And Another Thing!

Ah... 23 Things, come and gone. We had some good times, the Things and I. Sure, there were some rough patches - nothing's ever easy all the time - but we got through it. To paraphrase an excellent and admirable hobbit, I don't know half the Things half as well as I would like, and I like less than half of them half as well as they deserve.

Alright, so that last part didn't make a whole lot of sense. Whatever. Bilbo is awesome.

Feedback: I mentioned over and over again that I'm not 100% on board with the idea of "learning 2.0" or whatever, and most of the Things seemed to involve something either entirely frivolous or of questionable educational value. I do think it's important for teachers to be more or less up to speed with technology in general, so the 23 Things assignment works on that level, but I have a lot of trouble picturing MOST of the Web 2.0 technology presented therein as being useful in an educational setting. I also think the presentation of certain Things could be reorganized - for instance, Thing 16 repeats much of the same information as Thing 12, depending on which Google tools a student chooses for Thing 12. If Thing 16 happened first, then in Thing 12 a student could just choose different tools to avoid redundancy.

Where do I go from here? Lunch. I'm starving. After that, though, it will be time to consider what I may or may not do with this blog in the future. If I see a use for it in my classroom a couple of years from now, I may revive it, but for now I believe I'm content to let it lie while I go back to doing the things I was already doing. At this point in my life, a teaching blog is just one more thing to keep up with, and since I'm not going to be teaching for some time (or ever, if APSU continues to schedule classes the way they do), I don't see much point.

Did I learn some stuff? Yeah, I suppose. I was certainly exposed to some things I haven't been interested in checking out on my own. Have my technological horizons been broadened by this assignment? Not really, but then I was pretty comfortable with technology to begin with. Am I going to change my tune about cutting-edge technology in teaching? Not likely - at least not until society and economy catch up with technology. When I can be reasonably sure that all my students can access the web at home, then I'll worry about web-based assignments. When I can have unfettered access to computers for my students in the classroom, then I'll worry about using computers in class. Until then, I suppose I'll just keep an eye on the horizons of technology and think of what I might possibly be able to do one day, if the stars align properly.

Thing 23: Creative Common Sense

Since I am required to find an attribution in the 23 Things assignment, let's get that out of the way first:

Learning 2.0 - 23 Things for Teachers is based on Learning 2.0 - 23 Things. That program is based on the Learning 2.0 program that was designed by Helene Blowers, Technology Director at the Charlotte Mecklenburg County Public Library system, with the support and assitance of several staff. Helene's program was loosely based upon Stephen Abram's article, 43 Things I (or You) might want to do this year (Information Outlook - Feb 2006) and the website 43Things.

That's from the "About" page of the assignment.

Anyway, Creative Commons does offer a more sensible alternative to standard copyrights, but I don't see that it solves the problem of major corporate copyright holders. The copyright holder, after all, has to CHOOSE to put things under a Creative Commons license instead of a normal copyright, so it's hardly a panacea for all a teacher's copyright woes. I think a wise and prudent teacher would also be well-served by becoming familiar with the ins and outs of Fair Use doctrine as well as looking for Creative Commons material.

Thing 22: Invasion of the Podcast People

For this Thing, I listened to the most recent few episodes of Onion Radio News. I found it on iTunes, which was my directory of choice because I'm already an iTunes user, and then subscribed to it, so now the new episodes will automatically download to my iTunes Library as they become available. For those who are interested, the most recent episode is embedded below. It's short, but the mid-week episodes of ORN are. The Sunday episodes are a little over two minutes and cover more than one "story."



I don't see myself doing much, if any, podcasting in the future, for reasons I've mentioned before - primarily unreliable accessibility for my students outside the classroom (or even inside the classroom, depending on where I teach).

Thing 21: Animoto

I tried for like ten minutes to come up with a clever title for this one, and just couldn't do it. I blame Sudafed, personally. Anyway, here's the music video I made:



I think Animoto falls into that Web 2.0 category I've been complaining about: "toys." It's neat technology, but I don't see much point in it, especially with regard to education. You have no control over HOW the video turns out, so it's really like putting a slideshow on autopilot, with a soundtrack. I don't see myself ever using this again.

Thing 20: People called Romanes they go the house?

