Mike Falick's Blog

Shakespeare Searched: A Website Dedicated Solely to the Works of Shakespeare

If you like Shakespeare, or if you need to find a particular word within his works, then Shakespeare Searched is for you.  From the Shakespeare Searched website:

About Shakespeare Searched

Shakespeare Searched is a search engine designed to provide quick access to passages from Shakespeare's plays and sonnets. We cluster search results by topic, work, and character to make it easy to find exactly what you're looking for. From something as simple as identifying the speaker of a particular quote to discovering underlying thematic elements across works, Shakespeare Searched has you covered.

This website is not a replacement for a copy of the text. It provides no analysis or footnotes. It is meant to supplement a traditional reading of a work.

Shakespeare Searched for Teachers

Shakespeare Searched is a great resource for you and your students. You can recommend it to your students when writing papers to quickly locate passages that they remember reading but are having trouble finding. It provides citations for each passage so using what they found is a breeze. Shakespeare Searched returns only passages from the works of Shakespeare -- no analysis, opinions, or interpretations. That means potential issues with plagiarism or uncited sources are avoided. We provide the text, the rest is up to the student.

You can plan entire lessons or assignments around Shakespeare Searched. Have your students search for a subject like "love" or "death" and then report back on the results. What sort of topic clusters are generated? Use the tabs to cluster the results by work to see which play or sonnet a theme appears in the most. Or cluster by character to see what kind of patterns emerge.

Shakespeare Searched for Students

So you read the play and you're writing the paper but you can't remember where that one quote you need is. That's where Shakespeare Searched comes in. Just search by character, work, or a keyword or two and we'll find your quote complete with citation. For example, remember all that stuff in Romeo and Juliet about thumb-biting? What was that about? It's all right here. Wasn't that easier than searching through the tiny type in your Shakespeare book?

Shakespeare Searched doesn't give you sample essays, analysis, or anything like that. What it does do is help you generate your own ideas. Maybe you're having trouble coming up with a paper topic? Need some inspiration? Search for a particular play or character and check out the clusters on the left. They give you a quick topical and thematic overview and are a great starting point.

For example, a search of Much Ado About Nothing brings back a "Love" topic cluster with 66 passages in it. Open up that cluster by clicking on the plus symbol next to the cluster title and you'll see a sub-cluster for "Scorn." What does love have to do with scorn? And I thought this was a comedy? Explore the clusters to find out. Shakespeare Searched helps you uncover these kinds of connections and gets you on your way to a great paper.

Stratford Tennis Coach Frazee Named Coach of the Year by the Texas Tennis Coaches Association

Stratford's Tennis Coach, Rory Frazee, has been named as the 2009 Coach of the Year by the Texas Tennis Coaches Association.

From the Stratford Booster Club website:

We are thrilled to announce that our tennis coach, Coach Frazee, who is celebrating his 25th anniversary with SBISD (23 of these at Stratford), has just been named 2008-2009 Class 5A Coach of the Year by the Texas Tennis Coaches Association.  We have always known that Coach Frazee is the best of the best, and are so excited that the TTCA has recognized his dedication to the sport, our athletes, and our school.   Coach Frazee has always been the cornerstone of the tennis program’s “Tradition of Excellence.”  To paraphrase Coach Frazee, “winning is fun, but there is a lot more to a successful team than what is indicated in the score.”  CONGRATULATIONS COACH FRAZEE!!!

History Matters: A Useful Website for High School Students and Teachers

I recently discovered the History Matters website which is designed for high school and college teachers and students to provide a gateway to web resources and offers other useful materials for teaching U.S. history.  From the History Matters website:

History Matters: The U.S. Survey Course on the Web was first developed in 1998 by the American Social History Project/Center for Media & Learning, City University of New York, and the Center for History and New Media, George Mason University, with initial funding from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation. Over the past several years, it has become a highly regarded gateway to web resources as well as a repository of unique teaching materials, first-person primary documents, and guides to analyzing historical evidence for high school and college students and teachers of American history. In January 2005, the American Historical Association awarded History Matters the James Harvey Robinson Prize for the site’s “outstanding contribution to the teaching and learning of history.” In April 2005, the New York Public Library selected the site for its “Best of Reference 2005.” You can read a more detailed overview of the site, here.

