What Light

My stomach is in knots and I am nervous.

“Why did you do this again?”

“Because this feeling of terror when allowed to simmer resembles joy. This bubbling anxiety is a fine reminder that you are alive.”

“But I am tired and not really in the mood to do this anymore. I just want to go home and sleep. I am not ready. I will get the B flat wrong. I will forget the words. I will look stupid in front of the teachers I work with, the parents and worse my students will think I am an idiot. I will embarrass myself.”

“Can you hear yourself? This is what you do. You model behavior. You act brave. You embrace the voice inside, even if it falters and is inaudible at times. You owe it to your students, you owe it to Kaia, you owe it to yourself.”

“I understand what you are saying, but siting here on the edge I need more courage.”

“There is no shame in mediocrity. There is no shame in trying and failing. There is no shame in getting it “wrong.” Just walk up on that stage, strum that guitar and sing your song.”

Thoughts on performances from past years, February 2006, May 2006, and February 2007.

If you feel like singing a song
And you want other people to sing along
Just sing what you feel
Don’t let anyone say it’s wrong

And if you’re trying to paint a picture
But you’re not sure which colors belong
Just paint what you see
Don’t let anyone say it’s wrong

And if you’re strung out like a kite
Or stung awake in the night
It’s alright to be frightened

When there’s a light (what light)
There’s a light (one light)
There’s a light (white light)
Inside of you

If you think you might need somebody
To pick you up when you drag
Don’t loose sight of yourself
Don’t let anyone change your bag

And if the whole world’s singing your songs
And all of your paintings have been hung
Just remember what was yours is everyone’s from now on

And that’s not wrong or right
But you can struggle with it all you like
You’ll only get uptight

Because there’s a light (what light)
There’s a light (one light)
There’s a light (white light)
There’s a light (what light)
There’s a light (one light)
There’s a light (white light)
There’s a light (what light)
There’s a light (one light)
There’s a light (white light)
There’s a light (what light)
There’s a light (one light)
There’s a light (white light)
Inside of you…

by Wilco

Open Canvas

8 Replies

Hello Ds106ers and the rest of ya too! It has been a while since my Bava Light has been burning at full capacity, but never mind all that- I am here to say that I am back! At least I hope so, I got lost a bit in the shuffle of DS106 Radio and the previous audio assignments, no excuses, just lost the itch. I guess this is normal in a 15 week MOOC course. One that I am in no way obliged to take, and one which I am receiving no “credit” except for the satisfaction of pushing myself and making some art! Enough looking backwards, let’s see where we are now. First of course there is the latest assignment Telling Stories in The Web:

you will be intervening in the code and design of a website of your choice to tell a story. You are not to photoshop the design of the site (if you can), but rather intervene in the actual html and CSS of the site—though you can photoshop particular images on the site.

The great aspiration from Martha:

I want students to have to grapple with the code. It’s not that I expect them all to become expert coders or even to understand everything they encounter, but I do want them to develop a basic understanding and healthy respect for what goes on under the hood of a Web page.

I want them to develop an understanding of the architecture of a page: how do HTML and CSS work together? How is content separated from design?

I want them to think about how a story can be told in a single page. Web pages are complex information spaces. There are often a myriad of opportunities on a page to let a story unfold: menus, titles, texts of articles, texts of links. What do these elements represent rhetorically and how can we use them to construct a single-page narrative?

I want them to think about the choices we’re making as we tell our story. The Web provides us with a truly unlimited platform of spaces to co-opt for narrative. As we choose the site to build upon or through, I want to talk about what that choice represents. And as we enact the story in that space, I want to keep interrogating those choices.

Finally the great tutorial that made it all so easy. Wow! Crazy huh? I know. If I am to understand this right, I can take any website, play under the hood, and change the entire look, feel, and message by manipulating the code? Sounds like magic. Like subversive-web-culture jamming. Sounds like Bansky on HTML. Sounds like fun. What’s that Obama?

Is that really Sarah Palin?

A new movie about Glenn Beck? Don’t believe me? See the site for yourself here.

