Figuring Out Life While Aging
Through Twitter, (and sorry but I can’t remember whose blog), I discovered an interesting and diverse collection of 2007 videos – one is essential to watch. Our lives depend on it, – – – and it can be used in schools to teach critical thinking. Here is the link: http://www.twistimage.com/share2007/#/Joseph-Jaffe/
I urge you to watch it and share it!
From Michael Geist’s Blog – http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/2431/125/ – how to take action – and power!
Now that I am no longer buried in teaching and marking, I can begin to read (and learn) from my favorite blogs again. Here, through a link from my favorite information disseminater, Stephen Downes, is a clear honest evaluation about the state of writing, and teaching writing, and why this is important in the overall scheme of things, by Michael Umphrey. Please read it!
How to Improve the Teaching of Writing/
For about a year and a half I’ve been working with a very bright young woman, now 14 years old. I am pleased and proud to announce that she has recently published her first novel, Amelie of the Mitesen. It is a coming-of-age story set in a fantasy world somewhat similar to that of the Metis.
I did none of the writing; I simply told her what I thought was well written, and where she needed to add more of a set-up to parts of the story. It is all her ideas and all her words.
Feel free to order a copy from Lulu.com – http://www.lulu.com/content/1151511
What the sun says in passing …
The remains of beauty.
I heard a disturbing story today from a friend. She has a Yahoo mail account, or rather, she had one. Someone hacked into it and sent emails to everyone in her contacts list. I can’t remember if she said all her files were destroyed as well; we were both rushing in different directions.
All her contacts got an email starting “Hello Dear” which her kids immediately recognized as a fraud because she never uses that kind of phrase. The email continued, telling her contacts that she was stranded in Africa, and where they could send the money she needed to get back home.
I don’t want to increase anyone’s paranoia, but that level of fraud is pretty scary. My friend is a smart lady, and she took action immediately, but it has caused her a lot of trouble and anxiety. I don’t know what would allow that kind of security breech. Does anybody know how to avoid that kind of hacking?
Lately I keep ‘seeing’ the contrasts and correspondences of current urban architecture and how it frames itself. Digital cameras entice me to practice seeing what I see.
I was sitting in my exercise Second Cup, a 20 minute walk each way, and leafing through one of the magazines – Forbes, I think, when I came across and article on a new make of computer. I could hardly get my head around the price for Zonbu, a computer.
I like the set-up, too. I’m a fan of online applications, especially free ones. I already use Firefox and Open Office, and store some of my files online in my G.Space – http://www.getgspace.com/ and in my Box account. I think the plan to use the web is very forward thinking.
This is not an advertisement and I’m not going to give up my Mac for a Zonbu just yet, but this is the future. High storage and high cost applications will be for professionals, and perhaps the first home computer. Second or third computers, and computers for students, will be Zonbu computers, or something like them.
Sometimes even cuteness has a purpose
Found through Christopher Sessums
releasethehounds – http://releasethehounds.wikispaces.com/ is a wiki aimed at teachers and showing what can be done, by teachers and by students.
Among the tools it showcases are VoiceThreads, – www.voicethread.com – YouTube, – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZfqOTWQCuA – and SlideShare, – http://www.slideshare.net/charbeck1/scribepost-119097 – all free and fairly straightforward to learn how to use. All both audio and visual.
Courtesy of the prolific and generous Stephen Downes‘s OLDaily
