The Rest is Silence: Last Thing

What a long strange trip it's been. Much like the Intel Teach course I took, 23 Things has altered the way I look at my job. Many of the things we explored I already did; many I wanted to try and just needed prompting to do; and many that were new to me are still swirling around in my head looking for a place to land.

I plan to work on my wiki and keep it going; I want it to be a resource my alumni can use for their allusion needs; I am working on setting up a voicethread to use with my Greek Lit circles; I plan on implementing my own voicethread for missed lectures. I may not be completely tech-savvy, but my classroom will be a place of discovery for my students as we learn some of these things together.

Not sure if it is hitting my 40s or just getting into a rut of 14 years of teaching, but this course gave me a needed new perspective on many things in my classroom, including the insight that I do way too much work. We are so concerned with TAKS we forget that a true education lies beyond that realm of standardized tests. I wish now I had entered that 50,000 word novel in a month contest . . . one thing at a time, I suppose.

Would I take another online exploration course like this? Heck yeah. I love self-paced, sitting on my sofa learning experiences, and why shouldn't we be getting staff development like this if we are expecting our students to be tech savvy?

I want to re-purpose my blog; I want to create another one with more anonymity; I would like to get paid to write--I have always wanted to get paid to write, and somewhere I lost that drive and that desire when I began getting paid to teach others to write. I used to be a poet; now I find I can't even do that without analyzing the daylights out of my own writing . . .

I subscribed to Learning 2.1; there was something comforting in seeing Thing 70 on the page I found. 70 things! When will I ever get that book written? Meanwhile, my niece is a week away from Nicaragua, and here is a link to her blog. I'm wondering (hoping) she finds blogging as addicting as I do. Will that enthusiasm fade? Will it get stronger?

I have enjoyed posting comments, learning things that pissed me off, working through problems (never did get that dang Voki to work), and reading comments from colleagues.

What more can I say? I suddenly have time on my hands as I wrap this up. A fresh 6 weeks; a journey to voicethread; and business, but not as usual.

Good night, sweet prince, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest (Hamlet V.ii).

Homework Revisited, Dang Filter!: Thing 23

The beauties of a home network are nigh unfathomable--everywhere and anywhere I wanted to go, I went without risking my employment status.

The one thing I didn't get around to doing was loading a widget into this blog; I thought I would save that for my off period at school, thinking I would have to break the filter barrier again.

But I didn't. You can get to Ning free of Puritan guilt that might strike you when overriding the filter. I was shocked and slightly amused. Perhaps I could find a use for a Ning, like that tutoring thing I mentioned previously. But wouldn't it be even better if I made kids take care of it? Maybe even offer rewards of some sort for being available for tutoring online. Or maybe it could be used for peer editing since I still haven't figured that out on the moodle site. Heck, I haven't figured out how to help them upload their essays into the lovely folders we created there. But someday I will.

So the one thing I spent the most time searching for on Ning was voice threading. Who knew this would be so helpful? After spending way too much time again, I think I might be able to create this for my literary circles--I just need to narrow down the focus a bit. And after a visit from Tonya, who brought me microphones for when I start this endeavor, she emailed me a tutorial link and suggested that we (my students and I) explore this together. Is it lazy, evil, or pure genius then that what began to dawn on me was "why do I have to come up with a focus--make them do it."

I haven't decided yet--maybe it's all three: a lazy evil genius. Doesn't matter, I'm starting to really think I am going to like this project because instead of them doing steps I lay out for them, they will blaze their own trail (with guidance, of course) through Greek literature's most powerful women.

Maybe it will work, maybe not; but I think we will all learn something trying.

Homework Because of the Filter: Thing 22

I knew this one was going to be a problem from the get-go. Not that I don't know how to use Facebook--I have a site; I have a picture on it; I visit it.

The problem was here was a post that I couldn't explore at school because of the filter system.

I thought about going and overriding, but then the fear of the dreaded "we know where you've been and what you've been doing" record stopped me. That and the idea that I would have to override every single freaking page. Who has time for that?

So I was going to wait to do this one when I was at home, figuring it would be easier; but then I thought "oh what the heck; I'll just override. This experience alone made me smile evilly. One of the threats the district gives is that if you override facebook you could face "change in employment status". Is that some kind of politically correct way of saying "fired" or terminated" or "canned"?--not to be confused with "caned" which wasn't a district punishment, but maybe should be . . .

So I did it anyway--took my employment status into my own hands, inhaled (just air), and overrode. (Dramatic music here). I explored some of my friends pages--especially former students. They still ask me questions about their essays, and facebook is actually an easier forum to do this than email. I decided to become a fan of Dilbert as our school system gets closer and closer to the business world model (see earlier post for my feelings on that, if you dare!). Somewhere on that page a woman comments that she gets more like Alice everyday, and I think I do too.

I guess as educators we need to know how easy communication between our students can be. I think this could also be a time to teach the old internet tact lesson. I noticed that some people can't communicate without four letter words. Of course I couldn't have written this sentence or the last without four letter words. HAHAHAHAHA! I like the wall to wall communication feature as it allows me to communicate with just one person instead of posting to the world. I find it annoying that some people have to update their lives--like we care--"Jane is going to bake a cake and then slit her wrists."

An educational application? I'm not sure. As you can't access this without risking termination here, I think it would be nearly useless. On the other hand, I guess you could do some kind of class help page, sort of like an on-line tutoring. But then you would have to keep up with that.

I'll have to let this stew awhile--and I may have more time on my hands if I get red-carded by the district . . .

As Time Goes By: Thing 21

Oh the joy of a calendar--another place you can mark off events as you accomplish them and then realize your life is passing you by as you do. I suppose it is a bittersweet thing . . .

While I was working on the calendar I realized how cool this would actually be for kids on that first day of each 6 weeks. If everyone had a Google account (and by now my GT kids do), and if everyone had access to a computer (which they should any day now), we could fill this sucker out together with all the important dates for assignments, etc. And then, the excuse of "I didn't know it was due" dies a horrid, bloody death. Sigh.

But maybe because people are trying to enter grades, or maybe because it is just early in the day, or maybe just because the school servers are old and over used, the calendar program was really slow. At one point, it just locked up completely. But that's okay; I had time. Now on the first day of the 6 weeks, I might not have time or patience to go through that. But I think it would be cool. I'm all for anything that throws responsibility back on the students. Of course, I would need to know when all my stuff was going to be due and what we were doing, but I'm getting better at that as the years go by.

The other thing I decided to explore was Google Books because I wasn't sure what it was exactly. The first thing I did was type in Lord of the Flies. Why? Because this book is still under copyright, I assume, because none of the book companies we are adopting from have it as a title to adopt. And yet there it was on Google Books--full text. Now it did say limited time or something, but then as I kept looking, lo and behold! They had all kinds of versions of LotF, including one that was a casebook. My first thought was "research". I only have one edition of LotF, but some of the other editions have introductions by Bloom or other scholars, and now kids could actually see these copies and learn information that might be pertinent to their research paper. So I went back to see if they had Arden editions for Shakespeare. These are expensive, but have excellent introductions--and they were there. I think I will be using this feature for my students when it comes to research. I can't expect them to buy the Arden Shakespeare, but they have access to the information through this Google feature.

Let me just go post that to my calendar. . .

