Larry Cuban says:

Teaching, then, whether in graduate schools or kindergartens – in elite universities or slum schools – binds all of us together. In teaching we display our views of knowledge and learning, we advertise our ideas, how we reason, and how we struggle with moral choices whether we intend to or not. To teach is to enlist in a technical, morally based vocation…

Now change that to:

Blogging, then, whether in graduate schools or kindergartens – in elite universities or slum schools – binds all of us together. In blogging we display our views of knowledge and learning, we advertise our ideas, how we reason, and how we struggle with moral choices whether we intend to or not. To blog is to enlist in a technical, morally based vocation…

Edubloggers, do you see blogging as an extension of your teaching? If not, should you?

On the flip side, do you see teaching as an extension of your blogging?

*All this was found here.

It’s like I can see it. I’m unsure if it’s a mountain or valley or ugly clay mound, but I can see bitterness in the distance. I can see how people end up there, unable to get out. When it’s in my sights at times like this, I have to stop in my tracks and, like Robert Frost, take the road untraveled. Get off the beaten path that, in this case, leads to bitterness. And constant negativity. And complaints. I refuse to be one of those people; yet, the stopping and recognizing has to be done by me. Sometimes with bad timing involved. But I have to do it. Create the whiteboard in my head that’s full of crap. Erase it mentally.

It’s like I can hear my brains’ own anti-lock brakes. I’m slowing down. Looking both ways. Holding up traffic to blog about it. To get it out.

Been There, Done That
=
Been There, THOUGHT That Already…

(Bits & Pieces from the “Can Technology Make Teens Better Writers?” article…)
=”I’ve never believed in pandering to kids: ‘Well, that’s cool, let’s do it that way.’ But we must help school be as engaging as a lot of the things that young people do outside of school,” says Richard Sterling, chair of the advisory board for the National Commission on Writing, executive director emeritus of the National Writing Project and senior fellow at the College Board. “The traditional ways of doing school often give rise to boredom.” [Insert a "duh" here.]
=A teenage boy sitting in front of him spent the better part of nine innings tapping away on his phone, sending text messages to friends. “I suppose some people think, ‘That’s pretty lame. Why doesn’t he watch the game?’ But I was thinking, at what point in history do we have most teen boys and girls constantly writing?” he says with amazement. “It does open up an opportunity for teachers to talk about communication and audience. … I think it’s an exciting time.”
=In classrooms scattered across the country, students are creating blogs, video editorials, wikis, podcasts and electronic portfolios. Several schools across Maine, with the help of the Maine Writing Project, are also tapping the power of digital storytelling, which blends images, video, audio and text to create a narrative, often one that is deeply personal to a student.
= “Things like SAT prompts, they’re very generic and boring. Sometimes it’s hard to construct an entire paper about something you’re not passionate about,” Guay says. Digital storytelling is different. “It’s less mechanical because you can put your personal touch into it, so more kids get into it.”

Digital Storytelling = Powerpoint MusicVideo Project!

= In Japan, the latest literary best-sellers are being composed on cell phones. One thumb-tapping woman crafted a book in a series of installments that was then uploaded and e-mailed to thousands of young subscribers to be read on, yes, their cell phones. “There’s a democratizing effect here,” says Kathleen Blake Yancey, president of the National Council of Teachers of English. Recall, she notes, that 19th-century author Charles Dickens wrote his classic novels as serials, a typical format of his day.
= Text messages reflect the “spurts and jolts of ideas and connections — and that’s the way we think.”

Just even thinking, as a related sidenote, about my friend Cheryl and how she texts to her daughters throughout the day. I didn’t have that connection to my parents in my teen years. Will this result in a closer tie between friends and family? Perhaps.

Teenagers’ Internet Socializing Not a Bad Thing…
Oh, really? How about 30somethings & their internet socializing?

Can Technology Make Teens Better Writers? By Melissa Slager…
This reminds me of my blogging research… NOW they catch on!

I’m presenting on blogging. Yes. Again. Next week at the Summit conference. While this has got to be like my fifteen millionth time talking about this particular vice of mine, it’s been a while since I’ve presented. At least, it feels that way. The last time was… last fall at GPACW? Wasn’t it?

Anyhow, I really, REALLY have to sit down and ask myself: WHAT do I want to say about blogging? After six years, WHAT haven’t I covered and how can I cover what I’ve presented on in the past in the most fun/helpful way possible? I think I get about an hour…

One other thing to consider = Sherman Alexie is presenting some film of his AT THE EXACT SAME TIME that I present, so, really, will I have that many participants? Who knows. I’ll make it as cool a presentation as possible (duh), but that is QUITE the competition, isn’t it?

