steph's blog

Claremont Grade 11 Book club sets · Book of Negroes · Three Day Road · The Gum Thief · English 11 book club

2010-12-12T21:28:00.000-08:00

Book of Negroes

The Book of Negroes

Lawrence Hill

ThThe Book of Negroes tells the compelling story of Aminata, an African girl captured by slave traders in the late 18th century. "Meena"'s journey is tragic and remarkable. Readers become completely enthralled with her odyssey. We also learn about Britain's role in the post-Colonial America slave trade and the Black United Empire Loyalists who were awarded a colony in Nova Scotia.

"Unrolling a map of the world, I would put one finger on a dot I had drawn to represent my village of Bayo, put another finger on London and say: "I was born there, and we are here now, and I'm going to tell you all about what happened in between."

18th century (22) 2009 (24) Africa (72) African American (16) black history (12) book club (11) Canada (33) Canada Reads (17) Canadian (43) Canadian author (17) Canadian fiction (17) Canadian literature (13) England (10) fiction (139) historical (18) historical fiction (100) history (21) Nova Scotia (57)

Three Day Road

Joseph Boyden

Joseph Boyden has written a WWI novel of magnificence and splendor. Told alternately by Niska an Oji-Cree medicine woman and her nephew, Xavier Bird we learn of a side of the war of which little has been written.

When the story opens, Niska is traveling from her home in northern Ontario to reclaim her nephew, who has returned from the Great War. During the trip back to her home by canoe, Xavier relates the story of his time overseas alternately with his years growing up with his boyhood friend, Elijah Whiskeyjack. Elijah and Xavier enter the army and serve together. It soon becomes apparent to those in charge that the two are skilled shooters and they are soon utilized as snipers, aiming to eliminate their German counterparts.

Niska, at the same time, tells the story of her life, growing up in Northern Ontario and trying to maintain her life as a Cree living in the bush and depending on the earth for sustenance. Most of her relatives abandon that lifestyle and succumb to the charms of city life, which she finds reprehensible.

The author weaves the story back and forth in time and place. From the war-torn fields of France to the fields and streams of northern Ontario we follow the story of the two life-long friends, whose relationship undergoes tremendous strain as Elijah becomes more and more addicted to both morphine and war. Boyden does a masterful job of creating and nurturing that metaphor. The two friends grow further and further apart as the strains of combat overcome them both. On page 285 Xavier remarks:

“Elijah seems to have no more need for food. He is thin and hard like a rope. He is a shadow that slips in and out of darkness. He is someone I no longer know”

In the end, it is Niska who has to use all her skills to save Xavier from addiction, from loneliness, and from himself. Prose that sings and a compulsively readable narrative combine for a mesmerizing read. Highly recommended.

Awards

· 2005 – Books in Canada First Novel Award – Winner

2006 – Canada Reads – Shortlisted

· 2006 – Evergreen Award – Winner

· 2005 – Governor General's Literary Award: Fiction – Shortlisted

· 2005 – Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize – Winner

aboriginal (12) book club (6) Canada (32) Canada Reads (4) Canadian (56) Canadian author (12) Canadian fiction (17) Canadian literature (14) Canadiana (4) Cree (22) fiction (107) First Nations (19) friendship (6) historical fiction (32) history (5) literary fiction (4) native (6) Native Americans (5) novel (13) own (6) read (6) Roman (7) snipers (8) TBR (8) unread (7) war (30) WWI (104) WWI fiction (5) WWII (4)

· The Gum Thief

Douglas Coupland

Douglas Coupland, like Chuck Palahniuk for example, is a ‘Marmite’ author – you either love him or hate him. Those that like his work have to consume everything that he produces and others, like me, avoid everything having never tried it. How could I not enjoy a novel that deals with the delights of working in retail? especially a retailer that provides its employees with red shirts as uniform! Two employees at a Staples superstore develop a friendship through the medium of the written word. Roger, the alcoholic, divorced frustrated novelist and Bethany the confused Goth communicate through a series of diary entries; never acknowledging each other in the real world. This superbly humorous and touching novel deals with the frustrations and disappointments of modern life and shows that friendships can develop even when all seams lost. I now consider myself a convert and will be reading more of his work.

