Expert Lurker Seeking Other Online Educators

I love my online networks.  Without them I would not be the educator I am today (and may not even be in education without them).  What's the draw?  Over the past ten years, I have thought long and hard about why I'm drawn to reading what others do or don't like to do in their classrooms.  I began learning through an online network when I was a student at Bread Loaf School of English in the summer of 1999.  Thank you Bread Loaf Teacher Network for teaching me how to interact with a group of professionals online.  Thank you for encouraging me to get my students involved with other students online. Because of BLTN I stayed in the profession.  I had the guts to get my doctorate.  So thank you, thank you very much.

Within the past three to four years, I've become involved in other social networks such as Facebook and Twitter.  I read educator's blog posts and have many I follow, even if I don't agree with them philosophically.  I have tried to post on Twitter and my own blog regularly, but am only sporadically successful in posting.  Life has gotten in the way!  And I have been too easily defeated by people I categorize as gatekeepers of the technology within my professional life.  The only people who encourage me to use online networks to grow as an educator are online educators.  Unfortunately I haven't found many of these educators within my school building. 

Am I turning over a new leaf?  I always do after I've had a week or so off to regroup and refresh my mind.  This time, though, I want to find others like me out there.  I know you are there.   Here's another teacher who feels similarly--let's explore together.

If Hee-Haw Were Here Today...

Larry the Cable Guy would be holding the sign that said BR549.

Don't Forget Your "hiney" shot!

My eight-year-old daughter Rebecca said the darndest thing today. 

As she and my mother were riding through town after school, she asked my mom what a "hiney" shot was.  Not realizing my daughter had a flu shot at school earlier today, Mom was caught off guard by the comment.  When Mom asked her to repeat the question, Rebecca somberly asked her what a "hiney" shot was.  Then she pointed out a billboard and said, "You know, that 'hiney' flu shot that's up there on the sign."

Mom had to pull over to keep from having an accident.  The number one printed on the sign was in a sans serif font.  The sign actually read "Get Your H1N1 flu shot."  Smart kid.

Pheeling Phine in Philly!

Today was my first full day in Philadelphia, PA for the National Writing Project's annual conference.  Our writing project site has ten people here, and we're all spreading out and going to different sessions to get the most out of our conference!

One of my interesting finds today was the Reading Terminal Market.  I tried to record some of the images I saw as I walked through the market.  I experienced sensory overload when I first walked into the market.  Wow!  Unbelievable!  So many ethnic groups represented, foods represented, goods represented.  I bought something for my girls to take home from the candy shop.  I'm tired of posting--posted to both Facebook and Flickr tonight.  We're getting hungry and are ready to go and eat.  Planning a trip to Chinatown tonight.  More later.

The Ping of My Personal Lie Detector

A friend told me this past week that everyone knows where his/her line is drawn. A person will accept anything that goes up to that line but will not cross it. This line could represent a person's conscience, but for the sake of this post, I propose that it could also be my personal lie detector, an internal radar that pings quicker and louder the closer I draw to the moment of no return. A bald-faced lie, told intentionally, crosses my line, but partial truths, well, they just walk right up to it.

My second year teaching, I was in a new school teaching Spanish out of field. (Bet you didn't know that tid-bit about me.) Not only was I dealing with a subject I had little experience teaching--none, actually--but I was also a nearly new teacher still learning how to manage a classroom full of teen angst and hormones. I was like a program car on the used car lot, used with low mileage.

I was called into the principal's office one day to explain how I was assigning grades to students. A parent of one of my students complained about me because her daughter did not have an A in my class. The daughter had a high C, and I definitely remember that correctly. Therefore, I was in the wrong somehow/somewhere in how I was grading my students. Aside: I later found out from a colleague that this same young lady could not get the new car her dad had promised because she did not have all A's.

Collaboration was not expected then, but because I was so new to the subject area, I leaned heavily upon the experience of the second Spanish teacher at my school. She was wonderful. Miss Sproul always took time to answer my questions, help me with lesson planning, talk with me about pacing, and even discuss grading. I was trying to follow Miss Sproul's pacing lead but was caught at the end of a nine weeks one test grade short. I don't remember all of the details of what I had done, but essentially I counted a test grade twice--for all students--and that was the only detail that the parent could get the principal to put his finger on and tell me to change.

The principal questioned me about my grading. I was still new enough to feel apprehensive about being called into the principal's office, and I found myself being extremely careful about what I said. In the process of answering his questions, I carefully weighed what I was saying to make sure I wasn't implicating myself somehow or placing myself in a bad light. My instinct was to cover my butt. As he asked me questions, I felt my internal lie detector begin to ping. I hated being questioned. I so wanted to give an answer that would remove me quickly from the principal's office, even if it meant not telling the truth. I remember him asking me about the test and how I weighted it. I wanted to lie and say that it was not true, that I did not weight the test. I wanted to be out of that chair and out from under his gaze. I remember not fully answering, or not being completely open when answering, the principal's questions out of fear that some reprisal would occur because of my unknowing wrongdoing.

I could tell my lie detector was active and pinging, but not at a pace where I would cross my personal line. There are moments you instantly remember from your first years of teaching, and this is one I will not forget. This incident does not sound very distressing except for the fact that I knew I was approaching my own personal line of dishonesty, and I wanted to do it to save myself.

By the way, when I went back and reaveraged all of the grades for my classes minus the test grade, all of my students' grades went down several points with the exception of two students who actually gained one or two points on their averages. I did approach my principal and ask him if I should adjust the grades of the majority of my students downward once I removed the extra test grade--of course I knew he would say no. That was just a matter of numbers--I really wanted to show him I did not do anything to the detriment of any of my students but had in fact actually inflated their grades several points by my "error" in grading. I made sure I notified the mother that her daughter's grade was actually lower than what I had given her on her report card.

Fifteen years later, I reflect back on that encounter between a parent, a teacher, and an administrator, and I know it really wasn't a personal lie detector that caused that feeling of uncertainty, inadequacy, and insecurity. It was a combination of a couple of things: 1) being a new teacher who did not know her way around the principal's office and 2) the surprise attack by two people who had power over me--a parent who happened to be a veteran teacher and did know her way around the power structure within a school, and the principal, the symbol of authority (in my eyes at that time) within the school.

When I was a child, students who were called to the principal's office were in big trouble. My psyche holds on to that; it affected me then much more than it affects me now, but that unease at being asked to see the principal is always with me. Even today, when the school secretary called my room and told me the principal wanted to talk with me after school, I fought back a ping in my stomach, even though I knew his request was most likely innocuous. Today, he only wanted me to meet a pre-service teacher because he wanted her to observe my classroom.

Too red for Redneck?

Earlier today my Ag Academy class and I spent 3 1/2 hours together while the sophomores in our school took the PSAT. When we entered our last thirty minutes, the kids and I had all we could take of researching American authors. One of my students talked me into watching this video on "The Turtleman." The student recommended it because this guy was the epitome of being a "Redneck," a word that is not considered a derogatory stereotype in our little South Georgia town. No one in the class wanted to be this man, however, but we did top off a lengthy day with a laugh. Oh yeah, be sure you listen for the part where turtle man mentions his chainsaw accident.

Viewing "Stitches": A Memoir by David Small

A few weeks ago I read a review on NPR about David Small's memoir, Stitches. Small is an award-winning illustrator of children's books and also published illustrations in major periodicals such as the NY Times, Washington Post, and New Yorker. His memoir is illustrated and reads much like a graphic novel. Last week I walked into our local library and saw it on the new books shelf, remembered the review, and decided to try it for myself.

First, I must say that I have little experience reading graphic novels and am not drawn to them, but the uniqueness of this book drew me. After reading, I began to think quite a bit about how to read and write this type of work.

How quickly should I be reading this book? It moves much faster than anything written traditionally with words--I found myself scanning much of the pictures and moving on without really stopping to think much about some of them. I was almost finished reading the book when I realized how quickly I was moving through it--should I have forced myself to focus more? Does the use of pictures facilitate my understanding of meaning in a way that I "get it" without having to process so many words/letters (themselves symbols)? My brain processes pictures and words differently--am I missing something with the pictures I would not have missed by reading it in words? Am I gaining more meaning by reading the pictures than if I read the words? He does use words, but many pages are only illustrations.

