What we say is true confessions.  I am approaching the same code of the situation.  I'm taking hold of it from a more positive spectrum than anything.  Upon the days I've spent with Bella, which I've known for hardly a season, have been dealt upon daily.  Almost imprisoned from my current passions and arts, I spend much wasted time as a lounging vessel hoping to be free.  My true thoughts linger to her former bestfriend, yet becoming my former best friend, Susan.  Susan and I had a falling out some years ago, but before that she was a true spirit, an eccentric innocent young girl, always eager and full of heart.  Over the course of her mind expanding, I've come to learn of her value change.  What she did once value with love and family had now left its traditions to a more selfish one, infatuation and fame.  She secretly desires to be the jewel of attention in the heights of glory beyond glam.  Within this reach, she demands a boy toy to measure up to those expections, one to add to her winning independence, but secretly she desires all there is to be experienced, even the most tempting and provoking ones.  In her depart back to Paris, she had found her young chap, a better version of I, but less parallel to her character.  His personality may be an elaboration of mine, but it lacks the genuine touch and history I have put into Susan.  Maxwell and Susan may try their best to live this life foolishly, but in the back of her dull life, something is wrong and hidden.  The secret impulses remind her of me.  In my time of Bella speaking of Susan, feeling betrayed by the constant flirtation exerted in Susan's personality (but she think its specifically towards me), reminds me of her.  Bella is a true woman of heart.  Her personality is more eccentric, but in a more innocent way.  Her attractiveness cannot touch the sublimity Susan has left on my heart over this years.  I've known Bella for a season, but all derived from Susan.  Was that Susan's main purpose before leaving me in this Dorset town?  Abandoned, Susan attempts to make contact with Bella and I.  Bella, hysterical, hoping I to care more about the gender seperation due to courtship, had left me astrayed to her cuffs as well.  I tend to Bella always as she is hysterically tragic-daily.  I, her last hope, before her mother, comfort in this course of time.  Coming soon, Darien and I are to visit the Count of Wales in a few weeks closing.  There, we are to assume pleasure in intellectual sporting.  What concerns me in this small town is the upcoming visit of Sir Henry and The Count during the winter break of Christmas.  At that time, Susan will be on board, steady, without consideration of our friendship's conflict, for it is invisible, will try to contact me.  Sir Henry always invites Susan over.  Bella isn't comfortable to accept Susan even near my presence.  The slightest utter of or to Susan leaves Bella in the drowning tears, almost to the verge of suicide for what she calls death in the inside.  I cannot express myself the touchy situation.  My highest hopes are in deed in my own brotherhood, but consequences like Susan and time come with them.  The far consequences of hurting Bella in her lonely desperation, but envious, hurts her as well.  I have fallen for Bella, but Darien suggests I can't live this way any longer.  I've agreed, but last time, after building courage from a month, to break it off with poor Bella, she pleaded her guts till I caved.  So, I try to hold onto the strings of my future, on one hand, a love to be by my side and juggling the deju vu of a mistake of deserting my companions, which I have worked so much energy and trust into.  I guess far better or worse scenes remain outside of these situations.  My chance to travel to England is bleak itself.  So, I hope to find that vast field in my mind, one with lanterns and another with a fresh Autumn sky.   Best wishes to you, but do, respond.

Sincere,
Mr. Scarlet

(Some is a prayer in the letter, what begs)

