Okay, it’s late, and I’m completely agitated. The process of replacing my roof is supposed to begin too early in the morning. After 9 AM, there should be a dumpster in the driveway, which means that I’ve had to park my car on the street. It’s making me crazy to have it out there. I can’t see it without flashlighting it, and I’m overly worried about it. Logically this makes no sense. I parked my car in a parking lot the entire time I lived in Austin, but I could always see the car from the apartment. Maybe it’s not being able to see it. But the thing is I’ve parked every car in front of my parents’ house, and it never bothered me. If I went to the trouble of trying to look at the window, I might be able to see it at home. But I never bothered. I guess I always feel safe at home, and I never feel completely safe anywhere else. I wish I could. I wish I could relax and be unworried.

If the car thing isn’t enough, I have my stupid physical therapy appointment tomorrow afternoon. My stupid back. It doesn’t even hurt, and I have to go do this stuff. I want to cancel the appointment. We all know what’s wrong with me. I’m fat. Having some person I don’t know touch me and force me into mechanical torture devices isn’t going to solve the problem. I wish I could disappear and avoid this.

IPods Fast Becoming New Teacher’s Pet, from the Washington Post

From the article:

At some schools, the rules are clear: Kids can chill out to downloaded music on portable players, but once they’re inside, iPods and other learning distractions must be stowed in backpacks or lockers and kept there. At Jamestown Elementary School in Arlington, Camilla Gagliolo took another approach. Rather than fighting the fad, she’s capitalizing on it by giving students iPods and re-imagining them as a learning tool.

THIS is what I was hoping to get from that Saturday IATE session. I was hoping for some stories on using iPods and mp3 players with students. Cool multimodal things. The students in Gagliolo’s class are highly involved, integrating their own podcast productions with what is going on in class and at the school. In ways, the story reminds me of Hilve Firek’s story on Saturday morning of her students asking to play on the computer, and for them play was creating their own class newspaper. Sigh… Maybe next year.

The Colbert Report

I joined my niece online last night to chat and talk during the new Daily Show and the premiere of The Colbert Report. I had even set a reminder in Outlook to make sure that I didn’t miss it.

Overall, I was really disappointed. We both were. Our comments ranged from “This is not funny” to “WTF?” We’ve decided to give him another shot tonight and see whether it was just first show problems.

This afternoon, I read The Colbert Report: Oui, Oui – Wonkette, which has actually clarified things a bit. It’s hard to notice satire of a particular show when you don’t watch that show. I’ve never seen the O’Reilly Factor in my life. It’s no wonder I was lost. Maybe knowing that will help tonight.

It’s been an exciting day of odds and ends. We’ve updated the ReadWriteThink Advisory Board, which meant related changes to the Web page. One name is forthcoming, and we will eventually have bio pages for each member.

In preparation for revision and editing of the January calendar, I brought the entries all forward from 2005 to 2006. The goal is to have them live before December 1, so that the “Next Month” link works. Timing my be difficult on this one, given the fact that 4 of the 7 days allowed for editing are Thanksgiving holiday/weekend. I haven’t exactly figured out my Thanksgiving plans, but they don’t really include the January calendar.

I did a little working ahead on the Ideas section for Inbox. This week’s edition hasn’t gone out yet. It’s being held for stories on the NAEP scores. But I finished my writing yesterday. I decided to look at the resources for next week, and it turned out to be easy to assemble. So next week’s Halloween-inspired column is ready and waiting.

On a silly whim, I visited the Factory Card and Party Outlet and bought up more Halloween and Thanksgiving decorations for the office on my way home. Sorry. I didn’t buy any costumes so there will be no pictures of me as Cleopatra or a Bar Wench. And no, you’re not getting a bee either.

Tags: English language arts |
K12 instruction |
lesson plans |
NCTE Inbox |
ReadWriteThink

The middle of the month means it’s time for another content report for ReadWriteThink. We submitted the two lessons that I’ve already mentioned (one on Night and the other on Gettysburg Address). We also added a couple of reviewed Web Resources:

Story of Movies The Film Foundation presents rich resources for teaching specific films in the classroom, including To Kill a Mockingbird and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Extensive guides can be printed from the site. [This resource really excited me when I saw the first commercials on TCM in mid-August. Sadly, at that time, they were directing you to a non-existent site, and they never replied to my e-mails. Because they are going to exhibit at the Annual Convention in Pittsburgh this November, they sent a copy of one of the To Kill a Mockingbird to someone in the Conventions Department. It’s a rich and wonderful resource.] Rapidcite This free tool produces bibliographical citations in three easy steps. The site supports MLA, APA, and Chicago citation styles.

