My Own English Teacher

THING 23

2008-07-13T21:38:00.000-07:00

My computer was in the repair shop after a couple nonstop Stick days in the heat--blew out a fan and a power supply. Worse than falling behind in my assignments was being cut off from family, friends, and Google!

Add to that disruption the four weeks away from home without Internet access, and you begin to understand what an imploding experience the class has been. I would love to follow every link, try every option, beef up my blog with cogent comments, Power Points, cartoons, slide shows, pull quotes, drop letters, tool lines, original Photoshop-enhanced photos all warholled, and much, much more, but I am burned out and have done all I plan to do at this time. I can envision many days next school year when the classes will be on task and I will have time to poke around some more--assuming I can recall my user name, blog address, and password. I think I will add those to my substitute bag right away before I forget them.

As far as the experience went, besides the obvious time drain, I anticipated more comments from other participants than were forthcoming. Perhaps I will get more as other people continue with their blogs, or perhaps, like me, they will not take the time to read through a bunch of blogs belonging to people who took the class at an earlier time, whom they will not get a response from, or whom they cannot identify. I don't know the members of our class, and I don't know how to distinguish their blogs from those out of district. Could I branch out a little and learn from an avatar from elsewhere? Of course, I could. But I would much prefer hearing how teachers locally plan to use the tools, how they think, and what they say and leave them encouragement. The list of participants was so long that I read only a smattering of their blogs and left few comments.

Besides having a more manageable group of people to respond to, it would have been helpful to have more face to face and personal sharing time. While it is a pain to have to be somewhere at an appointed time, I would have learned more if I hadn't had to read and write everything. Speaking and listening is a more expeditious method of communication sometimes. Clearly, some classes run that way, for their group photos are on Flicker. But that's so Old School!

I am getting the tiniest glimmer of why people put personal info on their profiles; it provides something for the anonymous stranger to hang a hat on. "I like sandhill cranes, chocolate chip cookies, and Elvis." Whoever cares? But being forced to try to make sense of someone based upon the little they write makes even a detail like sandhill cranes significant in ferreting out a personality.

Personally, I would prefer to save my brain power, scarce resource that it is, for solving a puzzle like how to create political will to institute Alternative Shoreland Standards, switch to alternative energy sources, or impeach the President. But wait...Hook a seeker with a cute avatar, explain/entertain them with a YouTube video, invite them to contribute to a wiki, and voila! another convert to the cause.
Would I sign up again? Do you mean would I give up a sizable chunk of my summer to sit glued to the computer for hours day after day for twelve lousy CEUs? Not likely! Not unless the time commitments were clearly stated up front and the CEU protocol were followed. Mike, you owe me at least 30 CEU's! I know I don't get the cash incentive, but you could at least award a reasonable number of units! Oh, yes, and do you reimburse for the $270 computer repair bill?

Have a great summer, all. The class is truly a worthwhile experience if you care at all what your kids are doing.

THING 22

2008-07-13T17:21:00.000-07:00

The Twain Blog and the snippy response to it linked as Dangerously Irrelevant just makes me tired. Why, I ask. Because there is a central core truth to both their arguments that I'd rather not face: I'm busy, but that can't be an excuse.

I am so very grateful that Edina Public Schools provides technology specialists to work on-to-one with teachers to help them through the burgeoning options that kids seem to master in a flash. In 2003 one of my last students asked to use a classroom computer. Why? She wanted to work on her blog. What's that, I asked. She told me, but it has taken until this summer to really find out.

I cannot imagine ever having had time to take this class while teaching. Mr. Professor exhibits little memory of or empathy for the demands on a classroom teacher, yet I grudgingly admit that he is right. Teachers still need to learn, and in my limited exposure as a substitute, it appears to me that in great measure they do. My guess is that this fall will bring department blogs, avatars along with photos on ID badges, and RSS feeds from the Admin. I'll just have to wait and see.

THING 21

2008-07-13T17:19:00.000-07:00

So that's what Ning is!

THING 20

2008-07-13T17:15:00.000-07:00

I joined my family group on Facebook. I do not like the site because of the log that shows who visited when. I'm not a fan of that tracking stuff.

I have had a page on MySpace for some time. I use it as a discipline for writing, but I haven't been very disciplined as there are only a handful of entries.

