Backpack: Home page

Backpack: Home page

OK here's a public backpack site for my project to put my intro to lit class online. This 37Signals and they are creating some simple, interesting, and useable sites with Ruby on Rails. I want to learn that programming language.

Teaching to the Six

 So why do I like teaching undergraduates? Because I am not dismayed by the prospect of a world in which at least one-sixth (and as many as one-half) of my auditors-students-interlocutors take seriously the possibility that they will use the critical tools I try to wield and to offer for further use.  I’m actually rather cheered by the idea. I think of it this way: On my bad days I teach to tbe six young adults who just might pursue literary and cultural studies for much of the rest of their lives, but on what scale of values does that constitute failure? Another twelve, maybe another twenty, might be motivated, by me and by my colleagues, to continue serious, critically reflective reading in their adult lives, and how could I possibly hope for a better "rate of response" from anything I might publish in a "public" forum? College teaching is, as many teachers have pointed out in the past decade, a substantial form of "public intellectual" work. And isn't pedagogy, in the end, one of the principal reasons that literary journalists have such complex and conflicted relations with literature professors —because we work the same beat save that they have readerships and we have students?

 Berube, Michael. Pedagogy, Winter2002, Vol. 2 Issue 1, p3, 13p

Michael Berube justifies the literary game.  Teachers should focus on students much as writers should pay attention to their audiences.  Is this so obvious to belabor?  No, because I honestly don’t see many teachers doing that.  What would happen if we really thought of students as our audiences not only now but after they have left our classrooms?  The classroom then becomes 4–D and time outside the semester becomes an element.  How to do this?  Continuing to serve your audience through weblogs, listservs, email zines, contests, surveys, consulting, etc.  The classroom is not a linear thing, an object plopped down in a plaza for all to view then walk away from.  A classroom is an inconceivable conflux of  thread and space that spins out from one short moment in time.  Practically speaking, it can actually be this now much more than ever before because we don’t have to abandon that web each semester.  I want my teaching to be this way because I think that it is a continuing part of the “public intellectual” work that I embrace out of choice.  It is a duty, too.  I owe my students that much because they are also my colleagues and friends .

Yesterday was the last day of finals, graduation was slated for the evening and I was returning some books to the university library.   One of my former high school students walked through the doors to do the same thing I was doing, but it was also his graduation day.  James and I talked about his years in college, his plans, and his dreams.  It was a closure moment for both of us when he told me what he remembered most from my classes—media analysis, especially movies, and most notably by the Wallace and Gromit movies.  If I had had an enlarged view of teaching like I am proposing, I could have shared more of his story and would have had a fuller life in doing so.  As James wished me a fond goodbye, I said I would start some cool rumors about him. 

I don’t express myself well here, but that’s ok.  Blogging can be so much thinking out loud and still be just fine.

 

Teach42 - RSS powered by FeedBurner

Teach42 - RSS powered by FeedBurner

A recent discussion on Will Richardson’s Weblogg-ed and a synchronicitous listen to a  Steve Dembo podcast of Teach42 .

Dembo says in effect that blogging is not an intuitive and that's why you need to do the blogging 101 thing over and over. Part of the reason I don't blog personally as much is because I am doing a lot of this bloggo a bloggo interaction. So... let's keep doing the 101 thing, but let's also figure out how to make blogs "useable" to the novice. Any ideas?

Essential Questions in Teaching and Learning

Essential Questions in Teaching and Learning

Schools become invisible when they engage students with real-life problems.

I am not sure who said that originally, but I wholeheartedly agree.  This has always been a goal of mine.  I don’t want to objectify school in somebody’s head, I want somebody to extend themselves into the world.  I am engaged in the process of gettng my intro to lit class on the web.  How do I make that place invisible? 

 

Combobulate.com : Cool Programs

Combobulate.com : Cool Programs

Lots of fun programs to junk up my computer and have my son yell at me, “Dad, there’s no more room on the desktop!”

 

Speeches by Bill Gates - Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Speeches by Bill Gates - Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

America’s high schools are obsolete.