I have become a man of minimum ego, stripped of friends, and miserable in the chains I am bound to. Announcing my prenagement, a foul ringless ring.  My toes cannot grasp the green. My hands can't even search for my pen. All my company has made their last attempts. I am either fooled to be in a relationship, this anchor of emotional monkey, needy for everything from me - and more. I can never offer it more than I can give. I am not corrupt enough to break the ties of her, in large, her family, from me. Everyone she'll talk to will say I'm a villian. I'll have haunting memories chasing my regret around every choking second of my lonely life. The sense of touch with be ignored. The old security followed by matrimony, kids, a head start of life will be pushed to point of extinction. I have risked everything for their care. I have sacrificed myself for a new skill I must learn: love. She desires the concept of marriage, the idea of having someone, when really all she wants to do is shop, travel, and have her husband as constant form of entertainment for something known as "affection." I desire a deeper complex of direct contact. I want not a material world, but an intimate one where intellect reaches deep, but to the point where the heart can stretch its passion. Aside, most importantly, I need the fellowship of good Christian men I can be honest with. I need a character and personality, not a controlled life. I'm spinning in suffering circles taking the shot to make one girl happy, but myself, less happy. I'm afraid of losing her tied by every memory which will repeat itself to me. I can't point whether she is an act of God or a distraction. If I am so torn, stressed, angered, and lustful, what good is this relationship if I am a warrior fighting with all my strength? Is she the darkness, combed by darkness that threats her, or is she some true woman who loves Jesus. I am bound to fall into this folly where I'm not strong, couragious, where my silence is to be justified as wrong. My time is no more my time to myself or God, but mostly her. God, please show me hope outside of her; there must be someone more equipt for me. I feel it obligation to date her as I live, four and twenty, under my petty box. I feel it may be a sign, that scares me, that she may be the one and only one to spend my life with. If it is in your plan to have her concieve a child from both our ends, then what is happening. I cannot upset her mother and get her male brothers and father frustrated at me. I don't want to be the target, a villian in diguise. At the same time, Lord, I don't want to be a fool. I am to be your righteous son. But I feel, I cannot be a commitment to her. We'll be the most different loose ends every to join hands on a wedding day which I will forever regret. Am I to seek my career, make fellowship, take splendor in my family and nature. Is my dream of England a true one or false idea? Am I ever to find hope for my lonely soul? Will she ever find happiness? How do I know everything is happening for a reason. It grieves me, God, to be in such a middle position, tied to the dark chains of someone I don't truly love. I'm beginning to feel I dated her out of lonely emptiness. It's a hole that fills the man like his desire for freedom and himself on the other end. I've been planning to break up with her, daily, since the starting day of courtship. What monster am I not to take action? I'm not sure what is in your will and what's in for my life, but I must end this relationship as soon as possible. I've had this urning in my soul daily. It must be true. Something isn't right if I have all these hopes and dreams, but I let this relationship stress me and make myself so miserable to the point that I pray my way out for I am not strong enough to confront someone and not harsh enough to hurt someone. I am a scared being thought of in a bad way, banned from the church, scared of hurting a family, scared of memories that will haunt my "poor" decision (which I don't know if it is a bad decision yet). How will I find security? A job? How will I break out of my pity house? What do you want for me, Jesus? What do you want me to do? Is life never to be the same? Help me escape this downfall, this darkness that dwells and tricks me. Make in me something right - the way you intended. God, I will wait. If I need to, I'll fast. I'm looking for signs Jesus. I'll keep my ears open on your purposed hands. Move my soul, Holy Spirit; move it in the direction of your intended wing. This I pray and give thanks for my living existence, Jesus. Your days, cloudless by the creamy gates are crushed towers made into loving spots, rings of Heaven they rang, in sweet gale wind by the morning barkwood, and depths of our lungs that breathe, thank you for that cold air that copes our sweating foreheads. Thank you for that water when in deed, we need to be thirsty for the Holy Spirit. Correct me Jesus, what's within and with out. Correct my soul. Correct me, overall. Amen.

Of prayers to God
And in word to you-

Mr. Hartwit

Fast Eyes

Talk about amazing. The other day I turned on my computer. I got on the Internet, went to a webpage, sat there, put on my glasses…there was a lot of text swimming before my eyes…but I sat there and I read the whole thing! I read it slowly; I read it carefully; I highlighted portions of the text using Diigo; I made some notes (Diigo again). I read it through a second time: an article that was first published in the Chronicle of Higher Education and now is in residence on the Web.

Of course, I was also IMing, and twittering, and blogging and wikiing, and I had some music in the background—Moby—and I was playing solitaire, and answering questions on Yahoo, and working on a vocabulary game called Free Rice—but my primary focus was on this article by Mark Bauerlein, a professor at Emory University, called Online literacy is a Lesser Kind. Might be interesting, I thought.  Oh, and I had Photoshop going, just to fool around with when I was bored. I’m thinking of creating an avatar.

The article did not start off auspiciously. Referencing Jacob Nielsen, the guru of web usability, usually puts me off. He can be a little pompous. And as I glanced down the page his name jumped up at me. I was tempted just to scan and move on, but I am interested in literacy and Professor Bauerlein should have some interesting points to make.  

So, Jacob Nielsen. I read on.  It seems he’s done this study on the way people ‘read’ material on the Internet, testing some 200 plus people, and it turns out the vast majority of them don’t read at all. Not line by line, word for word anyway. Rather, they scan the page looking at the text in an F pattern: read across the top, move your eyes halfway down the page, go across again, and then zip to the bottom.

‘F’ Mr. Nielsen opines, ‘for fast.’

One is tempted to use another ‘f’ word here, but this is a family oriented blog.

Now I wish I could say, ‘Jacob Nielsen, you’re dead wrong about this,’ but the F-pattern sort of rings a bell. That probably is how I ‘read’ most web pages. One doesn’t have all day, after all.

