Who Knew

I used to blog for my old company, but they took the blog down. I am
not actually allowed to own the writings I put up on that blog, but as
I reference them on occasion in my writing I am putting those articles
up in my archives here for reference sake. I'll put the tag GS on those
articles noting that they were originally published on the http://schoolfinder.globalscholar.com/blog/

Who Knew

November 21, 2008 – 5:47 am by Brendan

Last night I was looking through some bookmark tags on Delicious. For me bookmarks tend to come in waves and I don’t always have time to organize them when I save them. You know you read a page and follow a link and that has three more links and that one has six more, next thing you know you’ve spent three hours following links and you have twenty five pages you want to save and hopefully read when you have time.I used to try to create folders and organize everything that way. The problem was I would end up with several folders with similar bookmarks or I couldn’t remember where I put the bookmarks or whatever. So I’ve started to use delicious to tag my bookmarks.

Why am I going through all of this? In a vain attempt to lead into the interesting bookmark I found using tags. (yes found, I saved it and forgot about it) Of course the idea of tagging and using delicious can be very useful tools for anyone who uses the Internet a lot. (In case you too have saved and forgotten about a bookmark)

What was the bookmark you ask? It’s a government thing.

I never would have guessed in a million years that the NSA would get into making lesson plans. Really, do you think quality lessons to be a part of national security?

It is kind of logical if you think about it. Math is often a necessary tool in subjects like cryptography, and I’m sure there are tech geeks galore in the NSA. Then of course many folks have said that an educated populace is important to national security.

(I’ve heard it, but even as an educator I’ve always thought that was a bit of a stretch.) I’ll admit that large scale education makes a difference, but that doesn’t explain a couple of pages on a government web site.

Anyway the NSA not only has these lesson plans, but hosts “The Mathematics Education Partnership Program (MEPP) is a National Security Agency outreach program to promote mathematics and science ”

So Math teachers spend a few weeks this summer in beautiful Ft. Meade MD. Do your part to keep America safe.