NARA | The National Archives Experience
The National Archives has done well with this presentation of the three Charter Documents of Freedom.
I do love the iconic index at the top. Wish it would give a bit more of a hint to the contents as you roll over each icon. They could make some of the image resource links etc. more AJAXy. Overall, its a beautiful look, a deserving frame for these critical papers. Kudos to the artist who created those cool icon buttons.

Ernie Pyle
Digging and Grousing
I really love these columns by the great Ernie Pyle. So many newspapermen count him among their idols; would that they actually followed his model.

This presentation is all the more special, as you can hear the columns being read.

IdeaChannel.tv
Monday, Californians celebrated "Milton Friedman Day" Among the other events was a broadcast (PBS) review of his life's work , The Power Of Choice: The Life And Ideas Of Milton Friedman. Friday, IdeaChannel will put up video of a the University of Chicago memorial service.

As an Open Source project, we surely have to note the workings of this great mind and friend of the masses. One guest opined that, through just his influence on the economies of China and India, perhaps no one person has helped more people than Milton Friedman.

Via the magic of web tech, you can watch his show, Free to Choose, for, well..., free. Volume 6, What's Wrong with Our Schools? remains as powerful and true today as then. (Kids' hair and all!).

An Internet Storytelling Center and Bookstore
Not a huge or fancy site, but it reminds us again or that critical element--story. External links to storytelling organizations near you, as well as storytelling resources.

AHDS History
For those of you who really want to dig for info to tell, we remind you of the data source at the Arts and Humnities Data service, in the U.K. Some of the offerings:
- Peasant Land Market in Southern England, 1260-1350
- Acta of Henry II and His Family, 1154-1204
- Crop Yields and Animal Carcass Weights in England, c.1700-1914
- Medieval Marriage Sermons, 1200- 1299
- Wills and Inventories of Single Women in Durham, 1611-1700
List of all AHDS History's studies - pdf

The U.S.-Mexican War . Interactive Timeline PBS
This beautiful timeline--and the show--slipped by last year (likely a deficit in the budget at the local station). This makes a great subject for analysis!
1) Why not break it up the way the main site is: Prelude to War, War, Aftermath? There's just too much to take in at once.
2) Similarly, the War coverage needs levels. The invention of Daguerreotype and the penny press make interesting facts, yet break into the initial telling of the story for a neophyte.
3) Obviously, 'twould be nice if the timeline better integrated with the text material. Some links have popups in the Flash--nice. Others open a new window with HTML text of jarringly different design. The popup should be standard, unless a symbol warns the reader.
4) Strangely, the postwar section, in describing the finding of gold, pops up a video only about Indian oppression. Tell the story--and only the story!
5) And, of course, sound!
I really love this one--as it is so ambitious and beautiful, and yet so shows the faultlines of the Flash | HTML DMZ. Adobe is working it..but we also need creative design to help bridge the chasm.

Anyone want to fund a contest to encourage students to so experiment?

iTunes U
You'll generously recall that we predicted a day when students of mediocre professors would regularly be found in class, listening not to the drone before them, but to an excellent professor speaking via the headphones of their iPod. And indeed, Apple has been on the case.

First to join the chase was Stanford. I am now listening to Stanford professor Thomas Sheehan lecture on The Historical Jesus.
Stanford on iTunesU - Profile
Stanford on iTunesU - link to iTunes

Next up was archrival Berkely:
itunes.Berkley.edu
UC Berkeley on iTunes U Galvanizes Campus
University-Branded Site an Immediate Hit

The University of Wisconsin at Madison joined in:
Podcasts: Earmarked for Success
Centralized Content Streamlines Studies Birdcalls for Ornithology class.
Will this catch on and continue? The iTunes Music Store does seem to be at odds with the Open Source movement-kindof. It'll be fun to watch.
If you want to get in on the discussion, join in at Apple Digital Campus Exchange

Developing K12 courses: Early online course prototypes:

"Amelia Jackson Zaremba is one of K12's most experienced instructional designers, has focused for many years on building the highly engaging and popular K12 history courses. Instructional designers coordinate all the different elements that go into a new course: the online and off-line media, the activities students are expected to do, the writing, interface, and illustration designs, and more."

Amelia takes over Bror's Blog at K12 this week, describing her team's work in creating interactive content for history. K12's work is very challenging, as they must produce an entire curriculum, so the lessons must be integrated and testable. They also work with the constraint that most of their lessons were developed with dial-up in mind; and of course, they must fit the educracy's edicts to some degree (though they have more freedom than public school curriculum designers).

Be sure to try out the Interactive Kitchen rollover.

PodcastDirectory - History Podcast Search Results
Aside from our discovery of smARThistory.org (sweet!), PodCast directory remains disappointing. It could be easily fixed: if they would just add a search function that filters out all podcasts with less than five pods. Don't know about you, but I when I look for History, I'm not really interested in a show devoted only to 1)a child's head lice, 2) the Buckeye's two week old loss, and 3) some garageband. The five-pod filter won't eliminate that directly, but it is a quality control measure of the type that eliminates casts from people smart enough to know they had nothing to say and know its time to quit.

