How can I be one of those teachers?

Learing to Learn

So next year I'll be teaching freshman English. At least that's what I think is going to happen. So in thinking about what I'm going to teach next year, and how I'm going to teach it, I began to think about why I'm going to teach it. This is generally dangerous ground for a teacher to tread. But I want to share some of what I came up with. (I wanted to include some diagrams, but all I had to work with was mspaint, and it seemed more trouble than it was worth. I'll use paretheses instead.)

Class consists of (assignments, discussion, and writing practice). The hope is that this leads to (good writing). To many good English teachers, this is where it ends. We feel good if we turn out good writers. Administrators would like us to focus on the next step in the process, (good writing) leading to (good test scores). This is the end they have in mind. Of course I want my kids to do well on "the test". But I don't think it's as important as many in my building. So that's where I've been. Work = Good Writing = Good Test Scores.

But as I was thinking about how to use technology in my class room, I moved beyond this a bit. The point, the pundants say, of blogs, podcasts, the variety of ways that technology lets us hook-up with one another (flickr, stumbleupon, delicious, etc.) is to create community. And from that community comes a better world.

It's fun to help students become better writers. But some days that's not enough. Now how about making the world a better place. That might be worth getting up for. And I'm not talking about some general feel good kind of "make the world a better place." I'm thinking something more concrete here.

So from (good writing) we can go a variety of directions all at once. Good Writing = Good Test Scores, but Good Writing = Good Grades. Good Writing = Self Realization/Actualization. And the one I want to focus on is Good Writing = Sharing Information/Ideas/Experiences Effectively = Building Community = Better World. Yeah there may be a missing step or two in there. Maybe someone who sees what I'm talking about can help me fill in the blanks.

That's where I'm going to stop for now. Comments welcome. More to come hopefully.

Blender settings from 180 years ago

Another of my submissions to Digg.com got promoted to the front page. Huzzah!

I found this site the other day. I'm really tempted to put one of these on my car, but I don't think I'm quite that obnoxious. If you're bold enough to order one, though, please do. You can even design your own like I did (see above).

Now, it's not that I don't support our troops. I just don't see how slapping a ribbon on my car is doing anyone any good. The cynic in me sees those ribbons as a meaningless gesture that helps people to feel better about what we've done to our men and women in the armed forces. Perhaps if I pay lip service to supporting our troops, then I'm excused from the more difficult task of being watchful of when and how are troops are sent into danger, to make sure they are not sacrificed without just cause.

All the blogs at Brendoman have switched CMSs to cut down on spam problems. Now we're all on b2evolution. I decided not to carry over the visual format of the last blog. I think I might try something new later on, when I have time.

The switch to b2evolution is officially complete. I just issued this command via ssh: rm -R mt

Movable Type is completely deleted and hopefully our problems with spam will go with it. Thanks once again to everyone who was willing to make this switch. Now that the rush to switch is over we can spend some more time customizing you evoskins. If you want to add links to your sidebar, then there's a pretty easy way to do that. I can create a second blog for you, called a linkblog. Whatever you add to that shows up in your sidebar. That's how I've done my links section and my recent media section on my site.

Here is a great puzzle game. Very challenging yet simple.

Check out these sweet screenshots of Age of Empires 3. I'm pretty excited for this game since it's been awhile since AOE 2. Rise of Nations was great and this should be even better.

[via Joystiq]