Choices, Choices: Thing 7B

What a few weeks it has been in the world and in the space that is my reader. I have, however, developed a pretty good routine of checking it quite often, and even emailing some of the stories to people I think would enjoy them--like the 9 decapitated bodies story I sent to NinjaMickey (hope that didn't stir up some Nam flashbacks).

My problem now is what to do with this Dilbert cartoon I found that still cracks me up everytime I see it. It is like a gift, just waiting for me at the end of the day to remind me to be happy. If you are a fan of Dilbert, you know that Alice has an issue with her "fist of death" that quite often reaches out and punches her more clueless co-workers--and mostly her boss--at random times. Sometimes she is pictured just clenching her own wrist trying to control it. I love those moments as I feel that I have a fist of death that I barely keep a lid on sometimes.

On another note, I had to comment on a series of articles and podcasts from NPR dealing with one of Madoff's buddies being found dead of a heart attack at the bottom of his pool. Really? How convenient. I wonder . . .

And finally, as if the Dilbert cartoon didn't crack me up, I found this tidbit: Man shoots himself while pulling his gun up into his deer stand. I tried to link it, but NPR says the page is missing, so sadly, I couldn't read the whole story. But really, why would anyone think tying a deer rifle to a rope and hauling up to your stand was a good idea? He only shot himself in the hand, so he didn't qualify for a Darwin award, but I wonder how good a hunter he is if he is that clueless about gun safety. So instead, NPR gave me some other stories I could read about other missing things like the page I was looking for including Amelia Earheart, Jimmy Hoffa, 18 minutes of Watergate tapes, and luggage. This little side trip made me very happy too; what a good idea it was.

That's all for now; happy reading.

Easy as Pie: Thing 20

How nice that the week I get way too many essays to grade, the Thing involved is one I am already a big fan of and use quite often. What I learned to love most about Google docs is the instant accessability. No more lost thumb drives, no more just saving the short cut and not the document--the kids who utilize this tool find that the worst thing that happens sometimes is the font they picked ends up not being readable by the laptop used to present. With the overhead projector finally installed, the teacher computer will become the route they use, so hopefully that problem will disappear. No, I won't hold my breath, but I will cross my fingers.

Thinking back to when I first started using this and first introduced it to my students, I remember that the toughest thing, as always, was getting everyone logged into the server and then creating a google account. Some kids' emails were filtered, so I had to open them up, and some kids' passwords didn't work, etc. The usual garbage that one deals with when dealing with the school network and the school laptops. I also remember the painful amount of time it took to type in all the invitation emails, and then checking to see which invites went through and which didn't. I learned at some point that those with invites should just forward them to those who didn't receive them. The new gaggle email makes this process a little easier, but there is always at least one chucklehead who can't log in--and inevitably it is because they didn't type in their email properly.

What I learned from these exercises was to just be ready for chaos. The more prepared I am mentally for a disaster, the smaller said disaster appears when it occurs--and it will occur, trust me.

Last year during the American Literature strand, we studied the archetype of the cowboy and how that archetype changed through the decades. Kids were 1) invited to collaborate on a spread sheet to put all their knowledge about the cowboy in one place. Then they set off researching their assigned decades to see how film portrayed their cowboy. After all that, they 2) put together a powerpoint on their decade, working on the same project from different computers and at different times. Some of these students went on to 3) type the inevitable essay that goes with these projects on Google's word processor, and then their essays magically showed up at the exact time they needed them in class.

I didn't need to be sold on this feature of Google; once again, it is a tool that makes life easier for my students and myself; it also does away with many of the cyber excuses that come attached to any project.

Needs Must Have: Thing 19

There is a verb structure in Japanese that literally translates to "it will not do if I do not [verb]", so when you translate it into regular conversation, it amounts to "I must [verb]. That is how I feel about voicethread--it will not do if I do not have this.

My journey, at first, was confusing--I like the structure of the Venn Diagram heart thing with the kids on the side with their voices popping up in word bubbles, but the Industrial Revolution one doesn't have this feature--it is one guy, and his picture is unable to be seen. I really like the first one--but the more I looked, the more ideas started popping into my head, including, of all the boring things on earth, must have lectures. With so many kids in so many organizations, inevitably someone is out on those days we discuss as a class or I just yammer about something that will really help them with the upcoming assignment.

I want to use this; I need to figure out how to do this and what to do it on. My 3rd 6 weeks in the GT class usually involves some kind of techno driven unit done in literary circles. This year, it's Greeks, and more specifically, Greek women who are stubborn / strong / scary--think Medea, Klytemnestra, and Antigone. It will not do if i do not have . . . arinakereba arimasen. . .

How To Die Laughing: Thing 18

I have learned a great many things while searching through Youtube. For years, kids have sent me links to things they wanted me to see or thought had to do with what they were learning, and I always had to send the links home rather than fight through the school's filter system. Sometimes the kids were right--the videos I watched had to do with the lesson, whether in a serious or a farcical way, and sometimes they were just silly in a way that only high school students could find silly (which is kind of cute sometimes).

I set about on the scavenger hunt with The Inferno in mind. I don't teach it until next semester, but I have learned that if I want to do something new and exciting, I need to start on it pretty far away from the target date.

And I found plenty on Youtube that I could actually use, and some that I couldn't but that are still great--just a little risque--and some stuff that just made me laugh like a comment thread on the EA game "based" on the Inferno that went something like "is this based on the actual book?"--"oh yes, exactly" which is what made me laugh because Dante carried neither sword nor some kind of Klingon looking weapon when he journeyed into the underworld. Of course, Beatrice hadn't been kidnapped and drug down to the depths either, unless I missed that section, and missed it for the past 11 years (still giggling by the way).

Then I started searching for the "How to" video. There is so much to choose from, like How to make crack, make fake crack, make a pipe bomb, make a paper gun that really shoots, etc. So I tried a "How to be" search. Now I could learn how to be a ninja, gangster, gangsta (apparently those are two different things), nerd, and some word I didn't recognize but I think it was some kind of racial epithet. When I narrowed it to "How to cook" I got anything from lobster to gyoza to (again) crack. I settled for gyoza because I actually might use that video. I tagged all these videos (the Inferno and gyoza videos; not the crack or gangsta videos) so I could find them again later, then I went and washed my face because I had been laughing so hard I was crying, then I started coughing, and, well, I just had to stop at that point. But then when I was washing my face I remembered an old ad that used to play during football season that had Steve Young, John Elway, and George Seifert in it, among others, and they were doing Kareoke in Japan.

Lo and behold it was there! The whole face washing was pointless, because I cracked up (not cooked crack--absolutely no relation to that crack) again.

Teachertube wasn't nearly as fun, but I could see its use. The search feature was more difficult for me, but there was some interesting things there that I could use. Oddly however, I found the most educational Inferno video on Youtube. It is history lesson about why Boniface VIII was such a pain to Dante and why Dante made this pope figure so prominently in the Inferno. I may actually use that video with my kids this year, but I'll get it from home so I don't have to mess around with the filter.

Well, the video is here, but it doesn't seem to want to play. My Techie husband informed me that Youtube is cracking down on that kind of use, so I'll put in a link to the video that is supposed to be embedded here. Sorry about that.

