Senator Ted Kennedy died today after a long battle with cancer. I was fortunate to be on the floor of Madison Square Garden in the summer of 1980 when Kennedy delivered his concession speech to the Democratic National Convention. That speech was, I think, the high water mark of his career. He came very close…
Category: Posts
Help Change the World
If you are a history teacher (or really just a teacher) with a desire to help make the world a better place and have some time on your hands this summer (or next), I highly recommend a stint as a volunteer with Teachers Across Borders. This very worthy NGO is currently seeking volunteer teachers to…
So It’s Come to This?
Who knew that history educators could be put in the unenviable position to fighting to keep a standardized multiple choice test that is inflicted on third graders here in Virginia? For as long as the test’m till they drop mentality has been governing history instruction at the K-12 level, history teachers have been complaining about…
Why Wolfram Alpha Won’t Work for Historians
In our most recent episode of Digital Campus one of the news items I had a particularly caustic view of was the new search engine Wolfram Alpha. My broader pronouncement in the podcast that WA will “sink like a stone” is predicated on the incredibly clunkiness of the interface and the fact that when the…