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Month: July 2008

Total 19 Posts

Amok

By • July 4, 2008 • 1 Comment

Michelle Crisafulli:

Our students know more about technology and how to use it than we educators and administrators can even imagine. Letโ€™s stop kidding ourselves; we will never catch up! And as each new generation arrives at our classroom door, we are yet further and further behind. So, I say, put the monkeys in charge of the zoo!

My comment there was deleted, so tread lightly and all that.

BTW: My comment was exhumed from the moderation pile.

MagCloud For The Masses

By • July 3, 2008 • 12 Comments

In spite of my retrograde, contrarian stance on the potential of your Internets in my classroom, I’ve gotta say that if my job description put me anywhere in the humanities next year, I’d be on MagCloud like an NECC attendant on a 1GB flash-drive embossed with an itty-bitty Pearson logo.

MagCloud: upload a PDF and they’ll print it (full color! saddle-stitched!), sell it (40 cents / page!), and distribute it.

I’m serious, people. Get your kids into publishing. Start a literary magazine. Post a call for submissions for your student body’s best photo and print material. Make a contest out of it. Use InDesign. Avoid ComicSans. Put a PDF online for free. Sell a print edition through MagCloud. Turn a profit with any price point above the 40 cents / page minimum. Forget to disclose your earnings to the IRS!

It’s in beta. Request an invite here.

Full disclosure: this post has not been sponsored by MagCloud or Pearson, though the author is willing to negotiate with both.

Postscript: I’ll be sure to let you know when my own magazine goes live โ€“

dy/av : 003 : preview

By • July 1, 2008 • 21 Comments

I have found little use for teaching as it’s depicted on t.v. or in film. I decided long ago that teaching is just too weird a profession for the literal screen treatment, something like chasing a rhino with a butterfly net. My practice has been enriched far more often by t.v. shows and movies which have nothing directly to do with teaching.

Tomorrow’s episode excerpts the t.v. show which has done more for my classroom management than any other.

Motivating Questions

  1. From my experience, new teachers hear one maxim for classroom management at the expense of all others, one which is as irrelevant as it is prevalent. Any guesses?
  2. If you had to put a new teacher’s fate in the satisfaction of a single maxim (“Never wear green,” for one hypothetical example.) what would it be?

Recommended Reading

  1. Unfit For The Grind, concerning Chalk, possibly the best teacher movie I have ever seen. Which, of course, is as faint as praise comes around here.
  2. Career Crisis #2 (of 2), concerning Freedom Writers, which I didn’t care for one little bit.
  3. The Truest Stuff I’ve Ever Watched or Written, concerning a scene from The Wire which has nothing directly to do with teaching but which has somehow formed the core of my interactions with deeply confrontational students.
  4. David Foster Wallace’s 2005 Commencement Address, my favorite author in a walk, to whom this next episode owes a debt.
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