The problem, Professor Bauerlein points out, is that most schools are going under the assumption that the computer and the Internet are suitable venues for serious reading. They think that students can and will use the Internet to ponder such things as Heidegger’s ontic- ontological distinction or to ‘plow’ through Middlemarch, and your average student is just not going to do this. Educators think they can use the computer for serious learning outside the classroom, for research, reading assignments and the like—and that just ain’t gonna happen—because today’s students, before they even get to the classroom, have been trained by thousands of hours of non-academic computer use to look at the monitor with ‘fast eyes’—it’s those computer games, again—and it is futile to think they will slow down enough to actually think about something they are ‘reading/ looking at’ on the screen. So, if we take our culture seriously, if we take reading seriously, we need to get our students off the computer and off the Internet. We need to get them back to books and pencils—yeah, pencils, though I suppose a quill pen would be acceptable. Moreover, we need to honor older forms of narrative, like sitting around the campfire telling stories—yes, campfires, though ‘its modern day equivalent the PowerPoint projector’ is acceptable to Professor Bauerlein as well…

PowerPoint? Think Abe Lincoln reading by the fire, a screen off to one side, holding a mouse. First slide: “Four score and seven years ago…” Second slide: a graphic showing how many years in a score. Maybe a third slide showing the math: 20 + 20 + 20 + 20 + 7 = 87 years. Think a flickering center light, the students gathered round, their quill pens poised, a storyteller in the center, spinning tales of mystery and wonder about…I don’t know…the use of adverbs…or the use of prepositions at the end of a sentence. Something to get the blood flowing.

The PowerPoint thing kind of threw me; it seemed a little more research might be necessary here, so I read another article, this one by James Bowman first published in The New Atlantis, but now available on the web. “Is Google making us Stupid?” is his question. And his answer is yes. But that’s not the heart of the matter. The real problem is all those teachers.

If our young people are toiling their way through their educational careers while reading less than ever before for their own pleasure or enlightenment, why be surprised? No one has ever taught them that books can be read for pleasure or enlightenment—or for any other purpose than to be exposed as the coded rationalization for the illegitimate powers of the ruling classes that they really are. Why would you willingly read a single line of literature if that is all you supposed it to consist of?

Now, I know, your average literature teacher is a sycophantic ideologue, grinding away at the latest intellectual fashion and not at all interested in the pleasures of the text, the joys and passions of actual reading, but still, “the coded rationalization for the illegitimate powers of the ruling class?” It’s been a while since I was in college, but I don’t remember that lesson.

There is another article called, “Is Google making us Stupid?”, this one originally in The Atlantic by Nicholas Carr—but of course I read it on the Internet. Remember Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001? When Dave Bowman (no relation, I trust, to James Bowman) slowly disconnects Hal the computer from his database, he (Hal) moans, “Dave my mind is going.” This is analogous to how Mr. Carr is feeling these days—not, you know, dying exactly, it’s just that he isn’t doing the deep reading he used to do. Instead of Tolstoy or Kierkegaard, he’s fooling around with Google and ‘Mary had a Little Lamb.’

Carr’s contention is a little more serious than fast eyes and dogmatic teachers: He thinks we may be undergoing a change in the way we think. The medium is the message; because we have a new medium, our brains are being rewired; we are being programmed to be superficial sots. Our consciousness is being scattered by the sheer diversity of resources available to us: pop-up ads, animated advertisements, hyperlinks, multiple windows, e-mail messages. You get the picture: Computers may be working to counter our deepest goals regarding education. We may be multitasking ourselves into a profound state of ignorance.

Bummer.

Painting another Picture

The classroom can be a barrier, a wall, a box, a prison, a church. It can be a pasture or a meadow. It can be a window. A platform.

I’ve given you a bunch of metaphors. Sure, the classroom is a room that has a class in it; you can figure on having a black or white board in the front, some desks, a source of heat, a dynamic teacher, eager students; that’s a real classroom: but metaphors like these control the way we think about the literal room. The classroom can be a box that contains the students, holds them in and controls them. The classroom can be a prison. The classroom can be a pasture, nourishing the students. It can be a window on the world outside, a platform to discovery.

Fortunately it’s not an either/ or situation here: ‘all of above’ can be the answer to my implied question. But if you’re scanning this, I hope the word control jumped out at you, for to nourish the students, you have to control the classroom, correct? Nobody wants the little cherubs swinging from the rafters, nobody wants chaos and anarchy, milk and cookies spilled all over the place. When I was in high school, I had a Spanish class where every time the teacher turned her back to write something on the board, half the class (the boys) stood up and threw a paper airplane across the room. It was not a good educational experience. The teacher never figured out how not to turn her back.

 ‘Student’ can be a synonym for ‘citizen’. It can be a synonym for ‘philosopher’, ‘scholar’, or ‘sage’. It can be a synonym for ‘person’.

The student, philosopher and Zen Master Shunryu Suzuki talks about control in his book Zen Mind, Beginners Mind.

Even though you try to put some people under control, it is impossible. You cannot do it. The best way to control people is to encourage them to be mischievous. Then they will be in control in its widest sense.

Say you’ve got this herd of cows and you want to make sure they stay in the pasture. There are two ways to do this. You can build a very strong fence and surround the field, patrol it rigorously to keep it secure—or you can get a very big pasture.

So it is with people: first let them do what they want, and watch them. This is the best policy. To ignore them is not good; that is the worst policy. The second worst is trying to control them.

What Suzuki Roshi doesn’t tell us is that the cows might not know how to behave when they realize the proportions of this pasture.

