Comments for Teachers #4

Beth Kinttles's thoughts on technology is really that. Her post, Dreams do come true if you work at them, is about one young woman's journey to make displaced children from 28 countries feel at home and safe in the U.S. by playing soccer. The children are refugees and have all seen war and lived through horrific events that most people are fortunate enough never to be faced with. Luma called her soccer team Team Fugee, short for refugee. She was helping the kids find a sense of belonging, but she soon found out they had other needs that the public education system was failing to meet. The kids needed a school and a teacher willing to work with them. So Luma created the Fugee Academy. Her school is privately funded and she accepts no government funding. She just purchased 19 acres to build her dream school. However, it will take $5 million dollars to start building, but Luma knows they can raise that money in just a year.
Luma's story is truly inspiring and someday I expect to visit her school and see with my own eyes her dream come to life.

The second post I commented on was about Google Data Explorer. It is a really sophisticated tool that would benefit educators in all subjects. Basically, it is doing something similar to Wolfram Alpha. However, you can make your own data sets. I have played with a couple of different maps and graphs and it is really fun. I would love to see how it would work on SMARTboards. Let's see if I can get it to work later this week...