Twitter Updates
Hall forwarded this article on to me, which fits perfectly into so many presentations that I do. Essentially, reporters bounced around the world of Facebook looking at teachers’ profiles, and found them to be on par with middle and high school students. Crude, often inappropriate humor and images, off color jokes and so on.
The crudeness of some Facebook or MySpace teacher profiles, which are far, far away from sanitized Web sites ending in “.edu,” prompts questions emblematic of our times: Do the risque pages matter if teacher performance is not hindered and if students, parents and school officials don’t see them? At what point are these young teachers judged by the standards for public officials?
Reminds me of a comment that wound up leaving on Doug Johnson’s blog entry about copyright. While I agree that we as people should be able to have whatever the heck we want on our Facebook page, we aren’t merely people.
We’re educators.
Is that being overly dramatic? Of course it is, and I 100% mean it to be. Pure and simple, we’re more of a role model than Barry Bonds, Britney Spears or Jay Z will ever be. Quite simply, we represent the good guys, the ones who have the best interests of the students in mind, the ones who care enough to stick with them and help them learn whether they like it or not. And that, if for no other reason, means that we need to be careful how we represent ourselves in public. And yes, online is public 
It’s a major concern to me, because how can a teacher tell a student with any credibility at all that they should clean up they’re MySpace profile, if their own has racy pictures or crude jokes on it? It’s just hypocritical.
The easy solution is to just keep it private. The problem is, many teachers (just like many students) don’t know how to do so. As the reporters discovered, privacy is pretty relative.
Like several other teachers interviewed, Webster said she thought her page could be seen only by people she accepted as “friends.” But like those of many teachers on Facebook, Webster’s profile was accessible by the more than 525,000 members of the Washington, D.C., network. Anyone can join any geographic network.
Oops.
Typically I ask students whether they’d be willing to show their Facebook profiles to their teachers. So let’s turn it around…
Would you be willing to share YOUR online profile (Facebook, MySpace, Xanga, etc…) with your students??
Related Reading on Teach42
Welps, this post has nothing to do with PLN’s, education, Web2.0, or technology (are crock pots considered ‘technology’?). But tonight, a friend of mine hosted her annual chili cookoff and for the first time I decided to compete. There were 13 other entries to contend with, but low and behold, when the dust settled adn votes were counted, guess who’s chili reigned supreme? That’s right! My chili, “The Parting of the Red Chili” took home the ribbon (which was actually an inflatable chili). Just in case you were wondering about the name, just consider it a celebration of the end of Passover.
So a few people on Twitter asked for a copy of the recipe so I figured no better place to post it than here. For the record, it’s a combination of several recipes on the internet that I drew inspiration from, but the base of it was “Dago Reds Wop ‘n Good Chili“, so full credit goes out that way. If you do decide to make it, get yourself a good movie or something, because it’s gonna be a while (about 4 hours from beginning to end)!
The Parting of the Red Chili
Ingredients:
- 2.5 lbs of London Broil
- 1 lbs ground pork breakfast sausage
- 32 oz. Chicken Broth
- 2x 15 oz cans of Tomato Sauce
- 12 oz Spicy Hot V8
- 1 tbs Onion Powder
- 2 tbs Garlic Powder
- 6 tbs Chili Powder (medium heat)
- 5 1/2 tsp Cumin
- 1 tsp Accent
- 1 1/2 tbs Tabasco
- 1 tbs New Mexico Hot Chili Powder
- 5 tsp Arrowroot
- 2 tbs Brown Sugar
- 4 tbs Wesson Oil
- Salt
Chop the London Broil into smallish cubes. Add to heated skillet with 2tbs of Wesson oil. Burners should be on Medium-Low. Cook meat until it is lightly brown. Be VERY careful not to cook the meat too long. Keep the heat down and cook it for no longer than 4 minutes. If you cook the meat too much now, it will be overcooked and tough by the end of the recipe. Drain and add beef to large stock pot. Repeat the same process for the sausage. Chop the sausage up rather finely as it cooks. Once again, be careful not to overcook it at this point. A little pink showing is ok, as we’ll be cooking it for 3 more hours.
Use an extra large stock pot or you’ll likely get splatters as the chili boils. Turn heat to low and combine the meat, sausage, chicken stock, tomato sauce, V8, onion powder, 1tbs garlic powder, and 2 tbs Chili powder.
Stir and cook uncovered for 90 minutes. Stir gently every 15 minutes throughout the rest of the recipe, ensuring that there is nothing sticking to the bottom of the pot and spices are absorbed throughout the sauce.
90 Minutes in – 1st Drop: Add 2 tbs of chili powder, 5 tsp cumin, Accent and 1 tbs Tabasco
120 Minutes in – 2nd Drop: Add 1/2 tbs Tabasco, 1/2 tbs of New Mexico hot chili powder, 1 tbs chili powder and salt to taste (just under 1 1/2 tbs seemed about right to me)
150 Minutes in – 3rd Drop: Mix 5 tsp arrowroot with a few tbs of water to form a paste. Add to the pot along with 1tbs garlic powder, brown sugar, 1/2 tsp cumin, 1/2 tbs of New Mexico hot chili powder, salt to taste (about 3/4 of a tbs tasted perfect to me).
Continue cooking for another 30 minutes. At this point, the sauce should be nice and thick. If it seems to runny, let it continue to simmer on low heat for another 15 minutes maximum. It will thicken even more as it cools down to be eaten.
Garnish with shredded cheese, sour cream or green onions and enjoy!
Related Reading on Teach42
Tony Vincent’s recent post on “How to Cheat” is sure to ruffle a few feathers. He embeds and links to at least a dozen videos describing in detail how to cheat in class.
Oh no! What if the students find it????
*snort*
That was the reaction I got from many when I posted on TechLearning about how to bypass firewalls. It’s a subject near and dear to my heart.
But the point is, many of these students have actually discovered Google already. And they’ve learned that if they type in “How can I cheat on the test,” they’ll find more than just this blog post. As Tony sez,
The “Cheating Documentary” above ends with the voiceover, “So students cheat. It is something that will never die. The question is, can teachers keep up in the race against students and their ever-going creativity?” The answer is not keeping up–that will never happen. One answer is creating assessments that students can “cheat” on. Rarely are people without some device that they can use to look up a formula or definition. It doesn’t make sense to have school assessments so incredibly focused on memorizing information that is accessible anywhere and anytime. Unfortunately, emphasis in education is on “playing school” instead of learning what’s important for today’s and tomorrow’s society.
On a typical test, in a typical classroom, does anybody reading this honestly think they can prevent a highly determined student from cheating?
So what CAN you do? Be atypical!
Related Reading on Teach42
I saw a quiz that someone had created using MyStudiyo.com and was pretty impressed with… Well.. for lack of a more sophisticated reason, I was impressed with how pretty it was. I figured the best way to learn about something is just to try it out, so I decided to build a quiz about EduBloggers and of course, have a little fun while doing it 
Just a few notes about MyStudiyo.com… I love the fact that you can embed in text, images, audio and video into quiz answers. Also, there are several differences between the ‘collaborative’ quizzes and non-collaborative. So make sure you explore both. Personally, I love the idea of collaborative quizzes, which is why I left this one open.
There were about 150 other Bloggers I wanted to add to the quiz, but a man only has limited time and resources. So I started off with 20, in no particular order (if there were a random feature, I would’ve used it!) I strongly encourage you to add yourself as well as other favorite bloggers to the quiz! It’s a great way to introduce people to the world of Educational Blogging and let them know about the people behind the blogs that they SHOULD know about, if they don’t already.
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