MySpace is owned by Rupert Murdock, reason enough to discontinue using it. I like my energy capital to go to causes I support.

THING 19

2008-07-13T17:09:00.000-07:00

Yes, I have considered creating a podcast. In fact, this is one of the tools I have discovered in 23 Things that I am most likely to use for my work at EHS. I haven't worked out the details, but I'll know where to go for the technology. Mike, do you have a sound studio? A good mike? Minimally, what would you suggest for a home studio? (I can Google it.) I just have to shape the idea more fully and clear it with the Admins.

THING 18

2008-07-13T17:05:00.000-07:00

I will not be visiting YouTube anytime soon. (See Thing 3 below.)

However, students ask to show the class a clip from there all the time. Sometimes I do. Then I heard the school policy changed. I guess it's acceptable to StumbleUpon but not to YouTube? I'm a little confused. Substitutes can be a bit out of the loop on policy changes like that. That's one reason why a blog/wiki for substitutes would be so helpful. [I'm all over that idea, so back off.]

Perhaps other subs never consider showing a YouTube video, but I often find them helpful.

Let's say I'm supposed to discuss Book 13 of The Odyssey. By Book 13, 94% of sophomores have found their shortcuts to the reading assignments, so they haven't read it and are not going to love discussing the next chapter with a substitute.

To put them in the proper frame of mind, I go to YouTube and show them the 15 second summary of the entire epic. Some students will still be daydreaming or talking, but when they hear everybody else roaring in laughter and calling "Show that again!", it snaps them awake. I can ask them to identify the scene from Book 13 in the video, and we're on our way to discussing what the teacher wants us to.

THING 17

2008-07-13T17:00:00.000-07:00

ELM is fabulous. It has really changed what one can accomplish in a small town public library, like McGregor, or Aitkin, or Grand Rapids, Minnesota.

There is simply no excuse for students returning from travels without their homework done, and I plan to tell them that.

And we'll simply ignore the fact that I did not work on 23 Things on a Stick the entire time I was away from home. Thank you.

THING 16

2008-07-13T16:56:00.000-07:00

A Research Paper Calculator would have saved me from printing a 23-page assignment guide with calendars when I was teaching research paper writing for most of my career.

THING 15

2008-07-13T16:51:00.000-07:00

Yeh, well, I have signed up for Get a Second Life or whatever it's called at TIES, so I will process my response to the experience there.

THING 14

2008-07-13T11:54:00.000-07:00

LibraryThing? GREAT! I have been keeping a list of what I've read since retirement--perhaps not as many books as one might think a retired English teacher would have read. I enjoy reading reviews of books on Amazon.com and encourage students to do the same when considering a book to read. The idea of being able to connect with readers who have read the same books is intriguing. It could replace eharmony as the new singles hookup! I will consider adding my list when I have time to look them up on amazon. Here's the first book in my library at Library Thing. I wrote it.

Interestingly, in spite of its intriguing title and the fact that students are greatly interested in it whenever I mention it in classes, I don't believe our high school library ever picked it up, though they have carried many other books from Greenhaven Press, publisher of Opposing Viewpoints.

The success of the Breakfast Book Club and GQ: Guys Quarterly and the fact that many young people choose to read a book in their spare time at school suggest there are ample readers in the high school to appreciate the Library Thing as a place to exchange ideas about books and potentially make new friends.

THING 13

2008-07-13T09:48:00.000-07:00

On Using ThinkFree Office and I quote from its site:

Ubiquitous Document Access
Your files will never be in the wrong location again. Using any computer connected to the internet, you can store and access all your documents in our secure storage server.

Wow! Never again will I be sitting in the small town public ibrary using the only Internet access available within 30 miles of my cabin, wishing that I had access to file from my home computer I hadn't thought to save to my flash drive. If I don't care about my privacy, that is.

Any Internet file storing site today includes in their privacy policy a disclaimer that files stored are secure unless a government agency requests them as part of an investigation. If, as a licensed teacher in the State of Minnesota, I had decided to follow through on a commenter to Thing 12's suggestion that I look up "hogtied bondage" on Wikipedia, then I save the site to blog about later in my response to the Thing 12 commenter, then forever after that file and that URL from the visited site remain in ThinkFree Office, where I composed my response before copying and pasting it into Blogger, where it can be subpoenaed for any investigation into my character and suitability for working with children. We know that, because a District Judge just decided that Google must turn over all records of whoever has visited any YouTube video ever. So much for privacy on the Internet, including ThinkFree. Interesting name. Sounds like Freedom. Which we have less and less of.

