We recently spoke to Alex Rappaport and Blake Harrison, founders of the innovative educational company Flocabulary, about how they were inspired to infuse challenging vocabulary and educational content into rap music. In this interview you'll learn more about why they feel rap music is the perfect medium for their mission... and you'll get to sample one of their flocabulous videos.  Continue reading...

How can students use the Visual Thesaurus to define and identify various geography terms that represent bodies of water?  Continue reading...

No one wants to be replaced in someone's heart or cubicle. Still, getting a pink slip at work or from a significant other is like a chocolate cupcake made of pizza compared to the sense of replacement I recently spotted in a New Yorker article by Elizabeth Kolbert.  Continue reading...

If you want to stir up interest in your blog post or online article, start a discussion about "corporate jargon we all hate" or "buzzwords to be banished." Your readers will oblige with a flood of submissions: "best practices," "value proposition," "change agent," "metrics," and so on. Eventually, and inevitably, someone will offer up a verb phrase that, to innocent ears, sounds like ordinary English: reach out. And the yelps of outraged affirmation will commence.  Continue reading...

The idea of the "elevator talk" is that you only have the duration of an elevator ride to get your idea across, so you have to strip it to its essentials. Starting long before this idea came along, however, organizations and institutions have striven to encapsulate their essence even more succinctly, in a short form of expression called a "motto."  Continue reading...