white board

As host of Meet the Press since 1991, Russert interviewed the major figures in American politics. He was a fixture on election nights. In a high-tech age, what many remember from Election Night 2000 is Russert writing on a whiteboard, "Florida Florida Florida." He turned out to be so right that TV Guide eventually picked that as one of the "100 Most Memorable TV Moments" in TV history. He also originated the "red-state, blue-state" description of the nation's partisan divide, according to The Washington Post.

NBC's Tim Russert Dead at 58

This reminds me of one of the Catholic high schools we visited. They had built a beautiful new biology lab with a wall-mounted, full-size SMART Board in place of the blackboard.

The teacher didn't like it and made them take the SMART Board down & put the blackboard back up. The student guides taking the parents around all loved that story.

In the lobby of the school I debriefed the math chair (yes, they collect and correct homework) while Ed talked to the chair of the history department. The history chair, it turned out, had a Ph.D. in history from NYU. He told Ed the school doesn't do discovery learning.

"We tried that in the 1980s," he said. "We didn't like it."