I love YouTube. I could spend hours there just watching videos and clicking through to related videos. Sure, there's a lot of garbage, but there's also a ton of really good stuff. Like that clip up there from Monty Python's Life of Brian, for example. YouTube is sort of a video microcosm of the internet as a whole, which is to say that if you know where to look, you can probably find anything. I mostly use it for entertainment, but there's no reason you couldn't also use it for education. If you do it right, you could probably use it for both at the same time.

Thing 19: POP goes the Teacher.

Alright, so now I've got this TeacherPOP thing up and running. I really doubt I'll use it much, though. Frankly, I am already being pushed to the very limit of my social threshold, and I am pretty selective about with whom I will socially network. A site where I have no control over who is in my "circle" just doesn't appeal to me at all. Still, I joined, and I have commented, and I have placed my little TeacherPOP badge on this blog.

Even on the internet, I am something of an introvert. This is less apparent than in real life, where I am extremely introverted, but it is still true. As I discussed above and in my post regarding Facebook and MySpace, the idea of being part of a gigantic group of people all just chattering away doesn't appeal to me. So no, I don't belong to any other social networks, nor do I want to. I have a badly-neglected LiveJournal account and I belong to several message boards, but these are examples of older, more structured technologies that better suit my temperament.

Just to be clear: I have no problem with new technology. Social networking, however, is not for me. Not the way most people seem to do it, and certainly not in settings where I cannot control whose chatter I receive. The signal-to-noise ratio is just entirely too low for my liking.

Thing 18: FaceSpace!

Social networking has taken the industrialized world by storm. It's a tremendous waste of time, if you ask me, so it is only natural that I've got a MySpace page (no, you can't see it) and a Facebook profile. ;)

I'm not what you'd call a power-user of these sites, though. For example, my girlfriend has 360-something friends on Facebook, and I know Morgan just broke 420. I've got something like 130, and it feels like too many. I guess I'm just not a terribly social person, but I don't like to "network" with people to whom I don't actually have some connection beyond simple common interests. Almost all of my FB friends, for example, are people I have known personally, and the ones I've never physically met are almost all "colleagues" of a sort in the Privateer Press Gang.

That said, it's neat, this social networking phenomenon. It allows people to form and maintain connections (of an incredibly superficial, limited sort) with pretty much anybody in the world. Facebook also allows people to become Fans or Supporters as well as Friends, so companies and organizations can also become part of the social networks. MySpace has some sort of similar functionality, but MySpace is such a train wreck (thanks to near-limitless "customizability") these days that I never bother with it any more.

Educators need to be aware of social networking for one simple reason: students ARE using it. If Law & Order - the origin of the fictional social networking site "FaceSpace" - and other police shows are to be believed, they're all doing something sinister with it, but I think we can safely take a less frightening view and just acknowledge that students are comfortable with the technology. We educators don't necessarily need to jump in the middle of their business, but it is always useful to know what they're up to.

Honestly, because of the extremely public nature of social networking, I don't think that MySpace or Facebook has much instructional value. Something more limited, like Facebook was at its inception (i.e. limited to one school or a small group of them), might have some use to instructors, but I think we're probably better off leaving the social networks for socializing - such as it is on the internet.

Thing 17: Tag and release.

Del.icio.us, and social bookmarking in general, is perhaps not as ridiculous as I originally thought. I don't buy the argument that old-school bookmarks are necessarily cluttering or unwieldy, but maybe that's because I don't bookmark a whole lot and have a strong urge to categorize and file things anyway, so my bookmarks are pretty well-organized. The tagging feature, though, is nice. Being able to create multiple tags per bookmark, and then use those to cross-reference, is very handy, and feels like a positive step toward my insane, utopian vision of a totally interconnected web (which I won't get into here, but might be willing to explain a little further on request). I particularly like being able to create a "string" of tags that I can add to or subtract from at will, allowing me to hone in on just exactly the right bookmarked site for my current needs.

At this point, my only resistance to using Del.icio.us is its rid.iculo.us name - a pet peeve well-documented already in this blog.

Thing 16: Brought to you by the Department of Redundancy Department.

Okay, 23 Things, I think I've been a pretty good sport so far. But seriously, this sixteenth Thing is just a rehash of several previous Things. Customized start page? Already covered here, in Thing 12. Online calendar? Also already covered in Thing 12. In fact, going down the list of suggested Web 2.0 apps to consider, it appears that nearly all of them have been covered in detail in previous Things.