That said, keep looking; you may find some goody like smarthistory.org!

smARThistory
The title here plays on the word Art, and is an History through art blog/podcast/enhanced podcast. "Beth Harris & Steven Zucker teach art history (online and in the classroom) at the Fashion Institute of Technology, SUNY."

Check out their visits to the Met and MOMA, where they give you some great background into some of the worlds most interesting art.

How to Tell a Story Yahoo! You-Witness-News
Kevin Sites of Yahoo!'s In the Hot Zone talks about telling the story.

Potraits of Fallen Soldiers YouWitnessNews Yahoo!
This Flash pod takes a look at the exhibit at Arlington National Cemetery of artistic representations of the soldiers lost in the war. Aside from the feax pas is one of putting a huge jobs ad below a film deserving more respect, it has some nice storytelling features. Especially, you can go back and see the main static scenes of the film.

The pod is part of a new service from Yahoo, You Witness News. A little bit Flickr, a little bit Current TV, a little bit YouTube, I guess. Looks interesting, will people watch?

Half of all children are below average in intelligence,...
Too many Americans are going to college.
Those with superior intelligence need to learn to be wise.

"It is not enough that gifted children learn to be nice. They must know what it means to be good."

Because,

"As William F. Buckley rightly instructs us, it is better to be governed by the first 2,000 names in the Boston phone book than by the faculty of Harvard University. But we have that option only in the choice of our elected officials. In all other respects, the government, economy and culture are run by a cognitive elite that we do not choose.

Charles Murray has an interesting three part series over at OpinionJournal.com. From his conclusions, we wonder if he has looked at OpenHistoryProject.org.

Story Arts | Story Arts Online!
Today a cheap Google result: this small site on StoryTelling in the Classroom. Does not seem to have been updated since 2000' I'll let you know if I get any of the newsletters we signed up for. You can find a number of stories. Here is the sitemap.

Warrior Challenge PBS
Not sure how we missed this one. It's four years old, now!

5th Anniversary of No Child Left Behind
Monday, Congress took the day off to celebrate the 5th anniversary--oh, wait, they took the day off to see a football game that started at 8:45pm that night. Either way, we got home from game watching just in time to catch Secretary Spellings' speech. CSPAN streams it; I have no idea how to get you a link-its under Domestic/Social.

Education Gadfly (channeling through Mike Petrelli) very thoughtfully asks Is No Child Left Behind's birthday worth celebrating? Among the issues, NCLB's irrelevancy to getting quality content into schools. But then, we've had decades of trying to legislate and bureaucraslate quality into education; why should this one be any different?

If you'd like to see good, quality, fun, interesting content made available, why skip the lobbying and jump in here to build something. I doubt schools will be much likely to skip past the Online online, interactive, occasionally rockin’, sound-and- animation history textbook when it turns out the way we envision.

Apple changes the future Again.
Wow.

Oh, yeah. They also released AppleTV.

Live From MacWorld Expo
Steve is up and at it. Looks like the world will change. Again.

Well, that was...
disappointing.

Place the State
A fine little game. I especially like that it judges how close you got. I, of course, was handed Nebraska right from the start!!

We saw another of these once. With the rivers and mountains in place? Didn't help!

Turkeys!
I just looked up from the computer screen after noticing that dawn (or the closest we'll see today) had arrived. With it, not ten paces from my nose, were five full-sized wild turkeys, hunting and pecking with one eye, and giving me the other.

Now, turkeys are interactive, but in a very limited fashion. You move. They notice. They trot away. Or, if you have a shotgun, you move, and then you have dinner. (Full disclosure: I've never shot anything not made of clay.) So why bring them up here?

History doesn't make any sense if all it is but names of personages, shifting maps, and themes like reconstruction and manifest destiny. It makes no sense if you can't feel for people for whom a wild turkey covers several much needed meals, and may not be very easy to come by.

We promised the other day to look more at storytelling. Turkeys and deer and wild berries and sparse plots of hand-tilled corn, beaver pelts and buffalo tallow should play a large part in those stories, as they played such a large part of the daily lives of the very real people behind the events of history.

The 1960s: A Multi-Media View from Capitol Hill
Since we're celebrating a brand new Congress, and a change of power to boot, this week seems a good time to highlight this offering from the Dirksen Congressional Center. The Center's mission is all things educational about Congress. These audio tapes highlight historic moments in the Civil Rights/Vietnam era.

Annie Leibovitz on American Masters PBS
Last night PBS ran a story on this celebrated photographer. It was a pretty good show. Amazing how many of her pictures you recognize. The trick is...telling a story in one shot.

