Matt's Blog

Plain View #10 5/27/05

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It's our tenth show. Who woulda thought we'd make it this long. Not anyone who's listened to it. Today we look back at some of the highlights and low lights of the the first 10 episodes.

Audacity continues to ball up on me, this time dropping a couple minutes of the cast. I'm in the process of putting up a replacement.

Ok, I think it's fixed.

Plain View #9 5/18/05 (Second Attempt)

Had some problems with #9. Act of God or because I did it on the new mac, who knows. I think I fixed it. Look for #10 sometime today.

Plain View #9 5/18/05

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This week's show is almost a week late in getting posted. This is due to a very busy week, and to be honest, not a lot of motivation to get this one up. To put a positive spin on it, I would say this is the most honest and gritty Plain View yet. In other words, we were tired and incoherent through out most of the show. We event went so far as to cut 7 minutes of political ramblings from the first part of the show. At any rate, in the future we will try harder to prepare for our shows.

At the Table #3

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The official poker podcast of Brendoman.com

I'd be interested in any thoughts about the cast, or my play.

Other links of note:

Card Club on Lord Admiral Radio where they say nice things about At the Table.
Music:

Eddie M and Blueshound - Gambling Blues

Bass Line Vitals - Superhero (For GWB)

Falkazone Bass - Rock on 808 (Special Bass Version)

RODJJAH - Locked Up

All available at Download.com

plainview #8 5/11/05

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Mare's List:
1) public education

Matt's List:
1) working for the man
2) the girl's special day

Links:
Jeff Oestreich Music

she said he said

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.

At the Table #2

The official poker podcast of Brendoman.com

Thanks to Mike for hosting, hopefully temporarily, the pod cast.
Mike's poker website

Audacity was giving me some trouble during production because of low disk space. So there are a couple places where the audio cuts out for a few seconds. Hope that's not too distracting.

I'd be interested in any thoughts about the cast, or my play.

Music:

Eddie M and Blueshound - Gambling Blues

Bass Kittens - GameSpot Live Theme (extended remix)

DJ Smash - Gimme Some

Natural Roots - Wind Catcher (2004)

All available at Download.com

plainview #7 5/4/05

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Mare's List:
1) job interview
2) book club - animal farm
3) bookcrossing

Matt's List:
1) viewer mail - sexy cheerleader dancing
2) education ramblings
3) political rant

Links:
http://www.bookcrossing.com/
http://onebighead.blogspot.com/
http://budtheteacher.typepad.com/bud_the_teacher/