Pretty intense I know. The more I played, the more my mind spun. I had a very hard time forcing my mind to settle on one major narrative. I could could not create lasting take, so I played with a few short poems. I dabbled. I tweaked. I played. I think I began to learn and understand the lesson Martha intended, as there were times when I wanted to change an image but it was written in a script or in Flash or in some other language I do not speak. (Yet!) I did however began to see the web in a much different light. It is much more malleable and fluid that I had thought. It can be so easily manipulated to make one idea seem like another. Our images, our words, everything on the web is a few code edits away from being something completely different. What does this mean in an age where the Internet holds so much of our knowledge, or ideas, our identities? What does it mean that we have created a world, a vault, a mirror of ourselves that can be warped and reshaped by any member? What do words like Truth, Real, Authentic mean in this world? How do we learn in a world where nothing can be trusted, even with our own eyes? How can we influence others? How are we manipulated? What values must we understand, create, or share in a world where we share a space which we can all alter and change?

Beyond these questions and the silliness of the sort of political satire I shared above, there are a myriad of educational implications for students. They must understand the all too easy deception that can occur on the web. More importantly they can (should?) begin to understand how to manipulate the web to tell their own stories as well, which I think was the point of this assignment. No matter which side of the screen a student is on- we should be made aware of how the experiences of web are created.

I find it hilarious that we so often warn students not to trust Wikipedia, because anyone can edit the pages. Nevermind that this crowdsourced space is most likely the most democratic form of knowledge creation we have ever known, but now anyone can easily fiddle with a little code and recreate a mirage or a smoke screen to create an alternative reality. A different story. Nothing on the web is safe or static from our imaginations. Read the fine print carefully:

What implications does this have on the idea of teaching kids about digital identity? Even if they groom and tend their online brand to perfection, someone can easily alter it as easily as they can spray paint a wall.

I apologize if this post is all over the place, but I have been like this all week. I feel like the very structure of the web has been removed and now I see it as a wide open canvas on which I can play. Not only can I create original content and carve out legitimate specs online for my own expression, but now I can also alter and manipulate the work of others. Like all post-modern, subversive, culture jamming street art, with great power comes great responsibility. Issues like ownership and copyright and creative commons and common decency are all muddled together into a great big ball of gray area. Perhaps uncle Walt has something to say:

There is also a post in here somewhere about how much fun it was to learn something brand new and play with my limitations. A post about how excited I was to follow the tutorial for awhile, only to take detours and see where I could go on my own. There is a post in here about the joy of discovery and that moment, when you realize you know how to do something you didn; before and suddenly a small piece of the world makes that much more sense. But I am too tired to write that post tonight, hopefully you can stitch together the pieces yourself from what is here.

Join me in the comments-What do you think about all this? This conversation could be lots of fun.

Flames With Action

17 Replies

I started this blog a few years ago as a way to reflect on my own teaching (learning), build a network of like minded teachers worldwide, and to have my own space to facilitate and encourage conversations about education with teachers in the building in which I worked. That was in January of 2009 a few years ago in Doha. I would say I have been fairly successful in two out of three of my goals. You can read my first post for yourself here for a more comprehensive look at my goals.

However, I have struggled with my third goal; I do not feel I have ever had a regular readership from teachers in my own building. I have not yet created a culture of blogging within our staff. I hope this post is a first step in creating spaces where our staff can interact. I hope it will spark a spate of new blogs as well. After a great in school retreat last Thursday, I hope to revisit my third goal here at my new school in Jakarta. I have emailed this post to the participants of our five hour meeting hoping to keep our conversation and inspiration going. Hi guys! Welcome to my blog. This is where I hang out, wrestle with ideas, connect with other teachers, and work on all the things we talked about last Thursday.

This post is my attempt to lure out the teachers and administrators from my school interested in creating new learning spaces and a dynamic tech infused pedagogy. Schools that are inquiry based and use technology to lead and guide student driven pedagogy. I hope that some of you will take the time to let loose some thoughts in the comment section and see if we can’t clearly articulate and enact our school’s vision.