Is There Anybody Out There?: Thing 17

Just nod if you can hear me. Are you feeling okay? Not sure why the whole podcast exploration brought the lyrics fo Pink Floyd's The Wall to mind, but it did. The idea of podcasting is not new to me; I have had iTunes since its inception, and once I bought my first iPod, I subscribed to a Japanese language podcast. Before I knew it, my pod-catcher was overflowing with short Japanese lessons.

It, much like my reader now, overwhelmed me. I finally unsubscribed, but watching / listening to some of these, I think I am ready to try this again. In my reader, I have an NPR feed, and I get podcasts there that sometimes interest me, and it is handy to have them there rather than to rely on my iTunes all the time.

The first one I checked out sounded really cool; it was suggested from the 2.0 site, and I was so looking forward to a podcast called "Dead White Men". This term is of course a running English joke about the canon. But when I got there, I think their server was having an issue; but I subscribed to this one anyway because I'm sure it will be up again soon. So I moved on to another one: Grammar Girl--Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing. This one is really neat, and I could actually envision giving the address to my students.

For my own entertainment, I went to the iTunes podcast search to see if I could find my old Japanese podcasts, but I had no luck with it. However, I found something better. The Onion has news podcasts, which, after listening to the first one "your cousin says prison food isn't so bad", I was laughing terribly. When I tried to subscribe to it with my Google reader, it didn't take, so I put it in my iTunes. I'll just have to remember to go there and listen. Probably won't be sharing that one with the kids as the language gets a little risky sometimes, but the satire is beautiful, so I could prelisten and then determine which I could play in class.

I'm not sure how to incorporate a podcast lessons, as in having my kids do one. My niece is going to Nicaragua on a school trip / project, and her teacher asked all the kids with laptops to bring them because they will be doing a podcast everyday about the activities they are doing. I sent my niece the address to blogger so she could also blog about what they were doing, post pictures of things and keep her family and friends informed, and this morning she sent me the address to her new blog. She is very tech savvy, so I think blogging will fit right into her life quite easily. I don't take my kids on field trips to Dallas, much less to another country, so the whole podcast as a class thing is still a bit nebulous, but it is on the back burner which means it could actually amount to something someday. But for now, I'll just leave it to cook a while longer.

Words, Words, Words: Thing 16

Odd what one discovers that maybe they weren't supposed to when searching and playing on the library thing site. What I realized was that the majority of books / authors here are either the basic pulp fiction / trendy books (Harry Potter, Dan Brown) or the books that sellers push to the public, i.e. the "book club" books (Kite Runner, Curious Incident of the Dog at Midnight). The classics were hard to find, though Agatha Christie was well represented, as she should be.

I'm not judging librarything by any means. I think, actually, it is a pretty cool site and a neat idea. I'm even considering joining, though I'm not sure when I would have the time to go through my library and type in the info--though that is probably easier than I am thinking. I guess what I am noticing is a trend in our reading habits. Our culture seems to read what we are told to read even after we leave high school English. A friend of mine sent me an article on this last year, and sadly, not being as hip with a reader or tagging option on my bookmark bar, I cannot relocate this article, but it discussed that today's college students are not branching out and reading the "rebellious" literature that college students of years' past did. No one is picking up Jack Kerouac or J.D. Salinger. Instead, they are choosing to reread the Harry Potter series or dig into Twilight (or back into Twilight) instead of finding the literature "forbidden" to them on the high school level.

I remember how cool the college bookstore was at Oklahoma State, and how much I enjoyed buying my books and a few extras if I could afford them. I was constantly looking for new authors or new titles to keep me interested, and through this hunt, I discovered how interesting historical fiction could be, but even better, in the right hands, or compelling history was in itself. And finally, I was picking my own books instead of having them assigned (although my lit teachers were doing plenty of assigning as I recall). It was here that, rereading The Scarlet Letter, I discovered I actually liked it and understood it. I think my years in college challenged my reading level instead of stagnating it by only reading what I remembered I liked in years previous.

Anyway, that was off topic. I liked the 50 book challenge and think it would translate to a high school classroom quite easily. The public library has these kinds of challenges for the kids during the summer (I think), and anything that fosters reading is okay by me. But at some point, a person has to take charge of this skill and begin reading out of his or her comfort zone--not that a person has to read something not liked; I've stopped plenty of books because they just grated on my nerves (Dan Brown, Agatha Christie's Tommy and Tuppence series--these two cannot rival Miss Marple or the persnickety Hercule Poirot). I suppose this leads back the argument about kids reading books where the characters have nothing in common with the student, so why read it? I hate this argument. If I only read books that had characters like me, I'd be pretty dang bored after a while. The beauty of reading, to me, is actually finding people not like me, people with worse troubles, better lives, more exciting careers, etc, things I may never experience and getting to see what that might be like.

Somewhat Palatable: Thing 15

You know the old saying you never get a second chance to make a first impression? Well as of yet, I am not impressed, far from it even.

I tried this during the IntelTeach workshop, back when it was called deli.ci.ous or something ridiculous like that--the name alone used to hack me off. Didn't quite get it, didn't know where to put the dumb periods in the name--confusing and annoying. This time around didn't start out much better. To begin with, the "Allow" button for the Firefox browser to install the buttons did not respond when clicked. And the directions state to merely push it and things will get better. Deliver on your promises, I say--reminded me of "Blabberize" . . .

This site, like many others, I can see the use for, but when the instructions do not work after many attempts, I find the site becoming more of a hassle then the "God-send" it promises to be. I realize, of course, the the fault is probably my own, but I am only doing what the site directions state-- "It is free, simple to use, and easy to install."

Seems simple, and yet the button does not push, and the install / restart option never arrives; it is neither simple nor easy to install, but rather frustrating and annoying. So I keep scouring the page, searching for the directions that I am obviously missing, but alas, I am not missing the instruction. It is right there in the yellow box . . . which then begs the question, is it my Firefox settings? Can I tell Firefox, on another page or my hard drive, to allow this to happen? Should things be that confusing and demanding? Cannot the button just be pushed, thereby saving me the agony of trying to do this "button installation" which, if the rest of the site is anything like this first introduction, I have no desire to deal with? The link provided in the 23 Things entry also led to failure with non-clickable buttons mocking my attempts. And it is moments like these that I realize that no matter how wonderful others may find these sites, my patience and my time are too valuable and in short supply to waste futzing around with buttons and instructions that don't work.

So I went about it a different way. I went to Firefox and clicked suggested applications, then typed Delicious into the search bar. Several options came up, none involving buttons, but one dealing with bookmarks. I chose that one and added in my bookmarks next. I have no clue if the buttons I need are there or not, but my bookmarks are, and again, after the bad taste left by instructions that do jackslap, I'm not sure I will be spending much time here--socially or otherwise.

Apparently, by importing my bookmarks this roundabout way (which worked, I might add; I'm not sure if following the delicious directions would have because, alas, I now have an inherent distrust of delicious) I found buttons on my bookmark bar. Did they arrive with the bookmarks? I'm not caring as they are there, and I can quit worrying about trying to force them on to my page. I will say that they make bookmarking much easier--just hit the tag button, slap a few tags in and POOF! there they are. I hope I did the misd23things tag right. I did find some AP stuff that could be helpful once I stopped messing with button installation. I'm sure there are uses for this that I have yet to discover. I did discover that I had a lot of dumb bookmarks in my folder, so I took the time to clean that up. I don't even remember bookmarking half of them, more than half actually. So it is nice to have a clean bookmark slate. I will try to get into the habit of using delicious, once the bad taste in my mouth leaves. . .