2007 (7) 2008 (13) Canada (11) Canadian (32) Canadian literature (11) comedy (4) contemporary (6) contemporary fiction (7) coupland (4) diary (12) epistolary (5) fiction (139) friendship (5) goth (5) humor (16) letters (6) metafiction (4) novel (20) own (9) pop culture (5) read (14) read in 2007 (7) relationships (9) signed (8) Staples (14) TBR (6) unread (10) Vancouver (4) writers (4)

· 20 Chickens for a Saddle

Robyn Scott

An exquisitely rendered portrait of an African childhood from an astonishing new talent When Robyn Scott ’s parents decide to uproot their young family from New Zealand and move to a converted cowshed in rural Botswana, life for six-year-old Robyn changed forever. In this wild and new landscape excitement can be found around every corner, and with each misadventure she and her family learn more about the quirks, charms, and challenges of living in one of Africa’s most remarkable and beautiful countries as it stands on the brink of an epidemic. When AIDS rears its head, the Scotts witness the early appearances of a disease that will devastate this peaceful and prosperous country. Told with clear-eyed unsentimental affection, Twenty Chickens for a Saddle is about a family’s enthusiasm for each other and the world around them, with the essence of Africa infusing every page.

Wise, intoxicating and poignant. It reminded me very much of one of my favourite books by Gerald Durrell – My Family And Other Animals

1980s (1) 2008 (5) 90s (1) adult (1) Africa (35) AIDS (4) Alex (1) animals (1) autobiography (6) biography (17) Botswana (30) Charlotte (1) childhood (3) Daniel (1) family (5) female (1) history (1) homeschool (3) humor (1) memoir (32) memories (1) New Zealand (1) non-fiction (15) places (1) South Africa (1) teen (1) travel (2) women (1) young adult (1) Zimbabwe

· Funny Boy

Shyam Selvadurai

Set in Sri Lanka, this is a series of events in a young boy's life, looking at politics, race relations and sexuality. At the start of the book, Arjie is very young, so is often overlooked by those around him, so he makes a great observer, though we as the reader often can connect the dots quicker than him as a narrator.

Through Arjie and his extended family, we get a real insider's view on life in Colombo in the late 70s and early 80s, told in hindsight, but from what he saw: Radha Aunty falling in love with a Sinhalese man, the return from Australia of a journalist Daryl Uncle (his Amma's former boyfriend), the arrival of Jeganm the son of his father's childhood friend.

However, we cannot forget Arjie and this important stage in his life, from child to adholescent. In the first chapter, we see a young boy preferring to play with the girls rather than the boys, being called "funny" by his family, as they see his sexuality before he understands it. Through the book, we see him struggling to understand his sexuality, as well as his ethnicity as a Sinhalese-speaking Tamil and his position in the family. This was a really good book to get a look at Sri Lanka, we all see the news with reports of the Tamil Tigers, bombs in Colombo, but this book helped me understand the situation a bit more and inspired me to find out more. ( )

1990s (3) 20th century (6) Asia (4) Canada (3) Canadian (13) Canadian literature (7) Canadiana (3) coming of age (17) family (3) fiction (76) gay (26) gay fiction (5) gay literature (5) gay men (3) gay/lesbian (3) glbt (6) historical fiction (3) homosexuality (5) India (3) LGBT (5) literary fiction (3) literature (5) novel (14) postcolonial (6) queer (14) queer lit (2) read (7) South Asian (5) Sri Lanka (47) Sri Lankan (4)

A Star Called Henry

Roddy Doyle

MY NAME IS HENRY SMART!

It's a cry you will read over and over in this book, a childhood expression of someone trying to define his own identity in a society and a family that doesn't take him seriously. Henry's perspective on English Imperialism and the Irish Revolution is magnificent - his realizations about the corrupt nature of leading Irish heroes, and his recognition that as a footsoldier in the revolution he is simply hamburger to his leaders, must be a bit of a shock to Irish patriots. But on many levels it is less about ireland than the corrupting nature of power and adulation. I've read every word Doyle has published. But this one hit me like a ton of bricks. Powerful and poignant.

1910s (5) 20th century (18) coming of age (6) Doyle (9) Dublin (24) Easter Rising (11) fiction (268) guerilla (4) historical (13) historical fiction (40) history (16) IRA (14) Ireland (117) Irish (84) Irish fiction (24) Irish History (5) Irish literature (21) literary fiction (5) literature (13) novel (58) politics (6) poverty (11) read (12) revolution (7) Roddy Doyle (8) Roman (6) romance (5) TBR (13) unread (13) war (14)

·Life of Pi

Yann Martel

A preposterous but utterly enchanting story about a young Indian boy adrift in a lifeboat with his good friend, a Bengal tiger, and some other zoo animals.