The Big Pasture

Professor Bauerlein remarks on the good intentions of educators who set up computer labs for their students. They think the students are actually going to use them to read and study, to actually ponder the profundities of our civilization; they think they are extending the horizons of the students by giving them access to this new found source of information; they think they are extending the classroom—taking that literal box and changing the metaphor from prison to pasture. Little do they realize how little the students absorb their assignments—poor benighted fools—even with all the testing our schools do now. Little do they realize the students are looking at these computer monitors with the same mind-set that they bring to their Wii. Little do they realize how little this has to do with education.

Now, I hope you realize how little I think of this stuff. It’s not so much the idea that he thinks PowerPoint, perhaps the dullest program in existence, is an important narrative tool, nor is it the little confusions, like when talking about the ‘flattening’ of reading he writes: It equates handheld screens with Madame Bovary, as if they made the same cognitive demands and inculcated the same habits of attention. I mean, handheld screens are technology we use to read information. Madame Bovary is (or can be) the content we are reading. The problem is that he gets the big pasture wrong.

When we think about using computers we butt up against two models that don’t necessarily conflict, but can be thought to do so: The first is the world of Excel, Word, PowerPoint, the desktop, files and folders, keyboarding skills, information processing—a serious important use for computers, and the model at the heart of the origin of the personal computer. Let’s call this model Business Operations, or BO for short.

The second model is a little less easy to define, partially because it is a developing and emerging model (and one I hope to explore at greater length one of these days). It sees the Internet as both a vehicle of exploration, and as a mirroring of the world. Properly speaking we’re talking about the computer, the Internet and a data base so big that it is mind boggling to comprehend. Petabytes. I mean, just how big is a petabyte? Google, for one, is thinking in terms of petabytes these days. It could be just the beginning…

 If the first step in computing was to see that information could be formulated using a simple binary formulation, the steps we’re taking now are to allow this binary structure  via the computer and the vast structure that is the Internet to embrace and engulf the world—a kind of knowing, I think.

 Let’s be honest, this is the computer mysticism model… and we got here listening to an old Zen Master… But keep listening. Here a short quote from an online essay about technology written by Hubert Dreyfus and Charles Spinoza: 

In writing about technology, Heidegger formulates the goal we are concerned with here as that of gaining a free relation to technology–a way of living with technology that does not allow it to "warp, confuse, and lay waste our nature." According to Heidegger our nature is to be world disclosers. That is, by means of our equipment and coordinated practices we human beings open coherent, distinct contexts or worlds in which we perceive, act, and think. Each such world makes possible a distinct and pervasive way in which things, people, and selves can appear and in which certain ways of acting make sense. The Heidegger of Being and Time called a world an understanding of being and argued that such an understanding of being is what makes it possible for us to encounter people and things as such. He considered his discovery of the ontological difference–the difference between the understanding of being and the beings that can show up given an understanding of being–his single great contribution to Western thought.

Professor Bauerlein, Martin Heidegger! And by the way, if you want to start reading War and Peace, here’s a link to an online version.

Motoko Rich's article "The Future of Reading," published in today's New York Times, discusses the emerging trend in publishing and education of reaching out to young readers via video games. According to the article--

Increasingly, authors, teachers, librarians and publishers are embracing this fast-paced, image-laden world in the hope that the games will draw children to reading. Spurred by arguments that video games also may teach a kind of digital literacy that is becoming as important as proficiency in print, libraries are hosting gaming tournaments, while schools are exploring how to incorporate video games in the classroom. In New York, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is supporting efforts to create a proposed public school that will use principles of game design like instant feedback and graphic imagery to promote learning.

Loyal readers will recall that last year I wrote quite positively about the MacArthur grant to promote gaming literacy. However, the trend detailed in today's article seems like a big step in the wrong direction. While graphic design and computer programming are vital skill sets we should be teaching our kids, trying to hook them on reading through video games is altogether different. It smacks of cheap gimmickry that dismisses outright that reading might be a pleasure unto itself. In an age when the majority of college students can't handle complex but necessary reading tasks and high school illiteracy rates are woefully underreported, trying to hook kids on books with Dance Dance Revolution just doesn't seem like a great plan. If anything, it's yet another step in the dumbing-down of America, a land increasingly hostile to anything with a hint of intellectualism--reading included. No wonder the Nobel Committee are such dicks to the U.S. Buried at the end of the article, luckily, is a voice of reason--

“I actually think reading is pretty great and can compete with video games easily,” said Mark S. Seidenberg, a professor at the University of Wisconsin in Madison who specializes in reading research. “So rather than say, ‘Oh, books are irrelevant in the modern era because there are all these other media available,’ I would ask shouldn’t we be doing a better job of teaching kids how to read?”

