Funny (and I Agree)

As a proud Wikipediaholic, I had to chuckle when I discovered Uncylcopedia's artice on Wikipedia.

Wikipedia is a Massively Multiplayer Online Editing Game played by experts in redundancy, skepticism, pseudoscience, hyperlinking, reverting articles, demanding reliable sources, redundancy, verification, redundancy, identifying original research (which is often quickly denounced in the article talk pages), and initiating subtle flamewars over what is encyclopaedic.

And further down, within a list of reasons Wikipedia can't be trusted:

Most Wikipedia articles are written by people whose lives closely resemble that of that 40 year old, over-weight Comic Book virgin on The Simpsons. Therefore, they have little or no real world experience to write about.

Classic.

Time Magazine's Person of the Year

It's me! And you. And you. It's all of us.

We, the bloggers, the YouTubers, the Wikipedians... we're Time's People of the Year. Hooray for us! Awesome, Time Magazine! Thank you!

The computer itself was Time's "Person" of the Year way back in 1982. Back then, everyone knew the computer had power. The computer was going to change the world, and it has. However, kudos go to the human race for taking the reins of the computers, harnessing the power they possess, and finding ways to utilize it to empower all of ourselves. Yay, humanity!

[L]ook at 2006 through a different lens and you'll see another story, one that isn't about conflict or great men. It's a story about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before. It's about the cosmic compendium of knowledge Wikipedia and the million-channel people's network YouTube and the online metropolis MySpace. It's about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes.

Let me quote that last sentence again:

It's about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes.

Can we not apply this statement to teaching as well? Let the students wrestle that power away from us. Let them help us by letting them help each other. I don't think I need to say much more than that. This is the generation of self-controlled learning... self-directed knowledge... self-produced collaboration. We as teachers need to embrace that and allow these applications to infilitrate our classrooms daily, for the sake of each and every one of our students' futures.

DATE Conference Website

2007 DATE Conference Website

The Rain and Thunder, the Wind and Haze...

...I'm bound for better days.

Sorry, blogaholics, for the lack of posting in the last two weeks. Life is treating me like a baby treats a diaper. I'd like to thank Norm from Cheers for that gem of a metaphor, which I'm definitely appreciating right now. A lot of external factors, a lot of life things, have caused school to become very low on my list of priorities recently. The fact that school has taken this plummet in my importance list during the final two weeks of classes, though, definitely has me worried. But anyway...

I'd like to thank Ray for being a super-good friend right now, despite the fact that I barely even know him. I'd also like to thank Joe for calling me last night to ask for help with text formatting on the wiki. Good to know that, despite the lack of bloggery, I am still needed in the ENG506 classroom.

The DATE conference website, my project for the course, is in fine shape and ready for upload as soon as my username and password is received from ACS. Huzzah! One less thing to worry about.

OK, I'm needing to buckle down and spend all this time with which I find myself burdened on finishing some projects for other courses (*cough*unit plan*cough*). I just needed to blog quickly to let all my fans know that, yes, I am still alive and, yes, I'll be there for you ('cause you're there for me, too).

iWeb versus FreeWebs/GooglePages

Considering the fact that part of the course curriculum for our ENG506 class is learning iLife applications, I find it pretty funny that no one in the class (except I think Ray) is using iWeb to make his/her website. However, I actually view this as a good thing. Let me explain.

The computer applications of the future are going to be all freely available on the Web. Audacity is not quite as great as GarageBand, but it's free and available to anyone with an Internet connection. The same goes for Picasa versus PhotoShop, and for dozens of other free downloadable applications off the Web which are nearly as comprehensive as their corporate counterparts.

I'm doing my final project for this course in iWeb, and, so that I can become more familiar with multiple ways to make a webpage, I am using GooglePages to make my personal site. I know that many others are using FreeWebs. I think this is great. Down with the man -- the Internet should be free!

Seven-Goal Outburst

The first NHL highlights I saw on YouTube, and it was the amazing seven-goal second-period outburst by the Sabres in last night's pounding of Tampa Bay. Let's go Buffalo!

Enjoy Rick Jeanneret's goal calls. He is without a doubt the greatest announcer in the history of sports.

The Bloglines Plumber

I just tried to log into my Bloglines, and instead of seeing my feeds, I saw this. Apparently, according to the text that was next to the picture, Bloglines needs a little "fixer upper" and the plumber is on the case. I like it, and I'm sure my feeds will be back soon.