Small had cancer as a young boy and lost one of his vocal cords and his thyroid after surgery. I get the idea that turning to illustrating was a way for him to regain his voice figuratively as a teen and an adult. This book is another way for him to have his say, yet what he has to say is extremely personal. To say he portrays his family as dysfunctional is an understatement: his grandmother had to be placed in a mental institution, his mother struggled (and hid) her sexual identity as well as her own severe health issues, his father was never home (to avoid his wife) and his parents tried to hide from him that he had cancer. How does a writer/illustrator who chooses to write autobiographically in this fashion decide what to illustrate and what to leave alone? How does he know what his audience can handle? How does he write about such serious issues in this format and have his audience take them seriously? How does he avoid appearing narcissistic? I wish I could ask these questions to Small myself. He does choose his demons carefully, and demons they are. A narcissist would not write/illustrate a family in this way--he preserves their humanity, though they are deeply troubled and flawed.

I want to keep thinking about how he emphasizes in pictures his eyes, his parents' eyes; how he screams visually while having only one vocal cord; the literary allusions; his dreams. His book reminds me that our worldly experiences are dystopic; nevertheless, while these experiences are a part of him, he does not choose to choose to live the rest of his life defeated by them.

Today I Am Hopeful

Often I find myself wondering if what I do for a living (educating teens) is futile or if I am making a difference. Students never make me feel this way. I enter this blue funk when adults with whom I engage in the business of education do something so asinine that I have to leave their presence or be fired for what I say. The inactivity of adults in "charge" drives me crazy as well.

A colleague of mine is so angry at the bureaucracy of education that she is actively engaged in researching options for establishing a magnet school where she lives. I believe she will do it. Her determination was palpable when I talked with her. When I see teachers who love students so much that they are motivated to act on their behalf, to make sure they are cared for and have an opportunity for an education in an environment that appreciates their uniqueness, I am hopeful.

Teaching Induction and Deduction with Candy Bars

With the Georgia High School Graduation test just around the corner for my 80+ juniors, I decided that now would be a fortuitous time to work on a review of persuasion. Today we focused on logical persuasion, specifically inductive and deductive reasoning.

As I love to have my students collaborate, I divided them into six small groups. Groups 1-3 received snack-sized Snickers bars while groups 4-6 received snack-sized Twix bars. I asked each small group to come up with a Top 10 list to promote their respective bars. They were to make observations about their bars based on size, taste, smell, ingredients, nutritional value, packaging, or even promotional advertising for the bars. Then the groups wrote their Top 10 on the board. (Of course they were allowed to eat their bars).

Then we discussed the differences between deduction and induction. I gave them several examples of each. For example, if I were a CSI working a crime scene and found a pool of blood, spent casings from a missing gun, and a dead body, I can come to the conclusion that a murder has occurred (induction). I reminded them that when they were writing to an audience that was not likely to agree with their position, then induction is a good type of reasoning to use.

Understanding syllogism for a deductive argument was a little more difficult. The idea of a major and minor premise was more difficult for me to explain. We again used some examples: Major premise: Dogs usually have four legs and can bark. Minor premise: Rover has four legs and barks. Therefore, Rover is a dog.

After I assured them that they were already experts at arguing (or at least their parents might say they were), I reminded them that they use this type of reasoning all of the time without even being aware of it. How do they know they will receive detention if they are tardy to class? They know that they must be in class before the bell rings. They know that if the bell rings and they aren't in class, they have to see an administrator for a pass. They also know that they only get one warning for tardies, so any tardy after that results in punishment. Therefore, if a student has already had one tardy, he/she will be assigned detention on the second tardy (inductive reasoning).

Now, back to the candy bars. I asked them to again return to their small groups and come up with one argument about their candy bars using inductive reasoning and one argument using deductive reasoning.

1. Deduction:
Major Premise I: Some people are allergic to peanuts.
Major Premise II: Some Snickers bars have peanuts. (Others have almonds.)
Conclusion: People who are allergic to peanuts should not eat Snickers bars.

2. Induction: (This one made me smile.)
Observation: Snickers bars contain milk and peanuts.
Observation: Milk has calcium, and peanuts have protein.
Conclusion: Snickers bars are nutritional.

Dust Bowl Video Compliments of New Deal

I started doing a little research on background information to help my students understand the historical context of The Grapes of Wrath. This semester one of my classes is an "Ag Academy" class filled with students who are pursuing a career pathway in agriculture. I teach the same curriculum with these students but try to choose reading selections that are appealing to their love of agriculture; thus, The Grapes of Wrath seemed a natural choice. Students have knowledge of the Great Depression, but the impact of the Dust Bowl is not as well known.

Sometimes the Internet takes me on a circuitous research route--I go in search of one thing and find a different gem altogether. Tonight I was searching for a children's book on the Dust Bowl, and I came across a 25 minute video about the Great Plains called "The Plow that Broke the Plains." It is a documentary sponsored by the Resettlement Administration, a New Deal program. It has more video and music than dialogue and vintage farm machinery going all the way back to a horse-drawn plow. It essentially gives the agricultural history of the Great Plains leading up to the Dust Bowl. Scenes from dust storms are effective. Best of all, I found it on Google--not YouTube or another site. On good ol' Google. I'm embedding it in the blog for you to see. Now I have to research the films that Google has available online to see if there are any others I can apply to my curriculum. Another plus is that the video can be broken down into segments, so I can choose which segment I want to play if I do not have enough time to watch it all in class.




I also found the film on another website, the Prelinger Archives, and it has a better picture than the one I saw on Google.

Crying over Gran Torino

I watched the first Clint Eastwood movie that made me cry today. He was gruff, tough, and rough. He was typically Clint, albeit elderly. And I cried like a baby. For those of you who have already seen Gran Torino, then you know why I cried. For those who have not, well, your loss. Go rent it at your local video store.

Clint plays a widower, Walt, with children and grandchildren too busy to spend time with him. Their father/grandfather is not the most lovable man, but Walt's family prefers to live self-centered lives only popping in or calling when he can do something for them. Walt argues with his priest (not always a bad thing) and talks like a bigot. He has his own ideas about manhood, parenting, race, and religion. He is old enough that he says what he thinks without saving one's feelings.

You can tell from the get-go that Walt does not like change. Why stay in the same neighborhood for forty years when everyone else just like him, a retired Ford autoworker, has moved away? He is surrounded by Asian neighbors. The family next door has a big-mouth daughter and wimpy son who is doing his best to avoid gang life. When the young man is forced to participate (half-heartedly) in a gang initiation by attempting to steal Walt's 1972 Gran Torino, Walt catches him. The friendship begins.

Walt, who was a soldier in the Korean War, has to confront his prejudices, and his neighbors have to confront their fears. The film is just tough enough and just real enough to interest you in the everyday lives of the characters, wondering how the decisions they do or do not make will affect their lives the next day. Wait on the ending; the last five minutes are the most important.

When I turned off my DVD, I wondered if I could ever make the decision Walt made to loyally stand by his friend and stand up for those who are unable to defend themselves. I was reminded of John 15:13: "Greater love hath no man than this..."

This film is not intended for young children, and I do not know many teens mature enough to understand the tensions in the film. It is rated R for a reason. One final caveat--if you cannot contextualize offensive language, then do not watch this film.

Technology Miscellany

For my friends who are educators (and those who love to read--see #4 & #5), some Web 2.0 tools and online sites that you might enjoy:

1. http://www.polleverywhere.com/
You can create an online poll where respondents use either their cell phones or twitter.com to respond.

2. http://historicaltweets.com/
Fun, fun, fun! You can read interesting tweets from historical figures or get creative and come up with your own. There is a Photoshop template you can use or just send in your ideas to the historicaltweet crew. It would be really easy to come up with an interesting student activity that crosses content areas.

3. http://www.bookglutton.com/
Book Glutton is an interesting way to read online with others. Many books are free and can be inserted into blogs as a widget. You can see Alice in Wonderland on my blog on the left hand side at the top. I haven't read much lately but hope to finish it soon and put another on my blog before the end of July.

4. http://www.librarything.com/
I've been on Library Thing for a while and have posted some of my books. You can hook up with other book lovers who share similar tastes in reading. A lot of media specialists are on this site. They also have book reviews and give away hundreds of books each month. You can sign up to be an Early Reviewer and hope to receive one of the books. I try every month but haven't been lucky enough to snag one yet. But someone has to!

5. http://www.goodreads.com/
Good Reads is similar to Library Thing in that you can catalogue your own books online, but this website is more for avid readers than librarians, though usually they are one and the same. I just find this site much more user friendly than Library Thing, and it has a slicker look. It is a social networking site, and you can find friends on this site who also post info on what books they have read, are reading, and want to read. There are groups you can join, and some of these groups also have podcasts where they talk about authors.

