Slow Down

Having watched my photostory 174 times in the last two days, I have come to realize the problem with my use of fair use. By limiting each of my segments to 10% of the original song, things felt pretty fast–even for me. If I would have used cc music (creative commons, not c&c music factory), I could’ve had a longer fade out at the end of the flim; I could’ve taken a little more time with the intro.

However, it’s enough of a challenge to find just the song to create just the right mood when looking through my own music library, I can’t imagine doing it with songs I’ve never heard before. If I ever become a famous musician, I’ll make sure to take the copyright off of my music after the first 18 months. I bet record companies would love to have me .

 

10 percent (photo story and fair use)

I’ve been chuckling to myself this last week about photostorytelling. I’ve wanted to do it for longer than I can remember–initially learning about it from a colleague. She presented it to the staff, and talked about how simple it was to just throw a couple of pictures and some open source music together…and viola! You have a photostory.

My journey has been a little different this week. It hasn’t been terribly difficult, but it has taken so much more time than I ever would have expected, especially thinking back on the person who introduced it to me. It was all in good fun though, since I chose a story about my son and I. I spent the week looking through old pictures and videos, scanning appropriate music, and getting ever more familiar with iMovie and Audacity. There was something romantic about sifting through my digital photo albums while the rest of my family slept–and something fun about crawling into bed with 15 months of baby pics in my head.

Since it has consumed me, I couldn’t help but think about education as well–specifically how this could be used in education. As an English teacher, the obvious answer is to tell a narrative. However, I couldn’t help thinking about how media and literacy are constantly flexing and morphing, and began to envision a persuasive piece written as a photostory: an argument read underneath a series of images and film clips; images flashing across a screen while a debate happens in the background. Even an expository piece could happen here: use photos as notecards, and topic sentences, and read your essay while images engage the class. The amount of writing and revision I had to do for this project was incredible, and made it easy to see this fit into almost any writing piece I could think of.

Enough out of me. Here’s my first ever photo story, created in iMovie with full advantage taken of Fair Use Guidelines. Peace.

 

Reach out and collaborate with someone

Looking through the Horizon Report, I think over the effect of mobile computers like the iPhone. I never was a huge fan of cell phones as a replacement of the house phone. Sure there are things I love about it: emergency phone calls when an engine starts on fire 30 miles from home; accidentally dialing someone I haven’t talked to in years, resulting in a nice reunion; and the unfortunate, yet obnoxious, “Sweetie, did you want Chubby Hubby, or Cherry Garcia?” However, along with these conveniences came the expectation that I would answer my phone 24 hours a day–something I was not willing to do, much to the chagrin of my cell phone smitten friends and family who think nothing of 5 calls in 30 minutes.

Handheld computers pose a similar dilemma to me. I now am the smitten one, ogling iPhones every chance I get, wondering if I’m ready to sell my soul back to AT&T (despite our messy divorce four years ago) for internet everywhere, or if I should settle (and settle down a bit) for an iPod Touch and the seemingly ubiquitous wi-fi hotspots. Despite my crush, I can’t help but feel like the more mobile we become, the more I’ll be expected to be online, just as I was expected to carry my phone with me wherever I went. Sure, “this is an opportunity for higher education to reach its constituents wherever they may be,” but what if those constituents wanted not to be reached…

The opportunities are amazing, and again, I’m hoping to write these posts from an iPod Touch in the near future. I’m just glad that, for now, I still get to decide when I want to be online, and when I want to leave online behind.

 

I know kung-fu

Ok, 20 minutes trying to think of an appropriate title, and all I can come up with is ‘title?’ Ridiculous. By the end of this post, if I haven’t been able to change it to something better, I apologize. I look forward to two weeks from now when I am used to the new schedule my body will have to endure until next June (late to bed, early to rise), used to the rhythm of teaching, used to squeezing it all in successfully. Once I have acclimated, I’ll be much more adept at writing weekly entries. I loved it in 474, and, reading over my posts from that class, am excited to re-discover the fluidity I felt when writing weekly reflections. For now, though, I’ll appreciate this jumpy, disjointed feeling as representative of my life in education right now.

