O! thou monster Ignorance, how deformed dost thou look!

Nath. Sir, he hath not fed of the dainties that are bred of a book; he hath not eat paper, as it were; he hath not drunk ink: his intellect is not replenished; he is only an animal, only sensible in the duller parts:
And such barren plants are set before us, that we thankful should be,
Which we of taste and feeling are, for those parts that do fructify in us more than he;
For as it would ill become me to be vain, indiscreet, or a fool:
So, were there a patch set on learning, to see him in a school:
But, omne bene, say I; being of an old Father’s mind,
Many can brook the weather that love not the wind.
(Love's Labour's Lost, IV.ii.11-18)
So I suppose that Holofernes and Nathaniel were just being pretentious and snooty in respect to the more worldly Dull here, but Nathaniel's little rhyme reminded me of last night's class. Going through the sum of my learning and reflections over the last 5 semesters in the ITS program made me realize how fructified I have been. I like to think that I'm no more a computer geek than I have been before this program started, and I never will be. But it seems like (esp. this semester) I've had a window into the world of educational technology that will close after July. This cohort has offered so much insight to me mostly because I've been immersed in the culture of learning with new technologies. How do I keep up with that once Bill and all the ITRT's have departed from my weekly routine? I wonder if I have the initiative to keep up with it. It's like when I got up this morning and scrolled past MTV2 on the tube (in this world of HDTV and plasma, they don't even call it "the tube" anymore, do they?). So many unfamiliar bands and rappers and styles. I used to be a college DJ, on the cutting edge, and now I'm clueless. Scary.
It's a quandary, I'm sure. And I'm also sure that whoever began reading this has stopped by now, so let's get to the point. The other day, I came across this site, http://misterteacher.blogspot.com/ by James Tubbs, a 5th grade teacher in Wyoming, Ohio. This dude is sharp when it comes to instructional technology. I'm pretty sure. His work reminds me of Will Richardson. And I like him because he advocates student writing in Mathematics! He's fun to read, as well. Just check out his student blogs page, with actual samples from his own class. I can't believe he has fifth graders doing this stuff. So cool. It's inspired my leadership group's effort to create an initiative to incorporate blogging across curricula, especially in mathematics and science. Speaking of which, I'd better get back to writing the proposal.
Oh, if you have an idea how I can keep that window open, and keep out that monster Ignorance, I'd appreciate your comments!

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder

and it may be necessary from time to time to give a stupid or misinformed beholder a black eye.
- Miss Piggy

Sorry, I just liked that quote so much I had to put it down. It's funny, you know, so many group members talking about final thoughts and it's all over, etc., and I'm wondering what's going to happen after Friday? I would like to continue blogging here. I value the comments from my buddies in the cohort, and I wonder, if I keep posting, will they keep commenting? I really like the comments, and I have a feeling that if I keep posting, I may never see another comment, other than the occasional junk mail-type message. Oh, well. I've really valued these reflections, and as Mr. Langston Hughes' mother said. "I'se still climbin'. . . " So I'll keep it up, I think.
Anyhow, back to Miss Piggy--you know, that chica has a head on her shoulders. Too many narcissists in this world. Yours truly included. Every now and then Americans need to be knocked on the head a little. Take this article on the global economy, titled "America Isn't Ready." Not exactly breaking news, as we've already read The World is Flat, but this kind of thing should still be on our minds, perhaps.
So anyhow, it seems to me that this web 2.0 thing is our chance. Look at Apple's company profile. Look at Google. Two of the most powerful, recognizable companies in the world. And where are they? Not in China or India. They're in California. Sure they're globalizing, but they're still in Cali. Hope springs.
So I'm just saying, perhaps the end is not quite near. Or perhaps it is. Nevertheless, it doesn't change the fact that I'm going to continue to try to give a realistic picture to my kids. "Hey, there's no guarantee that you're going to be handed everything for the rest of your life. So enjoy the Guitar Hero and the free iPhone now, but if you want to keep that stuff, you'd better work your butts off."
Out.

"Romans, countrymen, and lovers!

hear me for my cause; and be silent, that you may hear:
believe me for mine honour, and have respect to mine honour, that you may believe:
censure me in your wisdom, and awake your senses, that you may the better judge."
(Julius Caesar, III.ii.10-12)
So last night's class was mostly about podcasts. Last night we added a podcast message to our advocacy wiki. By "we" I mean Marc and Tracey. I was doing the staff development workshop page, although I did get to say a few words in the podcast. In this case we chose mainly to divide and conquer, and the products turned out just fine, I must say. I would like to get to know the software a little better, but I did learn a few things from what I saw (and heard).
As for the "So What" of podcasts, I think that they can serve a function much like video, only for the more auditory learners. In fact a lot of broadcasters have video podcasts online these days; check out one of my favorites (by "one of my favorites" I mean "one I've actually heard of"), Willie Geist's "video blog," aka ZeitGeist. Apparently you can subscribe to this feed, but I haven't figured that one out, yet. Anyways, being a more visually stimulated person, I haven't really gotten into podcasts yet, so I don't have any favorites there. Perhaps once I read Richardson's chapters on podcasting, I'll have more to say about them. (I suspect I'll still like video better, though.)