BY SUZY HANSEN

"Jesus, Mary, Muhammad and Vishnu, how good to see you, Richard Parker!" Pi Patel cries when he sees an old friend struggling aboard his lifeboat. Pi's scrambling of faiths probably won't win him the affection of any of those religious figures. But then again, in Yann Martel's "Life of Pi," our hero Pi (yes, as in 3.14, though his full name is Piscine, the French word for "pool") has just survived a sinking ship in the Pacific Ocean and witnessed the death of his family. Anyone in his position would be rejoicing to multiple gods at the sight of an old friend -- even if this feisty Richard Parker character is actually a 450-pound Bengal tiger.

And anyone facing Pi's outrageous plight -- a skittish zebra, vicious hyena and lumbering orangutan join the castaway party for what ends up being 227 days adrift in the (large) lifeboat -- would need the help of all the gods they could summon from the skies. Martel's "Life of Pi" might sound ridiculous, but by the time Martel throws Pi out to sea, his quirkily magical and often hilarious vision has already taken hold. (After all, this is, as Martel promises us, a "story that will make you believe in God.") Martel frames the novel as the reminiscences of an older Pi as recorded by the author and intermittently offers his own observations of this curious Indian man. The device works: Martel is so mesmerized by Pi that one can't help but be enchanted too.

As Pi explains, in his Indian hometown of Pondicherry, the local priest, pandit and imam, as well as Pi's parents, had many objections to his penchant for collecting religions. But as Pi reasons in his typically idiosyncratic way, "Hindus, in their capacity for love, are indeed hairless Christians, just as Muslims, in the way they see God in everything, are bearded Hindus, and Christians, in their devotion to God, are hat-wearing Muslims." When he observes how Muslims pray, he says, "Why, Islam is nothing but an easy sort of exercise ... Hot-weather yoga for Bedouins." His naiveté can be silly, but ultimately it's an open-mindedness, a way of turning things upside down to see them differently, that serves him well.

Eventually, Pi's family flees an unstable India, where his father runs a zoo, heading for Canada, and bringing various animals along with them on a Japanese cargo ship. It's on this voyage that their happy ark mysteriously sinks. Luckily, Pi possesses a nonreligious kind of understanding and faith that allows him to survive on the lifeboat with four animals not known for their compatibility. Pi's father taught him that the most dangerous creature in the zoo is "the animal as seen through human eyes ... It is an animal that is 'cute,' 'friendly,' 'loving,' 'devoted,' 'merry,' 'understanding.'"

Yet, while Pi knows about the ferocity of the beasts, he's also familiar with the quirks of the animal kingdom that often befuddle humans peering in from outside. Sometimes goats can get along just fine with rhinos. A mouse can live with vipers: "While other mice dropped in the terrarium disappeared within two days, this little brown Methusalah built itself a nest, stored the grains we gave it in various hideaways and scampered about in plain sight of the snakes." Likewise, if handled carefully, a ravenous and terrified Bengal tiger will spare the life of the only human in sight.

Pi's lost-at-sea story never drags. The slow journey is spiked with fascinating survival scenes, as when Pi and Richard Parker meet a school of flying fish: "They came like a swarm of locusts. It was not only their numbers; there was also something insect-like about the clicking, whirring sound of their wings." Pi attempts to catch the fish for food; the tiger is better at it: "Many were eaten live and whole, struggling wings beating in his mouth ... It was not so much the speed that was impressive as the pure animal confidence, the total absorption in the moment."

Pi's story is so extraordinary that when he finally makes it ashore, he offers a comparatively boring version of the tale to two researchers, acknowledging that humans don't have much of a taste for the miraculous. This played-down version makes Pi's true tale, thanks to Martel's beautifully fantastical and spirited rendering, all the more tempting to believe.

·S Stupid White Men

Michael Moore

In the winter of 2002, Stupid White Men took America -- and the world -- by storm. Tired and skeptical of George W. Bush's high approval ating, frightened by the implications of the Enron scandal -- and generally just looking for a voice of honest dissent in the thick atmosphere of jingoism that followed 9/11 -- book buyers from coast to coast swiftly embraced Michael Moore's in-your-face anti-Bush-era manifesto, making it one of the bestselling nonfiction books of the year. With an unerring eye for greed, hypocrisy, and corruption, Michael Moore takes on the whole ugly mess of America at the dawn of the twenty-first century. Whether he's demanding U.N. action to overthrow the Bush Family Junta or calling on African Americans to place whites only signs over the entrances of unfriendly businesses, Stupid White Men is a pitch-perfect skewering of our culture of Malfeasance and Mediocrity.

