NYSCATE 2006 Website

Charm and I were very happy with the way that our website turned out. We both put an incredible amount of time and effort into it and I think that it shows. If we were to do this project over, I would want to develop a clearer vision of what were going to do before going to the conference. Of course, neither of us had ever been to a conference before, so we didn't really know what to expect. I would probably not have spent a full day at one workshop and I would have taken more pictures and video. We did have a few problems with my didgital camera running out of battery power, so that limited what we were able to do. Even so, I feel that we were able to gather and organize a lot of information for our site.

I learned that there's a lot that you can do with websites and that they are a great way to present various types of media on a subject, including text, pictures, video, and links to other sites to include even more information or concrete examples. I feel that I have a good grasp on iphoto and imovie after using them again on this project. I would like to learn if there is another (better?) way to upload video to a webesite. In order to upload our video footage, we had to compress quite small and consequently the quicktime viewer was pretty small as well. Also, I would like to continue to do general experimentation with photo, video, and website programs just to learn more and see what they can do. I liked googlepages, but it had only a limited amount of templates and designs available and I think that other programs give you more options.

Attending the conference also showed me that the issues we have been discussing in 506 are just what we need to be discussing. These issues are so relevent right now that everyone should be discussing them and, I feel, soon will. Our time in Rochester also reaffirmed that I've come a long way since the beginning of the semester when I first labled myself a "mellenial technophobe." Though spending an hour in a workshop that had nothing new to offer me was a little frustrating because of our limited time, it also felt good to be "in the know" (somewhat) when it comes to matters of technology and education.

After my own experience making a website, I feel that it would be a challenging, enjoyable, and very useful project for ELA students. Because you can build a site around anything, and because you can incorporate various media--photos, video, audio, text, etc-- a website project would help students develop and showcase both multimedia and traditional literacies. I would definitely have my students do a website project, and I would probably have them work in pairs because it is a very time-consuming project if it is done well.

In closing, I would like to say that I really enjoyed what everyone did with their projects. It's too bad that we all didn't get to see everyone else's, but from what I did see, it seems as if just about everyone really accomplished something to be proud of. Though this class was challenging and a ton of work, in the end, I am glad that I took it and I feel that I can now meet the rest of the 21st C. head on. Or at least with my head out of the sand.

Bringing Back the Fountain Pen

According to this article, a private school in Scotland is requiring its students to learn how to use fountain pens and to use them for all written school work except math. They also have handwriting classes that help them work with the pen and improve their penmanship. Though the title of the article says "School shuns tech, teaches fountain pen," the article itself states that "there is a full range of facilities for computer lessons and technology isn't being ignored." School administration says that the policy has improved student work by forcing students to take greater care with what they are writing and to focus more. In turn, this has improved self-esteem.

I thought this was an interesting phenomenon in the increasing emphasis on high-tech schooling. Of course, this is a private school, which is an important point. I doubt they are doing the same thing in the public school system. I have to say that I think there should be more emphasis placed on student handwriting in our own schools, especially since students are required to hand write on all those standardized tests that we will have to grade somday, and deciphering student writing is often no easy task. Not that I think fountain pens are the answer. I've never had to write with a fountain pen in my life. Apparently they were before my time. Don't you have to put the ink in yourself or something? Of course, if Scottish seven-year-olds can do it, maybe I should give it a try too.

I Love to Showcase Myself

I just realized that I never posted the url to my professional website anywhere. Maybe we're a little past this now, but here it is anyway, for all the world to see. It's still under construction because it kind of took a back seat to other things. Also, as you can see, I've been having a terrible time trying to articulate my "Philosophy of Teaching." It's just so hard to sum up in a nice little paragraph what I think teaching is, or what I think/hope my teaching is. Or will be, I should say, because I'm not teaching yet. I know that I want to pursue multiple types of literacy, including media literacy. I want to incorporate a wide variety of texts, including non-fiction. I want a really writing-centered classroom with a lot of journal writing and blog writing. I hope to give students as much agency as possible within the classroom. Can any of this really be achieved? In truth, I have no idea. So, at the moment, my "Philosophy of Teaching" section is sitting there pathetically blank. Every time that I try to write a few senteces, it comes out sounding like a bunch of pre-packaged, totally-disconnected-from-reality, school of education hogwash. Or, it sounds like I have no idea what I'm doing and I'm making it all up off the top of my head. Which I don't, and I am.

Oh, also, I have tried unsuccessfully to upload the imovie that Charm and I made to my Graduate Studies Portfolio page, and even though I should have plenty of room, it doesn't seem to be working. I have 100MB to work with on Google pages and the movie is only about 12MB, but I've let it try to upload for like an hour and it just keeps saying uploading, and it never finishes. Should it really take over an hour to upload one video? I compressed it really small for the web so I didn't think it should take that long. Anyway, if anyone has thoughts or suggestions, please share.

Ever Feel Like You're Being Watched?

