This May, I will join a student trip from Arapahoe High School to journey to China in an effort to explore new relationships...

I keep a Google reader gadget on my iGoogle homepage and one of my feeds is from the Colorado Association of Libraries. They just posted a comment by an anonymous blogger who stated that "the bookshelf is the information source of last resort..."

I wonder in the age of readily available information if it’s worth spending valuable instructional time memorizing “facts.” If so many details are available on Google, should we just move on? Case in point: Google Earth, a free program, presents current, high resolution satellite images of the entire world. Why should we have globes with names of countries that are out of date? And, with Google Earth, you can “write” notes on the earth and easily share those notes in the form of .kmz files. If a classic question of the twentieth century is “What’s the capitol of Colorado?” perhaps the classic question of the twenty –first century is “Using satellite imagery, determine why Denver makes a suitable capitol for Colorado.” Which question do you think will lead to higher order thinking?

Sometimes it is a good idea to go back to old writings (including old blog entries) to see how things have improved over time. I came back across a blog post I wrote in 2005 that laments a good sub-laptop option for schools. Nice to see progress in the market:

Sunday was Dr. Suess' birthday so I traveled to East Elementary to share the Lorax with second grade students there...