Making Mummies PBS NOVA
Now here is a way to tell a story. It's just an audio slideshow; it does have a storyteller. You can hear her.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Clause.
For New Years Eve, we took in some sights and senses of Pittsburgh. Among the treats were Macy's (Kaufmann's) window displays. Now, these weren't like the little 30" windows at the downtown Washington Macy's. No indeed. These were full display window visual feasts . The storytelling craft is at its best in these true works of love. Every detail of the rooms and people are considered.

As I stood before these gifts, downtown Pittsburgh slowly filling with families and friends ready to enjoy First Night activities, with the surrounding shops in better shape, the streets and sidewalks cleaner, and the mood lighter than the city has been in my traveling lifetime; it occurred that we had somehow, finally, found our way back to 1959, or '61, or '65. Before Woodstock changed the culture. Before suburbanization shewed civilization from our city cores. Before the "Great Society" unevened the playing field. Somehow, our cities are livable again.

They're better, of course, as the sky above and the areas up and down Pittsburgh's rivers attest loudly.
____
Early last year, we promised to dig in to the emerging Web 2.0 technologies. This year, we want to focus much more on the art of storytelling. I don't yet know how we're going to do that. Pretty sure we need to find a storyteller who wants to talk about their art. Hmmm, I feel a road-trip coming on...

Firefox 2.0
If you haven't made the switch yet, let me commend it to you. Among other niceties, spell checking is inline--for any form text area you happen to be typing. A blog entry, for example, as the entry above--which I entered via an old Windows ME system with Firefox 1.5 still resident.

The JibJab Year in Review
The guys from JibJab were on the Tonight Show last week to premier their newest production. It looks back over 2006, so we get to call it History here. I won't say it's one of their funniest videos, but if you're not sure if you recall the whole year, they'll help you out. And, it's not that bad an example of how to cover a multi-event period of time.

A word about the title. JibJab was aiming to be a fairly mainstream production. So it prbably says something about the culture and the level of education out there that there are still enough people to find that title funny, and few enough people that might be perturbed.

Charles Dickens was a Behavioral Scientist
Have you seen A Christmas Carol yet this year? We took in the Patrick Stewart version the other night; were reminded again of the joys of seeing Christmas anew.

And were reminded, too, of the oft repeated lesson of "Beyond the Basics" last week. Content matters. Great writers are great because they are more than momentarily entertaining. "A Christmas Carol" changes your life more than 20 episodes of most any TV show. David Copperfield has more to say about the nature of man than six semesters of behavioral science classes.

Which brings up our Christmas wish for the 50% of urban and minority kids who might but probably won't graduate in the coming years. Might would-be teachers and teachers returning for Masters training study far less pedagogy and memorize far more Dickens and Shakespeare.

Merry Christmas to All, and to All a Good Night!

AJAX Yahoo !finance charts
Yahoo! has gone and made their financial charts all AJAXy (in Beta). Thought you might have to display data one day...

Nineteenth Century Inventions HistoryNow
The quarterly issue of History Now is out from Gilder Lehrman. This time they look at gadgets and the people who brought them. A beautiful interactive timeline lets you learn more.
(Reminds me that I'm way, way overdue to visit our near neighbor, the National Inventors Hall of Fame!)

The “Narrowing” K-12 Curriculum
Is there room in education for a traditional liberal education? For History, Literature, the Arts?

The answer (and, yes, we've had enough driving to D.C. this fall), was a resounding "YES!" from the hundred or so wonks, teachers, administrators, and entrepreneurs gathered in the Hotel Washington Tuesday. Is squeezing it in a challenge? Sure. It can be done, and perhaps not with additional hours to the schoolday. The key (all knew this 50-60 years ago) is to integrate history, arts and literature into the rest of the curriculum.

Among those already doing this are any schools associated with the Core Knowledge Foundation. They take advantage of the substantial "reading" periods from Kindergarden up to spiral in good knowledge. The teachers, by the way, love it.

Similarly, the folk at K-12 are fighting the good fight to get quality material into schools and kids wherever.

Of course, we here at the Open History Project have known this truth for a little while now, and you can find the idea subtly integrated throughout the site. Too bad Speaker Pelosi summoned away the new Chair of the House Education and Workforce committee - or he would have heard it loud and clear too.

I would be remiss if I didn't commend in particular the remarks of Dana Gioia, who led by example with a speech laden with Shakespeare and Byron. He spoke of childhood in the labor town Hawthorne, CA; of how his family of no formal education still gave him poetry and music; and of example low performing students then and since affected deeply by literature, music, and drama.

If I profane with my unworthiest hand
This holy shrine, the gentle fine is this:
My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.

All this seemed to have worked out OK for Gioia, author, successful executive, and now chair of the National Endowment for the Arts.

Find the papers and presentations here and the full video (indexed) here.

Virtual reality inducing false memories?

"a recent experiment...tested students' ability to learn how to use a real digital camera by operating a virtual one. Although those students who used the virtual camera found it easier to remember how the camera worked, they also experienced more 'false memories'."