I will say, though, that I enjoy the irony of a Thing about online productivity that is, itself, not productive. Going over the same material multiple times is not a good use of anybody's time and energy.

Thing 15: Wikity-wack.

Ah, the wiki. The epitome of Web 2.0. A website you can alter at will! Ultimate collaboration! True interactivity!

Feh.

Call me an elitist, but personally I believe that knowledge needs gatekeepers. Auctoritas is not something we should scoff at. We should definitely value the contributions of experts over the contributions of Joe the Blogger.

I'm not saying amateurs don't have valuable insights, or that all experts are necessarily right and should never be questioned. Not at all. "Question everything" is an excellent motto, in fact. The problem with an unregulated wiki environment, though, is that the wiki itself cannot question anything, while lending legitimacy to all its contents equally. I have mentioned before how much that bothers me, so I won't belabor the point further in this post.

Having said all that, I do think that a moderated wiki is a fantastically useful tool for gathering many ideas together in one place and creating a font of mutually-acquired wisdom. My gaming and other geeky interests generate a host of group wikis, and these can be quite useful sources of information, so long as someone with some sense keeps a firm hand on the tiller, so to speak.

For education, then, wikis can be a great way to create whole-class projects and get every student to engage. The sample AP World History wiki looked like a great example of that sort of usage, and in education a wiki has a natural gatekeeper built right in: the teacher. So as long as the teacher him- or herself has some sense and is willing to exercise a little editorial control, maybe educational wikis needn't necessarily be wack. ;)

Thing 14: In the rain or in the snow, I've got the funky funky flow(chart).

If any of you can actually identify the source of this entry's title, I'll be shocked and amazed.

I've used flowcharts in the past to explain things to people who don't seem to be understanding my words, and to that end they can really come in handy. When a process gets even a little bit complicated, it really helps some people to have a visual representation of it so none of the salient details get lost. I've been trying to think of how I might use one in Latin instruction, and I think a flowchart might help some people in translating Latin sentences - at least from a structural standpoint, not a vocabulary one - but I'm not about to make such a monstrous chart right now. It'd take forever.

If I were to undertake such a thing, I'd use Flowchart.com. It looks reasonably easy to use, and unlike Gliffy it is a dedicated flowchart thing as opposed to a general-purpose chart/diagram application that "can be used" for flowcharts. Also, Gliffy is a silly name.

On the subject of mind mapping, though, I'm kind of at a loss. What's the point? How is it supposed to help? I don't understand the concept of mind mapping, so it's hard for me to think of what I'd use it for.

That said, if I were to map my mind, I'd use MindMeister. It's easy to use and has a ton of features, and there's a mostly-helpful video tutorial that explains almost everything other than what the point of a mind map is in the first place.

Thing 13: Google Docs in a box with a fox.

Alright, actually I'm not in a box - I'm in a basement - and there's nothing remotely vulpine here in my subterranean lair. But I am here to write about Google Docs.

I opted not to check out Zoho Writer because I'm already so well-ensconced in Google. May as well keep it all in the Google family, you know? So I played with Google Docs instead. And by "played with," I mean, "looked over briefly to refamiliarize myself with." I'm no stranger to Google Docs, having most recently used a Google spreadsheet as the organizing force behind a gift exchange of sorts, involving participants from all over the world (my gift ended up coming from Arhus, Denmark). It's a handy thing, Google Docs. It's not fancy or flashy, but it allows easy collaboration on the real nuts and bolts of information - the humble word processor and spreadsheet. I'm a little curious about how secure it really is as far as only letting intended viewers/collaborators in, but then I can't imagine most things you'd use it for needing to be totally secure.

Of all the vast jungle of Web 2.0 stuff out there, I think Google Docs might be one of the very best inventions. I don't think it will replace full-blown productivity software for a very long time (if ever) because there's still so much more MS Office and the like can do (and internet access is not yet totally reliable), but for basic to moderate productivity needs, you often need look no further than Google Docs.

Thing 12: Hooray for Google!

For this Thing, I decided to play with Google Calendar and iGoogle. As with everything else Google-related, once you have a Google account they're both easy to set up, and I've actually had an iGoogle page for a long time - even if I had sort of forgotten about it.