What do we do in the classroom when our websites, blogs, wikis, whatever are down for maintenance, or when (God forbid) they disappear altogether? Are we totally up the creek? Do we need to work contigency plans into our units/projects/lessons to account for such misfortune? I hadn't thought of this before. Very interesting.

Oh, What a Tangled Web We Weave

Since I am using iWeb to make my the website for my class project (still waiting for the go ahead to be able to upload that to the SUNY Cortland server), I have decided to try to use GooglePages to make my personal website.

Just saying. Here's what it looks like so far.

Give Me Hockey!

Since YouTube is all the rage (Jenn Gee even used it today in a presentation on teaching argument, for Jiminy's Crickets), I thought I'd share this little tidbit I just discovered:

YouTube and NHL team up for strategic content and advertising partnership

“The partnership will enable the NHL to expose YouTube’s vast audience to all of the excitement and drama of the new NHL,” said Doug Perlman, NHL Executive Vice President, Media. “What a great way to showcase the talent of our athletes.”

“By delivering a wide array of daily programming to YouTube, the NHL will be able to connect with its existing fan base and reach a vast new audience that is passionate about hockey,” said Kevin Donahue, vice president of content for YouTube. “Today’s agreement demonstrates how major sports leagues are realizing the powerful benefits YouTube offers in terms of growing their audience and creating a new channel for generating revenue.”

And, of course, most importantly, this means no more getting my video highlights on crappy, jerky, Yahoo Video! Plus, hey, if more people are exposed to the fact that the Buffalo Sabres are downright unbeatable... well, that's good too.

iMovie on YouTube

My super-long, poorly edited iMovie is now up on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4Ie_Ras28w

The interviews are what take up the bulk of the length, but I didn't want to cut out anything anyone said, because the variety of people and the passion they show are what really makes the hobby interesting.

Technically, videos are supposed to be under ten minutes on YouTube. Since mine is nearly twice that(!!), it may be subject to removal or truncation or whatever YouTube does to violating videos. For all I know, the bigwigs at Google might come to my door and break my legs.

So, anyway, view it while you can, and let me know what you think about my film-making ability. Oh, and remember I'll be showing it in class tomorrow night as well -- so, for those of you who will be there, don't watch it here unless you want to be bored twice.

My Stage Presence

I've just discovered that Joe called me out in a comment a couple posts down, saying (and I qoute):

Dave ... is so utterly unused to ... being ignored that he has attained a pseudo-celebrity status

He is so right. Joe, I apologize, but it's true. I work under the pretense that I am gunning for anonymity. Joe is probably not the first person to have ever seen through my guise, but he is the first one to do so with such levels of boisterousness. I can't be just one of the crowd, no matter how much I like to pretend to be. I always stick out. I always either take control in some way, or divert attention to myself with off-the-wall antics.

Why do I do so? I can't really say, for I have no clue. It's just in my nature, I guess. I can't be ignored. I must have every little accomplishment I achieve trumpeted to the mountain tops. Even my failures must be acknowledged, either via my "oh well" facade or through my "I can teach you something from my mistake" mentality. I can't be in the shadows.

More than any of the things I've learned (and haven't learned) in graduate school, I'm pretty sure this personality trait, which I of course already possessed when I got here, is going to help me the most. I can take command of a room. I can keep people's (students') attentions. I can make something trivial seem mega-important, if I so desire. And, much to the contrary of the way I feel about myself most of the time, I'm pretty sure I can make anything relevant to any other thing, and therefore make education relevant to students.

Am I a ham? Yes. Am I a showoff? Yes. Am I an attention (good and bad) hog? Yes. I think these are superb qualities for a teacher to possess, though. I think that this God-given gift of being able to turn the spotlight on myself (and then turn it again, wherever it is needed -- be it on the subject matter or on a student) is more valuable than a lot of things I am learning in a certain teacher education program.

Joe has a lot of these same qualities and more, so I'm certainly not putting this into his face. I'm just pumping myself up, via blog, and, considering what I posted just a few minutes ago, reminding myself that it's all going to be OK.

Dave vs. Technology

Whelp, I've managed to get myself totally overwhelmed again. Technology is awesome, but I've also discovered that technology forces me to "waste" massive amounts of time. I shouldn't say I just discovered that; I've known this for going on ten years now. Get me in front of the World Wide Web, and I can spend hours -- wait, better make that days -- doing nothing of any value to my life.

I can spend an hour creating hockey player profiles on Wikipedia, but I can't create a ten-day unit plan which was due last week, and whose completion is of the utmost importance as far as the state of my education is concerned.