Is the same thing true of any non-reality training (e.g. lectures)?

Survey: M.B.A.s Are The Biggest Cheaters CollegeJournal.com
Shocking. OK, maybe not. Shucks, we would have thought the number much higher. And who knows, maybe B students are simply more honest in surveys, recognizing the need for solid marketing data and all.

At least all these dishonest louts have been good for the career of one Donald McCabe, who has made his profession at Rutgers studying them. His C.V. lists publications, alas with no hyperlinks. Why, there is even an International Plagarism Conference. Here's the Conference Proceedings. Alexander Hamilton, where are you? (Sr. Annunciatta, where are you?).

The River City Project
One of the excellent people we met Thursday was Ed Dieterle, a Harvard researcher in technology and education. The River City Project is billed as "A Multi-User Virtual Environment for Learning Scientific Inquiry and 21st Century Skills". It looks sweet.
The interactive uses a downloadable client not accessible to the general public. However, our lofty status as educational geeks/wonks/pundits got us a copy and guest account, so ask and you may receive!

Too Hard On Themselves? The View From D.C.
The Fixing Failing Schools session was long...and intriguing. But not at all surprising. All day we heard that
1) Testing is exposing the weakness of our poorest schools, but
2) Sanctions are being applied infrequently and N.C.L.B. public choice is rarely chosen.
3) The biggest positive effects may come from the Supplemental Services portion of the bill. But that too is unevenly available across the districts.

Well, this problem took 100 years to build, and five years is a bit of a short time to turn it around. Especially with fundamental union opposition. Still, every other profession has improved itself using metrics, and this one will too, in its own sweet, and perhaps painfully long time.

If you oppose national government testing, why, jump right in here and help build a movement for a more sane approach to education metrics.

Fixing Failing Schools
We're off again to that nasty town on the Potomac. Will we learn anything new? Surely. It's a discussion of "Is the NCLB Toolkit Working?". Either way, we need lots more efforts from the local community upward.

Rails 1.2: Release Candidate 1
We can't swear that Ruby and Rails really are the state-of-the-art in Web 2.0 ajaxy goodness. But Rails does seem to ride the edge in some domains. Either way, the new release features REST (REpresentational State Transfer). Well, if you are interested, follow the links, Google on, and get a copy of the new Agile Web Development with Rails.

The Desolate Wilderness
The Annual Tradition.

How the Pilgrims Made Progress
You'll recall last summer we met with John Rolfe of Jamestown Colony, and he told the strange story of his colony's experimentation with communal living, it's near demise, and recovery into a prosperous and permanent settlement.

In this recounting from William Bradford, a similar story of experimentation, failure, and recovery is told. 'Tis a story not often told in the schools--see the above dropout story!

Generation Dropout
ABCNews is running a series of stories on the poor graduation rate.

• Video: High School Dropout Epidemic
• Dropout Generation: Nearly 1 in 3 Won't Graduate
• High School Dropouts Earn Far Less Money
• Solution to Dropout Generation: A Support Network

Slashdot discusses the story and What's the Problem With US High Schools?

Generation Next: Speak Up Be Heard
PBS and partners like USA Today take on a season-long project investigating the lives, passions, technology, religion, and environment of 16-25 year olds. The project is ongoing, with intermediate broadcast segments and a final documentary to be aired in January. Components are added to the site regularly and features published in partner organizations.

You Are the Historian: Investigating the First Thanksgiving.
Here is en extraordinarily rich site that would be vastly improved if it practiced what it preaches. The media are fantastic; the the narrative perspective, and worse, the instructions on the pompous Teacher's Guide, much less so.

Can you imagine bringing a teen into the Army, sitting them down, and giving them lessons: "You Are the General! Investigating the Battle of the Bulge!" No. As this lesson points out, the Native Americans knew how to teach history. They told stories, and the children were expected to learn them to pass them on to their children.

'Twould be nice, for example, if kids were to learn and remember something of Massasoit, Standish, Bradford, etc.

Still, a very rich site. And filled with sound, as you know we so like to hear. The media fan in me just loves it. This would make a fantastic forensic case study.

Buckeyes Win
And if it wasn't an historic enough game, Bo went and died.

Oh. Saturday night's pick 4 lottery numbers: 4239. We kid not.

Buckeyes vs. That Team From Up North
What? Your mind is on education and storytelling? You gotta get out more.

There's only 31 hours, 32 minutes and 54 seconds til kickoff time. You want History? #1 playing #2 in the last game, for the Big 10 Championship and clearly the National Title, in a season that started with the same #1 playing last year's #1 down in Austin? That's History friends!

Go Bucks!!

Beta Blogger, Site Update
Last week brought a little reprieve and time to finally(!!) get some dynamic dropdown menus onto the site. The code isn't quite 2006 Web 2.0, but it works--and great thanks to Aaron Boodman (www.youngpup.net). Hope it's now easier to find your way around.

