Cartoon Violence Thinks of the Children

Cartoon Violence Thinks of the Children—This Wonkette piece reminded me of my tech analysis of New Yorker cartoons. There’s not much in the PowerPoint, but I asked students the same sorts of questions as they looked at how children interact with technologies in the cartoons. The same assignment could be done looking at gender, age, and race (though that will be a short study). I have a PowerPoint of the cartoons that I use, but since they’re copyrighted, I can’t post it. You could easily do the assignment with the book however: The New Yorker Book of Technology Cartoons.

In the News: Grassroots Women Gaining a Voice

UNESCO | Education – Grassroots Women Gaining a Voice
talks about ways that technology increases literacy . . . and not in the way we usually talk about it:

“The UNESCO teams introduced workload-lightening technologies such as water pumps that eliminated the need for women and girls to plod miles for water, millet grinding mills that replaced tedious hand grinding, and donkey carts that substituted for hauling heavy loads on their heads. Functional literacy activities conveyed health advice and tips on hygiene, such as how to filter swamp water, that dramatically lowered infant mortality.”

Rhetoric: Machina Memorialis on Emerging Fields

Machina Memorialis: Vitanza Quote Found While Marking Time in the Archive—clipping this quotation because it may be useful for my C&W paper.

YALit: Girl in a Cage: Importance of Being Earnest

Girl in a Cage: Importance of Being Earnest—I gush over Donorboy and then the author of the book writes a blog entry questioning the value of authenticity and earnestness. Now what am I supposed to do? Granted he finally decides that sometimes earnestness is okay, but I just couldn’t help but feel that the author is just out to make me sad. I so loved that book for its authenticity, and here the author is telling me that authenticity isn’t where it’s at. Brendan, can’t you rethink? Please?

In the News: Learning in the Classroom by Reaching Out to Others

Learning in the Classroom by Reaching Out to Others—description of a 3rd grade social action project, making books for younger children. The article describes the purpose of the activity: “Making the books is part of a literacy project designed not only to teach lessons about reading and writing to third-graders, but also to forge a connection with their community.”

How to bind a book – Lifehacker

How to bind a book – Lifehacker—okay, so I may not have a really good excuse to bind my own book, but at least I have the instructions should it become necessary.

In the News: Be Afraid

Don’t Talk to Invisible Strangers – New York Times and IMs: What’s a Mother to Do? – Washington Post—goodie! More fearmongering article to annoy me. It’s not that I don’t believe that people (not just kids, but anyone) can get into trouble on the Internet. Hell, be honest. Anyone can get into trouble anywhere by sharing the wrong information with the wrong person. Only the clinically paranoid would conclude that people should never ever talk to anyone else as a result. Yet the conclusion of these sorts of articles is a catalogue of fears and a long list of don’ts that ultimately result in families severely limiting access or taking away access altogether. Just once I’d like to see a positive spin on building community and establishing safe online persona. As long as fear sells though, it’s not likely to happen. What we need to be afraid of is how fear is shaping our ways of moving through the world.

Daily Work: Filth Management

For reasons that still aren’t clear to me, I went to bed last night at 10:30, and I actually got hours and hours of great sleep. Woke up completely refreshed, and ready to tackle the world. From this well-rested perspective, I found myself absolutely annoyed with the messiness of my desk in the office. I spent the bulk of the day on a Filth Management Project, cleaning up junk, putting away stuff from lessons that have already published, clearing piles of mail, putting away lingering holiday decorations that had stacked up. It’s so lovely to rediscover your desk. I even found time to take care of some online detritus, cleaning up broken links on the site.

Daily Work: Opossum Trauma Abates

The harrowing night of the opossum yielded to the treacherous morn of the opossum. In other words, when I got up this morning, he was still in the driveway. He hadn’t moved since that rolling over that I noticed at 9 PM last night, so I decided that he had to be dead or extremely stupid. What opossum lies in the same place for that long, especially when there’s very bright sunshine and a barking dog in the neighbor’s yard.

So I called Animal Control, and they told me that they don’t deal with wildlife so I’d need to call a pest control company. Great. So I called the office to alert them to the fact that I was going to have to figure out how to get rid of a opossum before I could come in. Fortunately, Sharon reminded me that my driveway was really the alley, so he was technically a opossum in the street. Lo and behold, the phone book actually has a listing under Public Works labeled “dead animals in the street.” I called them, and they said they’d send someone over. That crazy critter was out of my way in 10 minutes. All hail Public Works!

Sharon says that the lesson we have learned here is that if opossums die in your yard, get a shovel or rake and shove them into the street so that you don’t have to deal with them.

I know it’s heartless of me to think not of the poor soul of the opossum. In his last moments of life, I threw rocks at him and wished him ill. I am currently punishing myself for this evil by building a memorial in the driveway, er, alley. I believe a large stone marker and memorial tree would be best, but I’ll have to get city approval first and the city hall people didn’t sound too pleasant when I talked to them about this shrine.