Stalin vs. Martians

Big Download blog just reported what may be the bleeping stranges idea for a video game since someone decided to make a game out of Dante's Inferno. It's Stalin vs. Martians. Yes, Stalin vs. Martians. In case the premise is confusing to you, it pits Stalin vs. Martians. The release date? April 20 -- Hitler's birthday.

Here's a video preview of the excitement that awaits you:



And for those of you wondering what Dante's Inferno will look like as a game, here's a taste.

I'm Confusing Even Myself

My school's in the midst of a ton of interesting initiatives surrounding diversity, global education, tech, pedagogy, professional development, curriculum, etc. It's all really exciting stuff. I was trying to explain what we're doing to a colleague from another school this afternoon, however, and I found it difficult to give him any "elevator speech" that ties everything together. And what we're doing is tied together pretty tightly around a few very clear conceptual pillars. I really need to put everything down into one place and construct a coherent narrative that explains everything simply and clearly. I worry that we could lose ourselves in the details as we make so much progress on so many fronts.

Having read Made to Stick a while back, I'm acutely sensitive to issues surrounding messages and their reception. I want to avoid all the "21st century skills" boilerplate and get toward something that's a bit less grounded in trendiness and more set in sound reasoning and logical construction with a healthy dose of clarity thrown in for good measure.

Sorry if this blog post reads more like an inner dialogue than it does an actual posting, but I'm trying to publicly commit myself to the task in as public a manner as possible. Not that I've got an audience for this blog, but still...

Kansas 7th Graders' KKK Project Draws Flack

Some kid in Kansas did a project which involved a Klan-inspired board game. It was highlighted at a parent open-house and people were upset. Go figure...

World's Largest Model Railroad

I used to take my kids to Northlandz when I live in New Jersey. I thought it was a pretty big place. This video makes me realize that maybe it wasn't all that big after all...

St. Petersburg/Leningrad: Then and Now

The web site English Russia has some really interesting photos of St. Petersburg/Leningrad which intersperse current photos with footage from the Nazi siege of the city during the war. I'm a sucker for anything relating to Russia in WWII -- it's endlessly fascinating to me.

Fewer Indian Students Going to American Universities

When I visited India several years back, it seemed like a huge number of students were making their way to study in the U.S. According to a recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, however, this is not quite as true as it used to be. Fewer students are making their way to the U.S.A. and people are talking about a "reverse brain drain" back to India.

Here's a fascinating statistic:

The Educational Testing Service has reported that the number of Indian students taking the Graduate Record Examinations fell from 74,000 in 2007 to 55,000 in 2008. That could result in a significant decline in graduate applications to the United States, which absorbed nearly 80 percent of the more than 120,000 Indian students who went abroad last year.

From the perspective of India, that's a really good thing: India needs all the talent it can muster as it continues its path towards economic development. My one worry is that the cultural cross-pollination that has happened as a result of Indian students coming to the U.S. will lessen the strong ties between the two nations. But could it be that perhaps more U.S. students will start heading out India?

Educational Jargon Generator

I love academic jargon in the sense that I love to be disoriented. Reading it is the intellectual equivalent of spinning in circles with your head balanced with a baseball bat and running across the yard. That's why I love the "Educational Jargon Generator". Just hit the "generate jargon" button and you'll come up with such gems as "integrate thematic relationships", "target mission-critical pedagogy", and "iterate open-ended competencies".