First up, a blog by and about an educator, Jennifer Thomas’ Portfolio and Blog.

She can be quite reflective as here in this piece –

For myself, I think I struggle with creativity the most out of the list of 21st century skills. When I am forced to come up with something creative, I immediately get nervous. If the word creative is even mentioned in an assignment description, I immediately think I will not do well. I mostly don’t even know where to start, and being a math/stats person for so long, I have internalized a stereotype somewhere along the line and have never really viewed myself as a creative person. This is not necessarily true, but I often squash the creative side I do have.

She posts a few times a month. If you are a teacher or planning to be one, here is a kindred soul.

Next, we come to Emma Harger’s Portfolio. She has a lot of material on her blog and is in no way shy to say what she thinks. I find her work appealing. Here, read this post –

Women’s magazines are not known for being very progressively-minded. Their main focuses tend to be on looks, dieting and getting men. Although some magazines have started to take baby steps into the pool of reality—for example, plus-sized model Crystal Renn on the cover of Glamour, wearing a bikini—some magazines, or people working for them, are nowhere near this pool. In fact, they’re sitting on a deck chair beside the pool, shuddering in disgust when anyone with even a little bit of body fat walks near.

She is a journalist and intent on success. Give her stuff a read and leave a note of encouragement. (Remember she doesn’t like it when women are referred to as girls!)

Balloonland features some fervent political writing. Actually, all of its is fervent. I don’t this guy has any soft beliefs. I like him. We don’t live in a time for the “soft” believer.

Here’s a sample of his writing – (He also draws!)

I suppose I can understand why the “good past” is so seductive to many – it appears to be such a clean and understandable story, with lots of firmly closed plotlines and happy(ish) endings, compared to what they find themselves embroiled in now. But it’s old news, and old information can never truly apply to a new and evolving situation.

Now this is from the Computer Education Blog and from this post.

Today, I got to lecture to first year students in CS1315, our Introduction to Media Computation course. This was the first time since 2006 that I’ve been in that class. I’m not teaching the class, unfortunately — I was encouraging those students to go beyond their requirements to take a second computer science course. I’m going to be teaching CS1316, our Media Computation data structures class “Representing Structure and Behavior,” in the Spring (for the first time since 2007). CS1315 is required for all Liberal Arts, Architecture, and Management students at Georgia Tech. CS1316 meets some degree programs’ requirements for technical electives, but is mostly an elective course. So, my job this morning was to encourage a group of non-CS major undergrads to consider taking more computer science.

It was such fun! I am so pumped-up afterward, in spite of the rainy Monday morning. I told them that the course explained how the Wildebeests charged over the ridge in Disney’s “The Lion King,” and that the same techniques underly how video game characters are rendered and their behavior is realized. I explained that the ideas of modeling and simulation that underly the course can be used to answer a wide variety of questions, from how do ants forage for food to what happens in human emigrations.

This teacher is still fired up after what must have been a long career. (If you are not teaching first year classes you’ve been climbing the totem pole for some time.) I’m impressed. This computing blog is written by Mark Guzdial, a professor in the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Institute of Technology.

This guy is a major honcho in the computing field. So if you’re interested in computers and/or teaching, don’t pause for a moment, put this one on your favorites.

Well, I hope you enjoyed my little internet visiting. There’s a whole world out there to explore and it changes every day.

Please remember, the average blogger is seldom read by anyone. When you visit a site, it is important to leave encouragement.

James Pilant