There's an interesting column in the latest edition of Newsweek magazine (I read the paper version, I must confess, but I've linked to the electronic version here). Steven Levy writes about how the rise of cell phone cameras and easy Internet access has led to such "radical transparency" that people now have to constantly monitor their behavior so as not to wind up as a figure of ridicule on the internet. All of us, even those who live far from the public eye, now have to worry about public scrutiny. Do we all remember the "screaming teacher" video that was posted on our class blog a few months back? Certainly that guy never thought his less-than-flattering meltdown would wind up viewed by thousands. Levy cites another example of this kind of unexpected exposure:

"But two Bank of America employees at a private function celebrating the company's merger with MBNA couldn't have anticipated what happened to them. Their over-the-top rendition of U2's "One" (with custom lyrics like "Integration has never had us feeling so good") wound up being mocked by thousands of Internet critics. (Adding injury to insult, lawyers for U2's record label threatened a lawsuit for copyright infringement.)"

Now, this particular incident brings up another recent 506 point of discussion. Copyright infringement? Are they @#%*ing kidding?!? Since when does drunk singing at a private function violate copyright? Did they make money from it? Did they ask to be posted to the web? Or are the lawyers going after whoever posted the video? Hmmm... It's not totally clear, but either way, it seems completely ridiculous to me. Any thoughts?

Anyway, to get back to my initial point, the threat of being photographed or videotaped at any moment and having said recordings made public for all the world to see (and mock) is certainly real. Levy points out in his column that this super-transparency could have a positive side if it deters perverts from flashing people or dog owners from leaving their pet's poo behind. But, the idea of always having to worry about one false move destroying your credibility or your career or a relationship or just making a lot of people laugh at you, I think far outweighs these possible benefits. Think about how Winston felt, with Big Brother constantly watching. Is "little brother" any more benign?

So What?

When Charm and I went to the NYSCATE conference, we attended a workshop called The Creative Journey, which was about infusing your classroom with creativity. The workshop was run by Peter Reynolds, a children's book author. Though there were positive and negative aspects of this experience, he said something that has really stuck with me, which I think goes to the heart of 506. He said, basically, that once you have the computer, so what? Just getting a computer in your classroom isn't particularly meaningful, it's what you do with that computer that matters. I thought of this immediately when a read a recent post on Will Richardson's blog, in which he addresses the same issue:

"What difference, really, does the infusion of technology into the classroom have if the teachers who use it don’t have a context for learning with it? My guess is that most of what’s happening in schools right now is what Alan November calls “automating,” taking the stuff we used to do on paper and digitizing it in some way without any real change in the pedagogy or in the understanding of what the learning potentials are."

Looking for ways to change the pedagogy is key here. As we've heard, read, discussed over and over throughout the semester, the old paradigms of learning just aren't adequate any longer (if they ever were). It's time to find a new path for ourselves and our students. But just "digitizing" isn't a solution. Having your kids do a power-point presentation instead of a poster doesn't change anything. When we interviewed Peter Reynolds after the workshop, he said "Technology is the invitation." Technology is a tool that we can use as we try to reshape the English classroom, but its potential is limited to what we decide to do with it. The real challenge will be answering that question, now that you have the computer, just what are you going to do with it?

Lies My Email Told Me

I received the following email, which claimed to be submissions from high school English teachers of metaphors and similes written by their students:

Every year, English teachers from across the USA can submit their collections of actual analogies and metaphors found in high school essays. These excerpts are published each year to the amusement of teachers across the country. Here are last year's winners.


1. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.

2. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.

3. He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.

4. She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli, and he was room temperature Canadian beef.

5. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.

6. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.

7. He was as tall as a six-foot, three-inch tree.

8. The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife's infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM machine.

9. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't.

10. McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.

11. From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you're on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30.

12. Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.

13. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.

14. Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.

15. They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan's teeth.

16. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.

17. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant, and she was the East River.

18. Even in his last years, Granddad had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.

19. Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.

20. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.

21. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.

22. He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame, maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.

23. The ballerina rose gracefully en Pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.

24. It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.

25. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.


Now, I thought this was pretty amusing, but it seemed suspicious to me. Who are the high school students writing these sentences in actual English papers? Numbers 2, 3, 8, 11, 14, and 20 seemed particluarly unlikely to be written by kids in high school. Not that I think that high schoolers couldn't come up with some really vivid, funny, interesting metaphors and similes. These just didn't seem to be in the style of high school kids. So, I looked around the Internet to see if I could find an actual contest for English teachers to submit their kids ananlogies, and not only was there no such thing to be found, but all of these come word-for-word from a "bad analogy" contest by the Washington Post, some from 1995 and some from 1999. Which makes sense, more sense than the English teachers submission story, but why would someone have collected these and tried to pass them off as the work of students? Why not just send out an email saying, look at these great bad analogies from the Washington Post? What is the point?

And it's amazing how far and fast these chain emails spread. When I was looking for some information on an analogy submission contest for English teachers, I found a couple of blogs that had posted this exact same email and list, but without any mention of the Washington Post contest. It really makes me wonder where this particular email originated from. Anyone else seen it before? Anyway, this would make a great illustration to show students that you can't believe everything you read in cyber-space. And then you could have them come up with their own bad analogies, which actually are written by kids.

Going Way Low-Tech

According to this article, (which I only found out about through my aunt's blog--love that cyber-space network) the military is training bees to sniff out bombs. I just find this fascinating, maybe because something as ancient as an insect is becoming an integral part of modern warfare. They're not using robots to sniff out those bombs, just your average honey bee. The world is such an amazing place.

This also reminded me of those old disney cartoons where Donald Duck is at war with a bunch of bees. Does anyone remember those? I used to love them. I wonder if I could find some clips online somewhere...