6. http://www.diigo.com/
Ever wondered what to do with all of those really cool websites, online articles, videos, blogs, images you find online while you're away from your personal computer? Or maybe you want to access your personal bookmarks when you're away from home? Diigo is an option that I've just begun using. I am more familiar with #7.

7. http://delicious.com/smartmedia8
This should take you to my homepage on delicious. It is a social bookmarking site. My main problem with bookmarking is that I forget to do it and then regret not remembering the site I wanted to remember. Bottom line, use a bookmarking tool and you'll never forget where you saw something online again.

Seven seems like a good place to stop. After spending three and a half weeks writing and posting to a blog, I plan to stay in the habit. I'll post more about Web 2.0 online tools for learning, so check back.

Please share your own experiences with these tools that you use to improve your performance as a teacher, help your students, or to have fun.

If you'd like to look at some other Web 2.0 tools, here are some educational bloggers with some suggestions for you:

Larry Ferlazzo's Best Web 2.0 Applications for Education 2008

Jane Hart's E-Learning Pick of the Day--once you go to her blog, you will want to click on the Learning Tools link on the left of her page. She keeps a running list of online tools to use in the classroom.

Science Poem: Ode to Precipitation

Learning Science through Poetry at BWP
(Poem draft is a collaborative effort between Stephanie, Nikki, and Julie)

Water, you can change
from solid, liquid, to gas.

You're controlled by the air currents,
traveling where they blow you.

You create natural wonders:
glaciers, ice burgs, and canyons.

It takes time for you to boil over
and even more time for you to freeze.

You can have quite a temper,
causing hurricanes, monsoons, and tsunamis.

You provide for us
supplying electricity and nourishment.

It's Hip to Be a Square

Today's demo at BWP was on using poetry in content areas. We used Margaret Wise Brown's book The Important Book and followed her structure to write a poem about a shape. (For those of you familiar with Max Thompson's Learning Focused Schools, you will notice this is used as a summarizing strategy in his framework.)

An important thing about a square is that it has four equal sides, and each angle is a right angle.

It is like an air vent, a PowerPoint slide, a piece of bread, the cover of a children's book, and a mouse pad.

It is a CD case or an LP album cover.

It's the Hint cell phone my daughter wants, a priority mail box, one side of a cube, a piece of a quilt, tiles on the floor, and a thumbnail profile picture on Twitter.com.

But the most important thing about a square is that it has four equal sides ad four 90 degree, right angles.

Young Adult Books in my Reading Stacks

Freewriting for BWP 07-01-09

Today's topic is "looking ahead." I'm having difficulty getting started because I want this to be a positive freewriting; therefore, weight, my job, and how dirty my house is are all off limits. So I want to talk about my favorite items in the whole wide world and in the universe: books! I've never met a book I didn't like. I'm sure someone famous, like Mark Twain, has already voiced this thought, but today, it is all mine.

I am looking forward to the stacks of books I have waiting on me at home. I have purchased a few too many in the month of June according to my budget, and I have been reading through some I found in the library. I also have two tote bags full of books borrowed from my school library before leaving for the summer. (Yes, I really did check them out--our librarian is wonderful.) Probably the Coastal Plain Regional Library librarian will come looking for me soon as I am sure a few are overdue. My personal "stacks" are not to be confused with stacks at the library. All of my stacks are on the floor in my office, by my bed, by the sofa, etc.

(Update on overdue books: Success! You really can renew your books if they are a day late.)

Books in Julie's Stacks:

1. The Mysterious Benedict Society. This one is currently sitting on my nightstand. I'm about 1/4 of the way through it and am loving it. It's a young adult novel that centers around a young gifted boy who finds himself recruited for a mission to infiltrate a school for gifted children and stop the world takeover planned by the school's founder. I would guess this book is for ages 9 and up.

2. Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman. At the beginning of the summer I purchased and read Gaiman's The Graveyard Book. I was familiar with Gaiman's reputation as the creator of the Sandman graphic novels but had never read any of his work. The Graveyard Book was superb; it followed the life of a young boy whose family was murdered. I don't want to give away too many details, but ghosts in a graveyard raised him. Gaiman was inspired by Kipling's The Jungle Book. Go check it out. CPRL on Chesnutt Ave. currently has a copy if you want to check it out. I also have a copy but have passed it on to my almost-12-year-old, Hannah. If you have issues with ghosts and spirits, though, you may not want to read this book. Gaiman does create a netherworld below the earth inhabited by some scary creatures. The book is appropriate for ages 10 and up.

(I'm beginning to see a theme here--all young adult novels so far.)

3. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. Okay, this is not in my "to read" stack. I devoured it last month. But I'm putting it on this list in case any of my blog or Facebook readers actually do read this post looking for a good read. Collins is more famous for her Gregor the Overlander series of books. Hannah has read all of the Gregor books, and when I read several recommendations about this book online, I bought it. Collins is a clever writer. If you haven't read much Shakespeare, I'll go ahead and tell you that many of the minor characters are named after minor characters in Shakespeare's play, Julius Caesar. This is appropriate as the female protagonist, Katniss, is in a fight for her life as well. Interestingly, this is a post-apocalyptic novel that is written for a young adult audience. I have been drawn to well-written post-apocalyptic novels since reading The Road by Cormac McCarthy last year (another book I highly recommend you reading before you see the movie). This book is appropriate for ages 10 and up.

4. The Bloody Jack series of books by L. A. Meyer. The media assistant at my school has been trying to get me to read these for two years now. She sent all of them home with me over the summer. (I think there are five.) They center around another female protagonist, Jacky Faber, who as an orphan disguises herself as a boy and sets sail on a pirate ship in search of adventure.

5. The Lightening Thief, The Sea of Monsters, The Titan's Curse, The Battle of the Labyrinth, and The Last Olympian by Rick Riordan. My daughter Hannah came home this past school year talking about this really cool book that had Greek gods for characters. Of course, Mom the English major was excited to hear her talking with knowledge about these gods. (The act of reading is so much richer when you pick up on the allusions to Greek mythology.) Her reading teacher introduced her to the first book in the series that centers around a boy protagonist named Percy who is a demigod. Riordan just published the fifth and final book in this series this summer, so I'm going to tackle this one as well.

Can I just say that as a mother (and English teacher) who loves books, I am so excited that my daughter and I are sharing young adult literature with each other. I don't know which book made reading click for Hannah, but she is picking up my good habits of carrying a book with her almost everywhere and creating her own book stacks in her room. When I see my children pick up a book and read just because they want to, my heart is overjoyed. Worrier that I am, I had a difficult time waiting on Hannah to show any kind of interest in reading for enjoyment. Rebecca is getting there, but she is more interested in drawing and watching the Discovery Health channel. (Actually, everyone at my home is a little confused as to her fascination with Discovery Health, but that's another blog. I'm not going to discourage that interest, though. There must be something going on in that head of hers that is interested in medicine.)

For Every Season...Turn, Turn, Turn

While I haven't been in education very long (15 years), many changes have occurred at the school level. Whatever happened to these items that I remember having in my early years of teaching? Let's retrogress to the teaching technology of the 80s and 90s.

1. The machine that you placed a carbon on and cranked by hand to make copies for your students--you know, the one with the purple ink that you loved to smell--I can't remember it's name because it has been so long since I've seen one much less used one.

2. Risograph--I think this is how you spell it. It's a step up from machine #1 because it could make hundreds of copies quickly, and you weren't required to hand crank it.

3. Dot matrix printers--these were great! You always had to make sure the paper was on track, and when it printed, it made a grinding noise. Well, maybe grinding isn't the write descriptor. The noise, if you were printing a long document, would lull you into a relaxed state because it was so repetitive. And you could tell when the printer came to a shorter sentence or was printing a single word. The BRRRRRTTTT sound it made would be just a BRT with longer stretches of silence as the print cartridge glided across the paper.

4. Paper for a dot matrix printer--the sheets were always attached to each other, and you could make banners with it easily. I loved printing out these banners and then coloring them in with my Crayola markers.

5. Computers with DOS operating systems--I've forgotten every key stroke that I had to learn to run one of these babies. I actually resisted learning how to use a computer until my last quarter in college (Spring 1992). I took a fiction writing class that semester and just could not endure the multiple drafts on my Brother typewriter.

6. My Brother typewriter. Man, I loved this typewriter. I wish I still had it. It was an electric typewriter, and I got it one year from my parents for Christmas. Typing was the best class I took in high school. I use it daily. I used my typewriter all the time as well. I typed every paper in college as an undergrad on that Brother typewriter, and any time I ran out of correction tape, I would cry. Thank goodness I typed well and had few errors. I even used it to type worksheets for my students my first year teaching.