I think I promised a detailed morning blog entry. Oopsie.
How about some questions, from today, posed to me or by me (or by others) instead?

“What’s up with this blogging?” says Mike Rockne. I say, “I mainly do it to record my life.”
“We keep saying ‘they’ but we should say ‘some’,” clarifies Larry Merbach since many faculty were saying “they don’t _____” about our Generation Y students.
“What’s the difference between them & us? I can’t handle conflict either,” me, in response to Harvey Henderson saying that his Generation Y students can’t handle conflict. I also, in response to Char’s students who feel overwhelmed when she tells them they have to study for 8-10 hours for one of her tests, would feel overwhelmed. I hate tests; I’d rather write. Probably a big reason I don’t test my students that much.
“You could have them look at blogs; what makes a bad blog and what makes a good blog,” offers the presenter; my immediate question: What is the difference between a bad blog and a good blog? There isn’t a difference, in my opinion (it’s not formal writing, so how can it be bad?).

As you can about guess, today’s sessions were professional development geared toward looking at the Generation Y student (those born between ’82 and ’00, approximately). At first, I was intrigued, but then (like yesterday) I started adding up problems with looking at just this generation.
For one, we should be assessing how we teach based on every learner out there no matter what generation they come from. We should just make our methods as flexible as possible and not base them too much on what generation is geared towards what. Why? Because that generation is generalized, for one, and secondly, we don’t deal on our campus with just one generation anyhow.
Secondly, these Generation Yers aren’t that different from any faculty I know. None of us deal well with conflict… many of us would freak out if we had to study for a test… most of us want to know exactly what is expected of us… and, speaking for myself, I feel just as entitled to a good life/career/family as my students do.
Thirdly, they are typically going to react differently to a required Gen Ed course than a course in their field. I cared much more about my English classes than I did others, not because of how my generation learned but because that was my field. As an English teacher (a required Gen Ed course for almost all students), I’m going to run into haters and lovers no matter what. I’m okay with that; I just have to try to reach every odd learning style with various projects and activities and go from there. It’s all I can do = try.

More tomorrow, kids. Stay tuned.

The less I blog, the more I have confusing/interesting/odd thoughts daily that make me think,
HEY I SHOULD BE BLOGGING THIS!

So, what did I do over Memorial Day weekend? I crammed myself into my closet (not to experience the “homosexual closet,” mind you) in order to really TRULY clean it. And about 5+ garbage bags of clothes later (as well as a $7 in white hangers and a $5 light fixture), it is a closet I can FIND THINGS IN. Amazing. I realized I was using my dressers in my actual room for the underwear arena (which worked) and t-shirts/tops (which didn’t). So I rearranged. Only underwear and pjs/workout clothing are outside of the closet now. I put away my fall/school pants and huge sweaters in see-through bins out of my reach in the closet. I color-coded my tops and vests and tank-tops and dresses. I folded my jeans and categorized them (need-to-be-skinny-to-wear-this-pile, not my favorites pile, etc). I even filtered my t-shirts (patterened/designed, words on them, plain, and stripes/pok-a-dots). Plus, I listened to my sisters’s idea (yea, don’t tell her that) to use white hangers; this allows one to see their clothing better. All in all, it may be a disaster area once again by summer’s end, but for now, it’s my mini-fashion-church. Oh, I even lined up my shoes (put away my “winter” ones, again, in see-through bins) on the floor for easier access; previously, I had them in a pile and would spend many minutes trying to find a freaking match while hustling my butt out the door.

What else have I thought about? Right now, nothing comes flying at me, but I have had conversations with people that have lead me to believe that a) I can see old situations that happened with old friends happeneing with new ones (yikes – don’t repeat history!), b) my perceptions of people are often different than others’ perceptions (thinking of a reality show here), and c) I am who I am and while I try to be a better person, there are certain things that need to be said. The line, “Be nice,” works only to a certain extent because not everyone has earned my nice-ness. And sometimes, I think that we have to be the 2x4s that smack others upside the head, in a gentle way, of course. Otherwise, they will continue to do uncool things to many people.

Man, I have missed blogging. It feels to even type thoughts since I’ve spent the last few days using my arm muscles and legs and stomach to lift and bend and push and move items. I didn’t take the new bike out yet because of the weather and also because I’ve been sore from spending 5+ hours sorting and rearranging that dang closet.

