Improved technology played a big role in the identification of the two primary suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing.
Law enforcement officials were deluged with digital images and video after asking anyone who was in the area during the event to submit them. Traditionally it would take hundreds of officers countless hours to examine all of that media, but new versions of facial recognition technology have made that task much more manageable.
CNet explains how this tech works: "The software, which can help pick a person out of crowd, looks for differentiating features -- from the shape of a mouth to the ridge on a nose to the distance between a pair of eyes.
3VR in San Francisco has developed software that extracts information from video and then makes it searchable for its clients, which include retailers, banks, security firms and law enforcement."
In this installment, I write about the themes I discovered in my story of working as a gifted education resource teacher. Essentially, I experienced much frustration until I learned to first collaborate with classroom teachers, until I gained their trust and respect, only then could I begin to share my expertise. Interspersed in the writing are journal reflections and e-mails, which convey my thoughts and emotions at the time of the experience.
...
Note: This article first appeared in The Qualitative Report. This is the first installment of a series on working as a resource teacher of gifted education. I am sharing a modified-version of this article in pieces because I think it sheds might light on the challenges that teachers face collaborating together—when one “has” their own classroom and the other visits the classroom to work with students. Both resource teachers and classroom teachers can learn from each other, for the benefit...
Years ago, a mentor gave a very useful suggestion. He told me to visualize what my ideal classroom would look like. Not just the decorations on the wall and the seating arrangement, but all the aspects of my “ultimate classroom,” including how the students behaved, what the learning looked like, how I was teaching each day, my interactions with parents, and the kind of academic (and social/emotional) results I would achieve. It was a powerful exercise.
I was recently reminded of the...
So, word walls… I can sum this one up in four words...
Are you ready?
Kids. don’t. use. them.
Yep, I said it! Let’s keep it real. While the idea of a word wall is a good one, in practice, I just have not found them to be a very effective tool for my students. Even if my words are huge, even if we practice using it together, even if they help me make it, a typical word wall just doesn’t do the trick.
Why? I...
![]()
Did you Know that JULY is National Ice Cream Month in the USA? It was established by President Ronald Reagan, in 1984. National Ice Cream Day is the 3rd Sunday in July. Learn some fun facts about ice cream!
1. One scoop of ice cream needs about 50 licks to finish.
2. The Chinese...