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.