually wind up thinking about Jane Addams and Hull House. The settlement house movement of the late 19th and early 20th century has a lot of lessons to offer us in the progressive education community. That’s not terribly surprising, since Addams worked […]

Can I Handle the Freedom?

Posted October 11, 2011 By Dave Thomer

Gotta get back on the blogging bandwagon, and I’ve been mulling on this one for a while. It just so happened that I heard two very different visions of a teacher’s role in planning lessons and curricula in the same day. I was reading Mary Beth Hertz’s blog entry about planning the technology curriculum at […]