I'll get the easy discussion out of the way first. I really cannot think of an educational use for iGoogle, beyond the web-searching and suchlike that plain old Google already does. I have mine set as my homepage, so I obviously find it helpful (or at least interesting), but it's not something I see being tremendously involved in the educational process.

Alright, well, there is one thing, and that's the fact that you can incorporate other Google tools into one centralized location. My iGoogle, for example, has a Google Translate section and a YouTube section, and those are both Google applications. Other than that, though, I stand by my previous paragraph.

Google Calendar is another story. While mine looks pretty sad (which is exactly why I don't typically keep a calendar - I don't need to), its simplicity and ease of use cannot be denied. You can share the calendar you create in a number of ways, and this would a really easy way to help a classroom stay on top of deadlines, field trips, test dates, or whatever else has a timeframe attached to it.

Now, I am only going to share my busy/free information in this blog, so as not to make the ladies jealous, but here's my calendar for the forseeable future.

Thing 11: Feed me all night long.

I ended up using Google Blogs to search for more blogs to read. I tried to look at Feedster but the link wasn't working, and I checked out Technorati but it felt kind of cluttered because of the ads and general layout. So, once again, I returned to Google.

Mostly in my searching (in which I added the TN Democratic Party, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, and the SCCA's Classics Links and Information to my subscriptions), what I found is that for every specific thing you are trying to find, you will find thousands of things that are only tangentially related, and often diametrically opposed, to your intended target. I also found that the right wing of our political system is much, much louder and angrier than anyone with whom I might agree (but to be honest I already knew that).

Sidebar: In my travels throughout the blogosphere, I read one person's angry "retort" to some scientific claims I'm not going to get into here because of time constraints, and one thing she said really stuck out in my mind: the internet democratizes truth. She, of course, was saying this is a good thing and it empowers people to decide the truth for themselves. I, on the other hand, could not help thinking that is exactly what is wrong with the internet.

The truth cannot be "democratized." I will be the very first person to say that there are no simple truths, and that even the most basic questions can have incredibly complicated answers. But there are things that simply are not true, no matter how many people repeat them on the internet. The internet gives equal credit to scientists and soccer moms, Ph.D.s and pundits, and as a result, the pool of collective knowledge is hopelessly polluted. The truth is not simple or clear-cut, but that does not mean it can be manhandled by anyone with internet access and still remain true.

So a word of caution, dear reader: take everything you read on the internet with a grain of salt, and ALWAYS consider the source.

Except for this blog, naturally. You can trust me without question.

Thing 10: Feed me, Seymour.

When in the market for a reader, I decided to go with Google Reader because, well, I already have a Google account. That was really about it. Then I had to pick five sites to subscribe to, so I thought about the kinds of things I used to do to entertain myself when I worked for the state and had nothing better to do all day. I had five sites in no time at all, except for the time I spent getting caught up on a couple of webcomics.

So, about those questions...

What do you like about RSS and newsreaders?

I guess the handy thing about a newsreader is that I can check everything from one place. I don't know how impressive that is, really, but it's kind of like going down your Favorites list without having to click each one to see if there's anything new today. Not really much of a labor-saver, if you ask me, but slightly more convenient than doing things the old way.

How do you think you might be able to use this technology in your school or personal life?

I think I just answered this, at least with regard to my personal life. In my school life, I suppose it would be handy if there were a bunch of professional sites I wanted to keep up with, or if I made my students maintain blogs or something - then I could keep track of them all in one spot.

How can teachers use RSS or take advantage of this new technology?

Teachers can use a reader to stay abreast of professional developments or breakthroughs in their fields, or to keep track of other teachers who blog or maintain websites. This latter use could help strengthen the educators' community. Being totally honest, I'm not sure I believe that, but I think that's the idea.

Anyway, I'm not going to do a public page right now, but for fun I will share the sites to which I subscribed on here:

Ghettokore Studios: Website and blog of fellow Privateer Press Ganger, semi-professional miniature painter, and all-around cool lady Jen Ikuta. She may or may not know karate.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart: I trust Jon Stewart at least as much as most "real" news outlets.

Homestar Runner: Words cannot adequately describe this site. Words like "hilarious" come close, but there ought to be more of them and I don't have time. Just go watch some cartoons - the Strong Bad Emails are particularly good.

