c h a n g e l o g

Fair Use and Copyright for Educators

Tuesday, November 11th, 2008 | NCTE Inbox | No Comments

From my entry this week for the NCTE Inbox Blog:
Unsure if you can use a music video in class legally? The Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education can help answer all these questions. Read the review for tips on additional resources you can use in the classroom.

Use Doodle to Cast Your Vote

Thursday, November 6th, 2008 | NCTE Inbox | No Comments

From my entry this week for the NCTE Inbox Blog:
Trying to plan a time to meet friends at the Annual Convention in San Antonio? Doodle is a free online polling tool that makes it easy to gather preferences–for setting up events or anything else! And there are many ways you can use Doodle for professional development and in the classroom.

Tell Me about Your Convention Session

Tuesday, October 28th, 2008 | My Writing | No Comments

From the NCTE Inbox Blog (you know, my other blog):

The 2008 NCTE Annual Convention is only 3 weeks away. Before you know it, you’ll be in San Antonio attending sessions, giving presentations, and connecting with friends and colleagues.
But why wait till you’re in San Antonio? Here are ten reasons to post information about your convention session today.

Installing a Bit of an Update

Sunday, October 19th, 2008 | Uncategorized | No Comments

Yes, I’ve been off this blog’s little sphere of the world for quite a while. Long stories, all of which we’ll skip. I have been writing regularly on the Inbox Blog for NCTE, so I haven’t been completely gone from the world of blogs.

And I’ve been twittering as both tengrrl (for educational colleagues) and hokiebunny (for my WyldRyde friends) for quite a while now. Been a few other places, done a few other things. They’ll all show up eventually.

For now, I think it’s good enough that I’ve converted from Blogger to Wordpress, which turned out to be much, much simpler than I thought it would be. Obviously there’s much still to be done. I want to customize a theme, clean up the sidebars, work on categories, and so on. I’ve played with Wordpress before, but never to any great extent so it may take a little while to get things exactly as I want them. Tonight my only other goal is to get rid of the ‘just another wordpress blog’ taglines. After all, it’s not JUST another one. It’s MINE.

Tags: wordpress

Another Revision

Friday, November 9th, 2007 | My Writing, journal | No Comments

Fiddling around with paper titles for the English Journal call. Wondering about “Plagiarism or Censorship? The Battles over Using Wikipedia in the Classroom.” Not really sure I like it, but oh well. I’ve written 11 words.

Published a lesson plan revision, a new 6-8 lesson on using books and their movie adaptations: Cover to Cover: Comparing Books to Movies.

Tags: ReadWriteThink

Proposals

Thursday, November 8th, 2007 | My Writing | No Comments

I’d like to get something written for the English Journal due next week on doing the right thing, but I’m having trouble getting started. The call talks about academic honesty, plagiarism, and cheating. I’m thinking about perhaps doing something with how online sources complicate things, especially when teachers aren’t even allowed to take kids to online sites. It can fit the topic. I just haven’t managed to get going on it.

Instead I’m off to happy procrastination land, looking at a CFP that has a proposal due January 1. Why work on something due in a week when you can worry about things due in six weeks? On a whim, I checked the Computers and Composition calls a few weeks ago and began thinking about this one: A Thousand Pictures: Interfaces and Composition.

Here’s the question: Would it fit to talk about how computer interfaces are represented in children’s literature? I’m not quite sure where I want to go with the idea, and I’d need to do some reading on interface design to write anything. But I’m thinking of some books that attempt to fake what IM screens and emails look like as well as picture books that show computers with their interfaces on the screen.

I’m just not certain if that’s a good topic, or it’s ridiculously simplistic and laughable. And there’s the bigger challenge that I’d need to do a lot of reading on interface theory-wise. I’m not even sure what to read. It’s hard to read on a topic when you have no idea where to start—and even harder still when you’re not sure if it’s a topic that would fit the call. Maybe I should go back to the EJ call.

Lesson Revisions

Wednesday, November 7th, 2007 | journal | No Comments

Finished my work on the markup and tidying of our revision of the 3-5 lesson Get the Reel Scoop: Comparing Books to Movies today. The whole process took close to 7 hours. I hope the next one goes a bit faster. Only 8 to 13 more revisions to go. Now to begin work on the 6-8 revision of the lesson.

Figuring out the Inbox blog entry

Tuesday, November 6th, 2007 | My Writing, journal | No Comments

So today I flailed about trying to figure out what to write for the blog entry. It needed to tie to 21st-century literacies, but I was feeling really lost on what to say. Going through the copyeditor’s comments seemed a lot easier than trying to come up with something new to say. As I was sitting there trying to figure out what to do, I thought, “I wish this were as easy as writing teaching stories for the manuscript. That’s what I do best. Oh, wait, why can’t it be that easy? Just write a story on one of the 21-century literacy issues.” Thank goodness the voices in my head talk about these things a lot. Otherwise I’d still be trying to figure out today’s entry, which ended up being I Was a Mac. They Were PCs.

Back to the Copyeditor

Monday, November 5th, 2007 | My Writing, journal | No Comments

Got a handful of things done today: Inbox Ideas done, Inbox Announcements done, Work on Feb 08 calendar done, South Park character made (don’t I look cool?), Hallmark ornaments mom needed purchased, trip to the bookstore completed.

But the important thing was finishing the notes on the manuscript and leaving it on the copy editor’s desk before I left the office this evening. One more step completed. Supposed to have page proofs back after Thanksgiving. This part seems to be flying compared to actually writing the draft.

Still things to do, like get an author photo, do all the related lesson plans, get the companion website set up. Looks like it’s going to be a busy time for a while. And that’s without thinking about the ReadWriteThink and Inbox work I need to do.

Sam’s

Sunday, November 4th, 2007 | journal | No Comments

Took a trip to Sam’s this afternoon. I hate going to Sam’s. It’s such a struggle not to come home with super-sized packages of things that I don’t have any place to store and get deathly tired of before they run out (or they spoil).

I managed reasonably well against the challenge. Got bags of candy for the office, which was the goal, peanut butter for the squirrels, and only 3 food items for me. I’ve decided to try the all protein diet, no carbs again. I simply have to do something before the season of eating descends and things get even worse. So I got prosciutto (which turned out to be very, um, questionable when I tried it tonight), smoked pork chops (mmm), and some sausage.

Unfortunately this evening the Carbonara that I tried to make with the proscuitto (diet starts tomorrow) is really sitting poorly. It’s burning. I added some Emeril Parmesan Italian thing from the frig and the garlic and spices set the acid reflux aflame. I’ve gulped down extra Prilosec and a double dose of Pepcid AC. I ate some chicken soup, bread, and milk. They settled things down for a few minutes, but it catches fire again not long after.

Heaven help me if this is like that sickness after the Gaming Forum at Purdue last month. I can’t afford to be down tomorrow. I have to finish editing the book and write all the text for the Ideas, Announcements, and Blog for INBOX. Besides the Honey Nut Cheerios and chicken soup diet I end up on when acid reflux is bad is wholly incompatible with the all protein, no carbs diet. Hoping for an overnight miracle.