Part of me is starting to act like Nick Nolte's character in The Incredible Hulk. He gets all of the Hulk's power and screams, "It's too much. Take it back...TAKE IT BACK!" The options are limitless. I feel like I could just expand educational opportunities through technology and internet useage all day long and not run out of ideas. Just today I was made aware of yet another personal publishing website that is centered on writing, thanks to Writers' Workshop student Amanda S. It seems that fanfiction.net allows fans of different works of literature, television shows, films, and even music, to become a part of the lore of their particular passion by given them an aggregate site where they can write stories in the medium of their choice, each within the domain of their favorite piece (or in other words, they can write the next chapter of the Star Wars Saga or write the next episode for Spongebob Squarepants and publish it for others to read and enjoy.
Next...I attend the second part of Rick Hengsterman (The PodFather)'s "Web 2.0: What the Wiki are We Blogging About?" (...he says that it is a working title) unleashed yet more ideas for me. While I have been pretty jiggy with YouTube.com for The American Experience class that I am teaching. We are working on putting together an anthology of students' stories about their families. Each student will get a copy at the end of the class. And then it dawns on me, as Rick is talking about students recording a WWII Veteran's 67 chapter personal account of his experiences in battle: How much more personal if students record their own stories! Names become people. Characters jump off of the page. Why? Becuase you speak differently when it is your grandmother. She is more than an old lady in a story. She is a smell. A sound. A feeling that you have when you are sick and your mom drops you off because she has to go to work. The taste of chicken soup and and giner ale.
It almost gets overwhelming. I feel like I am not going to be able to keep up and I wonder...is this how my parents' feel when I came home spouting off about e-mail in the fall of 1994? Is this how my grandmother felt when we bought and Apple //C and were able to correct what I typed without white-out? How can I keep up? Its almsot mind numbing at this point and I feel like I have seen the technology wave just finally start to gow me that I can't casually jog and keep up anymore. The next five years are going to be quite a ride!!!
2 comments:
Hey Mr. Mody... I just found your blog because of course, big english essay due tomorrow, it's not finished, yet my attention still drifts. So don't worry, that hasn't changed from last year. Although I did just refer to my gay rights persuasive essay trying to remember how to create a functional thesis. Oh well.
But must say I'm a fan of the idea of all this new interactive blogging, youtube, and podcast stuff.
English just isn't the same this year. Although Jenna, Victoria, Emily and I are still in the same class, it's just not the same. Ballston Spa misses you, Mody.
I hope Burnt Hills is treating you alright!
Hopefully I'll see you around sometime soon!
-McDonalamarama. :]
McDonalamarama!
Good to see that you are still...well, you! FYI...one of my freshmen wore the pink shirt that you, Victoria and Jenna made for me last year all day on Tuesday. I think you may have your first ModyWear customer.
Good to see that something you did in 10th grade proved useful after you left. First time for everything, and all. I am hoping once I get caught up with my grading (some things never change) I can hit the blogging/podcast world hard again. I have also been using wikispaces, which I wish I knew about last year.
Same English class for that crew two years in a row! Good thing that Jenna and Emily are silent. Is Ballestero still having a bad affect on Mansir? Some of my junior/senior class that I teach here read Soldier Boys, but didn't get it when I was talking about Dieter being shot and started saying a Ballestero-like "SHAAAAY-FUHHHH!!!!". I guess you had to be in that English class to truly appreciate it. They looked at me like I had three heads.
As for Burnt Hills, it is treating me very well. I am enjoying almost every part of the environment here. The only thing that I really miss is you guys. I keep telling myself that will all change in a few years when no one at BSpa knows who I am anymore. The kids here are great, too, but I think part of my heart will always be in BSpa.
Its also funny that I usually ran across the street almost every day to get coffee with Ms. Tsao, but I have yet to go out during my lunch once since I have been here. That's what you get when you have to create three new classes from scratch!
I am glad to see that you signed up as a youtube subscriber! You are my first one. I am hoping to have your propaganda video up when I upload my next round of them. Hope that paper went alright. It was great to hear from you. Keep in touch.
Sincerely,
PM
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