A Blast From the Reader Past: Thing 7A

I'm not sure exactly why I picked this NPR story to blog about. It could be that one of my former students is there in Washington marching for gay rights this weekend and has been posting updates to his facebook page with his iPhone (could we even imagine this 20 years ago?). When he was in my class as a senior, he had not come out to his parents yet, and he came to me after school one day, in tears, because he felt like he was living a lie and was tired of it.

Here was an amazing kid. He spoke 4 languages--English, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese--yeah, Portuguese. He was "out" at school, but not at home. He took honors / AP courses. And he was nice. We talked for quite some time that afternoon, and he decided he was going to tell them. I had asked if they were super conservative or close-minded, and he said no. I told him that while it might be a shock to them, they would still love him. I remember talking about how they might be angry, but that anger might stem from fear--fear of him being in a life that can get a person killed simply because, fear of him having a harder time getting through the day simply because, fear of their friends "looking" at them differently, simply because. . .

He told them; they love him; case closed. But what worries me is not the microcosm of our world but the macrocosm. He is marching for the right for gays and lesbians to serve in the military. And while a law can make that happen, a law cannot change the inside of a person's heart. We've had laws concerning racism for quite some time, but our world is still populated with racists. We've had laws about equality for women, but chauvinists still exist. We can write and vote in all kinds of laws while patting ourselves on our collective backs because we are so progressive and so forward thinking, and then go home and feel however we want to about whomever we want to because morality cannot be legislated. And for the most part, none of us will ever kill or seriously injure someone because of our inner feelings.

But we are just ordinary working folk. The president has a tough decision to make, and my former student has a long row to hoe.

So Many Ideas, Not Enough TEKS: Thing 14

I love words. I love manipulating them for rhythm, for nuance, for power, so I think I could find a use for this particular Wordle thing. To experiment, I went in and just entered the URL of one of my blog postings, then I played around with the color and format a little then hit create. This is what appeared. For a while I wasn't sure how this could be used in class, but then I started thinking.

What if I posted some of Hamlet's speeches into the generator and then created posters or something of them? Or, I could make a bunch of these to see which words Shakespeare's favored for his tragic heroes the most, including Othello, Lear, and Caesar--all plays I teach at one time or another. So I went and tried it with Hamlet's "To be or not to be" speech and got this.

This time I played around with the custom color function, and when I was thinking about it, I decided I could make each character have his own color scheme, and if I printed them, the kids could keep track of who said which words the most. Unfortunately, the code was rather a pain to embed here, and there was no way I could find to actually keep my own images. So I guess this is the only space I will have the ones I have already made. I also had to post them, so I did this last one anonymously in case there was still some kind of weird copyright on Shakespeare, but I don't think there is.

I went to Blabberize next; this could have been cool if it weren't such a pain in the buttocks (as Forrest Gump) would say. I had problems getting the cropping to work, then there were no instructions on how to use the mouth moving tools. Butt pain of epic proportions. I can't tell you how many times I tried, and I could only ever crop the picture once. The title page "it takes like thirty seconds" is a big fat lie! In fact, at one point, the cropping thing was so screwed up, I couldn't even see my picture. Sadly, I had such a cool idea for this, but when I mentally began swearing because the )#%^@)%^ thing wouldn't *#^%) crop my *%^#)%^*# picture, well you get the idea. Even now, because I am so fond of what I want to do, I'm thinking of going back and trying again, even though the site obviously sucks. I tried it again, no cropping, bite me, moving on.

The next few sites I tried required registering. Sometimes I get tired of that. I know that

is what my gmail is for, but I get so sick of all the crap that starts coming in every time I register at a new site. I did go to the photo shopping on line site, Picnik. I uploaded a picture of one of my other cats and started messing around. They have all these effects you can add, and since it's October, some of them are really creepy. I think there is one that you can make yourself look like a zombie (need to tell Travis about this), but as it is a premium feature, something might have to be bought to make that work. I tried putting a little pink heart sticker on Odysseus for Breast Cancer Awareness, but I could never move the sticker to where I wanted it to go. I do like to futz around with photographs, and doing it online is way more cheap than buying the chemicals (probably healthier for me and the environment too). I sharpened the contrast a bit here,

but then I put an effect on this same picture. He's in a snow globe or crystal ball now. And again, while I enjoy doing this kind of thing and can see how I would use it in a blog or power point to dress it up, stretching it to become educational and fit in to the TEKS I am supposed to be teaching for the day becomes a little more difficult. And then, as I'm not the guru of this program, I wouldn't really be able to help my students should they run into problems.

I did enjoy myself for the most part on this particular thing, except for my dealings with Blabberize, which I even tried one more time before posting this blog. Needless to say, the words I would use to describe this morning's journey there need no manipulation or rhythm--they just are what they are--and to avoid them, I think I just won't try it again.

I-M-A-G-E Lightbulb: An Old Joke for Thing 13

That joke used to crack me up as a kid. If you haven't heard it, you ask someone to spell all these words adding "lightbulb" at the end. When they spell "image" and say lightbulb, well, you get the picture. And yes, I've been a word nerd my whole life.

I really enjoyed messing around with these things and wished I had more of my own pictures to run through the image generators that need photographs. So mostly I just used what was available.

First I went to Smiley Generator and messed around with those for awhile. I had just read Rhonda's comment to my rant on usurers, and she says she must just be a hippie at heart, so I made her this:

I made one for me too that reflects my mood this weekend. Funny how when you make these things, they are better if they are sarcastic and obnoxious. Or maybe that's just me.

I moved on then to ImageChef. It was here I was wanting my own photographs as I thought this was pretty cool.
ImageChef.com Poetry Blender.

The poem is a haiku I made up last year and is no reflection on the former or current principal of my school; it was actually just a joke concerning an FR question that month. My sister and I have haiku wars over email sometimes; I told you I was a word nerd. While I was there, I also discovered I could make my own soccer jersey. Cool, I thought. So I made that little number right there. Then I left that site and moved on, wondering exactly what my students would do with these that could be educational, and how much class time they would spend decorating a project instead of putting the flesh on it.

While I was cruising around, I remember a co-worker once sending me a link to a make your own lol cat picture. So I went there and spent much time messing around with that. And this is what became of that little excursion. I did have an awful lot of fun playing around on these various sites, and I could see that they could most definitely make presentations and things more visually interesting. But like most cool things, when you are going to set kids loose on them, you better be prepared to lose the entire class period as they monkey around. These sites, at least in high school, are probably better introduced, and then part of the assignment that should be done at home.


I will probably try to put some of these things on my wiki simply for the experience of trying, but for now, I'm going to stop before I get that same eye-pinching strain like the flickr experience. Where does the time go indeed? And when is a door not a door?