And, for a reward, Google also opened its feature-complete beta Blogger to FTP users like us. Still a few entries to tag, and we hope they complete BlogThis, but so far, thanks Google!

Run Universal Javascript Animation Framework
The web is full of reports on this today, so why shouldn't we join in? Does it fill the bill? I don't know; I'm still looking for navigational components that install and work easily. So, we'll leave it up to you to decide if this beats the Animations in Ajax Control Toolkit, Macao Web Animation Framework, or any other.

Write in with your favorites, and history-telling examples.

FamilySearch.org
I thought this morn we'd talk about the benefits of religious diversity. Wait a minute!, say you? We're really off topic now? Hmmm.

Yesterday, we mentioned that FamilySearch and the Geneological Society of Utah are partners in in the Virginia Freedman Project. If this sounded odd to you, check GSU's mission statement, and lean closer: Mormons take their ancestry seriously. You can look up why yourself (or create an interactive explaining it!). The point here is that FamilySearch and GSU provide world-class resources for researching people.

Both, you'll note, are ministries of Church of Latterday Saints, so if you benefit in your work, say thanks for religious diversity!

Virginia Freedman Project Gov't Technology
Virginia Will Digitize African-American Historical Information
This announcement initially caught our eye as one more digitization effort to make note of. Something exciting here is the number and scope of organizations working together: National Archives, Genealogical Society of Utah, FamilySearch, state of Virginia, Black History Museum and Cultural Center of Virginia, and Howard University.

everystockphoto.com - your source for free photos
OK. Before we go, a link to a great image resource. But that's it!

Roadtrip to Northwestern!
We're off! If the #1 team in the nation isn't #1 Monday, and you don't hear from us...well, it may be because some Buckey fan found out about our record at away games.

Meanwhile, we're looking forward to finding a good Chicago Irish pub, a proper polish sausage, and a little culture and fun on the banks of Lake Michigan. Go Bucks!

Life After the Holocaust

To the Ends of the Earth Masterpiece Theatre
Three Sunday nights past, we sat down for William Golding's extraordinary drama of voyage on a converted 1770's British man-of-war. Golding, you might recall, started with Lord of the Flies; so his view of human nature runs somewhat hard.

Wouldn't your audience be interested in some of the characters and character of this story? Could you give life to a person of that time...just for a short while, for the young folk in school right now? Surely, with a bit of patience and teamwork,...you could do better than the history texts on their desk!

Jamestown Journey
Thursday, students (and you!) can join the opening of the celebration of America's 400th Anniversary. A live webcast will connect you to the spot where western civilization began to take root. Lessons plans and more are available.

GamesFirst! || Why Gamers Have No Eyes

"The National Summit on Video Games, Youth and Public Policy was both down to earth and informative. ... I honestly believe that the gaming industry by and large could have benefited from attending.

"Which is why the first article I'm writing about the summit has very little to do with what happened there, and everything to do with my disappointment in the lack of interest the event generated amongst the mainstream game media. ..."

The Last King Of Scotland Official Site
Has this movie been running? Either way, they put up a sweet Flash site.

The Field Museum | Underground Adventure - Virtual Tour
Here's a fine little interactive that lets kids virtually walk through an exhibit at Chicago's Field Museum.
Mind you the subject matter is a little dirty, but the kids should be ok.

Zune Coming Nov. 14
If you live in a bubble, as we sometimes do, you may not be ready for Zune--Microsoft's answer and ante to the iPod. Bigger screen, bigger battery, well,...have fun Googling on it!

We did see several Flash-to-Zune converters advertised. Why wouldn't it support Flash natively?

The Department of Education recognizes the promise of single-sex schools.
OK, nothing at all to do with web media. Should some kids learn without co-ed pressures? I have no idea. Do boys and girls learn differently sometimes? We sure better be open to that possibility--the evidences keep coming.

Hmmm. Maybe this does have something to do with history media. Think you that some stories will grab girls attention more than boys? Vice versa? Can the same story start with two (or more) different introductory narratives?

The 2006 Brown Center Report on American Education: How Well Are Our Students Learning?
You guessed it. We still haven't persuaded funders to stop funding more of the same reports on the problem; and give us money for the solution. But we whine...This one comes from the Brookings Institute (Report PDF):

..two very fascinating questions. The first is: Does the road of contentment, of happiness, if you will, as best we can measure it, of students in school make a discernible difference in their performance? The report then also takes up another somewhat unrelated question but equally important in the ongoing debate on No Child Left Behind, and that is the question of: How much truth is there to the common contention that the states are really gaming this law, artificially inflating the reported numbers of students that meet proficiency standards?

BBC - History - Interactive Content
BBC continues to add to its interactive and multimedia history content. This index gives you access to the whole lot of it. We saw a few previously not noticed: The Colosseum: Building the Arena of Death; Animated Map: Battle of the Somme; and Interactive Map of Auschwitz .