7. Chalk boards--Can I just say that I don't really miss these? Whenever my fingernails would hit the board as I erased something quickly, my face and body would contort and I would begin my chicken dance. The squeal of nails on a chalkboard is worse than water boarding in my opinion. Other interesting accessories that came with the chalkboard were long pieces of wood covered with athletic socks to use as erasers. For some reason, these long erasers were preferable to the short black ones I used to clean by beating them against the telephone pole for my teacher in elementary school. I suppose in another ten years I'll be able to add dry erase boards to this part of my list, but not quite yet.

8. Small tape recorders that have the buttons at the bottom you use to play/record/fast forward/rewind/pause--I actually had three of these in my closet that I donated to the school library this year. They were great when students had to record something for an oral history project, for instance, but they were bulky and took up too much room in my supply cabinet. Now I'm writing a grant for podcast recorders. If the grant goes through, we'll be able to record small group discussions and use the recorders for collaborative or individual student projects which we can then post to the school website.

When looking back over my list, I realize that all of these changes have occurred because in some ways, educators have decided to work smarter and not harder (one of my mottoes). Instead of resisting the computer age, I joined the 21st century and am especially interested in how I can help my students use these new tools that are displacing the old methods of communication in and out of school. Unfortunately, educators are too often Luddites who are either too scared or too set in their ways to change. Some technology tools I foresee working their ways into schools include social networking sites (Nings, Facebook, Twitter) in some form. The person who can figure out how to create a social network that schools will approve could earn millions. Many schools block these sites for student safety reasons, but students are still using them at home. The resistance will be there until the Digital Generation currently students in schools becomes the generation running the schools. By then, we'll be focusing on applications no one has invented yet, and today's arguments surrounding the use of technology in schools will be forgotten.

Oops! It's Father's Day

The freewriting prompt this morning at BWP was personalized for me: "Oops!"

Father's Day was a day to remember at the Rucker house this year. Earlier in June during the week of Vacation Bible School, my youngest daughter accepted Christ as her personal Savior and made a profession of faith at the final VBS worship service. The next couple of weeks, she asked questions about details concerning the next step in the process.

"Hey Momma," she called one afternoon from the backseat of the car, "When can I walk down the aisle to join the church?" While driving, I questioned her about what joining the church meant. She was huffy with me. "I don't want to talk any more about it." We went about our business with no more talk about aisle-walking that day.

The next day, Rebecca was concerned about what she was going to say to our pastor when she walked down the aisle. "What do I say to Brother Wayne? How will I know he knows what I want to do?" she asked.

"Honey, I know that you have asked Jesus to live in your heart. You don't have to worry about the words. You will be fine! You'll know when it's time to walk down the aisle to join the church, and Brother Wayne will know just what to say to help you," I reassured her.

She is so my child. Worried about all the little details. She wasn't worried about the state of her heart; she just didn't want to say or do anything wrong. I just continued to reassure her. Two services came and went, but on Father's Day, she walked to the front of the church and talked with Brother Wayne.

What a perfect Father's Day for my husband. His youngest daughter publically makes a profession of faith and joins our church, and it is his special day as a Father.

Then, oops! We were late leaving church that day after standing up front to receive many well-wishes from those not hustling to beat the crowd at the local restaurants for a Father's Day lunch. For those unfamiliar with my church, it helps to know that we are in the middle of a building campaign all around our church, making arriving and leaving the building difficult.

I walked out the backdoor to cross the rear parking lot. We now park across the street from the church because construction has removed a large part of the rear parking area, leaving few spaces. We want to save those spaces for people unable to get around as easily as we can. On my way out the building that morning, I walked as I normally do under the pick-up shelter and out onto the asphalt of the parking lot.

Without warning, I was falling to the ground, a small scream escaping from my mouth. Keith was ahead of me and did not see what was happening until it was too late. Before I fell, my left ankle rolled to the left, my wedge shoe going out from under me. I had stepped on a relatively large piece of gravel that was loose in the parking lot. Several men quickly surrounded me to check to see if I was injured. I told them not to pull me up too quickly because my ankle had popped. Instead they got me up and between the three of them loaded me onto the rear seat of a golf cart used for shuttling people from one parking lot to another.

On the ride to the car, I tried to assess the damage. There were no visible marks on my foot, but I could see my foot beginning to swell on the outer edge. Keith took me to the local emergency room, overlooking my weak protest that it was just a sprain. The ER staff hustled me into the back as soon as I arrived, rolled in a portable x-ray machine, and within 30 minutes, I saw my two fractures on screen as the physicians assistant in the ER explained to me what had happened and what I would now need to do.

Two hours later, I had crutches, a filled vicodin prescription, and ice packs for my foot. Neither Rebecca, Keith, nor I will forget this Father's Day.

Bow to the breakfast gods

Bow to the breakfast gods
Kellogg and Quaker;
Cold and hot cereal,

fiber I favor.

Apple Jacks, Mini-Wheats,
Fruit Loops and Corn Flakes,
Eggo and Raisin Bran,
On the run meals, can't wait.

Old Fashioned Quaker Oats,
Oat Bran, Granola,
Take Heart and Weight Control--
This food's good for ya!

Eating my three square meals
is always a challenge.
With coffee, cereal,
Always I'll manage.

*photo by Kristin Brennan

BWP Freewriting 06-24-09

The Lessons of a Former Yearbook Advisor

When I was a yearbook advisor several years ago, I realized that there are a few things that you don't mess up--senior ads and senior superlatives.

At my school, students voted on senior favorites, which were not the same as senior superlatives. Senior favorites were students who were "the most likely..." and one male and female were chosen by their peers for each category. Senior superlatives were students who submitted an application of sorts listing all of their extracurricular activities who were also vetted against their discipline record. If they had participated in a certain number of clubs, activities, honor societies, during their high school years and stayed out of in school suspension (ISS), then they were eligible to be a senior superlative. This distinction was created to recognize those students who may not be at the top of the class but who had still contributed to the positive culture of the school.

The deadline wasn't arbitrary; the yearbook staff had to plan for pictures, gather a committee of teachers to make final decisions, and still meet the yearbook page deadline. Inevitably, I would have parents approach me after the deadline wanting to submit their students' forms. This was not a fight I chose to fight, and all forms were accepted.

My first year as advisor, I made the mistakes of not triple checking a list to make sure no student was accidentally left off and confusing senior superlatives for senior favorites. According to the previous advisor, senior superlatives could not have discipline records. Misunderstanding the distinction between senior favorites and superlatives, I had the principal go through the list of seniors and remove any who had discipline infractions resulting in ISS. The list came back to me much shorter. This was the list I used to allow students to vote on their senior favorites, not realizing that I had mistaken one recognition for the other. The morning of the vote, something was niggling me in the back of my mind. I finally went to the previous advisor to question her about the process. When I repeated what I had done, she realized that I had sent the list of seniors to be vetted for the wrong award. All seniors on track to graduate should have been listed on the voting ballot. By this time, seniors had voted. I immediately announced to the school that I had made a mistake on the ballot and that we would have to re-vote the following week during homeroom.

Unfortunately, one of Momma's precious dumplings went home and reported that his name was left off the ballot for senior favorites. That night, I got a phone call around 10 p.m. from Momma. I listened with the phone several inches away from my head. I apologized. I accepted responsibility for the fiasco. I explained why I made the mistake and that I had already trashed the original ballots and was preparing new ones for homeroom the following week. I apologized again to no avail. I was told that the student, his brother, sisters, mother, and father were all traumatized because Precious Dumpling's name was left off the ballot. I doubted this admission as I had taught Precious Dumpling the previous year, and getting him excited about anything would have been a miracle.

The coup de grace was when she told me that everyone in the small town where I taught hated me tonight, at that very moment. Having heard all I wanted to hear, I said, "Well, it's a good thing I don't live there and don't have to worry about it." Then I slammed the phone down. The forward thinking gal that I am, I immediately called my principal, though it was ten p.m., and informed him of the conversation.

He poo-pooed my concern until the next morning when he received a phone call from the superintendent because the mother had already called the board office that morning complaining about my mistake. Fortunately, I had owned up to the error immediately, made arrangements to rectify the mistake, and kept my principal apprised of every detail.