· Memoirs of a Geisha

Arthur Golden

In this literary tour de force, novelist Arthur Golden enters a remote and shimmeringly exotic world.
For the protagonist of this peerlessly observant first novel is Sayuri, one of Japan's most celebrated geisha, a woman who is both performer and courtesan, slave and goddess.

We follow Sayuri from her childhood in an impoverished fishing village, where in 1929, she is sold to a representative of a geisha house, who is drawn by the child's unusual blue-grey eyes. From there she is taken to Gion, the pleasure district of Kyoto.
..She is nine years old.
In the years that follow, as she works to pay back the price of her purchase, Sayuri will be schooled in music and dance, learn to apply the geisha's elaborate makeup, wear elaborate kimono, and care for a coiffure so fragile that it requires a special pillow.
She will also acquire a magnanimous tutor and a venomous rival.
Surviving the intrigues of her trade and the upheavals of war, the resourceful Sayuri is a romantic heroine on the order of Jane Eyre and Scarlett O'Hara.

And "Memoirs of a Geisha" is a triumphant work - suspenseful, and utterly persuasive.

“We lead our lives like water flowing down a hill, going more or less in one direction until we splash into something that forces us to find a new course.”

“Being sent out into the world isn't necessarily the same as leaving your home behind you.”

“This is why dreams can be such dangerous things: they smolder on like fire does, and sometimes consume us completely”
Chiyo

· Bel Canto

Ann Patchett

Somewhere in South America, at the home of the country's vice president, a lavish birthday party is being held in honor of the powerful businessman Mr. Hosokawa. Roxanne Coss, opera's most revered soprano, has mesmerized the international guests with her singing. It is a perfect evening -- until a band of gunwielding terrorists takes the entire party hostage. But what begins as a panicked, life-threatening scenario slowly evolves into something quite different, a moment of great beauty, as terrorists and hostages forge unexpected bonds and people from different continents become compatriots, intimate friends, and lovers.

“If someone loves you for what you can do then it's flattering, but why do you love them? If someone loves you for who you are then they have to know you, which means you have to know them.”

Roxanne

· Fugitive Pieces

anne Michaels

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year Winner of the Lannan Literary Fiction Award Winner of the Guardian Fiction Award In 1940, Jakob Beer, a seven-year-old boy, bursts from the mud of a war-torn Polish city, where he has buried himself to hide from Nazi soldiers who have killed his family. Though he should have died with his family, he has not only survived but been rescued by a Greek geologist. With this electrifying backdrop, Anne Michaels propels us into her rapturously acclaimed novel of loss, memory, history, and redemption. Michaels lets us witness Jakob's transformation from a half-wild casualty of the Holocaust to an artis who extracts meaning from the abyss. Filled with mysterious symmetries and rendered in heart-stopping prose, Fugitive Pieces is a triumphant work.

Quotes

“The shadow past is shaped by everything that never happened. Invisible it melts the present like rain through karst. A biography of longing. It steers us like magnetism, a spirit torque. This is how one becomes undone by a smell, a word, a place, the photo of a mountain of shoes. By love that closes its moth before calling a name.”

In Search of April Raintree

The Two young sisters are taken from their home and family. Powerless to change their fortunes, they are separated, and each put into different foster homes. Yet over the years, the bond between them grows. As they each make their way in a society that is, at times, indifferent, hostile, and violent, one embraces her Metis identity, while the other tries to leave it behind. In the end, out of tragedy, comes an unexpected legacy of triumph and reclamation.