I can spend thirty minutes going through all the football and hockey blogs I have inserted into my Bloglines account, but I can't get motivated to work on the professional website which I am supposed to have completed, to some degree, by Tuesday.

I can spend countless amounts of time clicking through my fantasy football and basketball teams, searching for the perfect matchups, but I can't find the time to make the serious edits which need to be made on the second draft of my research paper (due Wednesday) or to be at all concerned about the twenty-minute presentation on said research assignment which I will be making on Wednesday.

This is the crux of our technology situation. Web-based technology is awesome. Like, uber-awesome. But in the wrong hands, such as mine, it becomes a breeding ground for unmitigated procrastination, followed by unwarranted whining, excuse-making, and stress-fueled fits of crying.

And please, for your consideration, allow me to share the fact that I came up to the library tonight to work on all these projects I mentioned above (well, for that, and to escape the grip the technology in my apartment -- the TV -- has had on me today), and I've spent the last hour surfing my Bloglines feeds, updating my fantasy basketball team, and writing this worthless post. Technology, be damned.

Will Richardson in Cortland: Exclusive First Photo!

From left to right: Natalie (suspiciously trying to edge out of the photo), Jack, Katie, Will Richardson, yours truly, and James

Will Richardson's Visit to Cortland: Let's Wikify It!

Will Richardson is visiting our college on Tuesday! This is very exciting! I have set up a page on the SUNY Cortland wiki where we can post our questions for Will, as well as take notes on what he has to say on Tuesday. Check it out by going to the wiki page (http://web.cortland.edu/wiki) and doing a search for the page titled "Will Richardson's visit to Cortland on 11/7/06". I'd put the exact link, but the wiki seems to be down right now. Strange.

Update: The wiki works again! The direct link to the "Will visit" page is here!

Technology Can't Cure A Broken Heart

I have such a headache. And some wires in my brain must be crossed -- this is the post I've come up with. And I just ended a sentence with a preposition!

iMovie Reflection

Well, I'm going to try to carve out ten minutes to make a post here. I really need to be working on the unit plan thingy (I can't say what it really is called, because I have yet to look at it) which is due in that other Tuesday night class, but I need to say something about my iMovie.

It's done.

Yes, I just put the finishing touches on it and it is officially complete. It is also officially 17 minutes, 40 seconds in length. In addition, it is also officially a complete snooze-fest.

As Sarah said in her comment to Matt's post regarding his completed project, I am also stuck in the "report mentality" of open-ended projects. I am so trained to believe I need to do something "scholarly" that, even when I'm given carte blanche to do whatever I want, I still make a documentary that is sure to cure the insomnia of any classmate who views it. Such is a side effect of growing up in the types of learning environments I have, I suppose.

That being said, I need to work on that other snooze-fest I mentioned in the opening paragraph. Ahh, unit planning. I'll leave you with the links to Matt's and James' movies, which are both simply hysterical. I'm partial to James' in particular -- if you see only one film this year which features me playing two roles, make it this one!

Chaucer: Undead in the 'Burbs (Matt Fuentes)
We Could Use More Dave (James Beach)

(Oh, by the way, I'm also terrible with titles. You'd think someone with a professional writing degree would have some idea how to put a catchy title on something. That is clearly not the case with this particular fellow, though. My title? Geocaching: Hide and Seek with a Technology Twist. It's just as boring as the footage itself!)

Principal Suspended for Giving Kid a "Wedgie"

Best headline ever?

NYSEC 2006

Listen to a podcast of this post, thanks to Talkr

OK, it would appear I am the last one to get on the trolley and make a post regarding our attendance at the NYSEC Conference in Albany this past week. I blame it on the fact that I needed three days to recover from the whole thing.

I attended three workshops during the day. If anyone thinks any of the information below sounds interesting, get in touch with me and I'll share the handouts I received and/or notes I took:

1.) "Words of Hope: Words for Hope" with Carol Jago (keynote speaker)

This session wasn't about what I thought it was going to be about. It ended up being about how to handle the workload that comes with grading hundreds of essays. She gave a lot of specific advice on how to keep your sanity when you collect a mountain of student writing and need to grade it all and return it within a reasonable amount of time, but also need to give detailed responses to the students.

2.) "Becoming a Grammar Detective Part II" with Cynthia Woodhouse of Sewanhaka CSD

At this session, I received a lot of tips for teaching students how to spot nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositional phrases, et cetera. After watching kids totally butcher Mad Libs in the classroom where I observe, I think this information was very useful. It was a lot of good stuff, but it led to an unfortunate incident at lunch where I argued (erroneously) with James about the usage of close versus closely.