Online Calendars
I don't live like that.

http://lifedev.net/big-list-of-online-productivity-tools/
Many choices there! I could create a PowerPoint presentation and post it to a blog. I won't take the time for that now.

Slim Timer
Oh, boy. Now I'll be able to discover how much time I am really spending on a Thing rather than going by intuition and infrequent clock checks. If I can figure out how to get it to work. It is really a mystery. The FAQs say "...once the clock starts..." but I don't see any information about how to start the clock running. "Click on the icon." I do that and an opportunity to edit the task pops up. I'll wait ten minutes and see if a time log appears. This is a great productivity tool for those of us who can get lost online.

Hiveminder, Rough Underbelly, ToDoList
All have potential as To Do Lists with task reminders. I'm a fan of Outlook Tasks--when I think to use it.

www.toodledo.com
Some people's favorite "not just simple" to doer.

I'm suffering from burnout.

Thing 12

2008-07-06T16:15:00.000-07:00

Have I ever gotten lost, read an article on StumbleUpon!? You bet I have! Many a time! Just now, in fact. Would I encourage a student to go there? Absolutely not. Unless one has the utmost discipline and least curiosity, homework time will evaporate while stumbling upon the most amazing websites. It may be a more productive use of time than reality TV, but it's a barrier to a strong GPA.

Thing 11

2008-07-06T15:29:00.000-07:00

I took a TIES class that included del.icio.us. Thanks, Mike and Mike. I use the site as a way to have access to my bookmarks from any computer, but I haven't shared them.

Also, it's one more password to remember. How are others handling that issue? With so many sites to visit and sign up for in this 23 Things project, do people use the same user/passwords over and over or have great memories or what?

OOOoooo...I was not going to use any smiley faces on here.

More Thing 10

2008-07-06T15:06:00.000-07:00

Cute video! I have concerns with using a wiki to plan for a camping trip, however! At least with e-mail there is a trail to follow. Using the wiki, I would likely forget what I had signed up to bring, and our little camping group might end up with two tents but no drinking water or food!

Thing 10

2008-07-06T14:03:00.001-07:00

Have librarians and teachers stopped blocking or steering students away from www.wikipedia.com? For at least two years the cite has required citations for entries and may remove an uncited entry after a certain amount of time. Monitors watch the activity around the clock.

Founder Jimmy Wales' concept was to invite contributions, not block them. Remember how the old Geocities community was resoundingly criticized for the fact that just anyone could occupy an address there and use it for most any purpose? Geocities was resoundingly criticized by my district's tech people when I opened "Books That Changed Your World" on Geocities, posted student-written book reviews, projects, writing, and other features. I heard from people around the world who had found it helpful, and the site was listed on some reading association's list of places to visit. At the time my district had no alternative to offer, and I shrugged off the criticism. (But I remember it fifteen years later.)

To me, Wikipedia is similar to Geocities in that it is the solid ground floor that supports the structure. Today, Geocities has long been subsumed by Yahoo, everybody has a social network page, and wikis are layered in everywhere. It has taken time for the interactivity to evolve, but the impulse to connect with, teach, learn from, and conduct commerce with others online has always been present. As long as humans are involved, their ventures will be flawed, but that is not reason enough to write off the ventures entirely. Long live Wikipedia!

THING 9

2008-07-05T23:19:00.000-07:00

I was unable to edit Google Docs because Find on This Page kept popping up. Editing the document in ZoHo was easy. Many more people edited the Google Doc. I am curious to read their comparisons between the two. The applications could be useful for any joint composing or editing task if available to people who took the task seriously. Clearly here, people are trying to inject humor into what could be one more burdensome Thing. If one were trying to accomplish a group assignment, it might help speed the process along and facilitate creating a better end product.

THING 8

2008-07-05T19:55:00.000-07:00

Just because you can create a slide show with colorful little confetti transitions, doesn't mean you should.

