Technology is like everything else we teach or have available to use in teaching… it can and (by many) be abused. Rather than labor an argument I'll just ask the readers to think about what they learned in any class and how it could be turned to a counterproductive purpose.  🙂

Good read.  🙂

Themes of Geography:Location: where it's at… Absolute location = lat. and long.; Relative location, in terms of time, distance, and / or, direction from a known location.Place: what it's like there… based in “signature traits” of place: Physical traits = what nature put there (flora, fauna, topography,climatic elements, etc.); Cultural traits = man made, caused, or induced things present… crops, roads, cities, diversions of watercourses, etc.Interaction: what we do there… in terms of natural traits of place, how we interact with nature to “make a living” [used to be called human-environmental interactio] Movement: interaction between or among places… in terms of cultural traits; how “our place” (we) interacts with “other places” (them) nearby. The movement of people, ideas, goods, services, money, anything that can flow from one place to another demonstrates this concept.Region: an area that you can define… as being similar within the bounds you set or different fro that which is outside of the bounds you set. A “place can be in multiple overlapping regions. [sometimes a hard concept to grasp since the you determine the parameters of your region based on what you are studying.Hope this helps.  ???

While I am not a true “determinist”, since many other things are also involved today, I do subscribed to the “influential” school of thought.Geography influences culture… culture influences history…. Geography is the stage, culture the players, history the play.

Spent a long time teaching a class how to take a test… reading all the ans before marking one, skip tough ones and come back after doing the easy ones, etc. Then told them that if one is confronted with two likely answers pick “C” if it's one of them because (according to the ed-psyc class, or was it psyc of ed…, that I took back in the Dark Ages: 60% of the time “C” would be correct, statistically speaking.Next day gave a 10 question reading quiz on the homework. Mr. Wise-a$$ turns in a paper with “C” marked 10 times, figuring that 60% will yield a passing (barely) mark of a “D”… he was wrong… none of the answers were “C”. At this point I explained statistics…. ;D

Lasting effect: abolition of serfdom in the empire.

And huge loss of the empire's military prestige. Next beatings – given by the French in 1859 and the Prussians in 1866 – forced reforms. Since 1867 there's no Austrian Empire but Austria-Hungary with several autonomous states.

Quite right; I should have said immediate (or short term)effect.

I can see the states need standardized texts so I have no problem with them narrowing the selection down to a small number.  However, I would hope History professors (who have peer reviewed the text books) and knowledgeable history teachers at the secondary level have the most input on the selections.  Bureaucrats in the state education departments shouldn't have much say over content.  They can have input on costs and publishing contracts though. 

Generally the books aren't reviewed that well by college professors… unless they are contributors (IMHO) and then become part of the problem… biased. Knowledgeable secondary history teachers are going to be ignored, by and large, simily because they will decry the pap that is being foisted off on the states. The B'crats are going to do whatever promotes the agenda of their IC's and those folks are usually appointed to do the bidding of whoever is in the statehouse. Again I say follow the $, but watch for the PC agenda too.