Did I learn any lessons from my stint as high school yearbook advisor? Yes. I learned that I worked with high school students, and I often reminded people of that when they complained about something in the yearbook. I also learned that I could quickly shut someone up by offering to step down as advisor so the complainer could take over as yearbook advisor the following year. It helped that I really meant what I said. I also learned that Precious Dumpling is always going to be precious to his Momma, no matter what he does, what he says, or how he looks. So don't forget to include his picture in the senior section, don't misspell his name in the book, and heaven forbid leaving his name off the list.

The Reality of Grits

When cold, grits won't mix
my pieces of cheese
into a smooth, creamy creation.

Mom's grits are butter-only.
A slice of Kraft is my only concession.

With calm deliberation, I tear
thin, cool strips which,
when torn again, become orange confetti
for the top of my grits.

With a spoon, I whirl the confetti
into the heart of my grits,
waiting for the white to adopt
a creamy, orange hue.

If I tarry too long before
coming to the table, my
punishment is assured.

Instead of a warm, creamy
orange creation, I just
get grits with cheese clots.

The reality is,
grits, when cold, don't mix.

Freewriting at BWP for 06/23/09

Experimenting with Video again

I created this video on Animoto from pictures I had posted to Facebook after a horrendous hail storm in May of this year. We had to replace the roof on our house and have our two vehicles repaired because of all the damage from the hail. I'm experimenting with creating videos to post to blogs so that I can find an easy way for students to use this technology.

Lessons for Today from Mike Mulligan and Mary Ann

Virginia Lee Burton wrote the story about Mike and his steam shovel Mary Ann in the late 1930s, and the book celebrates its 60th anniversary this year. I was a child of the 70s, so why did it appeal to me? Was it because of Mike and Mary Ann's work ethic? Mike's loyalty to his machine? On a child's level, I remember being more impressed with Mike's friendship and loyalty to Mary Ann, a machine personified in my mind.

I wonder what Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel teaches us today. If I consider it in a contemporary context, it is a book about the role of technology in our lives. When new technological advances/tools are at our disposal, should we disregard the technologies they can easily replace? Should we throw away card catalogs and reference books now that we have Google and Wikipedia? We now live in a disposable society. Until recently, Americans had quite a bit of disposable income that they would spend (even before they earned it) on disposable diapers; disposable razors; disposable plates, cups, and flatware; and even disposable caskets. Hopefully, the pinch Americans feel from their empty wallets will reawaken our desire to conserve, to reuse, to utilize resources more effectively.

Mary Ann proved that she was still useful to a society which had moved on to other technological advances, but in so doing, she forced herself into retirement by being unable to escape the hole she dug. Instead of dismantling and removing her, though, she was transformed into another useful machine which still continued to contribute to her society.

Emails That Put Me In A Pissy Mood

I hate opening an email from a well-meaning friend lacking computer literacy/media literacy/information literacy skills. For example, when someone forwards a message, email etiquette says to delete any extraneous information prior to forwarding, such as the HUGE list of email addresses the first sender used to distribute the email to her friends. That way, when I receive the witty, interesting, or cautionary email I do not have to scroll five minutes to finally reach the message. Along that same vein, if I am required to open an email within an email within an email, the impact of the original message diminishes with each click of an attachment. Typically I find it easier to click delete than all of those attachments.

Then there is the friend who sends me emails with animated clip art such as cats, dogs, hearts, and Precious Moments children. I call these the "feel-good" emails. In addition to such lovely clip art, which by the way has no less than twenty spaced throughout the email so that the reader must scroll through them one at a time, these messages typically contain synthesized music that missed the cut at Mr. Otis's elevator company. What is the purpose of these emails? Are they supposed to make me feel good? The sender feel good? How did the sender intuit that I was having a bad day and needed to read her email? How did she know I would be her audience?

I prefer to give equal-opportunity complaints to other friends who send me hex emails. You know, the ones that tell me if I don't pass them on to at least ten people I will be nailed by an out-of-control driver as I cross the street. Or the ones that say I will receive a new computer, free meal, or cash if I forward it to 50 people. And then the ones that exist on a higher, moral plain, the cyber-prayer emails, which insist that if I want God to bless me I will forward the message to at least ten of my closest friends. Are there people out there who cling to the hope that I will forward them an angel email from God? Surely not.

WWW.SNOPES.COM. Please utilize this information resource to fact-check prior to forwarding any emails to my inbox. Afraid that a child has been kidnapped and your email will be the one to save the little red-haired girl named Penny in the picture? Look first on Snopes to see if it is real, or just an urban legend. If I do have a little free time on my hands, I will hit "reply all" and post the rumor verification information myself so that all of the other friends you emailed it to will not be fooled. If something sounds too good to be true, or in other words, if you really think that you can make money by sending me an email, then go right ahead. Send it to me. Just don't expect me to verify our friendship by returning any emails to you.

BWP Freewrite 06-17-09

For the price of a stick of butter...

Freewriting from BWP that wants to be a poem.

Thank you Paula Deen
for giving women the courage
to use butter.

A pound of oleo
required in any dish adds
moisture, flavor, and fat grams.

"It's just like Granny did it,"
you'd say. Or maybe, "It's so good,
you'd slap yore granny, y'all!"

Tell me how one takes brown bags
from the Coastal Empire and recycles them
into a Financial Empire?

Perhaps its your blue eyes.
Without them, you look like most of us,
round in places children want to hug, gray on top.

Or perhaps it is because those Yankees
watching on Food Network can't get enough
of your "Howdy" and "Y'alls."

No one really uses that much flavor
in their speech. You aren't a pretender,
but you don't really talk that way, do you.

People save their pennies to eat at the Lady,
a highlight of any Savannah trip,
but I know the truth.

The same food on the buffet in the evening
appears cheaper at lunch.
Same butter, same flavor, different price.

When I cook your recipes at home,
they taste better than your meals at the Lady.
Maybe they lose something in the multiplication.

You should try smaller pots.
Come for Sunday lunch; according to my husband,
the casserole and cake are fine eatin'.

So, thank you Paula, for teaching me
that the only ingredient I really need
is the stick in my refrigerator door.

Just don't step on a scale, y'all.

Video blogging

For BWP Summer Institute Project

My particular research interest is using emerging technologies in the secondary English classroom. The term "emerging" is relative, but in rural South Georgia, where I teach, the use of blogs (and visual media) as well as audio podcasts as part of learning is not the norm. I wish it were. That way my students could spend more of their time being creative rather than learning how to use new technology tools. I do remember when my students did not know how to use PowerPoint or MS Word! So I trust that a time will come when this digital generation will begin incorporating new technologies into their educational lives.

This particular video was created using Animoto, an online video creator. Students can use this tool to create a 30 second video using their own photos and choice of music. Ideally, a student would create a video for his/her blog, choosing which photos to include (usually no more than 15) and incorporating a written component. Hyperlinks would be optional but would give readers more choices.

As a side note, I viewed the preview video for Google Wave that will come out later this year. It has the capability for users to create collaborative documents within Wave and embed those within blogs and other apps. How cool would it be for a student to create a video and post a blog and have peers collaborate and write about the clip or create a fictional account of a trip they never took, or carry on a conversation where they ask questions of the filmmaker about the film and receive immediate feedback? Google also has a translator that will allow your ELL students to type in their own language and have it immediately translated into English. Cool.

Carson McCullers's "We of Me"

A Facebook quiz (i.e., time waster) recently prompted me to read Georgia author Carson McCullers's book The Member of the Wedding. I'm ashamed to say I never picked it up before; the vivid images she evokes through her description of simple, everyday objects and events in the life of a Southern girl should be shared. Her description of the grape arbor took me immediately to the days of my childhood when I stayed at my Granny Jewell's home in Shawnee, Georgia:

Frankie was too tall this summer to walk beneath the arbor as she had always done before. Other twelve-year-old people could still walk around inside, give shows, and have a good time. Even small grown ladies could walk underneath the arbor. And already Frankie was too big; this year she had to hang around and pick from the edges like the grown people. She stared into the tangle of dark vines, and there was the smell of crushed scuppernongs and dust (1946, p. 7).