Canterbury Trials: Thing 12

I like slide shows. When I was little, I remember how excited I would get when my dad would start getting out the old slide projector and mom would start making popcorn. We didn't have a screen, so mom would drape an old white sheet over her big fold-up fabric cutting board. Off would go the lights, and we would travel back to our many trips to Canada, the western states, or just time itself. Most of the slides were in a cartridge that would drop one in, pull it out with the push of the attached remote (how's that for technology), shift forward, and drop another--ker-chuuuung-chik! ker-chuuuung-chik! I loved that sound, the same way I still love the sound of an old 35 millimeter camera's shutter opening and closing--solid and final--moment captured, for better or for worse.

How many times did I think I had taken the perfect shot, only to wait the 24 hours for developing (used to be a week or more-gasp-how did we live?) and discover the subject had flinched, so it's blurred, or the person had blinked, so the face was contorted. And film was expensive; so was the developing.

In high school I bought a black and white developing kit--projector, trays, red light, the works. Took rolls of film (black and white wasn't as expensive) and spent hours in my home-made darkroom (one of the bathrooms we didn't use in the giant 4 bedroom 4 bath house my mom and I shared after the rest of the family had moved on). I worked with tinting and exposure, cropping and focus-blurs--I loved it.

So while cruising around on Flickr, I decided to focus on Canterbury Cathedral. When my husband and I went to England a few years back, we didn't make it to Canterbury. We made it to Westminster Abbey and York Minster--both beautiful beyond belief--but Canterbury Cathedral, to me, seems to have a different air. Maybe it's Thomas Beckett and the whole "will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?" story, maybe it's Chaucer's Tales, but this Cathedral has been in my imagination ever since I can remember.

I found many views of the Cathedral on Flickr, but these were the ones that stood out to me the most, especially the undercroft. When we were in York Minster, I remember sitting in the undercroft, listening to the guided tour explanation. At one point the voice stopped, and this beautiful music started up--the Minster's pipe organ. I felt so at peace at that moment. . .

For class however, we don't focus on the York Mystery Plays, but we do travel with Chaucer, so these picture may actually come in handy some day.

1. Nick Garrod's Canterbury Cathedral

2. Major Clanger's My Mum Inside Canterbury Cathedral

3. Hyougushi's Canterbury Cathedral

4. Chingers7's Canterbury Cathedral

5. Steffen M. Boelaars's Canterbury Cathedral Cloisters

6. Steve Cadman's Cloisters, Canterbury Cathedral

7. Hyougushi's Canterbury Cathedral

8. Steve Cadman's Canterbury Cathedral

9. Wendy Clarkqt's Canterbury Cathedral

10. Nick Garrod's Cathedral Blues

11. Archangeli's Backpacking TarePanda at Canterbury Cathedral

Say Cheese!: Thing 11

Flickr post.

Headache ensuing.

Is it the weather, my allergies, or the simple fact that I have been staring at my screen gazing at photographs for way longer than the suggested 15 minutes? So much here; thankfully they have a search the CC area only option because I was having issues figuring out which was what and what I could have.

So I started monkeying around on this while my seniors were working on a presentation due next class period. If they approached my desk and asked me a question, I forced them to help me. It is amazing what you can learn and how much faster you can learn it when someone who knows how to do it demonstrates. I was having all kinds of problems trying to figure out how to download--first victim pointed out the magnifying glass thing (all views), and there was the download large option.

The headache started fading. But then I started reading what I had to do for this entry. I found a theme, learned how to download, and started that process, and then the bell rang. What? Where did the time go? And just before I logged out so I could teach the next class, I found the above picture. I started laughing like a maniac. Why? I don't know; I just love this picture by Archangeli. It makes me terribly happy.

I am already thinking of the millions of things I can use this for in the classroom, including making more mnemonic videos for remembering cool things like the 7 Deadly Sins, etc. I chose Canterbury Cathedral so I can have some visuals for when we do the The Canterbury Tales. Many years back when my husband and I went to England, I had this idea of taking my pictures and using them in a slide show about the Wars of the Roses and Shakespeare, etc. I have some pictures, but now I realize with Flickr I can fill in the gaps I have from places I didn't get to visit on that trip, like Shrewsbury and Towton. Also, how nice that maybe with this knowledge, the power point presentations my students do over various things could be more than text that they read. We've ALL seen that power point, yes? How many staff developments have we sat through that we could have just read?

And just when I think that my headache is vanishing, I realized that a wiki is the best option for a final product format for the class I just finished. No choice, it just is.

So I enter this electronic world with ideas and a lack of patience, and hopefully I will come out a teacher with a wider range of tools at my fingertips.

Circle 7, the Violent Against Art: Thing 10

Every year I teach Dante's Inferno, and every year the students are responsible for covering one or more of the circles and presenting their findings to the rest of the class. I require they find 3 or more humanities that go with their circle--art, music, movies, whatever. The present fad is to present it all in a power point (I don't require that), and they slap those images in and rarely give credit as to where they found the information.

How handy that Dante himself put the Usurers into Circle 7, a sterile plain of burning sand with flakes of fire falling from the sky. Apparently, he hated usurers as much as he hated Boniface VIII. When I watched "Get Creative", I immediately thought of Dante. The use of the term "intermediaries" I believe can be translated to "usurers"--people who make money off of money. I can see I've confused you. Let me back up.

A modern day usurer makes money off the products others create. No innovation on the part of the usurer is necessary. So when a band records a song and they want to put it on the web as a teaser, some lawyer at the record label has a conniption. Why? Because he / she is getting paid by the record label, who in turn makes money off the creative genius of say Alison Krause or the Rolling Stones. Did Mr. Stuffed Shirt write "Start Me Up"? No, that would be Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. But Mr. S. Shirt makes cashola off it, but he makes more if Jagger / Richards don't publish it online for everyone to have. That is way over-simplified, I know, but it works. It only takes a quick look around to see that our economy is populated with usurers who draw huge salaries from the backs of their workers. Does anyone seriously believe they are worth millions of dollars a year being a CEO of a company? At least an athlete is out on the field actually working; what do these chuckleheads do all day besides spend money on private jets and "corporate retreats" to Aruba?

But I digress. The changes in copyright that confuse everyone do so because our technology has superseded our laws' ability to keep up. In the '70s, who would have dreamed you could film your cat drinking water out of a tap--albeit awkwardly--post it online and have a million hits on it in a matter of days? No one, that's who, and our laws now demonstrate it. The people who can afford the lobbyists to pass such copyright laws are the ones losing money from "instant collaboration" found online. My guess is sites like Creative Commons are going to really test the patience of the usurer and their ilk. The situation reminds me of Inherit the Wind. In the play, a teacher in the south teaches evolution in a science class and all hell breaks loose. The back story of this drama (since it is based on truth) is that the ACLU wanted to take this issue to court, and so Scopes, the teacher, taught it (more interestingly, the authors say they wrote it as commentary on the McCarthy communism trials--funny how it works for both). I wonder sometimes when some one will take on the use of online materials in an educational setting, even though we do have more leeway than the average bear.

I myself use stuff from the web all of the time, and I include citations. I have never given work to cites like Creative Commons, though I may start should I ever get around to it. But then, I've never really thought that my photographs or whatnot needed sharing with the world (I reference back to the vacation photos quip in post 5). From what I understand, the district owns any creative thing I come up with on their computers, so I use my own most of the time, and save my cool ideas for fleshing out on my own time in my own home, with my own technology, but maybe I do own more than I realize--trust is not my strong point, however, so I'll keep working at home.

