MSM 573: Defenestrate Your Way To Safety

Summary:

Shawn and Troy discuss defenestration, AI, and more. Dave is statistically correct. 

Jokes:  

My Daughter turned 18 last weekend, so I bought her a locket with a picture of herself inside. Thankfully, she’s now finally..

  • Independent..

I took an elevator up to the eleventh floor for a meeting. As I got out, the operator said “Have a good day, son.”

“Don’t call me son,” I said. “You’re not my dad.”

He scratched his head, “No, but I brought you up, didn’t I?”

After my meeting, I got back on the elevator to go back down, and the same operator was there. I said nothing to him, but when we got to the ground floor, he said to me, “I’m sorry.”

“Because you thought you were my dad?” I asked him.

He shook his head. “No, son, because I let you down.”


What do you call a line of people waiting to get their hair cut?

  • A barber Queue

Pancake jokes? 

  • I’ve got a stack of ‘em.

Furniture Salesman: “This sofa will seat five without any problems.”

Customer: “Where am I going to find five people with no problems?”


One day, I hope to be able to install an indoor soccer pitch in my attic. I know what you’re thinking…lofty goals.


Middle School Science Minute  

by Dave Bydlowski (k12science or davidbydlowski@mac.com)

K12Science Podcast: Statistical Thinking

I was recently reading the January/February 2023 issue of “Science Scope” a publication of the National Science Teaching Association.  

In this issue, I read the “Interdisciplinary Ideas” column, written by Kristin Hunter-Thomson.  She wrote an article entitled, “Why Should We All Embrace Statistical Thinking?”  

Statistical thinking is the mindset that we use when doing anything with data.  The mindset is based on the following three criteria:

1.  Any work with data involves interconnected processes.

2.  All processes and data have variability.

3.  Understanding variability and these processes is key to making sense of data.

http://k12science.net/statistical-thinking/

Reports from the Front Lines

  • Lock Down browsers
  • Spreadsheets
    • Assessment Tracking 

The Social Web  

Alexlindsay  @alexlindsay

You can read 100 books on baking bread but you won’t actually know how to bake bread until you’ve baked 100 loaves yourself. This applies to many things in life.

Susie Dent  @susie_dent

Word of the day is ‘stiff-rumped’ (18th century): obstinate, unbending, and accustomed to taking everyone else for fools.

I have only just discovered that the original meaning of ‘prime time’, in the 16th century, was Spring.  

John R. Sowash  @jrsowash

Unleash the power of reading with this simple Google Form reading log! it’s the perfect tool to kickstart your next reading challenge. https://chrmbook.com/google-forms-reading-log/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=jrsowash&utm_content=edtechposts

#teachertwitter #GoogleEdu

Jonny Hemphill  @worcesterjonny

Cause of disease and treatment across the historical periods all on one page. Trying to help year 11 with their revision with this thinking quilt. Color coding the historical periods and the themes #historyteacher

NBR, Nordic Baltic Region of FIPLV & Egle Sleinotiene  

Resources:  

Our 10th Annual 15-Second Vocabulary Video Challenge

We invite students to create a short video that defines or teaches any of the words in our Word of the Day collection. Contest dates: Feb. 15-March 15, 2023.

Student Vocabulary Challenge: Invent a Word

Come up with your own addition to the English language. Suggest a new word by Feb. 28, and it could become our April Fools’ Word of the Day.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/01/learning/student-vocabulary-challenge-invent-a-word.html#annotations:hamkrqcjEe2ORtuJMgChGQ 

Project Look Sharp

Inspire and enrich your teaching by engaging all students in rigorous and reflective analysis of rich media documents.

In today’s media-saturated world, we need to teach our students the habits of critical thinking needed for their academic, career and civic lives. They need consistent practice in asking the right questions and in reflecting on their own meaning-making. Project Look Sharp’s approach integrates materials and methodologies that teach both core subject-area learning with these media literacy skills.

https://projectlooksharp.org/#annotations:QSHLgKloEe2UDZMLXUlVSg

AMLE Book Spotlight – Middle School Superpowers – Raising Resilient Teens in Turbulent Times – Phyllis Fagell

Are you concerned that middle school will wreak havoc on your tween’s well-being and sense of self? Wondering how you can ward off the decline in confidence research shows kids experience during these vulnerable years? Seeking strategies that will help your child emerge from middle school with even more resilience than when they started?   

https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/0306829754/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Geography Bee!

1200 questions for your Geography Bee at your school!  Downloadable as a Moodle Course and ready to make usable in your school.  

https://moodle.net/resource/4olx2f65uf6u-geography-bee

Web Spotlight:  

On the Road: Middle school football players execute life-changing play

As part of our continuing series “On the Road,” Steve Hartman meets the Olivet Eagles, a middle school football team who took a fledgling player under their wing and executed what may be the most successful play of all time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ejh_hb15Fc#annotations:bbKRtKYnEe2csQcPYuLe2A

We’ve always been distracted

Worried that technology is ‘breaking your brain’? Fears about attention spans and focus are as old as writing itself

https://aeon.co/essays/weve-always-been-distracted-or-at-least-worried-that-we-are#annotations:zL8KgKVyEe2iYn-bq0nsJA

WRBH

WRBH’s mission is to turn the printed word into the spoken word so that the blind and print impaired can receive the same ease of access to current information as their sighted peers.

WRBH’s target audience includes the blind and illiterate as well as individuals who are unable to read due to illness, spinal cord injuries, eye muscle damage, learning disabilities, lack of access to print media, and loss of vision due to age. While the majority of reading services for the blind use mechanized voice software, WRBH is the only organization providing this variety of programming via the human voice thanks to over 150 volunteers who donate nearly 5,000 hours annually to read printed information. 

https://www.wrbh.org/about-us/who-we-are/#annotations:edKTbqY1Ee2bXR8OXyqQVw

AXIS:  The Culture Translator

Defining the Situationship

What it is: With Valentine’s Day approaching, many young people are defining their relationships as “situationships,” according to Tinder’s “Year in Swipe” data report for 2022.

The Broom Method

In order to fuel its rockets, NASA scientists must take two of the most basic elements, hydrogen and oxygen, and cool them down hundreds of degrees into their liquid states. In this more efficient form, a rocket’s tank volume can be maximized, providing the needed fuel to achieve lift. This process is a potentially dangerous one, as hydrogen is highly combustible. If at any point during storage, fueling, or flight the liquid form evaporates back into gas, a leak could mean a massive explosion.

During the Apollo missions, scientists and engineers would simply walk through the facilities with a long broom held out in front of them. When the broom touched the invisible burning hydrogen, the end would suddenly combust and they could mark another area which had dangerous gas within it. It was low-tech — but it worked.

https://shop.minimuseum.com/blogs/cool-things/the-broom-method#annotations:5I8QSKZNEe2nnYdCmsV8eQ

Dispositional Realignment

Two Lithuanian films make it onto Netflix and HBO Max

https://www.lrt.lt/en/news-in-english/19/1887252/two-lithuanian-films-make-it-onto-netflix-and-hbo-max?fbclid=IwAR1CYSTB5QpGFys8Gl0OQYu0O4gf1UODG6Eel0BCeXgDNdGVzm7lo6O0DJw

Random Thoughts . . .  

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