In the News: Bush: Boost math and science

eSchool News online – Bush: Boost math and science—this initiative is why we’re internally focusing on what has been titled the “STEM learning pathway.” STEM = Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. In any other world, we’d be talking about reading and writing in the content areas or reading and writing across the disciplines (or curriculum); but in the world where the government gets to decide how things are labeled, we have STEM.

In the News: E-mail Tone

Email tone isn’t understood as much as we think – Lifehacker—of course the issue that isn’t being addressed here is how e-mail and telephone rhetorical skills compare to letter writing, memos, and so forth. There’s a move to damn what’s electronic about the communication without considering whether the issue may be the immediacy of audience and purpose that telephone communication may bring to a speaker/writer.

Web Resources: 30 Boxes Calendar Beta

30 Boxes calendar beta live – Lifehacker: This tool has possibilities for a shared calendar for IRA and NCTE as we both work on ReadWriteThink. We currently have a shareware app that lets us upload dates. This looks slicker. I need to investigate it in more detail though.

Blogging: Del.icio.us and Teaching (and Categories?)

cbd offers an explanation of how Del.icio.us and teaching go together. I wish I could get my head around del.icio.us completely. It just evades me. There’s something I just don’t get. The way the cbd explains it here made me wonder if it wouldn’t be a way for me to have categories on my blog, which doesn’t really support categories. If I chose keywords that were my categories and then tagged things, could I create category links to those entries on del.icio.us? It feels like that would work, but there’s something that makes the whole del.icio.us thing feel too complex. I think I need to sit down with someone and have him/her walk me through a site till I get it. I’m not exactly sure who that person would be or where she/he is hiding. And while that miracle person is at it, I’ll take details on how all this compares to technorati.

Depression: Late or Not?

Finally, I’m caught up. Feels like a million entries I’ve edited or written in the last 24 hours.

The most interesting observation through all this was a note on one day that I was horribly late for work, and a note on the very next day that I got in at a reasonable time. Both days I arrived at the same time. My brain is so mixed up it seems. I know that I am the poster child for black and white thinking, but normally, it’s that everything I do is wrong or stupid or horrible. Here I had evidence that I thought the same action was horrible one day and great the next—and I didn’t even notice until I read back through things. Maybe one day my brain will make sense.

Daily Work: Sleeping, Napping, Cooking

Got up at 12:30. Went back to bed at 2:00. Got back up at 4:30. Am I lame or what? I had it in my mind that I would run errands to Home Depot and Office Depot (an emerging depot theme). I didn’t really accomplish anything though.

Did lots of work catching up this silly blog, and I made broccoli soup. Didn’t work on cleaning things as I should have either.

Depression: "Just Getting Started" (Are they serious?)

A friend said that he’s taking Cymbalta, so I went off to find out what it does. I found the tips on their When You’re Just Getting Started page fun. I’m very good at “Defer Big Decisions”—that can account for not bothering to get out of bed long enough to go shopping. As far as “Try to avoid stress” and “Be good to your body” are concerning, I’m certain that napping is an excellent way to take care of both of those. Not so good at “Be aware of your diet” I guess, but I did make a healthy pot of soup today. “Interrupt negative thinking,” hmm, okay I’m failing on this one; but I scored on “Talk to your friends and family” cuz my sister called me twice and during the calls I chatted with my brother-in-law and mom too. If only things actually worked like this.

In the News: Charging for E-mail

Postage Is Due for Companies Sending E-Mail – New York Times—just what we need. What I find intriguing about the argument behind these charges is that spammers and other annoyances wouldn’t pay for the privilege of sending e-mail through AOL and Yahoo too.

Daily Work: ReadWriteThink Science Fiction Lesson, Blogging, Napping

Got to work just 3 minutes after. A major accomplishment. Continued work on the science fiction lesson plan. Had it live by mid-afternoon. Finding the Science Behind Science Fiction through Paired Readings is live and ready for the teachers of the world :)

As I was working on it today, I kept looking at one thing and finding that the cursor or arrow was some place else altogether. Turns out that in the world of computers, visual focus != cursor focus.

Did the traditional Friday night grocery shopping and started catching up on the long missing entries. I don’t know how I feel so far behind. Well, part of it may be something problematic that happened to a friend, and then once I fell behind, I couldn’t get going again. I saved drafts and snippets, but I couldn’t managed to get them published. I have it in my head that I can’t do new, current entries until I have all the gaps filled in. Stupid really I guess, but that’s my head. At least the process is underway. There’d be more done if I hadn’t foolishly taken a nap from 9 to 11:30. I have no explanation for that nonsense.