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."
![]()
Note: The following blog is the first of a three-part series on teacher inquiry.
It might sound cliché but you’ve likely heard the phrase that a teacher should be a life-long learner. Ayres (1989) wrote that “teaching involves a search for meaning in the world. Teaching is a life-long project, a calling, a vocation that is an organizing center for all other activities.” Whatever your philosophy, it’s hard to argue that engaging in teacher inquiry provides many...

This year's tree was especially of interest to me because it came from a town near me and where I went to college . . . Oneonta, New...
![]()
Americans chose to elect a billionaire businessman, an outsider with no government experience, over Hillary Clinton, the candidate of the establishment. What economic and social forces might have prompted this upset in...

“The biggest surprise has been how little importance large portions of the electorate placed on whether statements made by candidates (or their surrogates) accord with the facts.” — Howard Gardner
Ever since he went to Wyoming Seminary secondary school, Howard Gardner says he has been captivated with...

On December 1, 1955, a tired seamstress living in Montgomery, Alabama, made history. Rosa Parks was an African American woman who broke the law when she refused to give up her seat on a crowded bus for a white passenger. Her act of civil disobedience resulted in her being kicked off the bus and her arrest! She was charged and found guilty of violating the segregation law of the city...
What do I do when they finish their work early?
This is a common question posed by teachers when it comes to gifted students. But it really shouldn’t be a problem—if you have the right training, the right philosophy and some “go-to” strategies in your teaching toolbox. Some teachers simply give gifted students more of the same work. The student finishes the assigned math problems—so have them complete 10 more of the same type of problems. In other classrooms, teachers ask gifted...
Teachers in U.S. public schools are educating students who more racially and ethnically diverse than at any other time in our history (Levin & Nolan, 2014); any other time in history. In 2008, 44 percent of students were from minority ethnic groups. By 2040, this number is expected to grow to more than 50 percent (Levin & Nolan, 2014).
What does this mean for teachers? For starters, the challenge to meet the needs of diversity in the classroom are massive—and are not...
![]()