Webcomic Overlook: I can't be bothered to actually read all the bajillion webcomics out there. So I'm putting my trust in a masked Mexican wrestler to sort the wheat from the chaff. In addition to webcomic reviews, there is a recurring segment called "El Santo vs. The Vampire Women," in which the author takes on the apparently quite prolific subgenre of webcomics that specifically deal with female vampires.

Nuklear Power: Home of 8-Bit Theatre, an incredibly long retelling of the first Final Fantasy game's story, using mostly 8-bit video game sprites. The author, Brian Clevinger, has also written a novel about superheroes (Nuklear Age) and an award-winning print comic (Atomic Robo).

Now, what do these sites have to do with being a teacher? NOTHING AT ALL. But I did learn how to use Google Reader, didn't I?

Thing 9: I am not to be trusted with image generators.

After a long and exhasting search through several image generators I felt were lame and/or cheesy, I finally hit upon WigFlip, and one particular part of WigFlip: RoflBot. What you see below are the results of that.

WigFlip also has other great generator tools, such as AutoMotivator, where I made this thing:

And Thank You, Mario!, where I made this one:

I had a lot of fun doing the Latin ones (all but the Zombiecat poster), and I can see using any number of these tools to help students engage with Latin on a level beyond what might be presented in the textbook. If I can make Latin fun for my students, they'll do better at it.

If anyone would like to know what the Latin in any of these says, let me know in a comment!

Thing 8: Coming Soon To An Internet Near You

The movie poster you see above was generated with one of the many Flickr toys at BigHugeLabs. I don't necessarily think that Flickr itself would be terribly useful for my students, but if wanted to let them play a little bit I might allow them to make their own movie posters, magazine covers, or whatever using tools similar to the ones I just linked to - in Latin, of course. I will definitely have to remember BigHugeLabs for my personal use, though, as playing with digital photos is already something I enjoy doing.

Thing 7: I'm in ur internet, updatin mah blog.

Okay, so call me a dork (everyone does), but I don't think lolcats will ever not be funny to me. Some of them are less funny than others, but I can't help but giggle a little bit when I see a picture of a cat doing something odd, with a caption in a bizarre pidgin English. It's not just cats, of course (the lolrus gained internet fame for a while, for example), but cats are weird anyway, so it's easier to get funny pictures of them.

Anyway, when it came time to explore Flickr, I decided to embrace the full internet experience and search on the tag "lolcat." Several pages in I found this pic, which I thought was appropriate given the nature of this class:

The lolcat version of this picture is by kbaird on Flickr, and is taken from an actual cat photo by slava. Here's a link to kbaird's pic: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kevlar/1152595430/

I am personally a Photobucket user, and have been for years, so I wasn't interested in creating a Flickr account I'd never use, but just for fun, here's something from my Photobucket - a pic of last year's jack-o-lantern:

Thing 6: Pandora Radio Gets Free Advertising

I'm so pleased that Pandora got a "best of Web 2.0" award. I love Pandora, and have been recommending it to people for at least a year.

Here's how Pandora Radio works:

1. Create an account. This is the Web 2.0 component, as far as I can tell.
2. Enter the name of a song or an artist you like.
3. Pandora then harnesses the awesome power of the Music Genome Project to identify the key characteristics of that song or artist and creates a random playlist of other songs that it thinks you will like. It saves these characteristics as a "station," which you can name whatever you want (my main two are "Ska-tastic" and "Awesome Metal!")
4. As you listen, you can fine-tune your station by telling Pandora you like a particular song, in which case it will adjust the "seeds" for your station, or you don't like a song, in which case it will never play it again on that station. You can also "shelve" a song for month if you're tired of it or ban artists from a station entirely.

I've only rarely seen Pandora get it wrong and play something I don't like, and that's usually when I'm listening to something reasonably mainstream (i.e. generic) or difficult to pin down (e.g. They Might Be Giants or Phish).

As you listen, you can also click varous parts of the UI (that's User Interface) to get more information such as artist bios, album reviews, and even links to buy song or albums through iTunes or Amazon. You can also share your stations with friends if they also have an account.

Recently, Pandora instituted a "pay to listen" policy, but it's not that bad. Every user can listen to 40 hours/month for free. After that, it costs $0.99 to listen as much as you want for the rest of the month.

