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?