· A Complicated Kindness

Sixteen-year-old Nomi Nickel longs to hang out with Lou Reed and Marianne Faithfull in New York City’s East Village. Instead she’s trapped in East Village, Manitoba, a small town whose population is Mennonite: “the most embarrassing sub-sect of people to belong to if you’re a teenager.” East Village is a town with no train and no bar whose job prospects consist of slaughtering chickens at the Happy Family Farms abattoir or churning butter for tourists at the pioneer village. Ministered with an iron fist by Nomi’s uncle Hans, a.k.a. The Mouth of Darkness, East Village is a town that’s tall on rules and short on fun: no dancing, drinking, rock ’n’ roll, recreational sex, swimming, make-up, jewellery, playing pool, going to cities or staying up past nine o’clock. As the novel begins, Nomi struggles to cope with the back-to-back departures three years earlier of Tash, her beautiful and mouthy sister, and Trudie, her warm and spirited mother. She lives with her father, Ray, a sweet yet hapless schoolteacher whose love is unconditional but whose parenting skills amount to benign neglect. Father and daughter deal with their losses in very different ways. Ray, a committed elder of the church, seeks to create an artificial sense of order by reorganizing the city dump late at night. Nomi, on the other hand, favours chaos as she tries to blunt her pain through “drugs and imagination.”
Together they live in a limbo of unanswered questions. Nomi’s first person narrative shifts effortlessly between the present and the past. Within the present, Nomi goes through the motions of finishing high school while flagrantly rebelling against Mennonite tradition. She hangs out on Suicide Hill, hooks up with a boy named Travis, goes on the Pill, wanders around town, skips class and cranks Led Zeppelin. But the past is never far from her mind as she remembers happy times with her mother and sister — as well as the painful events that led them to flee town. Throughout, in a voice both defiant and vulnerable, she offers hilarious and heartbreaking reflections on life, death, family, faith and love. Eventually Nomi’s grief — and a growing sense of hypocrisy — cause her to spiral ever downward to a climax that seems at once startling and inevitable. But even when one more loss is heaped on her piles of losses, Nomi maintains hope and finds the imagination and willingness to envision what lies beyond. Few novels in recent years have generated as much excitement as A Complicated Kindness . Winner of the Governor General’s Award and a Giller Prize Finalist, Miriam Toews’s third novel has earned both critical acclaim and a long and steady position on our national bestseller lists. In the Globe and Mail , author Bill Richardson writes the following: “There is so much that’s accomplished and fine. The momentum of the narrative, the quality of the storytelling, the startling images, the brilliant rendering of a time and place, the observant, cataloguing eye of the writer, her great grace. But if I had to name Miriam Toews’s crowning achievement, it would be the creation of Nomi Nickel, who deserves to take her place beside Daisy Goodwill Flett, Pi Patel and Hagar Shipley as a brilliantly realized character for whom the reader comes to care, okay, comes to love.”

“A few weeks ago my uncle came over to borrow my dad’s socket set and when he asked my dad how he was my dad said oh, unexceptional. Living quietly with my disappointments. And how are you?I never know if he’s joking when he says things like that or not.”
Nomi

· Water For Elephants

Sara Gruen

As a young man, Jacob Jankowski was tossed by fate onto a rickety train that was home to the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth. It was the early part of the Great Depression, and for Jacob, now ninety, the circus world he remembers was both his salvation and a living hell. A veterinary student just shy of a degree, he was put in charge of caring for the circus menagerie. It was there that he met Marlena, the beautiful equestrian star married to August, the charismatic but twisted animal trainer. And he met Rosie, an untrainable elephant who was the great gray hope for this third-rate traveling show. The bond that grew among this unlikely trio was one of love and trust, and, ultimately, it was their only hope for survival.

“I want her to melt into me, like butter on toast. I want to absorb her and walk around for the rest of my days with her encased in my skin.”
Jacob about Marlena

· The Englishman’s Boy

Guy Vanderhaeghe

Winner of the Governor General's Award Counterpointing the stories of the legendary Western cowboy Shorty McAdoo and Harry Vincent, the ambitious young screenwriter commissioned to retell his story in 1920s Hollywood, this novel reconstructs an epic journey through Montana into the Canadian plains, by a group of men pursuing their stolen horses. The Englishman's Boy intelligently and creatively depicts an American West where greed and deception are tempered by honor and strength. As Richard Ford has noted, "Vanderhaeghe is simply a wonderful writer. The Englishman's Boy , spanning as it does two countries, two centuries, two views of history — the Canadian Wild West as 'imagined' by Hollywood — is a great accomplishment. Readers, I think, will find this book irresistible."

· Three Cups of Tea

One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace...One School at a Time

by Greg Mortenson ,David Oliver Relin

The astonishing, uplifting story of a real-life Indiana Jones and his humanitarian campaign to use education to combat terrorism in the Taliban’s backyard. Anyone who despairs of the individual’s power to change lives has to read the story of Greg Mortenson, a homeless mountaineer who, following a 1993 climb of Pakistan’s treacherous K2, was inspired by a chance encounter with impoverished mountain villagers and promised to build them a school. Over the next decade he built fifty-five schools—especially for girls—that offer a balanced education in one of the most isolated and dangerous regions on earth. As it chronicles Mortenson’s quest, which has brought him into conflict with both enraged Islamists and uncomprehending Americans, Three Cups of Tea combines adventure with a celebration of the humanitarian spirit.