First days. Jumpy and disjointed is, I think, pretty appropriate. My dad (who taught for 35 years) tells me every summer about how it was always a little tiny drag that teachers spend a whole year shaping their students and classes, and as soon as the relationship is solid, the culture established, and the machine is well-oiled, the school year ends and the process must begin anew (he also always  tells me how much he loved getting new students, new personalities). Last week, when I met my new classes for the first time, I was more strongly reminded of my dad’s tale than ever before. Last year was a hard year for me. With an interesting group of sophomores and a co-teacher with juniors (and a new son and grad classes), building that relationship was much harder, and ultimately more gratifying, than ever before. And as I see many similar challenges with my new classes, I get a little exhausted thinking about it. Though, seeing my former students in the hall and the lunchroom, I am constantly reminded that, like my dad, I love getting new students and building that relationship with them.

And this brings me to education. As I meander briefly through my first few days of school, I think about how this really is a metaphor of our lives as educators. Isn’t it? Isn’t this how we work? Don’t we work so so hard for an academic year, and then come back, somehow, to near square one? Thankfully, every year, we keep the knowledge we earned and we get better at what we do, but somehow it seems that we get restarted every August. Thinking about technology, there is a similar thing happening. However, instead of going back to that same old place every year, it is constantly growing and changing and using the former iteration of itself to guide and change and make better future versions. Maybe this is the disconnect that schools and technology are struggling through right now. Maybe this is why data driven instruction is on the list of buzzwords that are being thrown around our district right now.

Don’t get me wrong, I believe in education and I believe in technology in education–even more so because of CTER. But I think that right now, education is like Neo in the first Matrix movie, when he goes to see the Oracle. Regarding his doubt as to whether or not he’s ‘the One’ she quotes Latin and then tells Neo something like, “You’ve got the gift, but it seems like you’re waiting for something.” That’s the future of education to me. We’ve got the gift (or the means to make something huge happen), but it seems like we’re waiting for something until we decide to commit. Maybe–and yes, I’m still smitten with Clay Shirkey’s talk from the last year’s Web 2.0 expo–we are waiting for the collective body of education to ‘wake up’ from the overwhelming potential of technology. Maybe we’re waiting until the digital natives replace the digital immigrants so we don’t feel like we’re always playing catch up. Maybe we’re waiting until enough data is collected that proves, in fact, that technology actually is good for education. Maybe, with the constant flux of trends online, we just don’t know where to start. Whatever the case may be, when we are finally done waiting, and we’ve figured out how to embrace technology the way we embraced the chalkboard and the overhead projector, education, like Neo, will realize and use our potential.

I do want to be careful not to compare technology to a savior, as Neo was in the Matrix. I just think Neo and Education share a similar hurdle in their evolutions. But as we’ve talked about loads in this program, technology alone isn’t the answer, I hope that the future of education will find a large body of teachers who are trained in educational technology, and can help us stop waiting and start teaching.

 

80 minutes a day

I’m kind of excited that it’s snowing on WordPress right now.  I really like winter and snow, so I felt very peaceful watching the ‘flakes’ roll down the screen, though I did get a little concerned that my computer would get wet.  I wish it would snow as much as they say it would.  It seems like once a week or so there is a severe weather warning that many inches of snow and ice are about to fall any minute–stock up on canned goods, bottled water, and generator fuel, for this time we mean it-it’s going to be a big one.  24 hours and 1/8th of an inch of snow later, I’ve decided to stop hanging my hopes for white Christmases on weather people.  We’re due for another dump this week, which is a highlight–if it happens.  Otherwise, I have more than enough to fall back on:

Final presentation.  I have to thank Scott for posting his extremely comprehensive PowerPoint early this week.  It first of all gave me something to look at and be intrigued by, especially since I have an interest in smart classrooms.  It helped me realize, as this entire program thus far has done, that it’s a good thing for students to look at one another’s work.  It also helped that Scott was so thorough, he prompted a response from Kona asking him to hone his focus to three things: highlights, pertinence of results, and what we have learned as a result of this project.  This whole semester I’ve felt like a troll

Flickr photo by photogirl7

, hiding in shadows, eavesdropping on conversations, stealing the comments made to, for, and by others, using them to my own advantage.  My early first draft was not a first draft at all–it was the culmination of everyone else’s comments and conversations synthesized into a marked-up evaluation extravaganza; the result of reading all the advice Kona made to classmates before finishing mine enough to post.  Once again, I benefited from others (Scott and Kona) and tuned up a PowerPoint that tries to address those three ideas into a manageable number of slides.