At least I have the imagination to come up with most of my teaching ideas and the ability to ask for help from my colleagues who offer great insight on how to make them work better, and with Creative Commons, I can dress up my lessons with visual and auditory enhancements. As long as my brain doesn't become Dante's sterile plain, I should be able to pay my bills. . .

You Asked, But You Might Not Want To Know: Thing 9

After my somewhat unsuccessful and thoroughly confusing excursion into the world of the wiki, I set aside time this weekend to go "play" in the sandbox. It was here that I remembered I don't play well with others . . .

As stated earlier, I have an idea for a wiki--being stated now, I don't think I have the patience for it. Maybe I just read the directions wrong (it's been known to happen), or maybe I have worked too far ahead so the items I am looking for aren't even created yet, or maybe I'm just a bit of an idiot this weekend; the possibilities are endless. Sadly, my patience isn't.

So on to my learning experience: I used Firefox, I made small edits, but alas, the fun eluded me. The instructions on this are hard to follow, and the multi-colored fonts confused me. I can't figure out how to link the page I am creating to some area called Our Sandbox Pages. And here I thought I could read, but I cannot locate any such heading, anywhere, and as usual, after a while, not being able to figure crap out even when the directions are right there (I even printed them as suggested), I lose interest and patience fast. If it is going to take me 2 days to set something up with the added pleasure of having my blood pressure go north and my temper go south (and people who know me know that is an ugly thing), then, thanks, but no thanks, I'll skip it. I'd rather deal with the plague than sit here and be befuddled for precious minutes of the day, especially when soon there will be essays to grade again. Thank you NinjaMickey for the picture, which I thought would work perfectly with this entry.

And I thought I had a quick temper and limited patience before my excursion into the world of the web. Yes, you can thank the internet for a great many things, but one of those things has to be our increased demand for results instantaneously. If I have to futz around with this for too long, I'm not doing it. Ever. And I don't promise there will ever be a link to my page on the mysterious and elusive Our Sandbox Pages, so I will put one here, which even before reading that I had to, I was going to just to spite the other, ha ha, simply because the directions had their chance, and they blew it. Also the [toc] shows up on my page as just that [toc] or [table of contents] however I type it. Why not just type Table of Contents and be done with it? Again, just following the directions given. . .Update! I think I figured that out; we shall see. . .

Also, the voki thing. I thought it would be cute, but embedding / uploading / whatever doesn't seem to work. I get a string of code, much like [toc], that does nothing but make my page a mile wide and hack me off. Their help page / forum? Useless. And it is things like this that bring me back to the point I made in my last entry. I could have students doing this, and they would take all class period to design the voki (which would be fine if that were the lesson, but why would it be?), and then all or half of them wouldn't be able to get it on the page. My god what a colossal waste of instructional time.

Sigh. And somewhere, under sites we like, we're supposed to post a site we like (duh), but that is for Spring 09 people, and I believe I'm a Fall 09er. So if I post my site, (and I have one, believe me), will it be stuck on that old page? Will Fall 09 get our own page? Will the furtive Our Sandbox Pages ever show its face? I cannot answer these questions, but I am slogging on to Thing 10, rethinking whether there is a wiki in my future. I guess there could be if I had the proper medication.

Wiki What-What? The Trials of Thing 8

I am familiar with Wikipedia; truthfully, who isn't familiar with Wikipedia? Next to using Google as an educational search engine, students use wiki as their source for most information, whether that info is accurate or not. Mostly, I appreciate Wikipedia for its service as a jumping off point to other sources, which is, I suppose, what the point of it is. Some of the entries are very well written, while others not so much. But all of them have a list of links to further your education on a point. Sadly, I think my students don't use those links, but take the info on the page at face value.

Anyway, as I searched through some of the wikis linked to the 23things page, I was at first completely overwhelmed. I guess I was expecting something more like Wikipedia, including the Encyclopedia set up. Instead I was bombarded with too much extraneous stuff on the page, or at times, a lack of obvious student work.

I took notes on my whiteboard while perusing some sites; the first few I checked, I was not really thrilled with, including the first high school one, the wolfden, which I thought sounded interesting. When I got there, I wasn't sure what exactly to be looking for, so I just browsed. But there was so much, and then some of it was just links with no explanation where they went. I wasn't sure how to check for what the students did, and then, thinking like a high school student myself, I got tired of thinking about what I should be doing and moved on to another page.

Code Blue seemed like a good idea, but not really very inviting, just a list of links to other sites with no explanations really. While it is a good base of knowledge, I wondered how much of the knowledge listed was actually digested by the students (pardon the pun). Donning my high school thinking cap, I decided I could very easily find a site dealing with my topic, link it to the page, and go off and surf or go to facebook or wherever I wanted to spend my time. I'm just not sure the kids who put it together actually learned anything.

So I thought I would visit some lower grade sites just to see how they were doing. The School Then and Now site seems to contain information that the kids gathered themselves, maybe by interviewing family members or neighbors. The listings are organized somewhat, but still not necessarily attractive or attention getting. But I can see that the kids were more involved in putting it together. The learning and skills were more obvious to me, and got me thinking back to Coolcat teacher's blog where she listed off what she was having the kids do. With that information, I could see how one would go about constructing a wiki properly because she states that kids have to summarize what they are reading to put on the page, not just link to the page they are supposed to be reading. At least with this step, you know your students are getting some of the information and not just slapping links on a page to get a grade. She had more tasks, and I will keep those tasks in mind when I start constructing my own wiki lesson.

Another site I really liked was a third grade site which, for whatever reason, I found attractive; it was easy to follow and had the voice of the kids about it. Hard to explain and I'm not making myself clear, but the page was easy to follow; the links on the side were not just other pages about the topic, but pages created by the kids, complete with recipes, maps, and student produced art work. The images borrowed from the web were cited with links so visitors could go straight to the source. I liked this site, but is it a wiki or a collaborative website?

I think maybe I am having a semantic issue.

Maybe I am thinking about wikis in the wrong way. When I used a wiki in my class last year, we were compiling ideas based on research the students had done over decades and the western. They had to be familiar with their decade before they could answer the wiki needs. The nice thing was that because they could see the other students' posting, they could comment on those other ideas. My wiki didn't look like these, but it was called a wiki on the moodle, so I assume it was.

Maybe I'm confused by what looks to be entire class websites, not just wikis. There are so many tabs on some of them they seem like an actual sites, not just wikis. Or is an entire site able to be referred to as a wiki?

I would like to have my kids this year compile information about the Greco / Roman myths and, in their own words, make a database over the basic stuff we should know about the gods, goddesses, and major heroes / tales. I don't want just links to this information; I want the information already digested and compiled for quick reference when reading other works that will inevitably allude to all these myths. Links to other sites would be fine, but I want thumbnail sketches that make the information quick and easier to digest. I think I can create the basics for this on GoogleApps Collaborative Spreadsheet. Perhaps there is then a spot on my moodle to turn it into a more organized form accessible to all the students for whenever they need to access it.

So is there a wiki in my future? Most definitely. I just have to figure out how to make it happen the way I want it to happen and in the time frame I need it to happen.