Marie Antoinette and the French Revolution PBS
The timeline/dynamic map of Global Revolution revolution is quite revealing.

Also, under "Royal Life" there's some great VR, spliced in with scenes from the film, all organized as a tour of the palace.

Turning the Corner to Quality Thomas B. Fordham Foundation
They say Edison tried a thousand materials before he hit on a working light bulb. Experimentation is critical to improving education; but like surgery, experimental failures hurt real people.

The Gates Foundation, the state of Ohio, and others asked Fordham to take a look at the work so far in Ohio's charter schools. Now, charter schools are generally beyond the scope of this blog. Yet we do have a certain interest in seeing a few education dollars unleashed from the entrenched, unimaginative, hidebound educrats and given over to people who emulate the visionaries of other professions... and actually try new things.

This report takes a hard look at Ohio's steps and mis-steps on the charter school path.

Give Kids Good Schools Week
I can't find one whiff of substance here, but hey: Rah! Rah!! Go Schools!! Doesn't that make you feel better?!

NewsHour Poetry Series PBS
The U.S. has a new poet laureate, and the Newshour continues its tradition of introducing and recognizing these and other outstanding poets. Says new laureate Donald Hall, "I've seen enormous increases in the consumption of poetry...poetry is simply becoming more popular. It's still not as popular as dog racing...but it has become infinitely more popular."

If writing with feeling interests you (and it should as a storyteller), visit the Newshour's poetry project, learn of some poets, read and hear their works, and explore more resources on poetry.

What a week! Downtown D.C. and AUSA 2006, with briefings from the G3/5/7 on out and down, not to mention hair-raising details on software-based radio waveforms, electromagnetic armor, and machine language translation. Then back to Ohio and straight into 36 hours of the Algonquin Mill Festival, with spinner-weavers, cloggers, flint-knappers, and way, way too much pancake batter, biscuit mix, and coffee grounds. We even got to chat extensively with the would-be replacement to Congressman Bob Ney, Joy Padgette; and a visitor from the Washington Times White-House team.

What a country!

AUSA 2006 Expo
This week took us to the world's greatest annual study of people, policy, terrain, technology, medicine, you name it. Friends, there is old history, and there is evolving history and if you want to meet people really deep into tomorrow's headline history, the AUSA annual meeting is the place to do it.

I can only summarize this way: I've encountered more than my share of real geniuses. The guys who invented machine learning and A.I. The The folks inventing Rails as we speak. Avi Tevanian, inventor of the Mac/NeXT OS Kernel. The men and women running our army are some awfully bright, learned, adaptive, creative, committed people. Hearing their briefings on the progress and change of the past three years is truly inspiring.

The State Of Web Development - Ajax set to surpass Flash in ‘07 Ajaxian
We always thought Flash was an iffy technology for many web applications. Maybe now, Flash can start concentrating on what it was invented to do: Tell Stories!

Now Hear This: Downloadable Audio Study Guides
We asked you: "How soon will it be till college students are learning more from their iPod than from the professor lecturing in front of them?

Textbook publisher Pearson and audio vendor Audible.com have teamed up to produce study notes: Vangonotes.com . We've already downloaded our first two (free) modules on reconstruction and are excited (OK, it's still a textbook publisher - yawn) to hear them!

Civic Literacy Report
We want to report more on this, but for now:
A study of 14,000 college freshmen and seniors at 50 (good) schools reveals:

• There is trivial difference between freshmen and seniors in their knowledge of America's heritage.


• At 16 of 50 schools, seniors knew less than freshmen!


• Overall, seniors failed the civic literacy exam with an average score of 53%.

Aga Khan Speaks Out on Understanding of Muslims NPR
The Aga Khan gives a rare radio appearance and talks about education. "Shallow" is a great word to use in in re our education on world history and civilizations.

"Pluralism" however is an easy buzzword. The answer is much greater efficiency of education - and much more available life-long study. Not to mention much wider education in the regions the Khan defends.

We're working at it...

Slashdot | YouTube Won't Sell For Less Than $1.5 Billion
Wow. And we're just looking for a few thou to bootstrap a national community.

NCLB Commission Webcast Aspen Institute
The No Child Left Behind Commission met in Cambridge and webcast this video. Now, an amazing amount of nothing is said by the first several speakers, so go for a walk or fast forward until... Gov. Romney gives an amazing performance. His familiarity with the details is astounding (especially for someone who just launched a politics-shattering healthcare program).

There follows a panel discussion: the mediocrity of state standards is well covered. Somebody better do something about generating higher standards before the fed bureaucrats are given the job!

Ages of English Timeline BBC
Sweet! Sound, a bit of animation, funny characters, trumpets...what more could you want? OK, yeah, story. But...
This one romps through 1500 years of English in 10 acts. Quite original.

Winners: 16th Flashforward Film Festival
Yep, the winners are in. Who create the most wonderful history education app? Well, we'll not know. The winner in the instructional category: GeeGuides, a subscription art education site.