Bizarre sense of calm.  Could it be that 474 is wrapping up?  Could it be the lovely dusting of snow across the Elgin area?  Could it be the odd sense of quiet around the house, now that Masayo is gone?  Could it be the result of two action packed weeks of school left before break?  Could it be the numerous trips to Chicago (MSI yesterday-and just as soon as we get $400,000 we’re going to get us one-a-them smart homes) to see art, culture, fairy lights, and commerce?  Who knows, and it could all end first period tomorrow when I get into my class and realize something crazy like, “Wow, I have to do a million things before the end of the semester” or “Oh, wow, I totally forgot to grade these essays…from September” but for now, I’m holding on to this.

Too much to do, too little time.  I distinctly remember my first year teaching–I was completely confused as to how I was supposed to fill up 50 minutes a day for 180 days.  It seemed like a cruel joke, like when, during my years as a carpenter, we used to send the new guy to get the board stretcher out of the truck.  I think I probably talked a lot that year.  Nowadays, I have turned into one of those teachers that wishes he had his students for 80 minutes a day.  I think  I’m pretty happy about that even though I really struggle to fit it all in effectively for my mixed ability co-taught class (memo to self, get in touch with Brendan soon!).

474.  I’m also really excited about this class.  I’m pretty sure I’ve written about this before–in a forum post?  In an e-mail to someone?  During a conversation with my sister?  Right here in a previous week’s WordPress blog?  I can’t remember–but I’m just feeling good about this class.  I’ve really enjoyed learning about Appreciative Inquiry.  It has helped me look at what has started happening in some of staff meetings.  I see tracings of AI in some of the activities we do, and wonder if they would be more effective in a more comprehensively AI context.  Or if we didn’t do the same post-it note activity at every meeting, would we work harder on them as a staff?  I don’t know, but knowing what they are trying to do, I feel better about participating.

474 pt. 2.Also, I’m really excited about using an AI approach in informal evaluations of lessons, of texts, of assessments.  I’ve always been fairly positive, but AI further enforces the importance of looking for what went well in that failed lesson, or that terrible activity, or that abysmal assessment, and making good changes for the next one.  Using success as a foundation instead of failure.  Lastly, I really enjoyed my evaluation plan as a tool for exploring Moodle as an online supplement to teaching.  I’m not sure how close our school is to 100% access, but being forced to think about all of the aspects of online supplement that needed evaluation forced me to think about all of the components of my pilot program.  Great great great.  What a great way to create a program: evaluate it!  And this tied in so nicely with AI as a method for program creation as well!  So a lot of good things happened this semester.

There is so much more that is worth writing about, but I’m afraid I’m going to start repeating myself from precious weeks.  I’ll close for now, but for the past 14 or 15 weeks, I’ve been plugging this in every Sunday night.  Hopefully that’s long enough to help me remember to keep doing it this time.  If nothing else, I’ll see most of you all in January in Virtual Worlds.  Have wonderful holidays everyone, and to all a good night.

 

Wood

What a great week.  I feel a bit like myself again.  I saw Chagall, Calder, Oldenburg, Nevelson, Picasson, Miro, Dubuffet, Wright, Seurat, Hopper.  I saw a cloud gate, a bp bridge, a wave crashing over pritzker pavillion.  I saw how an imposter tries to fill the shoes of the cultural icon it liquidiated.  I saw lights and crowds and floats.  I saw some old friends.  I saw holes in my career choice (oddly, a sign of normalcy–doubt is a very powerful tool to aid conviction).  I saw snow!  I saw 8 pumpkin pies.

I feel like the plug has been pulled, I got out of dodge, and am a bit more myself.  This week is the week I’ve needed for a long, long time.  I still have kind of a lot to do, but have accepted this as a part of the rest of my life–and I’m ok with that.  The thing is that, for this past week, I did almost everything that I’ve been wanting to do for over a year.  I swear, we’re going to have friends come visit more often!

It’s short this week.  But I’m feeling pretty good about it.  See you in a week, surely long-winded again.

 

Free Dr Pepper Day

In  千と千尋の神隠し (Spirited Away, here in the US), there’s this great scene where this stink god walks into the onsen where Chihiro is prison working as a prisoner.  Everyone is grossed out as his large, blobular, stench is killing all plant life that it comes near, but Chihiro, being the new kid on the block, is forced to take him to his bath and wait on him as he sees fit.  Eventually, the stink god takes her in his hand in his dripping, mucky, disgusting hand and brings her near what looks like a handle.  She realizes that she must remove this handle and whatever it’s attached to.  So with the help of most of the staff, she pulls and pulls until finally a mountain of garbage is vomited out.  It turns out that it wasn’t a stink god after all, but a river god that was covered in disgust.