Professor Seidenberg seems like a wise and reasonable man. Let's hope that we can get this country back on track and realize that the skill sets needed to survive and compete in a technological world do not replace but rather augment traditional literacy. Video games are great entertainment but it's hard to imagine that they could ever trump the depth and breadth of philosophy and cultural currency contained in literature. Let's not cheat our children out of that heritage by mistakenly believing that they cannot be taught to access it.

However, we were discussing the notions of first-person shooters in class. In our discussion, we asserted that to a degree, videogames do have a literacy value in a sense that the player must keep track of a multitude of information at any given time. Take, for example, Command & Conquer, a military strategy game. I, as the unit commander of an assembly of soldiers on the screen, must be aware of a multitude of factors, including how many units I possess, the location of my base and its weak points, my power level and financial holdings, the location of the enemy, his assets, his capabilities, and his weaknesses. At any given time, I have enough time to process this information at a slower and more calm pace compared to first-person shooters. FPS, as they are so called, are more fast-paced, and the player must be aware of his health and armor levels, radar system, locations of friends and enemies, his weaponry and ammunition, and if he throws a headset into the mix, he must be prepared to interact with his teammates and relays commands, responses, or instructions in order to better defeat the enemy.

The point is that while videogames do not necessarily envelop the idea of literacy in the same manner as a book, there is a still a requirement to involve oneself in the information intake and processing procedures of the videogames if one hopes to better learn how to operate and survive in the field of electronic gaming.

Additionally, the idea of real-world videogame applications were discussed in the forms of the game controllers. Aside from games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero, which allow you to play musical instruments as controllers, the U.S. military is utilizing X-Box 360 and Wii controllers in order to pilot their Unmanned Ground Vehicles and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, as today's soldiers are familiar with such controls. It is the videogame controller which has revolutionized the manner in which we play videogames and operate today's futuristic robot combat systems.

See, Jack Thompson? Videogames can't be all that bad!

            I was right.  I heard from at least a dozen qualified humanities majors among the 100+ applications I received.  Two or three were noticeably better on paper than the others, though, and here’s why:

•      Their resumes were concise.  Anything longer than a page, I didn’t read.  (I was looking for anywhere between entry-level and 2-3 years of experience.  A page is plenty!)

•      Their resumes were readable—nicely laid out, plenty of white space, in a professional-looking, decipherable font.

•      Their experience and qualifications were relevant.  It was obvious they’d read the ad and had made an attempt to link their experience to my requirements.  For example, one applicant highlighted in the experience he had which I’d specifically written in my ad (I wrote “assist with search engine optimization” and his resume said “improved search engine optimization for a start-up retail store.”

•      They wrote cover letters that demonstrated they’d checked out my business online and had at least applied some preliminary imagination to the prospect of working here.  ("I imagine there's quite a market for your class in Technical Presentation skills, and I look forward to helping connect with more students.")

•      They’d obviously proofread their resumes, which demonstrated two things to me:  First, that they can proofread (literacy) and second, that they did (attention to detail).

       Next time, I’ll tell you about how the interviews went. 

                As future teachers, it is important that we teach our students to cherish differences instead of challenge differences.  It is difficult to get this notion through to young children.  In a previous blog I mentioned showing a video in class to your students that talked about different disabilities and that was kid-friendly.  This same approach can also work using literacy.  Children who love to read tend to learn a lot about the main character and almost feel like they know the main character based on imagination and resonance.

                I looked up some websites that offered lists of children’s books that were written for disability awareness.  The website, Teacher Vision, gave several different categories (reading levels) and the information for the related books.  I believe this site to be very beneficial to professionals in the field of education. 

Below I have listed some of the books that I find particularly interesting and plan on purchasing and making a part of my classroom library:

Title: Andy Finds a Turtle
Author: Nan Holcomb
Publisher: Jason and Nordic Publishers, PO Box 441, Hollidaysburg, PA 16648; 1988
ISBN #: ISBN-0-944727-02-6
Disability: Physical Disabilities
Story Profile: Andy enjoys physical therapy most of the time, but sometimes he doesn't. One day he's told he acts like a turtle with his legs and arms drawn in tight - but Andy doesn't know what a turtle is, so he goes in search of one. In this search he protects his baby sister from a strange invader and discovers something important about himself.
Reading Level: Juvenile Easy Reader

Title: Buddy's Shadow
Author: Shirley Becker
Publisher: Jason and Nordic Publishers, PO Box 441, Hollidaysburg, PA 16648; 1991
ISBN #: ISBN-0-944727-08-05
Disability: Down syndrome
Story Profile: Buddy, a five-year-old boy with Down syndrome, purchases a puppy.
Reading Level: Juvenile Easy Reader

Title: Joey and Sam
Author: Illana Katz and Edward Ritvo
Publisher: Real Life Story Books; 1993
ISBN #: ISBN-1-882388-00-3
Disability: Autism
Story Profile: Sam is five and has autism, and Joey is his six-year-old brother. They describe an ordinary day at home and at school, showing some of the ways they are different and alike.
Reading Level: Juvenile Easy Reader

http://www.teachervision.fen.com/learning-disabilities/reading/5316.html?page=2&detoured=1

What do we mean by new texts for the 21^st century?

