Who Needs Words Anymore?

emoji press releaseMy worst fear has been realized: we can now stop writing in words.

Last week, Chevy issued a press release written entirely in emoji (except for its hashtag line #ChevyGoesEmoji). Emoji are the little graphics that appear all over the digital world. You’ve probably gotten emails or text messages that include them: a thumbs up sign; a little yellow smiley or angry or sad face; a dog; etc. I’ve done a screen capture of a portion of that release that you can see above. According to one journalist, the press release was “utterly incomprehensible.”

The press release introduced the 2016 Chevy Cruze and seemed to be an attempt to appeal to millennials—the younger generation generally born between the early 1980s to the early 2000s. While the company released its English translation the following day, those in media attempted to decipher the emoji version.

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Kettle Moraine Kids, Compared to the World

You could expect students in the Kettle Moraine school district to do well. The communities served by the district in western Waukesha County are generally doing well economically, parents are involved and expect good results, and the school leaders and staff are talented professionals.

But what does “do well” mean? Compared to whom? Neighboring districts? Wisconsin? The nation?

How about the world?

Kettle Moraine has been an eager participant in a small, but growing movement that involves samples of 15-year-olds taking a test called the OECD Test for Schools. It yields comparisons of individual schools to students in nations around the world. The test also includes a set of questions that yield potentially insightful information for school leaders on the perspectives of students about the learning environment they find, both at school and elsewhere.

I was asked by editors of Education Next, a widely-followed national magazine and Web site, to write about Kettle Moraine’s involvement with the OECD Test.

The story can be found by clicking here and will be in  the issue of Education Next to be published in coming weeks.

And the answer  to the question of how Kettle Moraine kids are doing? The answer, in short, is quite well, but there’s room for improvement.

 

 

 

 

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Rodriguez v. United States: Supreme Court Says No to Prolonged Traffic Stops

Last week, the Supreme Court decided City of Los Angeles v. Patel, the fourth and final of its search-and-seizure cases this term. In Patel, the Court overturned a city ordinance requiring hotel operators to share information about their guests with the police.

Patel confirmed this as a good term for Fourth Amendment rights, joining Grady v. North Carolina (GPS tracking of sex offender counted as search for Fourth-Amendment purposes) and Rodriguez v. United States (police improperly extended traffic stop to conduct dog sniff of car). Less favorable, though, was Heien v. North Carolina (no suppression of evidence obtained after traffic stop that was based on officer’s reasonable mistake of law).

The remainder of this post will focus on Rodriguez, which strikes me as the most interesting of the Fourth-Amendment series. Broadly speaking, at issue was the extent to which the police can go on a fishing expedition when they pull over a driver for a traffic violation.  

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