Lucky Seven: Or How to Carry On an Internet Conversation

Seven is a lucky number; it's a perfect number--the number of man + the number of the divine. Thing 7 is pretty special too. Here is where we have the opportunity to teach our students the dying art of written conversation, including the skill of being tactful and constructive, even in our criticism, as opposed to hateful and destructive.

My students and I joke during writing workshop days about how to positively peer edit a draft. Comments like "good job" or "best draft I ever read" do no one any favors; the writer loses out on having a new set of eyes discover a mistake he may have made, and the editor loses out on the benefit of enhancing her own writing by learning to help others. And in a multi-grade classroom, nothing is more frightening to an incoming freshman to have an upper class student tell her she writes like a third-grader. I use that example because it happened, and it took months for me to coax that student into writing again.

Commenting works much this way. I loved the advice given by CoolCat about Darth Commentor. When I waited tables for a living, people would come in to eat for the sheer pleasure, I believe, of harassing their waiter. Some people are just not happy, and who better to take it out on than a waiter who can say nothing. Of course, these days with ethics where they are, I think more waiters are spitting in coffees than when I was waiting. And no, I never spit in anyone's coffee (I was more of a visine / beer gal), but I know someone who did, and the woman deserved it. Maybe commenting is the new outlet for those angry people, and here they don't even have to drive anywhere or shell out bucks for a meal. And no one gets spit on.

Also I bring back the hate mail link from last post. The comments, including the actual hate mail, are so telling in and of themselves. The grammatical issues, the misspellings, the left out words--these things alone nearly negate the argument trying to be made. The instantaneous puking out of venom rarely leads to a positive or constructive debate over ideas, but then fanatics and naturally angry people usually don't want to debate, do they.

On the other hand, the constant back patting, or as Blakester put it so eloquently in one of her comments, the "self-massaging" smug attitude taken by those in support can also negate the argument in the midst of being so self-congratulatory.

All of these moments in commenting become "teachable" moments in both rhetoric and mechanics. Perhaps, as Rhonda pointed out in another post, blogging could be used as a place to work on writing skills instead of just a social moment. The problem then becomes keeping up with all those blogs and making sure kids aren't abusing them.

I'm having trouble keeping up with my own reader! But this is something I want to think about more because I sense the possibilities, and they could be good . . .

Information Overload: The Reality of Thing 6

Ouch, my brain hurts. I left my reader alone for maybe two days, and NPR blitzed me. 92 things I had to catch up on, and some of them were a bit repetitive, but I think I made some sense of it all. More interestingly, the Texas Freedom Network kept me entertained as I read through some of the hate mail they were receiving from Neo-cons. I'm not sure why hate mail intrigues me so much, or why I am especially fascinated by hate mail from people who claim to be Christians. I remember being at church camp when I was a young'un, and singing those good old stand-bys "Pass it On", and "They Will Know We Are Christians By Our Love". I guess some of them don't feel that way anymore and are using God as a kind of club and shield combo.

This attitude makes me both sad and humored at the same time. I have had some of the most interesting conversations with Rhonda (we solve all the problems of the world on our shared conferences--last year we solved Welfare) and the kind of mental / intellectual stimulus that gives my brain is very rewarding. I think as a culture we tend to forget that there are fanatics and nutters in all beliefs, all religions, but the majority of people of any faith seem to be pretty mellow. This is no place for a religious debate, but the last time someone told me I was sure to go to hell, I said I'd save them a seat. Tolerance, I'm beginning to believe, is a dying art, though maybe the internet / blogging can keep all the nutters together under the cover of their anonymity and their inability to be touched or have to face off with someone in person.

So I left a comment there, the same one about the song lyrics. Now I'm REALLY going to hell I suppose. I do love to live dangerously that way, and let me add that using my gmail address and my pseudonym gave me a rush. The anonymity is intoxicating in many ways.

But I digress. What I really wanted to comment on from the TFN disappeared when I skimmed it; this happened before I discovered the "mark as unread" check box. Now I'm skimming smarter, not harder (whatever that means). So I searched the blog itself and found it. Mississippi is apparently more stupid than Texas when it comes to education. I particularly loved the comment about "girls should be" taught about abstinence where as boys can just go their merry way impregnating "bad girls" right and left. Is there a correlation between the sex-ed policy of a state and the overall IQ of same? Maybe I could get a federal grant to do some studies.

So before I left my reader, I zipped up to the Dilbert Daily feed and read the funnies. Ahhh, funnies. Dilbert makes me happy, and the more public education tries to emulate business, the funnier he gets. While I was there, NPR slapped more in feeder.

And it never ends; and that is overwhelming.

The World at My Fingertips, aka Thing 5

"Is it amazing and positive for a nine year old to be able to share her perspectives and ideas with tens of thousands of people around our globe, all within the space of 48 hours? I'm inclined to think it is." I had to comment on this quote as I think it reflects what I was trying to express in my last entry. I don't think, personally, that I would put a video of my little girl on YouTube simply because I can't bear the thought of some stranger "thinking" about her. Send it to my family and friends? Absolutely. Of course, speaking from a non-parent view point, I don't really care what your nine year old thinks about the President; it's kind of like vacation pictures or drawings. I can feign interest for only so long, but then. . .

That last link is just a little something I found while surfing. I especially love the comments; maybe I'm a cynic, but come on . . . "haunting"? I've always been more of a fan of that guy that critiques kids' drawings, but that link might be offensive to some, and I don't the school filter would let us visit anyway. But trust me, it is good for a laugh--a big gut-busting laugh.

Meanwhile, back on my reader, I hit "mark all as read" as I finished the NPR stuff, and POOF everything went bye-bye. I spent some time looking for them, but, alas, I cannot figure how to retrieve them. I even asked Techno-husband, but he doesn't use Google as his reader so he couldn't really help me. So next time, I'll just hold off on that until I'm really done, with everything. Live and learn--glad they weren't my important notes for my meeting with the President later; would you like to see the pictures of my linoleum?

So back to the world of YouTube, etc. While I was surfing and found the precious drawing cite, I also discovered peopleofwalmart.com (travel here at your own risk; again, not including the link on purpose--this one is disturbing). I think there are some privacy law issues here, but oddly, I could connect from school. This cite troubles me to no end. At any time, someone can snap a picture of you and upload it somewhere, make snotty little comments, and if you respond, suddenly you can't take a joke or something. Lawyers must love this!

So that got me thinking. Have we become so narcissistic that we crave approval from anyone just to feel validated. I had no idea who Kanye West was until he shows up all over the news for being a "jackass." Just quoting the President here because he put it so succinctly. Who cares what this guy has to say about videos or otherwise, but he apparently thinks we all do. He, Mr West, suffers from the "I'm the Center of the Universe Syndrome." Many of the blogs I've stumbled upon seem this way. And the responses / comments can be frightening. The aforementioned and linked blog above references what percentage of the responses contained "four letter words". To me that was creepier than the number of pedophiles who posted because you had to expect that--the dark curtain of anonymity pulls all the muck off the bottom of the swamp. But come on, if you don't agree with a 9 year old's politics, do you swear at her? Them's good arguing skills, Bubba. Yer maw must be proud. And this is just a sampling of the dark vitriolic nature of the average human being these days.

Remember the old Morton Downey Show? This set up seems so trite now as ugliness and hatred seem to be what feeds our collective unconscious. Why do we like controversy and conflict so much? Are we still that close to The Coliseum?