By obsolete, I don’t just mean that our high schools are broken, flawed, and under-funded – though a case could be made for every one of those points.

By obsolete, I mean that our high schools – even when they’re working exactly as designed – cannot teach our kids what they need to know today.

Training the workforce of tomorrow with the high schools of today is like trying to teach kids about today’s computers on a 50-year-old mainframe. It’s the wrong tool for the times.

Well,  duh.

\What's

\What's a character blog.  Read here and find out.  Would be fun to use a university mascot as a character blog with guest bloggers to round out the PR.  Good way to sell a university a weblog—PR especially if you are having a big anniversary.

 

 

Grant Robinson : Montage-a-google launcher

Grant Robinson : Montage-a-google launcher

 

Take what is and make it new.  This montage maker via google is the ultimate fun for the random learner/thinker. 

Why Won't They Just Use Technology?

There is an order of at least one magnitude between teachers who are oriented toward getting things done in the classroom with web and electronic technologies and those who aren't. This is a tipping point issue. As the digital generation takes over the classroom, change will come. I believe that the problem is in our own orientation: we are carpenters and every problem can be solved best with a hammer and nail. Here is the problem in a nutshell. We must put ourselves in the shoes of the non-enamored and skeptical. If we do this, then the proper order of business at the beginning of any professional development training becomes (1.) what do you teachers want students to be able to do in your content, and (2.) what are the best tools for doing it? Real 3 by 5 cards might just be a more effective tool than a weblog.

We need to know what our tech tools do best and then back off if there are other alternative tools available. Wouldn't we be better off developing methods which help teachers decide on the best mix of all available tools and that includes which ones fits our teaching personas best. That's a lot more nuance than most of us blogvangelists have been able to muster. Until the ed schools get off their butts to do this, I think we better get started with it.

Will at Weblogg-ed broaches this topic. I think he is dead on when he says that we must continue to get the message out. I thing the best way to do that is by making these tools part of the larger mix of tools. We must co-op the old tools just as the Catholic Church co-opted pagan holidays by squatting down next to, say... the lesson plan and taking it over incrementally. And we need to make damned sure that the mix makes their teaching lives better in demonstrably easier ways. Technology must pay for them in their own way first. If they come to see it our way so much the better, but until that tipping point is reached we are pissing in the wind by just putting the food down where the goats can get to it.

Madame Bovary v. Half-Life 2

JoHo speaks about Steve Johnson's new book, Everything Bad is Good for You,

"Although Half Life 2 is, as Steve points out, far more complex than the previous generation's Pac-Man, for all its amazing physics and integrated puzzles and pretty good pixelated acting, HL2 gives us a toy world. The world of Emma Bovary, on the other hand, doesn't resolve to rules and puzzles. It's messy, ambiguous, and truly complex. Of course Steve knows this, but he underplays it when pointing out the hidden complexity of video games."

Could literature get more respect from students by a head on comparison with video game narrative? I should think that any lit teacher worth his water should be able to do that. That would be the real marketplace of ideas in action. I think I can win that debate.

IDFuel, the Industrial Design Weblog

IDFuel, the Industrial Design Weblog

It's probably safe to say that every designer goes into the business with the intention of shaking things up. We want to "Change the world" or "Make a difference". And that's awesome. There are tons of problems that need worldchanging solutions. It just happens that not all the solutions are barn burners like a sexy new car or supersonic jet.

Take for example the brainchild of Deborah Adler and Klaus Rosburg. They are responsible for Target's brand new (and desperately needed) update to the lowly prescription pillbottle. Believe it or not, with the exception of the frustrating, and largely ineffective childproof caps, the orange plastic pill bottle has been unchanged since world war 2!

OK.  Now let’s do what they did for the lesson plan , the gradebook, the bulletin board and  the classroom.  What would a redesigned lesson plan look like in a weblog?  I would hope it would emphasize the organization of the old with the improvisational and interactive nature of the new.  That’s the hard part, now somebody go out and do it. 

