New for the New Year

I recently found out that I can add the New York Times to my blog. I chose the "Front Page" option (although seriously considered "Books") because I thought a "current events" option makes pedagogical sense. See it at left (obviously). I do wish I could figure out how to have a shorter list of items: must be a way.

Christmas Messages

The Royal Channel on YouTube is the official website for the British Monarchy. Here's the link to Queen Elizabeth's 2007 Christmas message. Important and sincere, I think, and with an acknowledgement of technology's power.

In contrast, here's the Christmas message from the U.S. White House this year. This static written message, taken in conjunction with the President's weekly radio address, do touch on some of the same themes as Queen Elizabeth's message. The rhetorical strategies differ significantly, of course, and so the U.S. message seems much less inclusive, much less sincere, and much less moving.

That's too bad.

Community College English?

This Chronicle online article sounds familiar . . . "The Petition"
Happy Break.

Negativity

AT this time of year, negativity is the last sentiment I'd like to write about, but listening to today's MPR interview with Mitch Pearlstein of the Center for the American Experiment was *full* of negativity.

The Midmorning host Gary Eichten said Pearlstein was talking about "reforming public education." Instead, he talked about destroying public education - not that he thought anything about it was good anyway - by letting vouchers and the free market take care of the "problems" of our public educational system. He acknowledged that more money provides access to better education when he asserted that poor "black" families should get vouchers so they can send their kids to "good private" schools rather than the "poor public" schools in their neighborhoods.

So he would rather see that money go to individuals than to the public schools themselves. But the public schools could use that voucher money to reduce class size, provide more one-on-one education, and reconfigure themselves so that they have some of the characteristics of so-called successful privates.

He had nothing but bad things to say about teachers' unions, too, setting up a false dichotomy (one of many logical fallacies in his comments) between unions and "neighbors and community members." "When people see that the choice is between these two groups," he said, "they'll choose the right group."

I am SO tired of the negative public rhetoric about public education, teachers, and schools. We hear this lambasting at every level: our governor, legislators, media (including supposedly "liberal" MPR), every-day citizens. It's come to be a commonplace to say "our schools are failing," when Minnesota's public school system is one of the best in the entire country: despite the disrespect for teachers, teaching, and education for citizenry (which our founding fathers had in mind when they created a public education system).

Teaching professionals persist by and through herculean efforts and despite the constant barage of public disrespect: they're committed to their profession, their subject areas, and their students, and this commitment and achievement simply must be part of the public dialog.

Come on, teachers: let's start combatting the negative rhetoric of "failing schools" by getting vocal about our achievements despite odds, our joys tempered with sorrows, and our pride in the strong students we've nurtured.

Writing Matters

Especially technical writing and usability testing so that people who need to use a document or website can actually use it!

If you don't believe me, read this New York Times article called "Technology's Untanglers: They Make It Really Work."

Ultimate Performance

I just attended the final class meeting of a colleague - he graciously invited me to sit in on this last class of his last course of his last year teaching. He's been at it for 37 1/2 years, and he's on the top of his game.

The course was Shakespeare, the final play "The Tempest," and Ray pulled together the bard's life and work, the power of Prospero, and the power of the humanities in general when it comes to educating human beings. His "lecture" (read "performance" as he so eloquently said) inspired me and another faculty member in attendance, and perhaps even some of the students. A tour de force.

Enjoy the rest of your life, Ray. You've made a difference.

Keeping Up

It's tough managing all the interesting things to read - books, articles, newspapers, email messages, discussion list postings. It's also tough to manage all the things to watch - YouTube, movies, the cats. And then there are those "multimodal" artifacts that I both read and watch: webpages, Facebook, blogs.

I'm finding so many interconnections between the academic listservs I'm on (WMST-L and techrhet are my two most active), especially when it comes to discussing how our students use technology (most of them, anyway). One poster even said that to teenagers, 2 or three years is a generation gap. Sure, but an even bigger gap might be the one I've been living in: I remember using a computer when you couldn't see much on the screen (remember the Osborne?) or when I could watch the cursor speed greenish across a gray/black screen, stopping (throbbing!) to wait for me to type in a command (see this blog for an example). Doesn't seem that long ago, somehow, yet eons ago in other ways.

Here's an interesting take on this odd speeded-up time/gap, especially in terms of what kids are doing with communications technology/social networking (what we called "CMC" or "Computer Mediated Communication" in the old days): "The Death of Email" at Slate.com/

So the question for me now becomes, "How to teach?" Or maybe, "What to teach?" Or maybe, "What is teaching?"

And here's a random list of cool online things to make me think even more about change:
**a YouTube Video "Did You Know?"
**an online journal "Said It: Feminist News, Cuture, and Politics"
**a quasi-academic article "A Professor Pokes Fun at Copyright"
**a blog "Feminist Philosophers"