Looking back on the post, I think the world of the internet scares me--not because I am afraid to use it or I think I can't use it--it frightens me because I'm not sure the world needs to be in each other's pockets all the time.

Thing 4: Blogging Begins with Reading

Post 3: Responses to Blogs I read.

Once upon a time, I was asked to be a “timer” for a series of One-Act Plays that were happening at our school. All I had to do was sit, sometimes in the audience, sometimes backstage, with a stopwatch in hand, timing the play. I was witness to many works that day—absurdist dramadies, heart-wrenching tragedies, and one little number I like to call “Kabuki Hamlet”.
Anyone who has read Hamlet, or watched the uncut Branaugh version, knows that Hamlet, even if the actors are rushing their lines, takes about 4 hours to perform. These kids had 40 minutes.

They did it—the entire Hamlet in 40 minutes. Well not the entire Hamlet, some of it was cut out, like almost two-thirds, but the gist was there, I guess.

You might be wondering what the heck this little tale has to do with blogging. Bear with me.

I could be commenting on how it’s all the rage, and the teachers who aren’t doing it should be flogged and we aren’t really teachers if we aren’t doing this, and someone who insisted a blog be required reading for High School English teachers (I read that as a “or else” statement--fill in flogging rhymes with blogging, get it? here).

Or I could touch upon the poor dude from the bullying site whose own site was ransacked by malicious self-righteous idiots who were set upon him, like trained dogs, by some editor at Wired magazine. I would, were I to do that, bring up an old Law and Order where some guy was killed because someone put up a hate fan site and well, killing him was then justified since he was some sort of zealot, as was the guy who put up the hate site. Where indeed does the responsibility reside?

But it was easier for me to tell the Kabuki Hamlet story because it sums up all the other arguments and points I would like to stress. Case in point.

Hamlet is a long play, and while some of the scenes may seem superfluous, they, in total, add to the whole product. Hamlet has some very comical scenes in it, especially where Polonius is concerned, but because they don’t lend themselves directly to the obvious plot, though they are terribly important to the overall read, they are the first scenes excised from the work when editing. What’s left after this wholesale chopping is 40 minutes of ?

In short, just because you CAN perform Hamlet in 40 minutes doesn’t mean you SHOULD.

And I think of blogging this way: it’s easy to attack in writing; it’s easy to say offensive things and then use the 1st amendment for protection; it’s easy, and I suppose confidence building to imagine that your words are so important the whole world must be exposed to them. Perhaps blogging has taken the place of the earth in the center of the universe. Once that theory was disproved (sorry if you thought it still was) we needed something to fill that void of being the center of the universe, and voila, we are important again.

Maybe when we teach kids the responsibility which comes with blogging, we should think about teaching them a little humility as well . . .

Oh, and the Kabuki Hamlet production was disqualified--they used too much fabric in their costumes and their sets.

Thing 2: Thoughts About Web 2.0

Okay, so if this blog is supposed to be a record of my learning journey, in my voice, then I'm afraid, dear readers, that you might find me a bit acerbic. The Educational Utopia of every child with a laptop and internet connection, which, working in tandem, suddenly make said children crave education the way they crave Skittles is just that--a utopia. And even Thomas More had a dark side to his. . .

I think, for example, if I see one more video of silent, sad-faced kids writing stuff down on white boards while heart-string jerking music wails in the background, I may be sick. Or one more "Ken Burns" transitionally loaded flash movie that either compares us to China or scolds us for how far behind we are in the world of education, and then promises me that technology will cure all that I am going to puke out my liver and stuff it down someone's throat. Having taught rhetoric of the visual and verbal kind for the past 13 years of my life, I think I know when I'm being manipulated.

Why are there more honor students in China than there are people in the US? China has 1.3+ BILLION people; the US-300+ million. China is mostly populated with a homogeneous group of people; the US has people of all cultures and religions, many of which don’t revere education the way the culture of China does. And don’t get me started on the religions that handicap our educational system; China doesn’t have the issue of a "religious right".

Should we be including technology in education, yes; should we throw away our books because kids don’t like to read? The Scarlet Letter is going to be as hard to understand on Kindle as it is in print.

Sorry, I am really tech friendly, and I attempt to offer my students a variety of lessons built around technology, but it is not the be all-end all cure for educational woes, and sad-faced kids who listen to Harry Potter on their iPod still need to be able to read. Last time I checked, the TAKS exam, the SAT, the AP, the ACT, the LSAT, the GMAT, etc were written exams, be they written on paper or written in a word document down-loadable from the web.

And that, I'm afraid, isn't going to change.

Will I continue to use technology in my room? Sure. Some lessons fall into tech plans nicely; will I force all my lessons into some technological format? No. When I told my students we were going to do peer editing online, they were distressed. They actually like having their physical essays in another student's hands being searched and studied. Should I force them to do it online? We aren't a paperless society yet.

I took the Intel Teach course and learned a great many things that changed the way I do certain lessons. I love the collaborative spreadsheet for brainstorming; so do the kids, but when half the class can't get logged in due to a tree issue or a context problem with the laptop system itself, the magic starts vanishing. Thirty minutes later, when finally, after multiple shut downs, battery pulls, entire computer swaps, and finally, merely using stuguest to get online, 1/3 of my class time is gone. Sometimes, ladies and gentlemen, you have to punt; and sometimes punting involves pulling out the old pen and paper method.

Are my students getting 21st century skills? Yes they are, and they are also getting skills to get them through a project if the electricity goes out, if their ink cartridge explodes, and their flash drive melts in the Texas heat. If we want well-rounded kids, then maybe we should teach them new skills but also update the ones they already have--like note-taking and active reading with a pen in hand, annotating for meaning.

Thing 1: Reflections on Lifelong learning

I love learning. Always have, probably always will. I love the school supply aisle in the grocery store and office depot the way a computer nerd loves Fry's Electronics. Come to think of it, I love Fry's.

I've never enjoyed being lied to or horn-swaggled, that's why I enjoy rhetoric and deconstructing language so much. So, for example, when I get magazines from New Jersey promising to help with my TAKS scores, I just shake my head and recycle them. You don't buy TAKS materials or salsa from New Jersey.

I'm plenty challenged, but I don't find that a problem--an inconvenience maybe.

With that in mind, of these 7.5 habits, I must say that I find myself always beginning with the end in mind--my problem is I don't always see the route to get there. To quote Ratbert "I'm more of an idea rat." In fact, looking over this list again (for the 9th or so time) I think I find most of these easy to achieve. I could learn to use technology more efficiently and more to my advantage--just as soon as I finish grading these essays, and these timed writings, and these quizzes--yeah, I'll get right on that . . .

What do they say about the "road to Hell"--it's paved with, oh yeah, good intentions. Sigh.

Okay, so maybe number 6 could be difficult; and let's add number 5 to that, too. Toolbox? Does it have to be virtual? Does my cool highlighter with post-its in the barrel count? No? Hmmmm.

Right, well taking this course might buy me some time to actually start "creating" that toolbox, and today during my conference I went to the library to learn more about my Moodle from TR; I learn something about that site every time I meet with her, but I forget to do it immediately, and then I forget how to do it altogether. . .

Where was I?

Just kidding; I can handle 7.5.