Homeroom D 140

Free Movies

Big Five Glories - Classic movies are the whole point of this site. It features films from the 1910s to the 1970s. Watch dramas, comedies, horror, westerns and other films, in glorious black and white.

Classic Cinema Online - Another great classic film site, it highlights several movies each day. Old serials are available, too, in daily installments. You can search for great new films in a number of genres, including silent films.

Clicker - Want films that are a little more modern? This site links to movie categories ranging from horror to kids movies to documentaries. This site doesn't show the movies, but links to sites that offer online rental or purchase. However, you can also find a helping of free links.

Crackle - Looking for a wide range of free and uncut movies? Art films, comedies, anime and many other types of films are available here. The selection is constantly rotating, so check back often. Some movies will require you to sign up to view content, and most have commercials.

Hulu - This site should need no introduction. It hosts hundreds of popular TV shows and movies from multiple networks. You'll find classic to modern action films, dramas, foreign films and musicals, among other genres. Some films require you to sign in to watch, especially those intended for a more mature audience. Expect to see commercials as well.

Internet Archive - This site collects public-domain works, so it's mostly classic films. Feature films, shorts, silent films and old trailers are all available. Browse entire collections or focus on specific subjects. The search feature is handy if you have a classic film you're trying to find. If you haven't seen it, I recommend His Girl Friday with Cary Grant.

Steven Spielberg Film & Video Archive - This site, hosted by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, hosts documentaries and personal films from a dark moment in world history. It's a great site for history buffs, but I wouldn't recommend it for children.

YouTube - YouTube hosts numerous free movies, not just short user-made clips. The OpenFlix channel has plenty of classic films. See mysteries, adventure films, romances, westerns, documentaries and more. YouTube Screening Room is a channel dedicated to short independent films. Four new films are featured every two weeks, so the selection changes often.

OpenFlix: www.youtube.com/openflix

Screening Room: www.youtube.com/ytscreeningroom

YouTube Movies: www.youtube.com/movies

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.
If we are to guard against ignorance and remain free, it is the responsibility of every American to be informed."
-Tom Jefferson

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
-Viktor Frankl

Inscribed on a New England tomb stone:
"Most of the things that killed me never happened"

“The need for a body of common knowledge and common reference does not disappear when a society is pluralistic. On the contrary, it grows more necessary, so that people of different origins and occupation may quickly find familiar ground and as we say, speak a common language.”

—Jacques Barzun

T. H. White, the British naturalist turned novelist to write “The Once and Future King,” calls upon the druid Merlyn to teach a lesson to the young prince Arthur:

“You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting.”

It's not enough to be busy; so are the ants. The question is: what are we busy about?

-Henry David Thoreau

I am alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit. In my afternoon walk I would fain forget all my morning occupations and my obligations to Society. But it sometimes happens that I cannot easily shake off the village. The thought of some work will run in my head and I am not where my body is — I am out of my senses. In my walks I would fain return to my senses. What business have I in the woods, if I am thinking of something out of the woods?

"It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has

"If learning is an act of exploration, then technology equips the explorer for the journey of a lifetime, if you follow the correct map and not wander off into the weeds.

"Ultimately, educational technology is not about technology. It's about what teachers and students are doing with technology to extend their knowledge and understanding of the world around them."

Exceptional performance doesn't happen without exceptional effort, and even allegedly inherited abilities - like IQ and other "smartness" measures - improve markedly and continuously when people work hard, have good coaching, and believe they will keep getting better. The nature versus nurture debate persists in academia and society. But natural gifts are useless without lots of practice. People, teams, and organizations that are novices at something almost always do it badly at first; brilliant or at least competent performance is achieved through raw persistence, coupled with the belief that improvement will happen. What people are able to do as beginners is far less important than whether they try hard and keep learning every day.

Research in dozens of domains reveals a similar story - exceptional performance doesn't happen without approximately 10 years of nearly daily, deliberate practice, for about four hours a day, by people who somehow (e.g. coaching, skilled peers or competitors, or books) have access to the best techniques. This 10-year rule holds in every domain - chess, medicine, auditing, programming, bridge, physics, juggling, dance, and music. And once achieved, exceptional performance can't be maintained without relentless effort.

Michael Wesch, cultural anthropologist fron Kansas State University, worries that we're becoming an "eyes down" society of the smart phone-focused and that our technology might be sapping our capacity for empathy.
"We stand at a crossroads right now. One of the roads doesn't go to a very happy place. We're starting to realize that, while all of this technology seems to promise new possibility for freedom, we're also seeing new forms of control emerge. We see new possibility for community, new types of connections. And we also see people using these technologies to isolate themselves more and more. These tools can help to create a richer, more engaged democracy. But they can also become the ultimate tools of distraction."

"We can no longer blame the media," he added. "This world is no more or less than what we make of it. And we as educators have a double responsibility at this moment to, not only make of this what we want it to be, but to create students who can make something better of all this."

"We have heard it over and over again: Today's students have grown up with ubiquitous technology in their lives, including cell phones, social media, and the internet, and as a result they are far more comfortable and proficient with technology than older generations could ever hope to be. Some research, however, has concluded that, while the Net Generation may indeed be adept at cutting and pasting, texting, Googling, and Facebooking, their range of skills does not necessarily extend to more complex technological tasks, such as creating and publishing digital stories or websites. What's more, critics have cautioned educators about the possible dangers of assuming that students are natural-born technology users, including failing to instruct them in the digital age skills they will need to participate in a global, collaborative economy."

Darwin's magnum opus introduced the world to a systematic, scientific argument that explained the diversity of life.

His

prophetic words in the closing paragraph of The Origin of Species are symbolized by the butterfly on the dandelion.

-Higher Education and the New Media Reality