I was also impressed by her manipulation of grammar, specifically her use of pronouns. I should look more often for examples to show my students of how a writer understands grammar so well that she or he can manipulate it so effectively. Here is one such excerpt. Frankie, the protagonist, is thinking about her brother and his bride-to-be who have traveled back to Winter Hill:

The darkening town was very quiet. For a long time now her brother and the bride had been at Winter Hill. They had left the town a hundred miles behind them, and now were in a city far away. They were them and in Winter Hill, together, while she was her and in the same old town all by herself. And as she sickened with this feeling a thought and explanation suddenly came to her, so that she knew and almost said aloud: They are the we of me. Yesterday, and all the twelve years of her life, she had only been Frankie. She was an I person who had to walk around and do things by herself. All other people had a we to claim, all others except her. When Berenice said we, she meant Honey and Big Mama, her lodge, or her church. The we of her father was the store. All members of clubs have a we to belong to and to talk about. The soldiers in the army can say we, and even the criminals on chain-gangs. But the old Frankie had had no we to claim, unless it would be the terrible summer we of her and John Henry and Berenice--and that was the last we in the world she wanted. Now all this was suddenly over with and changed. There was her brother and the bride, and it was as though when first she saw them something she had known inside of her: They are the we of me. And that was why it made her feel so queer, for them to be away in Winter Hill while she was left all by herself; the hull of the old Frankie left there in the town alone (p. 35).

Frankie wants so badly to belong, which McCullers emphasizes just by the stylistic use of personal pronouns. Something to think about: Who is the we of me?

BBs and Cafeteria Toast

My 11-year-old daughter is in her second year of 4-H Project S.A.F.E. BB program competition. We've practiced every week since September, and today is the day: State Competition.

My husband and I are in the scoring room for the duration. This year, the program has grown to 580+ 5th-8th grade shooters. Which means we have to score almost 2400 targets (24,000 bullseyes)! The number of participants this year is a record. Of course, we won't be scoring these alone. Plenty of parent volunteers will be scoring. Thank you, volunteers! Keith is the "Chief Statistical Officer," and I'm the data-entry clerk. We both enjoy the jobs, but we won't see our daughter shoot; I think she prefers this. She never wants me on the line with her during competition, and I can live with that. Instead the team coach will be on the firing line with her.

I walked over to the new dining hall at 7:15 this morning for some Rock Eagle toast. It is a beautiful building featuring stone and copper siding. I'm going to go back later today to take a picture of the copper siding while it is still the color of new copper. In time it will turn green, and of course that is appropriate for the 4-H camp! By the way, the toast is still hard and good. No one else likes it, but I do. I suppose that's another reason why I am a teacher--I love cafeteria toast.

Participatory Technologies in the English Classroom

Remember when your students did not know how to create a PowerPoint presentation or Publisher document, save to a computer disk on the a: drive, a network folder, or, later, a jump drive that fits in the USB port?

Even my students who do not have a computer at home know how to do those basic functions on a computer now, but I remember a time not very long ago when my students were confused when I asked them to save their work to a disk so that it could be recalled again the following day.

Ten years ago, I began asking my students to participate in electronic exchanges via BreadNet, the online, private computer network of the Bread Loaf School of English. I was fortunate to receive a DeWitt Wallace-Reader's Digest fellowship in the summer of 1999 to study at Bread Loaf and become a part of the Bread Loaf Teacher Network. I met other teachers at Bread Loaf with whom I began planning online electronic exchanges. In these exchanges, my students would be paired with a partner or a small group of students from another school somewhere in the United States. The teacher of those far-removed (geographically) students and I would prepare a collaborative learning opportunity usually centered around a common text, theme, or genre our students were reading.

Students would begin by introducing themselves, their schools, and their communities in a short writing assignment that they would then save to a floppy disk (eventually we moved to a folder on our school network). My students were responsible for writing a response to a common prompt on the text and ending with a question for their exchange partners to encourage a conversation. Once the discourse began online, students would receive postings from their partners and respond. Their writing was created in a word processor and then saved in a file to a floppy disk which I would then take, open and read, and post into one or two single files on BreadNet, forwarding the writing of all of my students to the teacher whose class was participating in the exchange with us.

The technology we used then to conduct our exchanges (floppy disks, a: drives, early versions of Word, early version of First Class) are obsolete because of software improvements or developments in computer technology.

(ASIDE: I could go on and on about what happens within exchanges (my dissertation work), but that is not where I'm going with this post.)

Students are tech savvy, at least in the sense that what I would have to explain step-by-step ten years ago they can do without any instruction today. My students can easily create a PowerPoint with sound and animation. They can design a newsletter on Publisher. Some create videos and others can record podcasts. So what technologies do I need to be utilizing in my classroom today? What are important skills my students will need to utilize after high school? What technology can we incorporate within the English curriculum that will make our students better engagers, collaborators, discourse creators, learners?

I just started reading Literature and the Web: Reading and Responding with New Technologies, a new book by Robert Rozema and Allen Webb, in hopes that I will find some direction. I also hope that I will find affirmation that what I already do with technology in my classroom improves student learning. I also am constantly reading about and searching for new Web 2.0 applications and trying them out myself. What are you doing to utilize participatory technologies in your classroom?

Does Twitter Change the Concept of Audience?

My students turned in reading journals today, some using twitter as their medium for the first time. I haven't had time to read through all of them but am excited about one in particular that I have seen. One young lady decided to twitter a conversation between herself and Walt Whitman. She read (and struggled to understand) "Song of Myself." I'm interested in reading her questions to Whitman and how she answered them through his persona.

While I was quickly scanning her twitter page, I was drawn into other twitters I have received over the past day or so. By the way, can I actually say I receive twitters? Do those tweeters actually intend to write only to me? I have no idea who will read my twitters at any given time, and I have no inkling of who will decide to follow me today or tomorrow; therefore, I am not writing to a particular audience. So is Twitter changing the concept of writing for a particular audience. How do you know who will read your tweets? Hmmmm.

I have some other twitter questions, but this one is at the forefront of my mind at the moment. What motivates us to choose the people we follow on twitter? For whom do we want to be an audience? I have chosen others in my profession, a couple of friends who are online and tweet, and some people I think have their fingers on a pulse point of our American society.

I ran across Bill Gates' Twitter today and decided to follow him to see what he talks about. (I do question whether or not Bill is actually Bill or if someone is writing as Bill.) Then I decided to see who he follows. He's influential; he's wealthy; for better or for worse, he is a notable American. He has 17,824 people following him on Twitter. So who does this American icon follow? He only follows 45 people/organizations/groups! They include many names I do not know or recognize, Macworld, Iphone Game Play, Scott Hanson (Sr. engineer at Dell), JeanPaulSatre, Darrell Jordan-Smith (VP with Sun Microsystems), and my personal favorite, Darth Vader. What does this say about Bill? What does this say about Twitter users' choice of audience? What does this tell me about how technology is changing the concept of audience for me as a writer?

Transcendentalism and Twitters

One class of college prep students is studying Transcendentalists this week. I've done some creative planning to get this study into my schedule before they take the Georgia High School Graduation Tests next week.

While reading postings on the EC Ning , I saw an idea from Jim Burke that I decided to adapt to my classroom. He highly recommended Stanford's Encyclopedia of Philosophy, so I divided the information between collaborative groups and had a conversational round table as an introduction to the Transcendentalists. Then I chose nine different reading selections from Transcendentalist writings (particular chapters of Walden, "Self-Reliance," portion of "Song of Myself," Prelude to Leaves of Grass, "Civil Disobedience") and had each group choose which section they would read for a short round of literature circles. (See initial assignment.)

As part of their individual reading, I asked them to do transactional reading journals and gave them 10-15 options for writing their journal entries. I also wanted to encourage students to incorporate technology into this study, so I gave them the option of creating a blog for the journal assignments or creating Twitter postings. I did adapt the writing options for the Twitter postings.

Yesterday when I gave students time in class to work on their journals, two students tried to access Twitter at school. I can access Twitter when I log in, but unfortunately, the powers that be that control our system's technology must have decided that Twitter is not acceptable for students to access and have thus blocked its use on campus. Thankfully these two students are quite savvy and are willing to do this from home, but I just hate that my students cannot use these technologies at school!

Top 10: Books that Stick With Me

A friend on Facebook tagged me in a note and asked if I could name ten books in 15 minutes that would always stick with me. Okay, I did not want to appear ignorant, so I had to skip all of those Harlequins I read as a teenager (and beyond!). Then I nixed those books that did not move me, yet I was glad I read them, like Moby Dick. Who isn't proud of being able to say that she read Moby Dick?

My final list fell into two categories: books that aroused an internal, primordial shift when I read them and books that led me to fall in love with reading. I couldn't differentiate between the two, for the books that led me to my true love of reading impacted me as much if not more than those books which caused me to feel a true emotion, not a sensationalized feeling of an emotion. The only book on the list that did both of those things for me was the Bible.

Here's the list, though I did not have time in my fifteen minutes to place them in any order of importance.