 

 

 

Blogging 101

Blogging 101

The major cause of fatalities among online learning operations, internal and commercial, is not technical failure or pedagogical failure, it is process failure flowing from a failure in vision. Short-sightedness, tunnel vision, and technology focus can leave you very exposed.

Parkin's Lot: Defining an E-Learning Strategy

Parkin's Lot: Defining an E-Learning Strategy

The major cause of fatalities among online learning operations, internal and commercial, is not technical failure or pedagogical failure, it is process failure flowing from a failure in vision. Short-sightedness, tunnel vision, and technology focus can leave you very exposed.

 

Amen to this.  The proper order of business at the beginning of any project:  1. what do you want to do?  2.Where are the tools for doing it?

Hullabaloo

Justice Sunday.  The jackboots are gathering and I can hear their thunder from afar.  What will you do?

Hullabaloo

Twenty years ago, I wrote about “National Socialism as Temptation,” about what it was that induced so many Germans to embrace the terrifying specter. There were many reasons, but at the top ranks Hitler himself, a brilliant populist manipulator who insisted and probably believed that Providence had chosen him as Germany’s savior, that he was the instrument of Providence, a leader who was charged with executing a divine mission. God had been drafted into national politics before, but Hitler’s success in fusing racial dogma with a Germanic Christianity was an immensely powerful element in his electoral campaigns. Some people recognized the moral perils of mixing religion and politics, but many more were seduced by it. It was the pseudo-religious transfiguration of politics that largely ensured his success, notably in Protestant areas.

German moderates and German elites underestimated Hitler, assuming that most people would not succumb to his Manichean unreason; they didn’t think that his hatred and mendacity could be taken seriously. They were proven wrong. People were enthralled by the Nazis’ cunning transposition of politics into carefully staged pageantry, into flag-waving martial mass. At solemn moments, the National Socialists would shift from the pseudo-religious invocation of Providence to traditional Christian forms: In his first radio address to the German people, twenty-four hours after coming to power, Hitler declared, “The National Government will preserve and defend those basic principles on which our nation has been built up. They regard Christianity as the foundation of our national morality and the family as the basis of national life.”

As Digby says,  “Makes the hair stand up, doesn’t it?”

 

The Future of Mathematics

The Future of Mathematics

New technologies inspire and infuse with energy. One math teacher's love for Flickr. Check into it even if you aren't a math instructor.

Index card conversion : Lifehacker

Index card conversion : Lifehacker

de Kooning, Willem -- Encyclopædia Britannica

Encyc. Brit. has an RSS feed.  LiberalArtRSSUniversity.  Tres bon.

 

de Kooning, Willem --  Encyclopædia Britannica

de Kooning, Willem
Encyclopædia Britannica Article

Page 1 of 4

Print PagePrint ArticleE-mail ArticleCite Article

Willem de Kooning
born April 24, 1904, Rotterdam, Netherlands
died March 19, 1997, East Hampton, New York, U.S.

Photograph:Willem de Kooning and his wife, Elaine, photograph by Hans Namuth, 1952.
Willem de Kooning and his wife, Elaine, photograph by Hans Namuth, 1952.
Hans Namuth


Dutch-born American painter who was one of the leading exponents of Abstract Expressionism, particularly the form known as Action painting. During the 1930s and '40s de Kooning worked simultaneously in figurative and abstract modes, but by about 1945 these two tendencies seemed to fuse.

WFMU's Beware of the Blog

WFMU's Beware of the Blog

One of the most consistently mind-blogglingly cool sites.  Be there.

Teacher Package

Teacher Package

Moodle Hosting possibilities

 

I am reading "The Metamorphosis" with my Intro to Lit students. It is one surly piece of work. And resonant for anyone who has had to recreate themselves or been involuntarily recreated by circumstance. We all wake up as insects at least once in our lives, helpless, leg-twitching, chitinous instinctoids driven by circumstance into our bughood.

Here's a copy of the e-text which I would like to annotate by voice for students.