Educational Entrepreneurship: Realities, Challenges, Possibilities AEI
We mentioned that our non-stop effort to attract friends and funders took us last week to D.C. 'Twas a short but reaffirming presentation. People with creative ideas who may be outside the system are making very positive and big contributions. They've now posted the event Video, summary, and transcript.

The 2006 Austin Game Conference OGX
Why aren't you in Austin? I mean, not only did you have a chance to see the top two football teams in the nation go to battle (Go Bucks!) you have Austin City Limits next weekend, FlashForward this week, and the Austin Games Conference last week. Who should spend September anywhere else?!

How We Dummies Succeed," Robert J. Samuelson, Washington Post, September 6, 2006
A good look at the American Learning System and how we muck along despite our problemic K12 schools.

Of course, if you're black, male, and inner city, you might need a bit more of a boost than Borders, Amazon, and the net terminal at your public lib can provide.

Fort Necessity National Battlefield
On our last trip to D.C., we finally had time to take in this gem of an historical site. Too often we forget about the earliest days of America--days when the Wild West was here in Ohio, and when marble icons like George Washington were wet-behind-the-ears scamps. The park boasts a spankin-new visitors center, and it is beautiful. Complete with a playground for the kids and a 30 minute movie, the center is the gateway to a four site park all Americans should see.

We're wondering about the funding for these long-overdue upgrades to our Nation's heritage sites. Are they part of the $100 million in history education funds? Are the parks just now making good use of user fees? Are outside donations the catalyst?

The Path to 9/11 ABC
We should start this by saying we generally dislike miniseries and docudramas. (To be fair, we don't see much else to like on the tele). Most days, we'd certainly agree with John Fund, who opines that "docudramas are the worst draft of History."

In all the hype over this show, it's worthwhile to view the movie in the context of the rest of the anniversary programming. Most all of it was quite shallow.

At the very least, The Path to 9/11 should be recognized as a tribute to all those victims of terrorism against the US--victims we way to often forget.

By the way, can you right now identify Robert D. Stetham?

God Endorses National Education Standards Thomas B. Fordham Foundation
Well, you'll just have to hear it foryourself...we can't possibly preface this one. Aug. 31 edition of the Education Gadfly Show, with an update the next week.

Amazon.com Unbox Video
Amazon.com launched its video download service yesterday. Not that you need more opportunities to watch South Park. You can, however, also find The History Channel.

Windows HS: Microsoft designs a school system CNN.com
Hard to believe they've already completed and opened this. Seems like we just reported on the announcement!

K: Erin Kissane A List Apart
Some articles on writing, and links to more.

Last day
When we last week suggested you swing by the National Museum of American History, we had no idea that TellingTheStory would make it. A last minute signup for Educational Entrepreneurship (and a wet Ohio Labor Day) had us spending the night near D.C., so why not?
'Twas a good chance to see how media new and old were mixing in the nation's central repository, and we were still amazed at the breadth of the collection. Most surprsising was Stanley, the super-computing Volkswagon that won last year's DARPA Grand Challenge. For a follower of DARPA initiatives, and a one-time tech at the lab which came in second (sniff) it's still somewhat shocking to find this years' super-high-tech already consigned to history!

Starting Too Early-- The best education reform: More sleep. OpinionJournal
"Waking teens from their deep REM sleep before 7 a.m.--which during late fall and winter is well before the rooster crows--is much like approaching a lion gnawing on an antelope carcass. "

OK, this may not help you build storytelling media celebrating the best people across time, but.... it may help if one of the little target audience yawns at you at o'dark.

The Patriot Spy - Webrangers NPS
This cool interactive from the National Park Service starts right: it has sound!. Designed to introduce students to four of Boston's historic locations, it assigns students four tasks involving a painting or document. (I masterfully got all 4). Completion here grants you a token to the larger Webranger game, and also links to the individual historic sites.

IMHO, the play to "critical thinking skills" is a little heavy; and I'd shorten the introductory directions. Also we learn almost nothing of the people involved. Still, kudos to the Park Service team for this exploration of learning through sound, motion and interactity.

NMAH: Closing the National Museum of American History
Might want to change your labor day plans--your next chance to see the National Museum will be mid 2008! "The full museum will close to the public as of September 5. (Labor Day, September 4, will be the last day to visit the museum.)"

When State Standards Go Wrong Thomas B. Fordham Foundation
Later today, a gathering at the National Press Club will receive the latest study of state education standards. If you check in, and are as disappointed in progress as might be expected, you might just sign up for next Tuesday's session on Entrepreneurship in Education (AEI.org).

Our own experience with state education standards a few years back was a real eye-opener. The BS-to-content ratio was amazing even by government standards. And the writing! Oh, my. We had previously thought engineers to be negligent with the basics of Rhetoric. Huh. They had nothing on O.D.E. educrats!