Tags: English language arts |
K12 instruction |
lesson plans |
NCTE Inbox |
ReadWriteThink

Can I just say that after writing and writing and writing entries the last few days it feels really weird not to have anything to say today? I have been a slug, and the best I could possibly write would be a description of my naps. I don’t even remember any dreams. I am a bad blogger. How thoughtless of me not to do anything bloggable today.

And now the final session. Actually, it was one of the ones I had
really looked forward too! iPods & English!

Again, we have been called to the front of the room, this time because the speaker is showing a PowerPoint show on his Powerbook for the session. The room is boiling hot and I really wish I were sitting on that table over there in the corner. I’ve grown weary of the laptop-on-my-lap arrangement. This room is tucked far in the back corner of the hotel, and there doesn’t seem to be any wireless in here. I’m trying to work in a text editor, and I can’t get it to wrap text, which I might add is driving me crazy. I guess that I will start hitting return. It’s so odd to try to remember that old typing skill of hitting return. I wonder if students even understand the idea of a “return”; for them, there is nothing to return. It took a while for the session to get started. The previous presenter took a long time to clean up and get out, and it’s taken a while to get the handouts and the computer setup. He has this habit of trying to make a joke about every interaction with every person. The kind of corny jokes your grandfather might tell. Jokes that don’t fit in the presentation, but finally we’re underway. He’s essentially reading through the slides, which he has given up copies of. Very basic and generic information (that I probably could have gotten from a commercial). Next slide is on his favorite uses for iPods. The first line: shopping with a shuffle. OMFG. I can’t believe what he just said to us. “My wife and shopping, well, you all know how women are. It’s not pleasant, and it’s not cheerful. I just shove on earphones and I listen while she shops.” How is it that I could let him speak such a thing to me and I haven’t gotten up and left this room. It’s the front row thing. I feel like I can’t get up and leave without being rude. But the thing is that comment was rude. Why is it okay for him to be rude to me, and not for me to get up and be rude in return? I guess it’s an issue of respect. We are supposed to show respect for our elders. We are supposed to respect presenters. When do we get to respect ourselves? It’s 1:45. The session is supposed to be over at 2:15. 30 more minutes? We’re on slide 7 of a 36 slide PowerPoint. All the information is incredibly basic, and I think I’ve just mentally checked out. There’s so little being said that there’s nothing to even type about. 1:57. I’ve just glanced back and noticed several people have left. I’m so fortunate. Bruce Ericksson just came in to remove some equipment. That gave me the chance to move back to the third row. As long as I feel that I have to stay, I may as well have the chance to put my feet up on the chair in front of me. 2:03. I wish that instead of a battery timer telling me how much more time in the session, I had a session timer telling me how much longer in this boiling room. 2:07. Walking around the room, showing us a family picture. 2:10. Next PowerPoint slide. “I don’t even know what this is, but I’ll share it with you. Podcasts which I think are visual sounds.” 2:13. “Apollo 13 scared me. The moonshot that went awry and killed all those astronauts. I believe in redundancy. In Apollo 13, they were working on improvisation, but I like all these things because they provide backups.” [The Apollo 13 astronauts didn’t die. Well, not during that flight anyway.] 2:14. “Just a footnote. How do I have the time to do all this? I retired 5 years ago.” o_O 2:16. The chair/recorder for the session has stopped the pain. Presenter says if we want to stay a few more minutes he can go through the rest of the slides. The recorder says that she will sign the Continuing Ed sheets. People trip over each other to get to her and get out of there. I’ve never been so disappointed in a session.

I admit that I wasn’t even sure if I should post this. With even the slightest bit of net know-how, you could figure out what this session was, who the presenter was. But here they are. More than anything, I think that the reason is that as I sat there with a group of young preservice or first-year teachers who needed their forms signed, I felt more than sorry for them. I felt responsible for them. I felt that I really should at the very least apologize for them. They came to find new ways to use iPods in their class. It’s definitely not what they got. I wished so much that there was a way to pull them all off to another room and talk to them about multimodal teaching in ways that would matter. Sigh. What a sad conclusion to the conference.

Tags: English language arts |
K12 instruction

First afternoon session is actually a substitute. It was supposed to be a writing workshop session tied to the Writing Project strand, but the speakers were unavailable. Instead Willie Bobbie‘s friend Susan Spangler [be jealous Willie Bobbie. we want you to be jealous] stepped in to do a session on Music and Writing. I’m convinced that this was worth staying here for. I’m so glad this session suddenly appeared. She’s doing a great activity on culture and writing that asks students to rewrite Cole Porter’s “You’re the Top” for modern culture. She really has everything here to make this into a ReadWriteThink lesson. I just have to convince her :)

So it’s a Writing Project session, which means that I’ve been writing. We tried to complete the activity. Then discuss the things that you can teach with the activity: audience, poetry (meter, rhythm, rhyme), layers of cultures and subcultures, allusions, look at the structure of other songs, research to determine the meanings of the original.