This scene is amazing for two reasons–first, it’s such a simple, yet strong allusion to the problem of pollution.  Few have made anti-pollution, be good to the earth sentiments so subtley poignant as the director Miyazaki has.  When something as beautiful as a river god has been turned into something as disgusting as he is portrayed, how can a person even think about dumping trash and waste into our water?  He makes taking care of the world we live in seem inherent (as it should be), not some new fad that the GAP is selling on a t-shirt.

The other reason it is a great scene, especially now, is because of how much I stink–no wait, I mean, because of how I too feel like sometimes all I need is someone or something to unplug the mountain of crap that has been collecting inside of me.  Lately, it has been a few things: actually working on a paper/project before the last minute and receiving such helpful advice and commentary, having a friend take the time and energy to visit us from very very out of town, Seijiro being back on a normal sleep schedule, and knowing one of the best friend of a friend that I could have ever hoped to luck into, oh yeah, and having a student-less week.

I honestly, physically could see the stress leaving my body on Friday night, sitting around with Masayo and Ryoko, Seijiro fast asleep in the next room.  For once, I wasn’t worried about getting it all done (though I started to get a little freaked out today since I still have to finish my discussion section which is hiding behind this window even as I type) in time.  I had, gulp, planned ahead and made sure to get most of my plan done during the week off.  This is a totally new thing for me, and I think I like it.  For the last 30 years I have been stressing until the last minute, frantically trying to get everything done in time.  It has helped immensely that we have had so much “class time” to work on it (seriously, I can’t imagine having to work on the project as well as other assignment–were that the case, I’m sure that this post would have a different tone).

Anyway, I’m almost done, but have to get this over to CTER before midnight–have to get my free Dr. Pepper as well!!  Thanks for reading this, and have a great week!!

 

I’ve been rubricized

I keep writing assignment descriptions for my students in prose–you know good old fashioned sentences and paragraphs?  And when I share them with my colleagues, one of whom I respect greatly and am happily planning curriculum with this year, they want to whittle them down to bullet lists and ‘rubricize’ them, for if the students know what we are looking for then they can give us what we are looking for.  Thinking that checklists are easy for students and let them know just exactly what it is that we are asking of them, I guess I never really gave it much thought.

Until tonight.  Over the last three years, I have slowly been transforming my teaching away from literature units and into non-fiction analysis.  I know it sounds boring (and, as an English major, so totally not what I signed up for) but I a) really think it is more important for my students to read an article from Time magazine and be able to understand it and talk about it and shape their view of how they should be in society and b) it’s almost more fun extracting meaning from non-fiction that may have been written yesterday (and in an election year!!) than coercing students to appreciate the blue flowers that Simon finds in Lord of the Flies. They are far more excited reading about drugs at parties, wives, and latino style–at least my students are.

Having had time to think about school this week, I sat back, snow falling down outside my window, trying to decide why I was bothered by the rubrification of my project descriptions.  Here’s what I came up with:  we are asking students to read and understand pieces of non-fiction text on a daily basis so that they may better understand pieces of text in the future.  And yet, when we give them a description essay (ok, maybe not an essay–I’m just trying to make a point here), we take all of the ‘need to analyze’ requirement out of it.  Sure it may be more challenging for students to read through 700 words to figure out that a definition essay may use a formal definition, synonyms, negation, etc–but isn’t that what we’re teaching them to do in the first place?  I think that, from here on out, I’m going to ask my kids to read the 700 words and make their own darn checklist.

Speaking of making checklists resulting from reflection, I am so, so happy to have submitted a draft of my essay to both Professor Bullock and Kona this week, and am so, so grateful to have recieved excellent feedback from both of them.  What a lucky man am I!!  I was pretty sure that I had most pieces written, so it was nice to get some affirmation about my progress!  I am equally excited about this week-to revise and complete my draft, to get feedback from my peers, and to begin my presentation–I have ordered my spandex body suit and ribbon on a stick and have been practicing such moves as “reaching for butterfly” and “weeping softly while it rains”–shoot, I think I’ve said too much.