The Violent Underground - Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone From Yahoo! News
Sites visits the tunnels used by the North Vietnamese in their war with America. Interesting video and photos.

Gucci goes Ajaxy!
Ajaxian points out the relaunch of Gucci's site with AJAX and script.aculo.us instead of Flash. We don't shop Gucci, thus can't personally vouch that the new site looks like the old version; it does imitate many Flash sites past. You can try Runway Fashion for their version of slider effects.

Most important to us, you can see that we were able to give you a link for Runway Fashion. That's not always the case in Flash sites, and one of the big advantages of the AJAXy approach.

FlashForward 2006
The 2006 edition of this famous conference is just around the corner: Sept. 11-14 in Austin!

UBCD for Windows 3.0!
On occaision, we take this space to give news that has nothing to do with history or education or new media, but may just make your life easier. Today is such a day: This summer, while we were burning ribs or somesuch and you were who-knows-where, the folks at Ultimate Boot CD for Windows were busy releasing version 3.0!

If you've never used UBCD, you may be lucky, or wealthy, or you just didn't know it was there. But is sure helps fix broken computers, as we often do to pay the web hosting provider. And version 3.0 is just sweet. Much, much easier to build a disk than before. New tools, new look, mem test before boot - all great new stuff.

Alexander Hamilton . Gallery of Peers New-York Historical Society
Here we have a unique way of approaching a story: a browser of the main character's contemporaries. In this case Hamilton's friends and enemies run from Dolly Madison to Gouverneur Morris.

Death in Sakkara BBC
This beautifully crafted game of Egyptian mystery had me hooked - for about 10 minutes.

Alas, if there's deep learning here, I'll not know. I spent quite awhile trying to guess the combination to the safe - without which the game just ends in the 4rd scene. Next, my arrow-key skills were too low to catch the thief--without whom the game also comes to a screeching halt. I fear the discussion board won't help me cheat through the mouse chase, so... let me know how the game comes out.

Flickr Clusters: Photos tagged with americanrevolution
Of course you want images for your interactive--or maybe you just need some inspriration and you know you could get it if you could just make get the gas money to go to Antietam or the Alamo. Flickr clusters perhaps to the rescue. Tag searches are great-sometimes. And sometimes they're a bit exasperating. If you haven't found Flickr clusters, here's a heads up. We found clusters for americanrevolution, civilwar, statues, civilrights, WWII, and WWI. Of course, the clusters for Kings turned up more on Kings Canyon and Kings College; I can't find any methodical way to find new clustered tags. But maybe you know more, or can add these and more to the Wiki.

Yahoo! Video
This may be obvious to many readers: Look to the video services of Yahoo! and others for inspiration, ideas, clips, and connections. Yahoo's collection has grown nicely. (Of course, you may see a lot of other stuff). Try Thomas Jefferson, American Revolution, Crusades, or just History.

Constitution High School Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History
The impetus to teach more history grows!! You recall the National Constitution Center? They've teamed up with Guilder Lehrman to build and run a high school. It's in Philly - home to some of the very worst schools in the nation a few years back.

More surprising is that there are already 31 History High Schools around the country. But maybe you, dear reader, go to one!

Drake Well Museum
In our non-stop quest to bring you the best ideas in storytelling, we took one for the team and took time from our camping weekend in Allegheny National Forest to visit Titusville and the Drake Oil Well Museum. We walked in the footsteps and learned of the tenacity of Col. Drake (no, not Sir Francis Drake - Edwin Drake).

Of all things, the movie in the visitors center starred a young Vincent Price!

Good news for those interested: The 150th anniversary of this huge moment in the industrial revolution is just around the corner...and the Feds are providing money to celebrate. Big improvements to this site will be coming in the next several years. Send them your ideas for new media!

Click to activate and use this control ActionScript.com
We missed this - you probably didn't. If the problem still exists, or if you are creating based on old info, you might want to check out the solutions.

We hadn't actually seen Actionscript.com ("The Flash/Flex ActionScript Developer Community") for awhile. Glad to see they're still flying!

Enterprise Integration with Ruby Maik Schmidt / Pragmatic Bookshelf
OK, we're not really going to tell you about building enterprise software. I wouldn't begin to presume!

But an hour with this book this morn cleared up for me my recent intuition to learn Ruby and Rails. I get these feelings about some technologies and languages and not about others; until this morn I couldn't place exactly why Ruby draws me.

It's this: the OHP website is far from "Enterprise". But it ( along with certain of my other projects) has enterprise-like aspects. Most of these are faked through some generously open and WELL documented library of php functions or free services that together deliver the blog, forums, wiki, etc. But it's becoming apparent that keeping up will require much more code, especially on the DOM side.

Ruby gives the feeling that one can hope to pull together many code bits in the way enterprises have, without the total confusion of JAVA & Javascript libraries, frameworks, and tools that have been the case so far.

This hope may or may not mature, but that's what struck me while reading this well-crafted book.