1. Native Son
2. To Kill a Mockingbird
3. Gone with the Wind
4. Holy Bible
5. For Whom the Bell Tolls
6. Where the Red Fern Grows
7. Are You There God? It's Me Margaret
8. The Yearling
9. The Sound and the Fury
10. The Boxcar Children

What's on your list?

What Technologies Should My Students Use NOW?

Tonight I have spent several hours visiting multiple social networking/Web 2.0 applications because they excite me. I've been to the EC Ning, Twitter (tweet me!), Dana Huff's blog, Jim Burke's blog, Blackwater Writing Project Blog, my own Literary Loafing blog, Readwriteweb blog, Eduwonk blog, Clay Burell's blog, YouTube, Goodreads, Diigo, and Digg. Oops, almost forgot my Gmail account. I've even stepped into the murky waters of Tweetdeck to see if it will really manage some of my networks.

How much is too much? When I read some of the technology blogs, I feel compelled to try out some of the latest applications. Today's Readwriteweb post from Marshall Kirkpatrick speculates that Twine is going to surpass delicious. Now, I do like the concept of delicious though I don't think about it more than maybe once a month and seldom remember to post there, but Twine? Today is the first day I've heard about it and it's ready to race past a web app that I do like. How do I keep up? I have to teach English to 11th graders, but participatory technologies keep drawing me in. Is there room in my English class for them?

I want to know where my kids go when they are online, and I know they are networking. I want to know how I can use that to my advantage as a classroom teacher. How do I help my students create meaningful discourse online in these environments? Should that even be a part of my job? Where does technology fit with my English classroom? We're moving beyond MS Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, and PowerPoint presentations (thank goodness!). At what point do we stop to consider what technologies our students should now be using in the secondary English classroom?

Trying to Connect on English Companion Ning

Jim Burke, teacher extraordinaire in California, started a Ning for English teachers at the end of last year. I've followed the explosion of the EC Ning in the past three months with much interest. Since 1999, I have been a member of an online network, the Bread Loaf Teacher Network, and I know that spending time with people on the network prior to becoming really active helped me make a connection. I studied at Bread Loaf School of English in Vermont for a summer and formed lasting personal and professional relationships with teachers from across the country that I still maintain online. That relationship aspect of the network keeps me checking in almost ten years after I started my online collaboration.

I'm curious if Jim's Ning can help teachers make the kind of connections I was able to make with others on BreadNet? A recent report, The Digital Youth Project, identified two factors that drew teens to social networks, and I believe they apply here as well. People are drawn to networks that are peer-based or interest-based.

Of course the people who are on Jim's Ning are all English teachers. Some teachers will go to the Ning out of curiosity. Others will go to find lesson plans and teaching advice and never engage in discourse. Still others will go for the camaraderie. I'm there for the first reason, but not because I don't understand electronic networks and how valuable they can be to a teacher. (If I were not a member of BLTN, I doubt very seriously that I would still be in education, much less just finished with a terminal degree in the field.) I'm watching the ning to see if it works.

This past week Jim posted the start of a ning book club, so I bought the book, Rethinking Rubrics by Maja Wilson. I've tried doing a "book club" type group on BLTN, and it flopped, to be honest. I wonder how it will work on EC Ning?

Finally, I wish the EC Ning would "live long and prosper." I hope it can. If its users can separate the EC Ning from Jim Burke's identity and truly believe it is for and about English teachers, then I predict it will be here many years from now. BreadNet continues to thrive over 20 years after its inception; why not EC Ning?

Show me the money (and where it's going)!

Several days have passed swiftly since I last sat down to write. We are finishing our nine weeks exams and are moving into the home stretch for the school year. I feel so bogged down and am ready to start afresh after our long weekend break.

What is it about springtime that makes my mind begin to float in a fog? Probably pollen. We have an abundance here in South Georgia; my car was covered in yellow dust today. Actually, I believe that teaching is so demanding physically and mentally that after seven months of pushing students to do more than they think they can, teachers find themselves in a place where they have to dig deep to endure.

Yesterday, I received an email from a textbook rep with whom I've had conversations about two different reading programs her company offers. Just as a good salesperson should, she addressed my budget concerns by pointing out how much money my school system would receive from the federal stimulus package. These funds are Title I and IDEA funds. I didn't realize that our federal government already knows how much each public school system in all states will receive from the package. By no means is our system receiving the amount of money like a Cobb County in metro Atlanta or Richmond County near Savannah, but the amount of money set aside for my system was significant. And we can use 15% of the special education funds for purchases for RTI.

My main concern is that our school officials do not see this as fluff money but an opportunity to fund programs that really improve student achievement. Even administrators and educators need to practice their new media skills--we are bombarded with so much information from companies (legitimate or otherwise) who want to make a profit in the field of education. Not every idea that comes along should be considered, much less acted upon. Sometimes I feel like someone is placing a band aid over my bleeding sore and ripping it off daily just to reapply a different band-aid without seeing if the first one would work. Many of the ideas bandied about are nothing more than what teachers were doing twenty years ago under a different name with prettier packaging. For those who are interested in finding their own system's funding from the stimulus, visit the government website that has a breakdown of what each school will receive in Title I funding and IDEA funding.

Blog List Application Out There?

As you'll notice on the right hand side of the blog, there is a list of blogs that I like to read. Maybe you noticed that the majority of the blogs I list are educational policy blogs. The others are related to teaching English. While the blogs entries I write are about after-school hours and how I try to have a life, I can't seem to shake that side of my brain that wants to read about and talk about school.

What I would really like is a Web 2.0 application that allows me to create my own blog list to watch. I find that most of the time when I go to my own blog it is to see my own blog list rather than write, though I am enjoying the writing of the entries. Where do I go to find out if there is such an application? I guess I'll Google it!

M*A*S*H 4077

The greatest show in television is....

Keith and I usually end our day relaxing in the bedroom with an episode of M*A*S*H. The Tivo records five episodes each weekday, and I feel special when Tivo finds a few more as suggestions. I have seen every episode, and I've found I can categorize them all based on character appearances.

First, there are the Trapper episodes. Any number of offenses were committed against Frank Burns by the duo of Trapper John and Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce. When Trapper left, B.J. then came to Korea for the duration. B.J. was the family man, yet even he was not immune to the charms of a woman--remember the artist who fell for him? She was played by the actress who was in Love Story with Ryan O'Neal. My mind isn't kicking in tonight or I'd tell you her name. She was also on McMillan and Wife with Rock Hudson.

Speaking of Frank, he is the character you just love to hate. He is childish, whiny, a cheat, and the most overblown stereotype for Christians and patriots (hypocrite for both). His love for Margaret dimmed only when he thought of money or his wife. There are the Frank episodes, and then there are the post-Frank episodes. After Frank disappeared to Tokyo for a mental breakdown ("Private Charles Lamb" episode, I believe), Charles Emerson Winchester, III, had to grow on me, but he did. Such a pompous elitist.

Another category of episodes are the Henry Blake episodes followed by the Colonel Sherman Potter episodes. Henry was such a lovable Lothario. He did his best to make life in war as normal as it could be for himself and those under his command. I still tear up when I watch the episode where he is killed in a helicopter crash, ironically as he is returning home from the war. The actors on set did not know that Henry Blake was going to die in the crash until Radar ran into the operating room in the final scene. Those gasps and cries must be real.

Colonel Potter came to town sounding like a hard nose in his first episode, but he quickly turned into the father figure for all under his charge. He was a voice of experience and temperance. Definitely a peacemaker. (As a side note, I'm sure Dave Ramsey would approve of Col. Potter's wife's ingenuity in saving back some egg money and paying off their home mortgage early!)

The only major loss (even Henry's death pales with this one) is when Radar goes home. For you trivia buffs, Gary Burgoff (sp?) as Radar is the only actor who played his character in both the big screen M*A*S*H movie and the TV series. The show really is never the same after Radar/Gary leaves. Klinger becomes normal, or at least he goes from wearing dresses to dressing like regular army. One of my favorite episodes featuring Radar is when he decides to take a correspondence writing course. I don't remember all of the instructors, but they all had famous last names, such as Hemingway (Ethel!). In that episode Radar goes around trying to improve his writing by adding florid descriptions to the Army reports. And remember the episode where he was a shoe salesman? Or the one where he wanted to get a tattoo? Radar was always looking for a way to be more of a man or to improve himself. His most obvious gift was his "radar," but he was just unusually observant.

I could go on and on about my love for the characters of M*A*S*H, but I'll wrap this up and save some for another day.