Seriously, however, I really ended up having a lot of fun working on my final sections of my paper, and am exited to present in a couple of weeks!

I’ll be happy to write next week, surely with many adventures to share, as our friend from Japan will be here on Tuesday for 2 weeks.  We are so excited we can’t wait!!  Have a great week everyone, and thanks for reading.

 

Five

I’ve missed my deadline…nuts.  Oh well, I’ve been hard at work this weekend getting in a little bit of everything, so I guess I don’t feel too terrible.  But, since I’m the last one awake in the house at the moment, I’ll make this quick:

474.  It has been amazing to have a light load the last week and a half or so.  I was able to take a much needed step back from class, focus on a few other pressing things in my career life (grading papers, anyone?) and return to my evaluation renewed and refreshed.  In fact, as I have spent the last few days rewriting my introduction section and working on my results section, I have felt a sort of cohesion that had een missing from the start.  I mean, I guess that is to be expected when writing a plan one step at a time–but the fact that I was able to work it all out in my head and rewrite accordingly was very nice.  Yay for school

Baby.  For some reason, just two days after explaining to our pediatrician that our baby goes to bed at 7 ish every night–falls asleep right away until 11, eats, falls right back asleep and is out for the night, he has decided that he doesn’t like going to bed–not one bit.  This translates into screaming bloody murder for a good hour or so.  The only good thing is that once he’s asleep–he’s down for the count.  He’s getting better, for sure, so hopefully this is just a phase (brought on no doubt by the recent round of vaccines that has been pumped into his body–I’m caught between not trusting the vaccine vendors and not wanting our son to get meningitis–it’s a tough spot to be in).

Baby 2.  Also, very excited that Ryoko and I splurged this weekend buying books galore for our son!  Ryoko was able to find some wonderful selections at the local Sanseido bookstore.  I trolled Amazon because, even though Better World is such a better, more socially conscious place to shop, we can’t pass up the “32% off” on every book we buy–even moreso when we are buying a bundle of books.

Collaboration.  I am working with another teacher this year, and I love it.  I mean I have planned here and there before, and have shared ideas with other teachers before, but this year, my colleague and I are actually sitting down and planning lessons and days and weeks and months together.  For the first time in five years, I feel like I am actually teaching the way teaching should be.  I love it.

Ok, the clock reads 1234, so I’m going to 5 my way into bed.  Night.

 

Closed for Cleaning

Ugh.  I got it.  I’m not terribly surprised, really, but I always try to beat it–I always try to convince myself that if I don’t act sick, and I keep up the same pace, same schedule, same everything, then I won’t actually become sick.  Like Monica says on Friends, only weak people get sick.  Surely one look at my plate would convince anyone that a meal that big could never fit in the body of a weakling.  Yet there I was, trudging through school barely able to make it up the stairs without a breather, then white spots in front of the class, then a sweat-box style break.  And that was just the first day. So maybe, just maybe, I’m not as strong as I thought.

And while that thought originally bugged me, it has kind of been nice.  Our son has been a champ, and will sleep about 8 hours at a time now.  This has been great, as I have been able to stay up into the wee hours working on any number of things.  But the last few days, I have had to use my free time to sleep.  Sure I didn’t plan very good lessons, but they didn’t flop either.  Sure I didn’t grade everything that I wanted to, but the kids will be ok for another week or so.  And sure I didn’t get around to finishing my last pieces of my evaluation project, but I have a whole week ahead of me–a week I am entering with more rest in my body than in weeks, so my head is high and hopes are up that progress will be great.

Thankfully I spent time early in the week working on revising my previously completed pieces, making them more cohesive.  This should allow me time next week to work on my results and discussion sections.  I am really excited to get one on one feedback in two weeks from Prof. Bullock or Kona, so that is motivating me to keep on working despite the ‘no class this week’ status that is flashing in neon in my head right now.

Sometimes, in a given situation that finds me on the spot, I think of just the right thing to say…two days later.  I’m afraid that’s how my questions and comments for this week’s blog post will end up.  I’ll have a great series of questions, poignant concerns, and intelligent commentary–after the class is over.  I promise to try and use my powers of foresight to find something really good for next week’s blog.

as a break-up song plays in the background, I am, for some reason, and not because I am breaking-up with anybody or anything, reminded to think about how everything is, really.