First of all, the addition of new text formats does not diminish the need for all of our students to be proficient readers. Our students will still read traditional print from textbooks, workbooks, newspapers, magazines, and other classroom materials. However, these same students will also be using texts delivered in digital formats whether as online text, audio files, or video files. We need to be sure that we prepare our student to interact with texts in any format. We also need to explore these new texts with our students.

One type of new text being used more and more in the 21^st century is the audio book format. Although we have had books on tape and even on compact disks for many years, with the advent of mp3 players like the iPod, many students have personal access to an audio player all the time. This means that they can take their audio books of texts we assign with them anywhere and have 24/7 access. Many students for whom auditory learning style is the most prominent can use this format to build better comprehension skills.

eBooks are books that are found online in their entirety. Most of these books are classics that no longer fall under US copyright law. There are a few authors, however, that publish eBooks and allow anyone to download them for free. This format allows students to download the texts they need and mark on them if necessary without defacing a textbook. These texts also allow students to cut and paste certain passages from books that they may want to explicate in an essay. These books save students' money because they don't have to purchase individual paperback novels for study. They can also help schools by preventing students from marking up textbooks.

Online picture books are great resources for students. They can be used as a reinforcement of skills learned in class, or by a special needs student who cannot hold a traditional picture book but who can use a computer. Many of the online picture books also have an audio component so these texts can be very helpful for struggling readers, too.

Why use blogs in the language arts classroom?

• Allows students to respond to what is being read in class even if they do not want to talk in front of their peers or teacher

• Allows students to polish their answer before responding

• Allows students to read the responses of others

• Gives students an audience, besides the teacher, for their opinions and ideas

Reading Revolution SlideShare

My name is Laurie Fowler from Tuscaloosa, Alabama, in the United States. This presentation is part of the K12 Online Conference 2008. In this session, we will be exploring new texts and new technologies that educators can use to support readers ages 5-18. The Internet and especially the tools of Web 2.0 offer teachers new texts with which to work. We must be comfortable with these texts ourselves in order to use them effectively with our students. We will focus on three main tools to allow our students to develop 21st century reading skills. First, we will explore using blogs as tools for literature response. Next, we will investigate using wikis to create online word walls to teach students new words and vocabulary in a dynamic fashion. Finally, we will use podcasts to respond to literature, do book reviews, and record other audio responses from students. Welcome aboard, let's get this presentation started!

Palaver: n.  idle talk, misleading or beguiling speech

Patois: n.  a dialect other than the standard or literary dialect; uneducated or provincial speech (from the French)

OK. At the moment I'm sorry I bashed Maureen Dowd for being a piranha. She is on fire today over the Palin person's use of language. Palin comes from a long line of Republican manglers of the English language, but is even worse than GW and Poppy Bush.

With her pompom patois and sing-songy jingoism, Palin can bridge contradictory ideas that lead nowhere: One minute she promises to get “greater oversight” by government; the next, she lectures: “Government, you know, you’re not always a solution. In fact, too often you’re the problem.”Talking at the debate about how she would “positively affect the impacts” of the climate change for which she’s loath to acknowledge human culpability, she did a dizzying verbal loop-de-loop: “With the impacts of climate change, what we can do about that, as governor, I was the first governor to form a climate change subcabinet to start dealing with the impacts.” That was, miraculously, richer with content than an answer she gave Katie Couric: “You know, there are man’s activities that can be contributed to the issues that we’re dealing with now, with these impacts.”

Hundreds of pithy comments ensued. A selection:

When I listen to her I feel like I put the car radio on SCAN and I am skipping from station to station in 3 second intervals. I believe that the way a person uses language is indicative of their thought and decision-making processes -- muddled language, muddled decisions. If her ability to make sound, evidence-based decisions is reflected in her use of language (as I witnessed it last Thursday), God help us if she ever attains a position of real power.

The fact that Palin had to cram for a week just to become (vaguely) familiar with current affairs should automatically disqualify her from the race. Would you hire a doctor or lawyer with such a lack of understanding?

The Rovian minions take advantage of all of this and continue to package ruin in a palatable and unassuming way. Many distracted people seem all too willing to eat it up.

A columnist hardly has to write anything around the actual quotations of Governor Palin. They are comprised of folksy vocabulary strewn in with the absolutely inane stringing together of words in hopes that no one will notice that they really make no sense. But they certainly provide an accurate sense of who she is... It reminds me of what my old social work professor once said: "We don't demand enough of attractive people. It's almost enough for us that they are simply attractive."

Isn't a "team of mavericks" an oxymoron?

Perhaps this part of the McCain/Palin healthcare plan: why have expensive doctors (who spent years studying) when you can get someone off the street to read up on the surgery the night before.

Governor Palin has already accomplished a seemingly impossible feat by making George W. Bush sound like William F. Buckley.