[My spins: do an immersion in a time period, do a book report alternative where students write the lyrics for a character in the book, using the setting from the book.]

Tags: English language arts |
IATE conference

Okay, so people were hanging around and I stayed to ask my exciting intellectual property issue question. She’s saying that the movie is satire so it’s protected as fair use. I’m still not convinced, but that’s her story.

Then she asked if I was a librarian, because it’s usually the librarians who are bothered by this issue. Sigh. That’s actually my point, I’m thinking now, as I write these notes. We should ALL be asking these questions and they should be dealt with up front and completely, not as an afterthought.

She went on to say, “George Lucas has seen this and he’s not bothered by it.” To which I responded, “His saying that it’s okay doesn’t mean it’s not an issue.” I asked about the credits and whether there was any notice there, at the end of the movie. She says there is.

I don’t know about the whole issue. I’m not satisfied with the answer. And I’m even less happy with the fact that she didn’t really deal with the issue at all in the session. Oh well.

And you know. Even if it was satire. Even if George Lucas doesn’t care. Even if I am being an uptight person (stereotyped librarian). Even if….” it was done with a ‘bootleg copy of Adobe Premiere.'” And she treated that intellectual property theft as if it was laudable.

Tags: English language arts |
IATE Conference

It’s Saturday, and I chose sleep over the 8 AM sessions; but I’m out of bed for Hilve Firek’s session, “Tech in the English Classroom: Winning Hearts and Minds.” We folks in the back of the room have been called forward, so I’m off…

And now I’m in the first row…There’s actually no one else in the front row, not on my side anyway. On the other side, there’s the speaker, the program chair, and the president. Apparently I am an imposter.

Sessions I’ve noticed seem to start with personal stories of “how I got here.” I guess that I knew that, but somehow today’s session and yesterday’s have made me realize this. Hilve is talking about how technology makes revision less tedious for students. Those who were resistant to revision when it meant literally “rewriting” it were far more willing to revise when computers simplified the process and removed the tedium. Beyond that, there’s the lure of the computer. She tells the story of a group of 9th graders who volunteered to play on the computer—by writing a newspaper. Additionally, computers can be more interesting to boys than writing on paper with pens. “What improves test scores isn’t technology and computers but technology allowing students to have a positive experience in the classroom.” She showed a student film: Star Wars Macbeth. It’s a cute film, but it completely and totally violates intellectual property rights. They have stolen clips from the film, and the entire soundtrack for the film is taken from the movie. Great work for high school students really, but I’m very disturbed that there’s no attentoin to the intellectual copyright issues. How can we expect students to document their work in research papers when we allow this kind of intellectual theft? Perhaps there will be something in the credits, but with the entire soundtrack for the piece taken, I’m bothered. They’ve also taken scenes from the movie and spliced themselves in, scattered them in as background. I’m not sure that I could call this satire, so the amount of stolen property here can’t be excused that way. The video is 5 to 6 years old, but she positions it as a “great work.” The movie is available online with outtakes, trailers, and so forth. It was filmed at school during the two weeks of holiday break in December. Turning to the audience, Hilve asks folks to brainstorm what the project helped students learn. She talked about popular culture being a way to get students excited and involved in classroom activities. Her big question here is “Why bother?”—both why we as teachers should “bother” to do these sorts of projects in the classroom, and why students “bother” to participate in these projects. Why do students buy in. Great. She just also divulged that it was done with a “bootleg copy of Adobe Premiere.” I don’t understand why this intellectual property issue doesn’t matter… Next, using The Boy Who Drew Cats. This presentation does include a legal disclaimer. The project integrates sound and is nonlinear. Basically, it’s a “read your own adventure story” taking advantage of the hotspots in PowerPoint. This sort of project asks students to pay attention to audience, as they have to think about the choices that the viewer will make. She does mention that “they are paraphrasing a folktale. We talked about how they can’t just take the text, they had to put it in their own words.” [so why does intellectual property rights matter with this, but not Star Wars?] The project does show typical student issues with overuse of the bells and whistles that the PowerPoint. The issue I see is that it’s not really a “choose your own adventure story.” It’s a story that asks students what happens next, and tells them that they are wrong if they make the wrong choice. The artwork is all clipart [which I assume was free?] Again, she asks the audience in the presentation to identify the learning that took place. Claire Lamonica asked her to talk more about how the project worked. Hilve talked about the importance of planning. She makes the students sketch out their story on paper first, before she lets them go to the computer. [Not sure that I agree with this premise. Multimodal composing is different in many ways, but she has forced it into a traditional paper-writing process structure.] Q&A: questions on where to find sound files, where to find clip art, overview of her book, [and I so want to ask about the intellectual property issue, but we are out of time…]

Tags: English language arts |
IATE Conference