And… now for some Chuck Klosterman (courtesy of the folded pages in my library book): “What exactly is reality?”: “How do we know what we know?” … “Most people consider forgetting stuff to be a normal part of living. However, I see it as a huge problem; in a way, there’s nothing more I fear.” = BLOG! “I think this is what motivates people to have children. [...] The import of you existence can be validated by whoever you bring into the world.” So, hopefully, the Bush twins will make their pa look good? “All the academics give props to older academics no one else has ever heard of.” Yep. Been to those conferences. (About reading a newspaper ->) “HOWEVER, the one thing nobody wants is sentences, and they certainly don’t want paragraphs. People despise paragraphs. Focus groups have proven this.” A great starter to a conversation in any English class. And if I assign this book in English 120, you can bet this essay, “All I Know is What I Read in the Papers,” will be first.

So, good ol’ Chuck will go back to the library today. A few of my Amazon books have arrived, so I’ll jump into those as a very exciting weekend approaches: my sister turns 28 AND the Sex and the City movie will be showing! As for today, I hope to double-check the online course that starts up next Tuesday (will use Monday to do this too if need be) and then take the Trek for its first official spin in Wahpeton. Tomorrow may be more of the same (course prep, bike rides, reading, and maybe an attempt to use the sewing machine to fix a few items); Thursday has me heading to Fargo for the weekend’s festivities.

Ready or not, here it comes. The Marathon Relay, that is. Yeppers. I’m ready, I’m freaked out, I know we’ll (I’ll) do fine, and in about 48hours, I hope to be starting (or already have started?) my route through north Fargo. Sure, I’d like to do my leg in about 75min (ran the 10K at Homecoming in that amount of time, and 10Ks are .5 shorter than my leg Saturday), heck, I’d like to do it in an hour, but really, I hope to enjoy myself. I know that feeling of enjoyment won’t hit until about mile 4, but I’m okay with that.

With that said (or written… whatever), I’m going to do some basic things at the office and then call it a day. I should’ve just taken most of this week “off” from coming to the office (to refresh the brain cells, etc.), but I am a little OCDish when it comes to checking email and blogging and Facebook-ing.

*So, when I developed the Creative Writing course, I put together (using the lovely Publisher program by Microsoft) a catalog of possible projects & their instructions. A little colorful booklet that was separate from the syllabus. Well, I liked that layout so much, I’ve decided to implement the same design strategy with my other classes. Yeppers.

SCHOOL.
walking program whirlwind.
best blogging practices.
WEATHER.
wicked wind again.
thunderstorms to show?
HEALTH.
no more coffee.
sick of fruit?
PERSONAL.
curly presentation hair.
high heels lead.

Spoooooky.
I think I may have just done 50% of the work necessary for my online summer course to get rocking & rolling. I updated the syllabus (I’ve started calling ‘em “cheat sheets”: the first page is the basic schedule/chart on the right side of the landscaped page with my info and strict rules on the left, then the next 2-3 landscaped pages that follow are the “boring things” that students rarely read but that need to be in a syllabus; it works out so that essentially, they only really need that first page, the cheat sheet) and put that on there (no more making syllabi in Publisher and then trying to transfer it all over to Word or PDF). Then, I created a mini-PPT about what to expect in the class. The main projects are listed, the theme is too, and some of the routine activities/assignments. It’s a small introduction, but it’s done in less than a minute with some creative custom animation. If the audio would work (and I may see if it will with the Articulate program), it’d be even better.

I may only have to change the dates in the specific units. I want to add more YouTube videos and insightful PPTs, but if I can’t get around to placing those in the summer class, they will go into the fall one for sure.

Oh, and in regards to my reading of Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, I read the chapter last night that looks into the Pam Anderson versus Marilyn Monroe comparison. Is Pam the same sort of icon for us that Marilyn was to a previous generation? I think Chuck essentially says ‘no’ to that, as do I, yet he brings up a lot of evidence for either side of that argument (who each one has dated, why they are sexual icons, etc.). Sometimes I walk away from his writing confused and smarter all at once, if that is possible.

I also wrapped up the chapter I stopped in the middle of where he’s on the road with a Guns-n-Roses tribute band (Paradise City). It was the type of Literary/Creative Journalism I was hoping to get my Creative Writing students to look at WHEN we were in the middle of the Creative Nonfiction unit. Ooopsie. Anyhow, this Chuck guy can do it all, or write it all I suppose. He writes sports-based stuff for ESPN’s Page 2, he wrote for the Fargo Forum (again, if I am remembering correctly), and he’s written a lot about music. Plus, chuck (hee hee) in some popular culture essays and this guy has multiple-personality-disorderly-writing skills. Practically. It’s like me being able to write about Buddhism, blogging, Beck, and biking… which I may be able to do someday.