At another point, she channeled Alicia Silverstone debating in “Clueless,” asserting, “Nuclear weaponry, of course, would be the be-all, end-all of just too many people in too many parts of our planet.” (Mostly the end-all.)

Bob Herbert continues in a similar P-word vein: Palin as punctuation to the Bush years:

Sarah Palin is the perfect exclamation point to the Bush years.We’ve lived through nearly two terms of an administration that believed it could create its own reality:  “Deficits don’t matter.” “Brownie, you’re doing a heckuva job.” “Those weapons of mass destruction must be somewhere.”

Now comes Ms. Palin, a smiling, bubbly vice-presidential candidate who travels in an alternate language universe. For Ms. Palin, such things as context, syntax and the proximity of answers to questions have no meaning.  ...

If Governor Palin didn’t like a question, or didn’t know the answer, she responded as though some other question had been asked. She made no bones about this, saying early in the debate: “I may not answer the questions the way that either the moderator or you want to hear.”

The problem with Ms. Palin’s candidacy is that John McCain might actually win this election, and then if something terrible happened, the country could be left with little more than an exclamation point as president.

After Ms. Palin had woven one of her particularly impenetrable linguistic webs, Joe Biden turned to the debate’s moderator, Gwen Ifill, and said: “Gwen, I don’t know where to start.”

Of course he didn’t know where to start because Ms. Palin’s words don’t mean anything. She’s all punctuation.

Pour l'essentiel, je vois des étudiants qui ont du mal à suivre ou à développer une argumentation analytique. En particulier, ils ont tendance à utiliser des sources superficielles et peu fiables facilement ramassées sur l'Internet comme un moyen de remplir les conditions minimales pour citer plutôt que de rechercer des sources plus autorisées à la bibliothèque ou en ligne. Ayant peu de preuve à leur disposition, ils ont tendance à se reposer sur leurs impressions, qui sont personnelles et, pensent-ils, indiscutables.

Dans ce contexte, les professeurs sont vus comme des bureaucrates grincheux de qui les étudiants doivent extraire des diplômes comme étapes d'une carrière dans laquelle les problèmes d'écriture et d'analyse critique n'ont en fin de compte pas d'importance

Un des objectifs de l'enseignement, comme je vois les choses, est de traiter les différences, réelles ou imaginées, entre les générations. Ce qui signifie aujourd'hui rencontrer les "natifs du numérique" ("digital natives") où ils sont, mais cela signifie aussi attendre d'eux qu'ils rencontrent les "immigrants du numérique" ("digital immigrants") - ceux qui n'ont pas été élevés devant un micro-ordinateur - où ils sont

Par exemple, j'ai continué de donner des cours magistraux dans un grand nombre de mes enseignements, mais j'ai graduellement appris à rendre ces cours magistraux plus stimulants et plus interactifs en y tissant ensemble plusieurs fils d'analyse utilisant des images, de la vidéo, des objets et des lectures - et demandant aux étdiants de faire ces lectures. Les cours magistraux sont conçus pour développer un argument suivi. Ajouté à cela il y a des intervalles de repos - dans lesquels la concentration peut se relâcher quelques minutes, tandis que les concepts sont examinés et discutés - avant que ne reprenne l'analyse plus ardue

Je sais que certains éducateurs sont fortement opposés à l'usage des cours magistraux. (...) ils insistent sur le travail de groupe. Et je respecte ce point de vue, en particulier dans la mesure où il a à peu près totalement banni le professeur sec et ronronnant, lisant des notes jaunies. Mais le tabou qui frappe les cours magistraux réduit parfois la liberté des enseignants d'expérimenter à partir d'une méthode traditionnelle d'une manière qui peut répondre aux compétences particulières des "natifs du numérique" - telles que l'interconnectivité et l'intuition - tout en les entraînant à l'usage de la preuve et de l'argumentation rationnelle.

Si les technologies numériques sont un facteur de "stupidité", c'est parce que nous avons librement dépensé pour des ordinateurs - entre autres choses - sans donner en même temps un soutien comparable aux enseignants. Les étudiants ont été laissés seuls à négocier une changement de paradigme culturel comparable aux révolutions de l'imprimerie ou industrielle, sans soutien adéquat de la part des institutions créées pour les aider.

Et cela m'apparaît indéniablement stupide.

You will find listed below, the top 106 books listed as unread by LibraryThing's users. I would give you the link to my bookshelf, but its been so long since I have used it, that I have forgotten how to sign in. These are the books you buy, but don't read. Perhaps you have bought them to impress someone? If that is true, then shame on you!

Next you mark off the ones you have read in bold. Italicize the ones you read for school. Underline the ones you couldn't finish. Add a * to the ones you liked, and would recommend.

Please note that I think these are Hsien's directions, and not the actual directions from the original meme. Not too sure on that, since I was too lazy to look them up myself.

I think I am at 34 - Actually my number is a guess, I am too tired to count!. How many have you read?