On a different note, take a look at these photos of cabins I took from our lake and decide which is more appealing:

This? Or this?

I hope we have access to this 23 Things site long after the class ends, that the links remain live, etc. etc. There is MUCH here I want to think about using.

One of my living-life-intentionally goals is to help change public perception of what attractive lakeshore looks like. I have been trying to think of a mass media approach without begging newspapers and magazines to run articles and photos of native species at the shoreline of lake homes rather than the lawn, rip rap, and hauled in sand beaches that realtors, suburbanites, landscape contractors, and advertisers seem to favor. I think it's a matter of conditioning, and if enough gorgeous, wild, natural "developed" properties are put before the public as attractive, public perception of how they want to keep their waterfronts will change. At least, I can hope.

I don't think the slide show sites are the best venues, but as I work my way through the list of 23 Things on a Stick, I may think of how to put something together. Permissions are the tedious part! I sought permission from a lake association to use a photo in a slide show, and it took forever. Having published a book, I know the publisher spent longer on permissions than in getting the manuscript from me!

THING 7

2008-07-05T19:20:00.000-07:00

Thing 7 does not interest me personally at all. I don't have the kinds of relationships with people that lead me to want to know when they are online. My daughter and I used IM for about two days and both found it to be an invasion of privacy. Regular e-mail is wonderful. I am not imaginative enough to think of when it would be advantageous for a HS to use IM unless teachers were asked to use it after school for an hour, let's say, to give homework help. But that's what tutors are for!

I am not aware that students at EHS can use e-mail except in special circumstances--exchange students, perhaps, or relatively short term assignments. I know students sometimes ask to use my e-mail, and I never let them because if it's not against the policy, it certainly is against my standards as a substitute. I suggest they talk to a librarian for that, and they almost never want to do that, so there's my answer, I feel.

I did just review the District's e-mail acceptable use policy re e-mail. Very well spelled-out policy! I didn't look for an IM policy.

THING 6

2008-07-05T16:05:00.001-07:00

inda123	You can see a lot by just looking.

Well, I expected that experience to turn out differently. I wanted just the "glass half full 'toon." I can see how one would develop personal pride in creating a good blog that well represented who the author is on many levels. These tools are very fun to experiment with. Unfortunately, they do take time. In terms of how I would use this, unless I could find a ready-made cartoon to use, I probably wouldn't. Some students like to create them, however. As a long term sub, I had a class create a newspaper as if it were being published in the Dominican Republic during the Trujillo era. It was the culminating project of research. A few students wanted to create a political cartoon. Would a site like this be helpful? Comments?

More Fun with Thing 5

2008-07-05T15:55:00.001-07:00

ENUF SAID!

Thing 5

2008-07-05T15:07:00.000-07:00

Ok, that was fun. Better to be petting the cats than warholizing them, however. You can't see my warholized cats, you say? That's because the output is so tiny, and enlarging it creates an even more annoying pixilated appearance. But click on it to see a full-sized image of Alex ala Marilyn.

There were a couple other problems with http://bighugelabs.com/photos/b2bcc4fe30cc71051b032c6860696564/warholizer9724646
as well.

For one thing, the edit button was not visible without scrolling down, so when I used the Back button to go back and edit, my work had been erased. Not the smartest move, I suppose, but elegant programming would place the necessary buttons on the screen where work is being created.

The link to upload my trading card
took me to this:

It's a warning not to link to Flickr. Great. I've just wasted another hour fooling around with Thing 5 and lost my work.

Luckily, I had saved a draft to my computer so I will be able to print those trading cards and hand them out to fans.

SnagIt does a nice job with screen captures, however.

Thing 4

2008-07-04T21:52:00.001-07:00

SEEDS OF MY NEIGHBOR'S DISCONTENT
Photo by Steve Took It (Steve Wall)

I used to think Webshots was the best photo site on the Web, but now I am less certain. Webshots is harder to navigate now. Formerly, the home screen would include links to Daily Photos, professional shots organized into catagories and searchable, as well. (Paying) members could download as many photos as desired in high resolution, and there were options to purchase merchandise with the photo on it, as well. Menu choices were clear on an attractive layout.

