Building empires to learn math

A game about ancient civilizations is helping some elementary- and middle-school students in Utah better understand basic and advanced math, practice problem-solving skills and learn ancient history. The students face hundreds of complex decisions in running their own virtual societies as part of a math game called Empire created by their teacher, Scott Laidlaw. As the Salt Lake Tribune reports, children are encouraged to focus on solving problems using mental strategies rather than paper and pencil.


Tags: Math, History, K-12, Education by Sistrunk

Newly-released photos reveal despair after MLK assassination

LIFE.com, the website of the defunct print magazine, has put online a series of previously unseen photographs taken following the assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.

The series of 13 photographs includes pictures of the cleaning up of the blood outside the Memphis, Tennessee, motel room where King was shot and a photo of his colleagues gathered in his room following his death.

The website accompanied the black-and-white pictures with comments from the LIFE photographer, Henry Groskinsky, who shot the pictures.

On the evening of April 4, 1968, Groskinsky ended up in King’s hotel room, where the civil rights leader’s associates including Andrew Young and the Rev. Ralph David Abernathy Sr. were sadly assembled.

Life.com, a joint venture between Time Inc., which owns the LIFE archives, and the Getty Images photo service, went online on Tuesday.

The website features pictures from LIFE's historic collection and new photos from Getty.

The LIFE collection includes pictures from renowned photojournalists such as Gordon Parks, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Margaret Bourke-White, and W. Eugene Smith.


Tags: Martin Luther King Photos, Martin Luther King, History, Civil Rights, Photography, Life.com, Education by Sistrunk

John Hope Franklin, revered historian, dies at 94

U.S. historian and civil rights advocate John Hope Franklin, credited with helping create the field of African-American history, died on Wednesday at age 94.

Franklin's book From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African-Americans, published in 1947, is still considered the definitive account of the black experience in America. The longtime Duke professor died of congestive heart failure at Duke Hospital in Durham, North Carolina.

He worked with Thurgood Marshall, later the first black U.S. Supreme Court justice, on the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case in the 1950s in which the Supreme Court declared segregation in public schools unconstitutional.

Franklin joined civil rights protesters in a 1965 march for voting rights led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in Montgomery, Alabama. In 1997, he was appointed chairman of President Bill Clinton's One America Initiative, charged with directing a national conversation on race relations.

The grandson of a slave, Franklin's scholarly work was informed by his first-hand experience with racism.

Reuters tells the story of an encounter Franklin had prior to being honored by Clinton:

In a speech in 2005, he said that on the evening before he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Clinton in 1995, a woman at his club in Washington asked him to get her coat. About the same time, a man at a hotel handed his car keys to Franklin and told him to get his car.

"I patiently explained to him that I was a guest in the hotel, as I presumed he was, and I had no idea where his automobile was. And, in any case, I was retired," Franklin said.

For a thoughtful tribute to Franklin, check out a column by Chicago Sun-Times columnist Mary Mitchell.

President Barack Obama released this statement:

Because of the life John Hope Franklin lived, the public service he rendered, and the scholarship that was the mark of his distinguished career, we all have a richer understanding of who we are as Americans and our journey as a people.

On a personal note, From Slavery to Freedom was required reading when I was an undergraduate. I recently was thrilled to see that my daughter is taking a class where she is studying Franklin's work.


Tags: John Hope Franklin, History, Black History, American History, Books, African American, Education by Sistrunk,

Ruby Bridges still fights to keep hope alive

What happened to the girl in the Norman Rockwell painting?

Ruby Bridges was just six years old when she became the face of school integration in 1960. Now, as NBC's Martin Savidge reports, she's helping to save the school that made her famous.

Related: The Ruby Bridges Foundation


Tags: ruby bridges, civil rights, katrina, new orleans, educational equity, racism, race, education, k-12, public school education, african-american, education by sistrunk