Anyway, I don't see that there'd be much use for Pandora academically, except maybe in a Music class, to play with identifying types of music people might not be exposed to otherwise. But as a personal music tool, I've been a fan for a long time, and will recommend it to anyone.

Thing 5: In Which I Show My Inner Curmudgeon

From Wikipedia's article on Web 2.0:

Critics such as Andrew Keen argue that Web 2.0 has created a cult of digital narcissism and amateurism, which undermines the notion of expertise by allowing anybody, anywhere to share (and place undue value upon) their own opinions about any subject and post any
kind of content regardless of their particular talents, knowledgeability, credentials, biases or possible hidden agendas. He states that the core assumption of Web 2.0, that all opinions and user-generated content are equally valuable and relevant is misguided, and is instead "creating an endless digital forest of mediocrity: uninformed political commentary, unseemly home videos, embarrassingly amateurish music, unreadable poems, essays and novels," also
stating that Wikipedia is full of "mistakes, half truths and misunderstandings".

To use some internet slang, QFT. That's "Quoted For Truth," to the uninitiated.

I've been trying to get my head around Web 2.0 - not as a concept, mind you, but what exactly the point is supposed to be. Most of the Web 2.0 tools I've encountered are neat tricks with some underlying technology that will probably SOMEDAY be really handy, but right now they're digital parlor tricks with silly names.

Add to Keen's criticism the fact that these tools are not going to be for everyone until everyone can afford internet access and a powerful enough machine to utilize it fully, and you get - in my opinion - the global information technology equivalent of the Segway. It's touted as revolutionizing the way we do things, but though the underlying technology is impressive, the masses don't see that part. We see the end-user part, and often have to ask: "That's neat - but what's it good for?"

Or, "I don't have internet access at home."

Or, "My computer can't run the required plugins."

And so on.

I know early adopters drive technology, but I don't think we should let technology drive the bus. Yes, students can enrich their education with the internet, but we should not allow the internet to further wedge open the gap between haves and have-nots.

Additionally, I don't see the virtue of technology for its own sake. The "classroom drawing" requirement for this class, for instance, has got me scratching my head. I have to include computers in my "ideal classroom," which means I have to make up some reason to have in-class computer time. At least for my part, I can't think of much of anything my students would do with a computer in class where the time wouldn't be better spent presenting material or answering questions. I do think it'd be useful for all teachers to have a setup similar to what we see in APSU classrooms, with one computer and an A/V setup that includes a smart board and a projector, but that's got nothing to do with "Web 2.0," and frankly it seems to me that many school systems can't afford to go even THAT far.

Thing 4, or, How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Peanut Gallery

Without comments from readers, blogging is just shouting into the void. There's nothing wrong with shouting into the void sometimes, of course. Sometimes you've just gotta shout, and the void doesn't mind. But that's not really the purpose of a blog. Not if you're doing it right.

Comments from readers allow the blogger to connect with other people, and allow those people to connect with each other. I have very dear friends (and one ex-girlfriend, as it happens) who I got to know in the blogosphere, but even beyond that, the basic idea is that blog commenting brings like-minded (or at least "like-interested") people together to share ideas.

Having never read a blog about blogging (a metablog, perhaps?), I was interested to read the thoughts of others on the ins and outs of commenting. I didn't necessarily learn anything, having found my own way to blogging years ago, but to see it all written down like that was new to me. I did note with interest ProBlogger's observation that commentary increases when there are rules in place as to what's acceptable and what isn't - a phenomenon I've seen in action quite recently on one of the fora I frequent - and I chuckled a little at CoolCatTeacher's description of Darth Commenter. I know that's a real thing, again from my forum experience more than blogging, but referring to "the lightsaber of unkindness" appeals to my geekier side (it's the upper 95% of me, if you're wondering).

Thus far I have only commented on one blog for this assignment. I posted a comment on Emma's blog (Burton's Blog) in which she mused on the word "blog" itself. I kind of picked Emma at random to start with, but the subject appealed to the language nerd in me, so I commented on that. I love etymology, even of modern not-a-real-word words like "blog," so I took the opportunity to explain the origin of the word.

I'll update this post as I leave more comments.

Update #1, 10-9-09: By now I am following the blogs of four of my classmates, and have just now posted a comment in Jessica's blog (Watson Wisdom) in which I posited that perhaps certain technological statistics bear further scrutiny before we get too excited about them.