3.) "Teaching Graphic Novels" with Jennifer Roy, Mandy Dwight, Gina Palmer and Tim Rifenburg of Wappingers CSD

This session talked mostly about the ways to deconstruct the graphic novel form in Persepolis, but they also briefly discussed Maus. They discussed how to read a graphic novel, how to interpret drawings, et cetera.

Then came our session. I was a little concerned about being referred to as "an expert" in my genre, since I am not any expert by any means. However, after giving my little blurb at the opening of the session, I felt more confident speaking about science fiction and knew what I was going to say in my little seminars and was ready to answer any and all questions. The practice of having given seminars in Dr. Stearns' YA Lit classes over the past two semesters paid off, and I found I had much more to say about science fiction than I thought I did. It felt good, yet strange, to be (for all intents and purposes) educating these long-time teachers. But it was a success, as all five of my colleagues have stated on their blogs. It was a good time all around.

Now for the extra-curriculur activity:

Yes, James, Matt and I crashed a wine convention. Matt gives a nice detailed account of it, without giving away too many secrets. I will add that one of the funniest things that happened to me at the convention was when a vendor (from whom I'd sampled four wines) said to me "you know, you can spit that out if you want." I just nodded. I didn't sneak into a wine convention to spit into a bucket!

Being the geek I am, I did bring my laptop with me and tried to hook it up in my hotel room. No service. So I spent a half hour on Wednesday night on the phone with technical support (I'm pretty sure the guy wasn't from Bangalore, though -- sorry, Thomas Friedman) and ended up getting a new Ethernet cord from the front desk. Nothing worked. So, I ended up sitting in the hotel's community computer station at 1:00 AM, checking e-mail and making the rest of my daily Internet rounds. Nerd.

I tried to talk James and Jack into visiting Fairy Houses with me before we got back on the Thruway to head home. No dice.

Fairy houses or no, though, I had an excellent time. Who knew you could enjoy yourself at an English teacher conference? What a strange world!

White & Nerdy

Listen to a podcast of this post, thanks to Talkr

I just watched the video for Weird Al's new song, "White & Nerdy" (a parody of the hip-hop song "Ridin' Dirty"), and I knew it had to be shared on my blog. It's just too ENG506! There are lyrics like "When my friends need code, who do they call?/I do HTML for 'em all." But this is the clincher for me:

"I edit Wikipedia!"

Watch the video. I have a feeling many of us will relate on some level. Now, for your enjoyment, see just how "white & nerdy" I am.

And, talk about white and nerdy, I actually found this on the Wikipedia entry for the song:

The Wikipedia article Yankovic vandalizes (by typing "YOU SUCK!" in big letters) is the article about Atlantic Records, referring to Yankovic's not receiving permission from the company to include "You're Pitiful", a parody of James Blunt's song "You're Beautiful", on Straight Outta Lynwood. Yankovic uses huge letters to make it clear to viewers what he is doing, although this is not actually possible in the current version of MediaWiki.

Leave it to Wikipedia users to spoil the fun. And I love 'em to death for it.

If Only I Had Time to Play It

Listen to a podcast of this post, thanks to Talkr

I don't even have time to blog (*gasp*), let alone to play computer games. However, last night I was reading USA Today Sports Weekly and I discovered a game review about "Ultimate Baseball Online" (UBO), which is, get this, the first MMO (Massive Multiplayer Online) sports game. There have been MMORPGs (Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games) for a long time, but more often than not those have involved wizards and magic and dragons and things like that, so I haven't been interested. UBO is a baseball game! In theory, while you're playing, the pitcher is another person, your baserunners are other people, the outfielders and other people, and so on and so forth. How awesome is that? I mean, if you're playing MLB '06 at home, and you strike out with the bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth to blow that game, that's not cool. But if you're playing UBO and you do the same, you've not only blown the game for yourself, you've blown it for (potentially) eight other people. You may even ruin someone's "career," as each custom-designed player represents its respective gamer's "life" in the game. D'oh!

As the USA Today Sports Weekly article pointed out, think about the number of kids today who'd rather get eight friends together virtually to play UBO than get eight friends together to go to the sandlot to play a real game of baseball. While that may seem scary, I don't think we need to be worried about the future of organized sports. I just think this seems like a lot of fun, and I hope I don't get addicted to it after I do my quick test-run on it (download in progress) -- I have too much other stuff to do!