Miscellany

Cleaning out my Bloglines clippings folder (e.g., procrastinating):

• Mentioned on datacloud:
  It Figures
  This blog defines figures of speech with current events and pop culture examples. Not all will be usable in the classroom, but many could be tapped. The technique might make an interesting writing project for a cross-curricular project or for an exploration of pop culture texts.

• From Kairosnews:
  Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents provides suggestions for publishing blogs in less than supportive environments (like that in Pope John XIII Regional High School) as well as ideas for getting picked up by search engines, blogging anonymously, and keeping e-mail private.

• From The New York Times:
  • What’s Cool Online? Teenagers Render Verdict discusses a marketing focus group exploring the strategies that attract teens. One of the cited resouces is “The Coke Studios Web site was designed to appeal to teenagers as a place to meet online, hold chats and make their own music.”
  • Got Wit? Make It Visual in Ads Online reviews an interactive exhibit at the Science, Industry and Business Library of the New York Public Library. The exhibit includes “some of the best ads ever made for television, radio, print and the Internet.” I’m guessing copyright will keep the collection from being shared online for those of us who can’t get to NY. The library has some info online. If you click through to the “Online Exhibit,” you’ll find some additional descriptions. The resources link there points to additional Web sites that may be useful for classroom studies of advertising and culture.
  • Forget Blogs, Print Needs Its Own IPod focuses on how “In an attempt to leave the forest of dead trees and reach the high plains of digital media, every paper in the country is struggling mightily to digitize its content with Web sites, blogs, video and podcasts.” I’ll readily admit that I don’t read a print newspaper. When I was in Texas, I got most of my news from CNN’s Headline News, before the show turned into a circus. When I moved to Illinois, I switched to listening to NPR every morning as I get ready for work, and frequently every evening. Now that I’ve been using Bloglines for a while, I’ve returned to scanning the headlines of “print” news”papers” via their RSS feeds. Might be interesting to have an assignment where students look at how they get their news and compare that to how an older family member remembers getting news at the same age and/or now.
  • Getting Your Point Across describes a forbes.com Special Report: Communicating. The NYT article explains that the “package on communication is a tour de force, taking on its subject from oblique angles using counterintuitive approaches.” Could be interesting jumping-off points for student inquiry projects (as well as connections to our own practices in the classroom).