Calling All Facebook Members to Stop the Spam!

Okay, I'm finally tired, which means the blog will be short tonight. I've spent the past two and a half hours manipulating settings and resetting passwords on Facebook, Google, and this blog. On evenings like this, I wonder if Web 2.0 applications are anything more than time wasters? Usually, my time spent social networking on Facebook is cyclical. Much of the time I have to remain out of the cycle because friends from twenty years ago think it is a hoot to send "Facebook Spam" to me. I'm defining Facebook Spam as all of those things that are thrown or flung at someone who is unaware and unwilling to spend time accepting/allowing the requested actions/gifts.

Flair was cute the first few times I received it. A little green patch was nice at first, considering I seldom am able to keep real plants alive for lack of water. Who can kill a virtual garden? Well, looks like I probably will. I discovered that my little green things were planted on a virtual plot of ground within the walls of Facebook, and they were turning brown and wilting for lack of virtual water. Go figure. Why doesn't someone just come up with a dead brown plant request so that I can get it over with?

And who the heck invented all of the quizzes based on the 1980s that are on Facebook? I really, really, really have no time for those. They don't even tell you what your score is unless you sign up for their phone service. Wait. That's it! That's the catch! Facebook isn't a free social networking tool!!!! What is everyone thinking? I have no idea what the primary purpose of the Facebook founder was, but he has turned it into a capitalistic nightmare. Everyone is out for more than his or her fair share of the almighty American dollar, placing us in our current, tenable financial position. How much money is enough? At what point will this particular network founder say enough is enough? No, I'm not blaming Facebook for our economic woes. That would be a logical fallacy. I am using it as an example capitalism at its finest (or worst, depending on your ideology).

Looks like I'm not quite finished talking about Facebook. Every time mainstream news media catches wind of a potential privacy issue related to the networking site, Facebook goes and pulls a stunt like this. Just last week the media reported that Facebook's new policy states it keeps all of information you post (which incidentally includes this blog on my notes page) on Facebook EVEN IF YOU DELETE YOUR ACCOUNT. After some trash talk in the media, Facebook wants its members to feel like they have a say in how the site is run. Well kudos to them. If you believe them, then I invoke the words of Bill Engvall, "Here's your sign."

Brennan and Booth to the Rescue

I'm damaged goods. I'm not sure if my personal diagnosis has a name, but it involves reading way too much educational theory and thinking way too much before synthesizing and then writing about qualitative dissertation research. Okay, here's the problem. I can't pick up a book and read for fun anymore. I have stacks and stacks of books all over my home just waiting for me to start reading, but for some reason they have no attraction whatsoever for me right now. This blog is the first writing in the past five years I'm willing to attempt for the pure enjoyment of it.

The only interest I have developed since graduation is a fascination for the TV series Bones. I checked out season one at my local library in January, and I was hooked. Season DVDs are wonderful! 21 episodes within reach of my index finger along with commentary from actors and special features! That first DVD ran out nine days later--yes I actually watched 21 episodes of a television show in less than ten days, most of them on my new laptop. When I went back to the library to find season 2, someone else had checked it out. The nerve of that person!

Undaunted, I returned to my laptop at home and experienced the true power of Google. Interestingly, citizens of China have an affinity for Bones as well. I was able to find a Chinese website with every episode of season 2 of Bones. Sure, I had to endure some fuzzy pictures and Chinese subtitles, but I didn't miss a day of Bones the entire month of January. Carrie, my librarian, called me when season 3 became available, but it was unnecessary, for my China connection provided all of season 3 (shortened because of last year's writer's strike) and took me all the way up to current season 4 episodes that can be watched on the Fox website. FYI: Only the latest five episodes are on Fox's website or hulu.

In 8 days, 11 hours, and 23 minutes (according to Fox's website) I'll be able to watch a new episode of Dr. Temperence Brennan, forensic anthropologist, and FBI special agent Seeley Booth's crime fighting adventures. For now, I'll settle for reading one of Dr. Kathy Reichs' novels on which the TV series is based. More on those in another post.

Other must-watch shows on my list: The Closer, Saving Grace, CSI, NCIS. Thank God for Tivo!

Green on a Budget

Several weeks ago, my husband Keith and I began Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University at our church. We've been married for 14 1/2 years, and the past two months are the only months in our marriage where we both sat down and planned specifically what we wanted to do with our money. How in the world have we survived without going bankrupt? Probably we should have but were too ignorant to know it. The first month's budget creating process was non-eventful. Dave said to expect an argument. Didn't happen. Until this month. The argument revolved around the money we spend on food and other household products. While I would love to continue fussin' and fummin' about that argument, that's not really where I want to take this post.

Instead, I want to talk about how "green" I am to cutting back on expenses. First, let me say that I am not an opulent person. Yet I always purchase products that make my life easier, and they do not necessarily have to be the most cost-efficient. I teach full-time, and if I can find acceptable short cuts to housework, I use them.

Well, after the argument yesterday, I read an article in a Farm Show paper about a recipe for "green" and cheap laundry detergent. A nun in Minnesota, Sister Clara Stang, created a recipe for laundry detergent that costs only .05 a load. I did a double take. I probably spend anywhere from $10-$15 per month on laundry detergent, and that isn't counting any trips to the dry cleaner. What the article did was peak my interest in finding economical, doable, environmentally safe solutions to easing my monthly expenses at my local discount store.

Today I began my quest for the "green-cheap" ingredients of laundry detergent. The first ingredient I needed to find was A&H washing soda; thankfully I have a husband who informed me that I can't find that in Tifton, Georgia. Seems no store, even our local discount store, sells it. One must order it. Lucky for me my husband uses it in some of his "science" experiments. I think I'll save those experiments for another blog, but let's just say that rebar, a wading pool, rusty metal, water, jumper cables, and a car battery can be unsettling the first time you see them together in your driveway.

The next two ingredients I researched online: 20 Mule Team Borax and liquid castile soap. Borax was easy to find at our local grocery store and cheap--3.73 w/tax for a box. Then I found Dr. Bronner's liquid castile soap online. It even comes in different scents: peppermint, lavender, eucaplyptus, and one for babies. I found the whole range of products for a reasonable amount on CVS.com. Searched Amazon and other online distributors, but the best deal for me was at CVS, especially if they had some in stock locally. So this evening, off I went to find some lavender- scented Dr. Bronner.

I entered our newest CVS (just opened in January) to see if they had it on the shelf. My first aisle was the laundry aisle. Nothing doing. Quite a few overpriced, small jugs of laundry detergent, but no Dr. Bronner. Then on I went to the shampoo aisle, as I had read in someone else's blog that castile soap worked wonders for the hair. No luck. Then I went to the natural products aisle, thinking that any environmentally-friendly product would have to be natural. Uh-uh. Not there, either. So finally I broke down and asked the lady at checkout if she could order a product for me that I saw on CVS.com or if it would just be better to order it online. After all but saying I'd be better off trying to find it myself, she went into her back office to presumably look on their store inventory. She popped out once to ask me how to spell Dr. Bronner. When she returned, she came quietly. Seems they do carry Dr. Bronner after all, but not on any aisles I previously visited. And they only had one scent: Peppermint. We both sniffed the product to see if it would be an acceptable smell for clean clothes. After we agreed that it would probably fade quickly, I went to the front to purchase my find.

$13.49 for 32 oz. (Oh, yeah, for all you Dave Ramsey disciples, I had $6 in CVS Extra care bucks, so I only paid a little over $8). That's a little steep, but I only have to use 1 oz. of the product in each gallon of detergent I mix. Each load uses one cup of the detergent. Once I find the rest of my products for my own experiment (minus rebar and a car battery charger), I'll figure out if this "green" product really will be cheap and worth the trouble. Oh, yeah, my husband, Mr. Know-it-all-Eagle Scout, took one look at Dr. Bronner (which I pronouced with an "ah" sound and he pronounced with a long "o"), he told me, "Hey, that's the stuff I used to carry when I went backpacking. It's really good for the environment.

Here's Sister Clara's as-yet-untried-by-me recipe:

13 cups of hot tap water
4 Tbs. of Arm & Hammer washing soda (not baking!)
2 Tbs. of Borax
1 oz. of castile soap
(optional) few drops of essential oil for scent

Pour hot water into empty 1-gal. jug. Add ingredients and shake to mix. Sister Clara says 1/2 cup for a small load an 1 cup for a full load.

P.S. Keith says to read Dr. Bronner's label--it was good reading around the campfire. Really.