Now on Obama, since the political can has already been opened I ask you. Do you think Obama is Patriotic? (which patriotism I do believe, belongs in the classroom) see my post on my political blog at http://citizenandsoldier.blogspot.com/2008/01/is-barack-obama-patriotic.html

on this issue.

Lorraine:
Since you now brought up religion (which also does no belong in the classroom)
Why is it okay and common for the media to confront “Pastor” Huckabee and the “Mormon” Romney and Obama gets a pass every time? In a democracy, the president works for us, as an American citizen, I believe I have every right to get an explanation on his affiliation to Islam. See http://citizenandsoldier.blogspot.com/2008/01/what-are-barrack-obamas-connections-to.html

Another thing I did shortly after I set up my blog was create a subscription option for people to just subscribe to educational technology related posts only. In the past month I actually took that feedburner chicklet off my right sidebar where the chicklets for my main blog feed and podcast remain– but that subscription option is still available and is listed on my page for Email Updates, which is one of the top navigation bar links on my blog. That feed is still available, and you may want to opt for that subscription option instead of subscribing to my main feed. The way this works is I have “edtech” set as the parent category of many of my blog categories. WordPress automatically generates RSS feeds for individual categories, so that feed (which I have burned with feedburner) includes basically all my posts that touch on educational technology. These are the current edtech categories:

Although I want to be sensitive about not turning people off by sharing ideas about my faith or political views in this blog space, at the same time I acknowledge that in many cases my political and religious views do color my ideas and opinions, and those will be revealed in part or in whole. I can assure you that I am not going to turn this blog into a political or religious pulpit, but at the same time I do not want to mislead you and say I am going to try and never share ideas here which go beyond the scope of education and technology.

In closing, I do appreciate your comment and am glad to have you as both a reader and a commenter. It is very important that we remain open, in my view, to other perspectives and ideas, and I am always open to constructive suggestions as well as thoughtful criticism. In the case of politics and education, I DO have strong views about the track we need to get on with respect to educational reform, and I do want to continue speaking out about those issues here. I hope these comments have shed more light on my thinking about the issue you bring up, my sensitivity to it, and the ways in which I have and continue to try to move posts focused exclusively on politics and faith to other blogging venues.

I really enjoy reading your posts and listening to you podcasts on education. I am bordering on whether or not to unsubscribe because of your political posts lately. Your politics are not why I subscribed and read your content. Please separate the two.

Kathy: I think you’re right about some people preferring “sensationalized” and “secret” messages. Part of human psychology I guess, but still something we should struggle to combat. I certainly prefer the truth as well. That is a good way to frame this in discussions with younger students as well as older adults: We should be passionate about truth and sharing truth, not fiction.

Heather: I am disgusted that Bill Bennett would stoop to that level. Good grief. The stakes are high, so some people are going to “pull out all the stops,” even if it means doing things that are unethical. Sad to hear about that from the author of “The Book of Virtues,” which I incidentally love and loved reading from to my kids when I taught 4th grade.

After looking at Snopes with another teacher, I’m wondering if other fact checking
sites might be more worth recommending. Although it does document the information,
the presentation seems very flashy and commercial, and so I’m wondering if some
of the other “fact check sites” might be worth exploring as well.

None of that negates the excellent point of your post or the fact-checking abilities
of Snopes… Just wishing it were a little more “serious” in it’s presentation.

I run a website called Understand Media about media literacy, with original articles, resources, links, videos, podcasts, and a (as of late) politically charged blog. Check it out if you have a chance, and maybe you’ll consider linking to it if you find it interesting?

Thanks, and keep up the great work.

This is an excellent and important post.

When we bat around the need to teach better information literacy–this sort of email shows why it is so critical in a democracy that the students we raise have good literacy skills.

Thanks for raising our consciousness!