Solvation

MS Ipod Parody

                 

What happens if Microsoft had designed the Ipod?

(Note, the author of this video is unclear; rumor has it that it was internal to Microsoft, released to encourage change within their own marketing team.  If you have information as to the actual author, please contact me.)

Public vs. Private Education

I wrote about that here. 

Book Review

In a fabulous book, "Doing School" How We Are Creating a Generation of Stressed Out, Materialistic, and Miseducated Students, by Denise Clark Pope, the author illustrates just how thoroughly kids have internalized our zeitgeist-driven anxiety that it's all slipping away.

It's a stressful read, but one that every parent and every educator should do, and frankly many older students would do well to read and discuss this book... if they have time.

Funny in Farsi

Just finished Funny in Farsi.  It's on the sidebar.  If you grew up elsewhere but your kids are growing up in the US, you'll enjoy it, I'm sure.

Good choice for High School kids' biography selection if they need one.  Some younger kids may like it too, but she spends a considerable amount of time talking from enough of an adult perspective that some kids might not be able to relate to it until they're older.

Vested Interest

When people talk about private vs. public schooling for their children, they think of the annualized cost, and sometimes they do the math for their 2.3 kids and realize that for K-12, they're well upwards of a half million dollars in completely illiquid investment (as opposed to buying a house in a neighborhood with top public schools, where the ROI is more tangible and when necessary immediate).

Forget Bill Gates for President

Those of you who knew me in 1998 will recall my pronouncement that there would be a clamour for Bill Gates to run for President in 2008.  This was before a lot of things happened, but I based it on expectations that environmental issues would be key and people would want someone who had "proven" they could "get things done," ruthlessness be damned.

Well, no need to run; he's become King.  The Gates+Buffet philanthropy juggernaut involves giving away $3 Billion annually.  While I both agree with and at times outright admire their effectiveness, I am a bit concerned by the precedent this sets:  since the Foundation sets policy and accepts RFPs, it's really a top-down structure, and one that isn't representational.