Tag: Obama

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President Obama’s Address to Congress 2/24/09 – Education in the Word Cloud Top 25!

Note: For full web version of President Barack Obama's speech to Congress Feb 24, 2009 click here.  

I think Wordle.net is a great tool that helps teachers and students to analyze text. Read my post to see some ideas for how you can use Wordle to foster literacy and critical thinking in your classroom. 

I used Wordle to make the "word cloud" below out of the text from President Obama's speech to Congress. I chose a setting to display the 25 most frequently used words in his speech. Glad to see that education made the top 25 of his verbal agenda!

You can make your own Wordle version of  his speech. Here's a text file Obama-2-25-09 of his words taken from the NY Times transcript. (I deleted the applause breaks.) Copy and paste it to the Wordle "Create" page and make your own word cloud. For more on Wordle font and layout setting click here. 
Obama-address-25
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Meeting Middle East Educators

IMG_0542 Last week I presented at the TeachME 2009 International Education Conference, in Dubai. It was a great pleasure to meet dedicated educators from across the Gulf Coast region. 

While many of the attendees are expats, a sizable number were local teachers and administrators. Their similarity to American educators far surpassed any differences. A smile behind a face veil is no less joyful. 

As President Obama said at his inauguration,  "We cannot help but believe that …as our world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself…" 

I suspect teachers will lead the way. 

Notice the TurningPoint response cards on orange lanyards – everybody loves clickers!
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Teach Innovation, Not Test Prep

Tom Friedman writes it's "Time to Reboot America" NY Times 12/24/08.

We need a reboot. We need a build out. We need a buildup. We need a national makeover. That is why the next few months are among the most important in U.S. history. Because of the financial crisis, Barack Obama has the bipartisan support to spend $1 trillion in stimulus. But we must make certain that every bailout dollar, which we’re borrowing from our kids’ future, is spent wisely.

… It has to go into training teachers, educating scientists and engineers, paying for research and building the most productivity-enhancing infrastructure — without building white elephants…

Maybe we can get back to teaching innovation instead of being trapped in test prep!
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Education and the Next President

“Education and the Next President,” a debate between Linda Darling-Hammond, education advisor to Senator Barack Obama, and Lisa Graham Keegan, education advisor to Senator John McCain, which will be held at Teachers College in the Cowin Conference Center on Tuesday evening, October 21st, 2008, at 7 pm. TC President Susan H. Fuhrman will moderate. You will be able to view a live Webcast of the debate at www.tc.edu/edadvisorsdebate starting at 7 pm on the 21st of October. The Webcast will be archived for subsequent viewing on iTunes U the following day.

(You might also enjoy a lively discussion on the subject broadcast on the Diane Rehm show on October 21.)

Obama and McCain managed to squeeze in a few minutes on educational policy into final debate. Isn’t it about time we heard more about their educational policies?