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!)
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
Wednesday, October 25, 2006
Sunday, October 22, 2006
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!
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!
Saturday, October 21, 2006
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.
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!
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!
Friday, October 13, 2006
Instant Podcasts!
Listen to a podcast of this post, thanks to Talkr
OK, I discovered that Will Richardson's blog now has instant podcasts for every post. I am trying to figure out how to embed them within each of my posts automatically. I have figured out how to do it manually, but I don't want to have to do that every time.
Ehh, what the heck. It's not too hard to do it manually. I'll just do it that way, because I've spent way too long trying to figure out how to do it the "easy" way.
You can now RSS this blog to your podcast aggregator, such as iTunes, if you so desire. Just click on the Talkr "chiclet" in the left column. Awesome, huh?!?
OK, I discovered that Will Richardson's blog now has instant podcasts for every post. I am trying to figure out how to embed them within each of my posts automatically. I have figured out how to do it manually, but I don't want to have to do that every time.
Ehh, what the heck. It's not too hard to do it manually. I'll just do it that way, because I've spent way too long trying to figure out how to do it the "easy" way.
You can now RSS this blog to your podcast aggregator, such as iTunes, if you so desire. Just click on the Talkr "chiclet" in the left column. Awesome, huh?!?
For Your Enjoyment: Sample iMovie
Listen to a podcast of this post, thanks to Talkr
When my host teacher for observation found out we are learning about iMovie, he shared with me his enjoyment the program, as well as a few sample movies he has created. Here's one he created during his classes' silent reading day, "Silent Reading Action Movie!":
http://www.cortlandschools.org/buildings/jshs/team4/mlevy/ssr.mov
The footage was taken on some sort of spirit/costume day at the school, which would explain (for example) the fact that there is a Twinkee walking around at random points in the movie.
Anyway, pretty cool, huh? He didn't tell me how long it took him to edit the footage into the movie, but I don't think it took him too overly long. As for tips, he shared with me a couple basic ones:
-the montage is always a cool effect (the books closing at the tone of the bell)
-have a visual effect which recurs intermittently during the story (in this video, the zooming in on some of the faces; in a more personal family movie he showed me, shots of his baby interspersed within the main story)
He said more, but it escapes me at this time. Dang it. Hope you enjoyed the Silent Reading Action Movie, and wish me luck as I begin working on my own this weekend!
When my host teacher for observation found out we are learning about iMovie, he shared with me his enjoyment the program, as well as a few sample movies he has created. Here's one he created during his classes' silent reading day, "Silent Reading Action Movie!":
http://www.cortlandschools.org/buildings/jshs/team4/mlevy/ssr.mov
The footage was taken on some sort of spirit/costume day at the school, which would explain (for example) the fact that there is a Twinkee walking around at random points in the movie.
Anyway, pretty cool, huh? He didn't tell me how long it took him to edit the footage into the movie, but I don't think it took him too overly long. As for tips, he shared with me a couple basic ones:
-the montage is always a cool effect (the books closing at the tone of the bell)
-have a visual effect which recurs intermittently during the story (in this video, the zooming in on some of the faces; in a more personal family movie he showed me, shots of his baby interspersed within the main story)
He said more, but it escapes me at this time. Dang it. Hope you enjoyed the Silent Reading Action Movie, and wish me luck as I begin working on my own this weekend!
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