Kelly in Kansas

Kansas: City to Demolish Killer’s House - New York Times: "Kansas: City to Demolish Killer’s House

By LIBBY SANDER
Published: January 11, 2007

The mayor of a Wichita suburb said the city planned to tear down the house where Dennis Rader, known as the B.T.K. serial killer, lived for 25 years while he carried out a string of murders. The suburb, Park City, bought the house from Mr. Rader’s wife for just under $60,000 and plans to demolish it in the next month, Mayor Dee Stuart said. The property will be converted into an entry to an existing city park, Ms. Stuart said."

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This is a good thing!

Snap

If you roll your mouse over the hot links, you'll see what interesting things this program does. Thanks, jill/txt!

The Chronicle: Wired Campus Blog: CIA Uses Facebook as a Recruiting Tool

January 24, 2007
CIA Uses Facebook as a Recruiting Tool

Struggling to convince students that Facebook is a public Web site, not a clubhouse for undergrads? Try pointing out that the Central Intelligence Agency now has its own page on the social network.

To be fair, the CIA isn’t using its Facebook page (registration required) to snoop on students. The agency is actually trying to recruit young men and women for its National Clandestine Service — “an elite corps, providing vital information needed by US policymakers, the military and law enforcement services to protect the national security interests of the American people.”

The CIA’s outreach seems to be working: Since it opened its Facebook group in December (organizations and businesses aren’t allowed to create their own personal profiles), more than 2,500 students have joined. —Brock Read

Historianess: "Teaching Research and Writing Skills in a Digital Age

In this weekend’s Houston Chronicle, I read an interesting op-ed piece by a librarian at a private high school near Washington, D.C. The librarian wrote about the rise of the “information age” and the subsequent decline of the ability to actually read books."

Could this be the final chapter in the life of the book - Sunday Times - Times Online

It’s the readers who will have the final say.”

No, it is the teachers who will have the final say. They will determine whether people will read for information, knowledge or, ultimately, wisdom. If they fail and their pupils read only for information, then we are in deep trouble. For the net doesn’t educate and the mind must be primed to deal with its informational deluge. On that priming depends the future of civilisation. How we handle the digitising of the libraries will determine who we are to become.

This article contains some interesting food for thought about the future of information and the abilities of individuals to harness that information. . . .

I'm on a family trip and will be back in about a week. I'm apparently missing a massive ice storm at home . . . .both good and bad news .. . .

S.M.U. Faculty Complains About Bush Library - New York Times

By RALPH BLUMENTHAL
Published: January 10, 2007

DALLAS, Jan. 9 — Intimates of President Bush have singled out Southern Methodist University as the likely site of his presidential library, but faculty members, complaining of being bypassed, are raising sharp questions about the school’s identification with his presidency.

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I don't remember the University of Arkansas at Little Rock being upset about the Clinton Library . . . .

Jobs, News and Views for All of Higher Education - Inside Higher Ed :: Can You Rank Crotchetiness?: "Panelists also discussed the extent to which comprehensive exams are a poor reflection of whether graduate students are actually likely to succeed as professors. For example, Burke suggested much more training in graduate school on “everyday business” — how to apply for a grant, how to give a short paper, how to write a syllabus, how to bring scholarly background to public debates. Such information isn’t taken seriously in many a graduate program, yet has much to do with whether people advance in the faculty ranks."

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Some of these same concepts apply to helping prepare undergraduates and master's level candidates who will teach history at various levels. "The Book" is no longer the ultimate goal but rather a career of continually contribuing in a variety of ways to one's profession and to the people with which they interact."

The Chronicle: Daily news: 01/08/2007 -- 03: Historians Tackle Statelessness, Speech Codes, and the War in Iraq at Annual Meeting: "Historians Tackle Statelessness, Speech Codes, and the War in Iraq at Annual Meeting

By RICHARD BYRNE

Atlanta

The 121st annual meeting of the American Historical Association, held here this past weekend, drew 4,730 historians, students, and exhibitors to panels, meetings, and job interviews.

The number of attendees was down from the record of 5,664 set at last year's meeting in Philadelphia, but outpaced the fewer than 4,000 historians who attended the 2005 annual meeting in Seattle."

I'm headed off to Atlanta and hope to run into some fellow bloggers - anonymous and otherwise. I'm also going out to explore the National Archives there and the Carter Library.

I listened to this "I Believe" segment on NPR yesterday morning. I like the marbling versus layering argument - especially in dealing with teachers as adult learners.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6696794

Just Like Pastrami

Listen to this story... by Lee Shulman

Lee Shulman

Educational psychologist Lee Shulman is president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching in Stanford, Calif. For nearly 20 years he was on the faculty of Michigan State University and founded its Institute for Research on Teaching. Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching

“I believe that pastrami is a metaphor for a well-lived life, for a well-designed institution, and even for healthy relationships.”

Morning Edition, January 1, 2007 · I believe in pastrami -- well-marbled pastrami. Hot, thinly sliced, piled on fresh rye bread with dark mustard and a crisp dill pickle.

I believe that pastrami is a metaphor for a well-lived life, for a well-designed institution and even for healthy relationships. Pastrami is marbled rather than layered. Its parts, the lean and the fat, are mixed together rather than neatly separated. Too much of life is lived by adding layers that don't really connect with one another.

When I was about 12, my parents bought a small Jewish delicatessen on the northwest side of Chicago. And that's where I learned about pastrami. I worked at the counter and I learned the differences between well-marbled and merely layered meats. My Dad would explain to me that some customers wanted him to slice away all of the fat on a brisket and then they'd came back to complain that the meat wasn't juicy. He'd sigh and explain that without marbling, they'd never get what they wanted.

I've seen the wisdom of my Dad's insight over time. When I started teaching college, my mentors warned me against having any interest in my students' lives outside the classroom. In my first month on the job, I taught a 500-student class. One day a young woman came to my office to tell me she wouldn't be able to complete all the course requirements. It turned out her husband had been killed in a car accident the month before. She was a 19-year-old widow.

I then began to wonder about the other 499 students. Their stories may not have been as extreme, but I would have been a fool to think their lives wouldn't have an impact on the classroom. Learning and living were marbled in my students' lives, not layered. To teach, advise and mentor them, I needed to be sensitive and aware of their tragedies and celebrations, their ambitions and their anxieties.

Separate layers are much easier to trim from the brisket. Separate layers are much easier to build, to schedule and to design. But I believe that marbling demands that we work with the messy world of people, relationships and obligations in their full, rich complexity. The diet mavens inform us that marbling can be dangerous for our health, but as an educator I'm willing -- even obligated -- to take the risk. I want to marble habits of mind, habits of practice and habits of the heart with my students -- just like pastrami.