Before I continue let me recap the main ideas from our meeting, so my regular readers have a sense of where I am coming from. Another great by-product of blogging is that I hope, teachers from my school new to blogging, will begin to see the power of being a networked teacher. I hope that you realize the fruitfulness of a blog and the conversations that can grow here, once the seed has been planted and tended ever so lightly. Let begin…

I work at a 1:1 school. We all have shiny new Macbooks and I love it. I love the freedom to do anything that strikes my fancy on a dime with my students. I am excited and inspired by the work we are doing. I am challenged on a daily basis to make sure I am not directing too much of what they do. I am realizing that technology and a 1:1 environment does not automatically lead to a inquiry based school. As a matter of fact, often it could hinder the shift. I am starting to realize that schools need focus and vision. I realize that not everyone on our campus understands what it means to be 1:! We need to be open and honest about what our staff is willing to do and learn. We need to hold our staff accountable for how they understand and implement the vision of the school. We need to train and support. We need conversations about who we want to be and how we can get there.

Through a series of manipulations, suggestions and hard work I am somehow got myself invited to a meeting where we were going to be having these exact conversations. There were about fourteen of us present: administrators, teachers from every branch of the school, and two students. We examined our vision statement, and through a google doc, answered a few questions about what it means to be a 1:1 school. I was pleasantly surprised by the depth of the conversation. Many of us are on the same page and have a lot to say on the subject. Here the gist of what we said:

So often we forget that our schools are filled with passionate teachers who want to learn and grow, but only need the venue and chance to do so. This meeting was a great example of that. Now I invite you to keep the momentum going. Look back at our Google Doc and synthesis what we discussed there. Add your comments on the document, process your thoughts and join me on this blog post. Leave a comment here sharing your ideas and/or excitement. Let’s find the best tools and spaces where we can join our energies and find out how to move our faculty and school forward. Learning begins with passion and curiosity; it is clear we have no shortage of either here at our school, so now we need to tend the flames with action. I would love comments from other readers as well. How have you created a tight group of passionate teachers to move your schools toward change? What advice do you have for us?

Speak, A Review

6 Replies

I’m a bit of a snob. Not the condescending obnoxious kind that thinks everything I like is better than everyone else’s, or the uppity bourgeoisie kind that marries importance of brands to my self-worth, but more like the kind that likes high quality items and doesn’t like to waste time with mediocre, mainstream garbage. Life is too short to waste on junk food, music, films or books. I can appreciate the occasional sitcom, romantic comedy or Beyonce single, but I would rather get lost in quality shows like The Wire, or a complex indie film. As for music? Well look for yourself.

While I occasionally dip into the top 40 or watch some terrible blockbusters for mind numbing satisfaction, I have a much more difficult time reading trash. I respect the relationship between text and soul too much to allow myself to waste a few weeks reading a trashy novel. I like books with depth. I want them well written and insightful. I want my books to change the way I see the world and make me think and feel and well….you get it.

Needless to say, I seldom, if ever, read young adult fiction. As a middle school English teacher this is problematic. I know. I have made a ridiculous stand against titles like Harry Potter, Twilight, and ahhhh….ohhhhh those are the only two series I know. You see? I got issues.

A few months ago someone on Twitter suggested I read Speak– a 1999 novel by Laurie Halse Anderson about a girl named Melinda Sordino who is an outcast as a high school freshman due to reasons later revealed in the book…Read more here.

Melinda Sordino busted an end-of-summer party by calling the cops. Now her old friends won’t talk to her, and people she doesn’t even know hate her from a distance. The safest place to be is alone, inside her own head. But even that’s not safe. Because there’s something she’s trying not to think about, something about the night of the party that, if she let it in, would blow her carefully constructed disguise to smithereens. And then she would have to speak the truth. This extraordinary first novel has captured the imaginations of teenagers and adults across the country.

As always, I was reluctant, but decided to end by supercilious embargo and read something that could prove not to be “quality” literature. Man! Was I pleasantly surprised. Speak is fantastic. Is it a classic to be studied for generations to come and placed in the canon next to Dostoevsky and Tolstoy? Probably not. It is a well written, easily accessible novel that will grip young readers because it is about issues they deal with- sexuality, acceptance, gender roles, alienation, depression, friendship and more. Yes! With clear and simple symbols and themes, enough figurative language to keep teenagers engaged, and a real world accessibility- Speak is the perfect book for any ninth grade English class novel study.

While the main event of the book, a rape, can seem controversial to some districts, it is important to remember that 1 in 6 American women will be the victim of an attempted or completed rape. In the U.S. a rape is reported every five-minutes. Nearly half of all rapes and sexual assault victims are girls under the age of 18. If a girl is old enough to be raped, or if a boy is old enough to attack, than they are both old enough to talk about why in a classroom. It should be our duty as teachers to help young people navigate these issues.