The Aeneid
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
American Gods
Anansi Boys
Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
Angels & Demons
Anna Karenina*
Atlas Shrugged
Beloved
The Blind Assassin*
Brave New World*
The Brothers Karamazov
The Canterbury Tales
The Catcher in the Rye
Catch-22*
A Clockwork Orange
Cloud Atlas
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
A Confederacy of Dunces*
The Confusion
The Corrections
The Count of Monte Cristo
Crime and Punishment
Cryptonomicon
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
David Copperfield
Don Quixote
Dracula
Dubliners
Dune
Eats, Shoots & Leaves*
Emma*
Foucault’s Pendulum
The Fountainhead
Frankenstein
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
The God of Small Things
The Grapes of Wrath
Gravity’s Rainbow
Great Expectations
Gulliver’s Travels
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
The Historian : a novel
The Hobbit
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
The Iliad
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
The Inferno (and Purgatory and Paradise)
Jane Eyre
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
The Kite Runner
Les Misérables
Life of Pi : a novel*
Lolita
Love in the Time of Cholera
Madame Bovary
Mansfield Park
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlemarch
Middlesex
Mrs. Dalloway
The Mists of Avalon
Moby Dick
The Name of the Rose
Neverwhere
1984
Northanger Abbey
The Odyssey
Oliver Twist
The Once and Future King
One Hundred Years of Solitude
On the Road*
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest*
Oryx and Crake : a novel
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Persuasion
The Picture of Dorian Gray
The Poisonwood Bible : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Pride and Prejudice*
The Prince
Quicksilver
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books*
The Satanic Verses
The Scarlet Letter
Sense and Sensibility
A Short History of Nearly Everything
The Silmarillion
Slaughterhouse-five
The Sound and the Fury
A Tale of Two Cities
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
The Time Traveler’s Wife
To the Lighthouse
Treasure Island
The Three Musketeers
Ulysses
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Vanity Fair
War and Peace
Watership Down
White Teeth*
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
Wuthering Heights
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values

At least I don't have any books on this list that I couldn't finish.

The truth is that American publishers put out 411,000 individual titles last year, an all-time record, and netted $25 billion--hardly a sagging industry. And those kids who have abandoned books for electronic media? Since 2002, juvenile book sales have shown compound annual growth of 4.6 percent for hardcover books and 2.1 percent for paperbacks.

In the "Shake Your Shaker" Song (from The Music Lady CD, "Move, Sing, Listen & Learn), students listen to the lyrics of the song in order to know what movement to do.  Helping young learners to develop listening skills is crucial to reading and phonemic awareness.   We have used this song with our special needs students, as well as students in the ESL program.  The repetition in the refrain provides predictability in the song.  In each verse students listen to hear what movements they are to do, such as:

Shake it up high

Shake it to the sky

Shake it down low

Shake it by your toe

Shake it out and in

Shake it by your chin

Turn around

Touch the ground, etc.

The repeated refrain:  Shake your shaker, shake, shake, shake is repeated in between each verse.

Tom Barrett has been busy blogging again and this time he has shared his favourite spelling resources:

1) Spelling City

This has proven to be a highly valuable resource. You are able to save spelling lists for the children to access beyond school. It comes into it’s own as each list is used in a variety of different games to help the children learn them. Each word that you add to the list is automagically linked to a snippet of audio pronouncing the word and there is even audio of the word used in a sentence.

Lists can be downloaded, printed and there is even a handwriting sheet that you can print off for your spelling list. My only grumble is that some words are difficult to understand in the audio as the pronounciation is American.

2) TutPup

No problem in TutPup with the English pronunciation of the words as the lady who has done the audio, I am told, did the announcements for the London Underground system! TutPup provides a social competitive edge to the children’s practice which they really enjoy.

The main bulk of games are maths based but the audio quiz for spelling is excellent too. The children listen to a word and type in the spelling, they are of course paired with another user from somewhere in the world giving it that competitive fun.

3) Look Say Cover Write Check

There are a whole bunch of these resources but the best in my opinion is the Crickweb version.

You can add your own 10 words, practice using the look, say, cover, write and check method and there is even facility to print paper based resource cards and review and assess progress. Simple and very effective.

4) Spin and Spell

A lovely interactive site for the simple practice of common key words. Children can choose from a range of different word topics such as “In and around the home” and “Animal Kingdom”. The children then are presented with a big wheel in the centre of the screen with all of the letters on it. They choose a little image from the many that populate the rest of the screen and they hear audio of that word and then have to spell it using the dial.

You can select to have the words chosen randomly and they can reveal and hear the word again as they are working. Again the American pronunciation can cause some confusion but otherwise it is worthy of a spot in my top 5 spelling resources.

5) GeoGreeting

A bit of fun for number five - this resource will help children to see their spellings in a different way.  GeoGreeting finds satellite images of buildings and other objects from around the world that resemble the letters in your words.

Great resources. Thanks Tom!