Here is a list of our current features:

• Many Pasts: contains 1,000 primary documents in text, image, and audio that emphasize the experiences of “ordinary” Americans throughout U.S. history. All of the documents have been screened by historians and are accompanied by annotations that address their larger historical significance and context. Browse a list of documents sorted by time period, beginning with the earliest. Or visit the Advanced Search to quickly locate documents by topic, time period, keyword, or type of document.
• Making Sense of Evidence: helps students and teachers make effective use of primary sources. “Making Sense of Documents” provide detailed strategies for analyzing online primary materials (including film, music, numbers, photographs, advertisements, oral history, and letters and diaries) with interactive exercises and a guide to traditional and online sources. “Scholars in Action” segments show how scholars puzzle out the meaning of different kinds of primary sources (from cartoons to house inventories), allowing you to try to make sense of a document yourself and then providing audio clips in which leading scholars interpret the document and discuss strategies for overall analysis.
• WWW.History: is our annotated guide to more than 850 useful websites for teaching U.S. history and social studies. We have carefully selected and screened each site for quality and provide a 1-paragraph annotation that summarizes its content, its strengths and weaknesses, and its utility for teachers. Information is provided on the type of resource (text, images, audio, and video) available. Browse sites by topic and time period or look through a list of some of our favorite sites. Or visit the Advanced Search to quickly locate WWW.History sites by topic, time period, keyword, kind of primary source, or type of resource. We also include extended scholarly web reviews as a regular feature of History Matters. In collaboration with the Journal of American History (JAH) we review approximately 25 websites per year. The reviews are co-published by the JAH and History Matters and appear in both venues. The archive page offers all featured web reviews.
• Reference Desk: provides annotated links to resources on standards, citing and evaluating websites, and understanding copyright and fair use laws as they apply to the use and creation of educational materials on the web.
• Talking History: History Matters organized 25 online forums with leading historians and teachers about the teaching of major topics in U.S. history—from early settlement to the Vietnam War. Those discussions are archived here and contain many useful teaching suggestions.
• Syllabus Central: provides annotated syllabi that offer creative approaches to teaching, with particular emphasis on innovative ways of organizing the U.S. Survey and integrating technology. Teachers reflect on how a social history approach, active learning techniques, and web-based resources and new media have affected their teaching and their students.
• Students as Historians: presents examples of the kinds of projects history students, from high school to graduate school, have done on the Internet. Projects range from oral histories or essays with web links to visual essays or exhibits. Browse the full list or visit the Advanced Search to locate student projects quickly by topic, time period, or keyword.
• Digital Blackboard: provides successful web-based assignments—some we have developed ourselves, others developed by such groups as the Library of Congress and the National Archives—as practical models for integrating new media into the classroom. Browse through the full list or visit our Advanced Search to quickly locate assignments by topic, time period, or keyword.
• Secrets of Great History Teachers: In these interviews distinguished teachers share their strategies and techniques. Good teaching is more often honored in rhetoric than reality. And great teachers are generally known locally within their own schools, but less often to a larger group of national colleagues. Our goal in this section is, in part, to identify and honor those people who have taught with excellence, dedication, and distinction. But more than that, we believe that these teachers have lessons to offer the rest of us.
• Puzzled by the Past: Between 1997 and 2003, History Matters presented historical puzzles and quizzes. We are no longer adding new puzzles, but we include here an archive of 20 past puzzles that can be used in classrooms to inspire creative thinking and challenge assumptions.
• Past Meets Present: was a feature of History Matters between 1998 and 2001. In it, historians offered their views on the relationship between current events and larger historical themes, between the past and the present, placing some of the most controversial political and social topics of the day in historical perspective. We have not continued this feature, but we include an archive of past commentaries on such topics as capital punishment and gun control.

List of all History Matters documents.

Stratford vs. Katy

Interested in the game today but unable to make it to watch in person?  You can follow the action online at this link (you will need Windows Media Player to listen).

Recap of the Board's November 9, 2009, Workshop Meeting

Our Board held its monthly workshop meeting tonight. Here's a recap of the issues discussed and actions taken on tonight's Agenda

We had three discussion items on tonight's agenda.  The first item was a discussion of the 2008-2009 Audit and Comprehensive Annual Financial Report for the Year Ended June 30, 2009. While the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR) itself will not be presented until the Board meeting on November 23, 2009, our auditors gave the District a clean bill of health.  I will post the CAFR as part of the November 23, 2009, Board Meeting Recap.

Our second discussion item concerned the 2010-2011 Middle School and High School Program of Studies Guide. As regular readers of this blog know, Spring Branch was involved in lobbying for the changes to the graduation requirements contained in House Bill 3 passed during the 81st Legislative Session last Spring (see this prior post for more information).  In order to add structure to these changes, the District has created suggested career clusters.  While not mandatory, these career clusters will, at the student's choice, provide the opportunity for students to choose courses based on a student's interests or career goals.

Our final discussion item on the Agenda was a presentation of the Schematic Design/Design Development for the New Spring Branch Elementary School. The .pdf of the schematic design can be viewed by clicking here. Even better, click the video below for a 3D animation of the design.

TED Video of the Week: Ian Goldin: Navigating Our Global Future

This week's TED Video of the Week is from Ian Goldin, whose talk is entitled the "Navigating Our Global Future." From the TED website:

As globalization and technological advances bring us hurtling towards a new integrated future, Ian Goldin warns that not all people may benefit equally. But, he says, if we can recognize this danger, we might yet realize the possibility of improved life for everyone.

Regular (nearly daily) Blogging will Resume Now

Sorry for the recent lack of posts.  Regular blogging resumes now.