Update #2, 10-16-09: I have just left a comment in Anita's blog (Ms. Hicks Has Fun!). She was talking about some of the mental obstacles she personally faces in the blog-commenting arena, and I said in effect that it's not a big deal and we all go through that stuff sometimes. I had my supportive hat on, I suppose. I hope nobody gets used to it, though - my "insufferable jackass" hat fits so much better. ;)

Update #3, 11-29-09: The final update. Through the fog and haze of this dreadful cold and the medicine I'm taking to fight it, I have rallied forth to leave some more comments. That sounded more heroic in my head.

Anyway, I left a comment on David's blog (Reflections of a Catalyst) complimenting him on his attitude. Then I left a comment on Morgan's blog (Pros and Conwell) asking what she thinks the future might hold. After that, I left a comment on Jen Ikuta's blog (Ghettokore Studios) congratulating her on the tournament she ran as a benefit event for breast cancer. Lastly, I commented on the latest article at Frankie Minus Johnny, which was sort of about the nature and benefits of thanksgiving - both the holiday and the act itself.

Thing 3: Blog - What Is It Good For?

I've been blogging on a personal level for a long time, but I don't think my students will get a lot out of my usual ramblings. No, for my students I will need new, more academically-oriented ramblings. What if my students don't have easy access to the internet, though? We're talking a lot about using Web 2.0 material and so on, but the simple fact is in many parts of the country, people don't have ready access to Web 1.0. It is easy for technophiles to forget that not everyone keeps up with the times - I myself only do so by plunging further and further into student loan debt.

With that caveat out of the way, I do think I could use this blog to enrich my students' experience. It'd be a bad idea, I think, to post mandatory class assignments online, but auxiliary stuff would be great. I can easily see posting a sort of "Latin Quote of the Week" and encouraging students to not only consider the linguistic aspects of it but also to discuss its meaning. In my own studies I have found Roman writers are surprisingly applicable in our own day and age - Cicero has a lot to say on the ethics of waging war, for example, and Catullus's poetry would ring as true with modern American teenagers as it did with ancient Romans.

There could also be a few bonus assignments posted online - "translate your favorite song into Latin," for example. Then students could not only share their results (which are bound to be entertaining), but they could help each other with tricky parts (and get my help, too) through comments.

Thing 2: De Blogis Natura

Or: "On the Nature of the Blog."

Yeah, I cheated on the word "blog," but it's not like Romans never imported words from other languages before.

Creating this blog was pretty simple. I have two others that I update semi-regularly, so this was a matter of seeing specifically how Blogger does things. I chose to call it "The Magister's Missives" because I wanted it to reflect me as a teacher (magister) and because sometimes I can't help myself with the alliteration. For the time being, I'm just identifying as "Eddie" because that's who I am, and my avatar looks like me.

I could wax philosophical about being true to myself and bla bla bla, but honestly if I had some awesome superhero name or something I'd use that. I don't. I am wot I am, and that's all wot I am - at least for the purposes of the general public. In my personal life I'm much more interesting, but that's not part of my teacher persona.

Not until I get tenure and can let myself go, at any rate. ;)

Thing 1: Reflections on Lifelong Learning

I have always considered myself a lifelong learner, even when I was so young the idea of being a lifelong anything was a little pretentious. I believe when you stop learning, you may as well just hang it up and call the funeral home to make arrangements, because you're done. That said, with the 7 1/2 Habits in mind, some are easier for me than others.

The easiest habit for me to maintain is probably the first: begin with a goal in mind. To quote a great song by Phish, "I don't wanna do anything where I don't know when to stop." If you don't know where you're going, how will you know how to get there? How will you know when you arrive? I do think, though, that "discovery" and "adventure" are worthwhile goals, and you shouldn't get so hung up on the destination that you can't enjoy the journey. Still, for most purposes, it is definitely helpful to have concrete goals in mind from the very beginning.

The hardest habit for me is the third, viewing problems as challenges. That's not to say I discourage easily, but I tend not to enjoy those sorts of challenges. Intellectually I can understand that difficulty is a great teacher, but it's different for me to feel anything other than a sense of grim determination, and that's not a pleasant way to feel. I also suspect it keeps me from learning all I could from adversity.