© 2006 Fabíola Medeiros, Flickr | CC-BY | via Wylio There have been several visualizations created over the past few years showing how people spend their days. I’ve used them in lessons where students have created infographics indicating how they spend their time, and then they compare their results with the interactives. And I’ve collected all of them in The Best Visualizations Of How People Spend Their Days. New data has just been released for 2014 by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and both Five Thirty Eight and The Wall Street Journal have reports on it, as well as new visualizations of what the numbers say.

Wrote via Compfight The Best Places For Students To Learn About…Their Names is a "Best" list I keep updated and periodically use in my classes as a resource where students can learn about their names and the concept of names. Here are some new additions to that list: What your name tells us about your age, where you live, your political leanings and your job is from The Washington Post. The Chinese Guide to Avoiding a Bad English Name is from The Atlantic. What’s In A Name? It Could Matter If You’re Writing To Your Lawmaker is from NPR. The importance of a name is from The Washington Post. Find out what your name would be if you were born today http://t.co/UV2tw4CKz0 pic.twitter.com/erzfvw5XRF — TIME.com (@TIME) May 19, 2015 Want to know when your name was popular? Check it out on the U.S. Baby Name Explorer: http://t.co/eLGeI41gw4 #dataviz pic.twitter.com/1w3DNytLZd — Randy Olson (@randal_olson) May 13, 2015

© 2010 Tim Green, Flickr | CC-BY | via Wylio I just realized that, with the posting of another "Best" list yesterday, that the count has reached exactly 1,450 of them! You can see all of them here, and they’re categorized, more or less. And most are regularly updated, too.

© 2011 Susana Fernandez, Flickr | CC-BY-ND | via Wylio My colleague Katie Hull Sypnieski and I have begun work on the sequel to our popular The ESL/ELL Teacher’s Survival Guide. We have about 10,000 words done, and have about 70,000 more to go by our September 1st deadline. Thankfully, some of our colleagues are also contributing sections, so we should be able to get it done in time. I think educators are going to find it very useful. This will be my eighth book in eight years, and I have reached a firm decision — I’m going to give myself two years to do a book from now on. No more of this book-a-year business!

JSTOR, otherwise known as that disappointing place that a Google Search links you to when you’re researching something and find that you have to pay $35 to access a study, created JSTOR Teaching Resources earlier this year and sent out their first newsletter today. They’re making quite a few of their papers available for free through the effort though, for the life of me, I can’t imagine high school teachers using any of them apart from short excerpts (and that could be valuable). They do have some other resources, though, that might be useful, including an online course for high school students on how to research. It’s worth keeping an eye on them to see what they can deliver in the future…

Ways To Find The ‘Right Balance’ Between School & Home is the headline of my latest Education Week Teacher column. Educators Renee Moore, Debbie Silver, Julia Thompson and Vicki Davis provide us all with some advice on balancing teaching with a personal life. Here are some excerpts:

Thankfully, the Supreme Court today ruled in favor of Obamacare subsidies. Matthew Yglesias wrote a very useful, and short, piece on the decision that I think would be a great text for students to read and learn what reading is really all about. Here’s a quick excerpt: I’m adding it to The Best Resources On "Close Reading" — Help Me Find More.

The Terror is the headline of a column in today’s New York Times that’s written by author and professor Junot Díaz. You’ll want to read the whole piece, which is very short. Here’s an excerpt: I this his entire essay would be a good one for my students to read, followed by this writing prompt: What is Professor Díaz saying about what fear does to us and how we should deal with it? Do you agree with him? To support your opinion, be sure to include specific examples drawn from your own experience, your observations of others, or any of your readings. I’m adding this post to The Best Posts On Writing Instruction, where you can find other prompts I use.

Every month I make a few short lists highlighting my choices of the best resources I through (and learned from) Twitter, but didn’t necessarily include them in posts here on my blog. I’ve already shared in earlier posts several new resources I found on Twitter — and where I gave credit to those from whom I learned about them. Those are not included again in post. If you don’t use Twitter, you can also check-out all of my "tweets" on Twitter profile page. You might also be interested in The Best Tweets Of 2015 - So Far. [View the story "June’s (2015) Best Tweets — Part Four" on Storify]

© 2013 Ron Mader, Flickr | CC-BY-SA | via Wylio I’ve previously shared a lesson, and a collection of videos, I use for a lesson on perception in my Theory of Knowledge class (see Videos: Here’s The Simple Theory of Knowledge Lesson On Perception I Did Today). Today, I discovered a great series of short commercials with the theme "Don’t Judge Too Quickly" that would make a great addition to that lesson. Plus, they would good for English Language Learners to watch and describe what they see, along with learning the critical thinking lesson that it’s dangerous to make assumptions. First off, here’s a group of them together. The second to the last one, however, is probably not appropriate to show in class: Here’s another one: There are others on YouTube, too, but, like the one I cautioned about in the first collection, they are a little "iffy" to show in class.