Singaut

Nau bai mi wokim sampela niu kain toktok. Dispela pes em i singaut long ol manmeri husat astok bilong em i Tok Pisin. Pastaim bai mi tok sori olsem na Tok Pisin bilong mi i no gut tumas. Mi triam wanpela taim tasol.
Nau bai mi tok save long ol manmeri: Yu mas lukluk long dispela Wikipedia ensiklopedia long intanet. Em i tok:

Wikipedia i wanpela ensiklopedia long intanet long planti tokples. Mipela i traim i mekim wanpela wikipedia long Tok Pisin tasol mipela i nidim manmeri mo husat astok bilong em i Tok Pisin. Sapos yu save Tok Pisin, halivim plis. Ol toksave bilong en i Open Content, na yu ken painim mo long GNU Free Document License. Ol i raitim mo long sampela 2.5 milion pes long yia 2001. 936,000 i long Tok Inglis, narapela pes long narapela tokples. Wikipedia long Tok Pisin i gat 300 pes nau. Yu ken halivim dispela projek tu. Yu ken editim sampela pes, translate pes long Tok Pisin, mekim nupela pes.

Sapos yu lukim long pes bilong mi, yu ken singaut long comments pes na bai yumi stori sampela taim tasol.
**English speakers: I thought I'd shout out to my friends in Melanesia and share with them the wonderful world of wikis so that they can contribute to the Tok Pisin version of Wikipedia, which only has like 300 entries so far, but it's building.

"Speak the speech, I pray you,

. . . as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines." (Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, III.ii.1)

Ok, so I thought this topic would warrant a separate post from the one I just did a few minutes ago (that and I wanted to post 2 Shakespeare quotes today). Last night we made videos for our advocacy projects, and like my dear Hamlet, I was an exuberant amateur director. I realize that the actors (thank goodness they stepped up to do it!) probably thought I was Mr. Bossy Von Directorpants, but I was just trying to do my part, get it done well, and move on. I think the product worked out pretty well, and I must say that I'm pretty jazzed about making movies now, especially since Beth and I have borrowed her father's most excellent camera.
Want to know more about making movies and videos? Here's a cool site that I shared with my students before we made our Macbeth videos, it's all about a crucial element of making a good video--storyboarding. Check out the different sections, esp. the ones on Shot selection and the useful storyboard template that they offer.

Home-keeping youth have ever homely wits.

"I rather would entreat thy company
To see the wonders of the world abroad
Than, living dully sluggardiz’d at home,
Wear out thy youth with shapeless idleness." (The Two Gentlemen of Verona, I.i.4, 7-10)

But it sure is nice to laze around for a few days once school's out!
In class last night I realized I'm going to be home-keeping quite a bit for the next two weeks or so, since we're suddenly in the final stretch of classes for our emerging technologies class. When Bill pointed out that we have like four classes left I saw some serious eye-popping. Time to buckle down. Since I'm going to be spending more time with the computer than with my wife for the next two weeks, here's David Letterman's Top Ten Signs Your Child is Spending Way Too Much Time on the Computer.
Oh, by the way, since we watched the ITRT spoof on Mac vx PC, here's another version done by Chris Elliott that I want to watch once I get out of dial-up sticksville. Let me know how it is.

"My good lords, hitherto in all the progress

Both of my life and office, I have labour’d,
And with no little study, that my teaching
And the strong course of my authority
Might go one way, and safely; and the end
Was ever, to do well. . ." (The Famous History of the Life of King Henry the Eighth, V.iii.40-45)

Granted, poor Cranmer was begging for his life here, nevertheless I think the point is fitting. Last night I began to see how our advocacy wiki is linked to our separate leadership course. First of all, it seems that Tracey has found all the relevant data we could possibly need for our advocacy campaign in our course text, Teacher Leadership That Strengthens Professional Practice. by Charlotte Danielson. Like how pages 108-109 discuss the importance of getting parents to support student learning. I mean, why would someone even start an advocacy campaign, unless he wanted to evoke some kind of change or improvement? And isn't that what leaders do? Nonetheless, I don't think advocacy is synonymous with leadership. Rather, advocacy is more of a subset of leadership--sort of like how all psychiatrists are psychologists but not all psychologists are psychiatrists sort of thing. Whatever. It's late.
Am I truly blogging yet, Mr. Richardson?

