Nearly 200 Websites to Find Out About Anything and Everything

Jane Hart, the founder of The Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies, has created a list of nearly 200 websites which provide information and/or instruction on a wide range of informational and educational topics. According to the site:

This is an alphabetical list of nearly 200 websites ... that include general reference resources, how-to guides, wikis, how-to videos, podcasts, courses, lessons, tutorials (including open courseware), e-books as well as other reference resources and places to ask questions both online and on your mobile.  The resources are suitable for learners of all ages: students as well as workplace learners and lifelong learners – as well as teachers, educators and trainers.

Click HERE to learn about the 198 sites that Jane has provided. I guarantee that you will find some new and interesting sites that you can learn from!

7 Long Island Students Arrested in SAT Cheating Scheme

According to MSNBC: (9/28/2011)

A college student flew home to New York to impersonate high schoolers who paid him to take the SAT on their behalf, and even took the exam twice in one weekend under different identities, prosecutors said Tuesday.

Between 2010 and 2011, six students at Long Island's Great Neck North High School paid Sam Eshaghoff, 19, between $1,500 and $2,500 each to take the SAT for them, Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice said.

Click HERE to read the article in it's entirety.

My first thoughts on this article concern where would a high school student get so much cash? Did the parents help with the payment? It does make you wonder doesn't it?

I know my personal outlook on things are more "black and white" because I believe you are who you are and you reap what you sow. Fortunately I'm all out of cliches at this point and I understand there is pressure to succeed and pressure to get into certain schools, but I really don't understand the rationale behind cheating.

There are obviously other reasons to cheat as well such as laziness or being unprepared, unethical behavior, and the hilarious excuse of not knowing right from wrong. Seriously, what is wrong with trying your best on whatever you are doing and accepting the result? If you know me, you understand how competitive I am. I would almost rather die than lose at anything and although losing eats away at me, I know I did my best and I can live with that.

I wish all parents and students would be able to accept this rationale because a test is simply a point in time reference and the result of one test should never shape your life. However, getting caught at cheating can shape your life as you get arrested and have a criminal record. That will definitely affect your college choices and potentially your career choices. Is cheating worth that risk? Not for me...

See related blog posts:
School Cheaters Often Have Personality Disorders, Study Finds
Cheating Our Character
Cheating Among Students: an Epidemic?
Cheating on the Rise Among High School Students
Schools Tackle Growing Practice of Cheating
Who Cheats? (list of blog posts about cheating)

The Power of Learning and Forgetting Curves

Dr. Will Thalheimer provides an in-depth look at his work on learning and forgetting curves in the following video that you can access from his Will at Work Learning blog.

I think Dr. Thalheimer's work is extremely relevant in the field of career and technology education as we design and employ learning interventions. We need to analyze not only how we train our students, but what is the result of the training on performance? Did we engage the learner and build understanding during training? After training, did we provide additional learning, prompting mechanisms, reminding mechanisms, and applications for learning? Did we remember that measurement is also an important aspect in the evaluation of learning?

Please watch the following video to understand the power of learning and forgetting curves:



I hope you also took time to consider Dr. Thalheimer's "7 Step Training Maximizer Model" that is at the end of the video. This action item will help ensure that learning curves occur during and after training and the effects of the forgetting curve should be minimized.

Be Creative...Draw a Stickman

Draw a stickman and watch him come to life. Check it out: http://www.drawastickman.com/
(Customize the message that appears at the end of the adventure. Then share it with your friends!)

Paper.li - Turn Your Twitter, Facebook, and RSS Feeds Into Online Newspapers



The Cool Cat Teacher Daily Tweetpaper

Paper.li, the product of Swiss startup SmallRivers, allows you to easily scan the hundreds of valuable articles shared daily by the people you follow on Twitter, Facebook, and through RSS feeds. Articles are organized into topics, summarized, the multimedia is extracted and tweets are re-integrated into context. Paper.li could have great applications for classrooms and also for businesses as a way of sharing information without blogging.

I recommend using Paper.li along with Listerous. Listerous is a Twitter list directory, where you can find a list on almost any subject you can think of. You can take any one of those lists and create a newspaper out of it in Paper.li. For example if you like Technology, go to Listerous and find a list under the keyword Technology and create a newspaper out of that list. Now once a day, you can have a newspaper with all the major news headlines or the topics that interest you the most concerning Technology. As I mentioned above, the paper shows text, pictures and video. It even has a live feed of tweets that are coming in realtime from that list.

Alternatives are Flipboard (aggregates your twitter, facebook, and other feeds in a ten page magazine format) or Feedly (a news reader that allows you to read share the contents of your favorite sites) which you can use on your smart phone or tablet. The advantage to these options is that the updates occur in real time and not on a daily basis like Paper.li. All of these are great products, but the one that you choose depends upon your purpose.

Let us know if you create a Paper.li newspaper!