But this book is not only about rape. It is about the alienation so many young people feel while in school. It is about the disconnect between the dreams promised- study hard, be popular, succeed, be happy and the reality- we are all broken in some way, trying to find a way to make the world make sense. School is not all cheerleaders and prom queens, for most of us, high school was/is a terrifying four years of uncomfortable understanding of who we are and what is expected of us from our friends, family, teachers, and society. Speak does a great job of showing the world through the eyes of a broken young woman who finds a way to heal herself.

The cynic in means has to say that parts of the book do read like an after school special, but for the most part it was a pleasure to read. The cold sardonic tone and imagery held my attention, and I didn’t want it to end. I would have loved a book like this when I was fourteen. Sure, we can continue to try and connect to students by pushing the greatness of Mice and Men, but perhaps we should start where kids are. Let them relate to characters that are dealing with issues they face, then move into Salinas county and the rabbits. I would love to teach this book with say Catcher and the Rye and a film study of Elephant.

I would also love to hear from those of you who have already taught this book. What resources can you share? How did students react? Parents? Did you face any obstacle or problems? Final note, I would love to dive deep into more quality young adult fiction. Friends are always recommending great series, but I always lose track. Could you please share your favorites in the comments below. Don’t worry about mentioning The Hunger Games. I have already placed an order.

Custom Headers

37 Replies

I am a big fan of blogs. This is no secret to readers of this blog. I think they are useful for teachers, students, parents, writers and non-writers a like. With more and more online activity and participation with social media, I see blogs as the personal space each one of us carves out of cyber-space to set up shop and build a home. Like a homestead in the frontier days, blogs are plots of space designated for our voices. The more I work with students and blogs, I am finding that personalization of this space increases authentic engagement.

The thing about blogging is that it is not automatic. It does not come easy to most students and they don’t particularity like it. I have been blogging with middle school ESL classes since October and we are just now at a place where I feel comfortable with their blogs and valuable spaces. Having said that, most of them are still only writing “assignments.” I have tried very hard to encourage personal writing beyond what I “expect” as portfolio posts. It is hard work convincing students to create a space that is both personal and dedicated to school. It is confusing and unnatural and I get that, but I believe if done with patience and love, students can find a voice that fits both their personal and professional selves.

A few weeks ago. I decided ask my students to create custom headers, and it was through this task that I feel many of them turned a corner. Suddenly, their blogs were their spaces. Sure they had all already chosen a theme, but after creating a header I saw students begin to change font styles and colors. A few students began to write posts on their own, and I could see them beaming with pride about their space. In the process, they learned a few tech skills as well.

I asked them to find (Flickr Creative Commons) or use four images that represented who they are. “When someone comes to your blog, what is it about you, that you want them to see? What do you look like in images?” We then used the collage feature on Picnik to create headers. We spoke about color, balance, composition. They added frames and finally, many of them were forced to name their blogs something other than, “My blog.” Some wanted to match the colors of their titles to the live link colors on their blogs. So we explored how to find the color codes on blogs and what that means in terms of design. I had several students change their headers three or four times in a few days, till they got it right. One student, Theo who rarely speaks in class decided to use Keynote instead and created his own header.

Another aspect of the blogs that I feel helps students feel connected is actually adding a picture and a short bio. I know there is a lot of fear of revealing too much information, but there is something to be said about personalizing their space in a responsible way. It must be difficult for students to know what to do if we are constantly giving them mixed messages. On one hand, we tell them to open up and share their voices on line, but then we tell them to be scared and weary of strangers.

The thing about blogs is that they are designed to meet new people. Blogs are about strangers finding similarities and making connections. How can we expect students to create worthwhile content and build authentic audience if they only post school assigned posts and share little to know personal information? There must be a balance, that is obvious, but I have found that the custom header and the brief profile have made our class blogs feel much more like home. Feel free to snoop around our class blog and see for yourself; most of the students now have a custom header.

In short, if you are struggling with blogging with your students, let them personalize their space so they can better connect with it. If not you may find student blogs to be lifeless folders where students dump assignments, another hoop they are learning to jump through.