"And since you know you cannot see yourself,

so well as by reflection, I, your glass,
will modestly discover to yourself,
that of yourself which you yet know not of."
I think that Cassius' quotation from The Tragedy of Julius Caesar (I.ii.74-77) speaks well enough for today's topic without me having to alter it. Last night I read in Will Richardson's book about "connective writing" in blogs (29-32). This, according to Richardson is a new genre of writing that "forces those who do it to read carefully and critically, that demands clarity and cogency in its construction, that is done for a wide audience, and that links to the sources of the ideas expressed" (29). That's a big "So what" for my reflections. As a teacher of struggling readers/ writers who are way below grade level, this is ideal because as he goes on to say, connective bloggers "learn to read critically because as they read, they look for important ideas to write about" (30). Lately I have thought of blogs simply as something I would use to post assignments and daily activities (the type of thing that you might see on schoolnotes.com), perhaps with some interesting side notes and links to supplement the lesson. Or perhaps as a medium for writing weekly journals. Now I'm realizing that there is so much more potential for expository writing and reading in my high school English classes. Writing can be so much more than just responding to prompts about "What I did this summer." They can inform, explain, and connect. So that is what I'll do now: check out these ideas from the British Council's Teaching English page which presents Some ideas for activities using blogs in the English classroom which go beyond simply managing or journaling. I'll have to keep looking for more of these ideas.

All the World Wide Web's a stage. . .

. . . And the people in it merely bloggers.
So I'm reading Will Richardson's Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms, and he mentions all these new tools for education, including those that publish, those that manage information, and those that share content in new and collaborative ways. These include blogs, wikis, rss feeds, aggregators, photogalleries, videocasting, social bookmarking, etc. As I'm reading, I think about this new Angel thing that we are supposed to be using here in Spotsy next school year. I heard that it's supposed to have some of these features, but that's about all I've heard. I've asked around and no one seems to be able to give me a definitive description of this mysterious Angel thingy. WOULD SOMEBODY PLEASE TELL ME WHAT THE @#$% ANGEL IS? Maybe I'm completely ignorant, and not looking in the right places (I can't find the latest issue of TechTalks, was it in there?), but it seems like there's this secret circle of tech folks who know all about it. But if you ask the typical teacher in my school about Angel, they'll say something like "Which Angel? I teach two girls named Angel."
Steve Tate did tell me that three teachers from our school will be trained on it this summer, so they can turn around and train the rest of our staff at the beginning of next school year. But I'm wondering, is this something that will drastically alter the way that we manage info and teach next year? If so, then why isn't everyone taking an inservice in it this summer? Wouldn't that be better than "Grammar Slammer" or another summer of CRISS strategies? Or am I just getting blown out of proportion about this?

If language be the food of Blogs. . .

Write on! So I wonder how long I can go on with these modified Shakespearean quotes. Guess that'll be my quirky little thing, like the cat lady, only . . . ummm. . . not.
Last night we explored some cool little gadgets in Web 2.0, including Google reader and Google gadgets. I've used the reader to subscribe to all my colleagues' blogs, which is a pretty cool thing. I explained it to my wife about the reader and she was like whatever but I don't care I still like it (student blog writing impersonation). The gadgets are cool for websites and wikis and whatnot, but I don't know if there's any practical educational application to them, other than to enhance design.
I can tell I'm beginning to loosen up in here. Hope my readers can withstand my colloquialisms.
We also spent a chunk of class time working on our advocacy wiki. I started to realize that this is going to be a major undertaking, probably when I realized that I would have to research my topic and that there are heaps of articles out there on student motivation. No problem finding the material--it's sorting through it all that will be a task. Fortunately I have some clever partners who seem to be on top of things.
No ideas yet for the lesson plan. It seems like I could use blogs to replace or as an alternative to weekly journal entries, but is that really a lesson? Here's an idea--perhaps I'll explore the possibility of a Multiple Media narrative where students tell a story through narrative, emails, diary entries, even telephone conversations. The whole thing could be arranged on a blog. But is that a really authentic way to use a blog? Just brainstorming. More in a bit. . .

To Blog or Not to Blog. . .

So this is my new blog. Nice place! I hope to make it a bit more cozy in the next few days. I'll try to add some images and play around with the other features.
Anyhow, I'm writing about my first impression of what we're doing this semester in the George Mason ITS program--Web 2.0, blogs, wikis, and podcasts in education. Well, I asked for it. Like six months ago at the Spotsylvania Techfest I actually approached my professor and asked him when we would be doing this stuff. Now I know.
My mission: to find my own niche here in Web 2.0, and to make it an integral part of my teaching, not just technology for the sake of using technology in the classroom. I think that being an English teacher gives me an advantage here--after all, it's all about effective communication. I'm looking forward to getting started.