Now the site has gone through major revision, incorporating blogs and focusing on community members' uploads. The user must delve deeper into the site to find the Top Rated photos, and I still haven't found the Editor's Choice. The entire site seems to have taken a tremendous dive in quality. A typical comment on a photo is "This is beautiful. I love old things." There is absolutely nothing that hooks the imagination, adds to one's understanding of the technique, message, or history of the shot. The emphasis may have switched to the People's Choice, but I haven't even located that.

On Flickr there seems more likely to be an engaging title and miniblog about a shot, though I don't see a marked improvement in the quality of the comments. The photos seem more likely to have tags, and for those who want to search by geography, there are geotags, which when clicked, bring up a Mercator-style projection map with photo colloctions labeled.

A highly useful element is that each photo is earmarked with the level of rights for use. For example, Steve's photo above is shared with some rights reserved, as opposed to all rights reserved or possibly some other designation I didn't happen to find. One clearly knows whether they are committing copyright infringement by using the photo, useful for classroom application.

THING 3

2008-07-04T11:23:00.001-07:00

As I was searching, adding, and reading articles from RSS feeds, I came across this article. Now that dozens of enticing articles from science, media reform, nature, and news will be downloaded every day, I will have even less time for home maintenance.

Photo source: mvdg.wordpress.com
RSS feeds will expose me to much more news than I take time for on a daily basis, but how much exposure do I really want? I have a stack of unread magazines going back years, even though I recycle regularly. I predict Google Reader will become another chore to keep up with. Good thing I'm retired.

Here is my take on one finding:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/jul/03/google.ruling

Happy Independence Day. Today we are even less independent than at anytime in the last eight years, now that U.S. district judge Louis Stanton has ruled all records of all videos watched on YouTube must be turned over to Viacom. Web addresses, usernames, and IP addresses of computers comprise what will be turned over unless this decision--ostensibly to prevent copyright infringement but with far-reaching ramifications in terms of loss of privacy--is overturned.

Interesting to me that this decision comes so soon before the election. While there is no good time for such a flagrant violation of privacy, it may cause the grassroots activist who wants to get the news out to large numbers of people quickly to hesitate. Especially if they have been paying attention to how our administration has abbrogated the rights of citizens in other ways.

Let's say that such an activist posts a video clip of a candidate saying something outrageous with the intent to expose the candidate's true beliefs, but the clip came from a copyrighted source--let's say a major network owned by Rupert Murdock. Who posts and watches that video will be part of data to be turned over. Who is to say that only that data pertaining to copyright infringement will be used and that the rest won't be released to someone with a vendetta or at least an agenda?

Thankfully, I am enrolled in 23 Things on a Stick and will soon understand better how to reach people to create a stampede of action against this ruling.

Update 7/6: I have yet to check Google Reader for my RSS feeds. If quantum physics extensions into theories of time have any validity, however, I may ultimately have all the time in the world to read them.

More Thing 2

2008-07-04T00:21:00.000-07:00

Well, I just lost forty minutes trying to post a response to Katie Russell's Thing 4. Blog.com accepted my registration but then would not allow me to log in. When I tried to navigate back to my comment, I was stuck in a never-ending loop and had to close the window. I submitted a ticket to the Help Desk, but since I can't get back to my comment page, I'm just going to skip it. Sorry, Katie. It wasn't your blog that was the time-waster.

Do others simply take this kind of set back in stride? I am trying to live intentionally, focusing my energies on things that matter, and not dwell on the little stumbling blocks. But half an hour here, forty minutes there--I could be reading a good book, say Code 2.0 by Lawrence Lessig.

7/6 Update: I haven't heard back from the Blog.com Help Desk. Maybe after the holiday weekend?

Thing 2

2008-07-03T23:31:00.000-07:00

Stephen Abram, addressing Web 2.0, generates enthusiasm by posing a challenge to the viewer to track how "things" are changing as one goes through the 23 Things. I primarily expected to learn some tech tools to keep up with students and bloggers everywhere, but now I see that an unexpected synergy may develop through the interaction among we learners.

I know that high school students seem to enjoy their blog assignments and that while social elements rank high on their priority lists, they will sit at a computer for an hour with a substitute in the room and focus on their blogging. Unheard of!

2008-07-03T23:12:00.000-07:00

Thing 1

2008-06-11T11:47:00.000-07:00

I created a blog!