pedablogical

So I spent all day today finally getting my new laptop set up in the office. Here’s the less cranky background. Every three years, NCTE replaces the computers in the buildings. Obviously this rotates among employees. It’s not like we go out and dump all the machines at once and bring in all new. So my very nice, but overtaxed laptop has been replaced with a much nicer, faster one. I’ve had access to it for a month, but with other deadlines and such, I haven’t had a chance to get it setup and move my files onto it until today.

It’s a lot like my home laptop in terms of the feel of the keyboard and the size and screen, so this should be an easy transition—as soon as I get all the special settings and preferences and plug-ins and whatnot installed and running properly. Fortunately, I get to hold on to the old one for a while, so I can look back for whatever I missed.

In the meantime, there is the never-ending Gettysburg lesson plan to work on. I discovered that C-SPAN has some great video clips that explain answers to some of the questions that I have students exploring. The thing is that I have a boatload of resources, and I’m not sure that they are on target for my audience, 3-5 graders. I’m beginning to wonder if this is a 9-12 lesson plan. I’ve asked Sharon and Lisa for guidance, but I keep writing (and writing and writing).

Got another very angry response to this week’s Inbox Ideas section. Today’s shows that special failure to see reality. First the traditional crap about promoting lifestyles. blah blah blah. Then a little sprinkle of the oxymoronic, which I shall paraphrase: Oh, please evil writers, do not judge me. Really I respect the gays as people. I just don’t respect their [evil, sinful] lifestyle. (Then you don’t respect them, do you?) Then we took a turn toward the silly. General stuff about values and whatnot was followed with an admonition that sexuality should never be discussed in the classroom. There is no place for such lurid topics. (Hmm. What do you do when it becomes time to cover Romeo and Juliet?)

I have such a hard time understanding this kind of hatred. I knew to expect negative messages, but it’s much harder when they actually show up. I guess it feels personal. But to hell with it. I’d do it again. I will do it again.

Today pretty much made up my mind about my work computer. I realize that makes no sense. Here’s the thing. I have a new laptop. It’s sitting on the far corner of my desk. It has been for almost a month. I just haven’t had time to set it up. So it sits there.

Well, today, the second day of trying to make some slightly bulky PDFs, I’ve learned my lesson. The PDFs are contents and summary pages for all of NCTE’s Kits. They’re just pages of basic text, but they have a border stationery that is a very large graphic. I tried again and again on the machine at work, but I couldn’t make them save properly. Brought them home, and here, I had no problems. Lovely PDFs in minutes. That work machine is just too full and too slow. I have no space on the C:\ drive, and I think it just couldn’t swap things back and forth. Okay, there’s some room. I think it was 80MB.

I must get that new machine set up.

Got the November calendar edited and live on the site. There are a few changes to make in the next few days, but it’s 99% complete. We have a forthcoming lesson plan on Elie Wiesel’s Night that will replace a 9-12 EDSITEment lesson on the Kristallnacht entry. And there’s the never-ending albatross, my Gettysburg lesson plan, which will probably replace the Exploring Free Speech and Persuasion with Nothing But The Truth lesson on the Gettysburg Address entry.

Today’s high point is the unveiling of my kit in the online store! That’s right! You can now go purchase the resources I picked and the framing text that I wrote in a convenient package (with a beautiful purple cover :)

On the very sad side, we’ve gotten angry mail about yesterday’s Inbox Ideas section. I know. It was about LGBT issues. I expected it. Really I did. But that doesn’t make it any easier. It would be one thing if someone said I was a bad writer. It’s different to be told that I’m writing about bad things and that the reader is completely offended by my words. How do you respond to a message that tells you not to write about such things again or the person will cancel his/her membership? Sigh… :(

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

So today I was at work for most of the day. We’re counting this as an accomplishment. I didn’t manage to do much more than that though. I really need to get to the grocery store and do some other errands; but I’m so wiped out from the drugs that it’s all I can do not to fall asleep at work. I did get my car filled up, but only because it was way over on the E and the “You must stop for gas chicken” was up in the front cupholder squawking about the need for gas.

I’ve finally managed to figure out the Gettysburg Address lesson. I dropped all the PowerPoint stuff and decided to do it as another one in the Myth and Truth lessons (the others are on Independence Day and Thanksgiving).
There are a number of misconceptions about the Gettysburg Address. The most famous is likely that Lincoln wrote the speech on the back of an envelope during his train ride to Pennsylvania. Since I can copy the backbone of the lesson from those original two, this should be easy to whip together now that I’ve finally figured out what I’m doing. At least I hope so.

I wish that I had managed to go through my notes and drafts for my book. I haven’t picked it up in weeks; but there’s a discussion on WPA about devising writing assignments. I’m sure that I have material that’s pertinent, but I haven’t been able to dig it out. Beyond that, I’m not sure if I’m supposed to share info from a working draft with someone else who’s writing a book and needs the information for a similar reason. My colleagiality voice tells me to share with everyone. My business-savvy voice says don’t be a fool and give your info to someone else. Keep it for yourself. I guess since I haven’t had time and the thread seems to be dying, maybe I can just not worry about it. The thread does emphasize the need for the book I’m writing. There’s nothing out there that pulls things together. So at least I’m writing on a good idea.

Time to dose up on another pile of pills and get to bed.

Hmm. Accomplishments for Saturday, the first day of October? Well, I got out of bed and watched the Virginia Tech football game. Eventually, the drugs made me dizzy/sleepy so there were two different naps.

Then I fiddled about with the Gettysburg lesson plan. I think I’ve nearly convinced myself that the original idea I had was a bad one. The thing is I have a lot of raw material, so I really need to do something with this text. It would be a shame to scrap it when I’ve gathered lots of good stuff. Mostly they are great Web sites that include drafts and other historical information. There’s also an iMovie site that has a student-produced movie of Civil War photos with the class reading the Gettysburg Address as the narration. Perhaps the oddest resource is from ourdocuments.gov. For some unknown reason, they have included a Flash version of the a draft of the Address. The resource allows you to move the piece of paper around so that you can see different parts of it on screen. It’s beyond me why they’ve done this. It’s more frustrating than it is useful. If you really want to see the original drafts and use them in class, I strongly urge you to use the Library of Congress pages, which show the entire page of the draft on screen. Much easier to use.

Beyond that, my only other accomplishment was adding a little calendar to my blog template. There’s some woman trying to sell something to add calendars. I wasn’t impressed with her work. First her page loads strangely with Google Ads flashing about. Second that blog page of hers is more then a year old. That’s dead for us Blogshares players, so I’m skeptical of the tool. Instead, I found a free javascript that does the job. I tweaked it slightly because I wanted the calendar on ever page, but I’m no longer sure that that was a good idea. Maybe it should only show up on archives. I’m figuring that I’ll look at it this way for a while, and then change it if I decide it functions too strangely. The problem on the homepage is that it builds a calendar for the entries on the page, starting from the bottom up. So today, for instance, I’m posting an October entry, but the little calendar in the right navigation bar will be for September—and not all of September, just from the entries on this page. The script works perfectly for archive pages, which is what it was designed to do. I just wanted one on the homepage, but I’m realizing the folly of that desire.