“I don't do what I'm doing to fight terror, Mortenson said, measuring his words, trying not to get himself kicked out of the Capitol. I do it because I care about kids. Fighting terror is maybe seventh or eighth on my list of priorities. But working over there, I've learned a few things. I've learned that terror doesn't happen because some group of people somewhere like Pakistan or Afghanistan simply decide to hate us. It happens because children aren't being offered a bright enough future that they have a reason to choose life over death.”

· The Patron Saint of Liars

Ann Patchett

St. Elizabeth's is a home for unwed mothers in the 1960s. Life there is not unpleasant, and for most, it is temporary. Not so for Rose, a beautiful, mysterious woman who comes to the home pregnant but not unwed. She plans to give up her baby because she knows she cannot be the mother it needs. But St. Elizabeth's is near a healing spring, and when Rose's time draws near, she cannot go through with her plans, not all of them. And she cannot remain forever untouched by what she has left behind ... and who she has become in the leaving.

· Beijing Confidential

Jan Wong has returned to Beijing. Her quest: to find someone she encountered briefly in 1973, and whose life she was certain she had ruined forever. In the early 70s, Jan Wong travelled from Canada to become one of only two Westerners permitted to study at Beijing University. One day a young stranger, Yin Luoyi, asked for help in getting to the United States. Wong, then a starry-eyed Maoist, immediately reported Yin to the authorities. Thirty-three years on, and more than a decade after the publication of her bestselling Red China Blues, Jan Wong revisits the Chinese capital to begin her search for the person who has haunted her conscience. She wants to apologize, to somehow make amends. At the very least, she wants to discover whether Yin survived. As Jan Wong hunts through the city, she finds herself travelling back through the decades, back to her experiences in the Cultural Revolution, to places that were once of huge importance to her. She has changed, of course, but not as much as Beijing. One of the world’s most ancient cities is now one of its most modern. The neon signs no longer say “Long Live Chairman Mao” but instead tout Mary Kay cosmetics and Kentucky Fried Chicken. Places she once knew have vanished, bulldozed into oblivion and replaced by avant-garde architecture, trendy bars, and sleek condos. The people she once knew have changed, too, for better or for worse. Memories are everywhere. By searching out old friends and acquaintances, Jan Wong uncovers tantalizing clues about the woman she wronged. She realizes her deepest fears and regrets were justified. But Yin herself remains elusive–until the day she phones Jan Wong. Emotionally powerful and rich with detail, Beijing Confidential weaves together three distinct stories–Wong’s journey from remorse to redemption, Yin’s journey from disgrace to respectability, and Beijing’s stunning journey from communism to capitalism.

· Mao’s Last Dancer

From a desperately poor village in northeast China, at age eleven, Li Cunxin was chosen by Madame Mao's cultural delegates to be taken from his rural home and brought to Beijing, where he would study ballet. In 1979, the young dancer arrived in Texas as part of a cultural exchange, only to fall in love with America-and with an American woman. Two years later, through a series of events worthy of the most exciting cloak-and-dagger fiction, he defected to the United States, where he quickly became known as one of the greatest ballet dancers in the world. This is his story, told in his own inimitable voice.

References for Daredevil: Comic to Film

2008-10-30T15:25:00.000-07:00

Brubaker, Ed. "Interview with Ed Brubaker." DaredevilManWithout Fear.com June 2006 October 24, 2008 ://www.manwithoutfear.com/interviews/ddINTERVIEW.shtml?id=Brubaker>.

Callahan, Timothy. "CBR Reviews." Comic Book Resources Oct. 26 2008 30 Oct 2008 ://comicbookresources.com/?page=user_review&id=431>.

Daniels, Les. MARVEL Five Fabulous Decades of the Worlds' Greatest Comics. 1st American ed.. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1993.

"Daredevil (Matthew Murdock)." Marvel Universe: the Official Marvel Wiki . 28 Oct 2008 http://www.marvel.com/universe/Main_Page

De Bliek, Augie. "Pipeline At Five." Comic Book Resources #262Jun 18, 2002 25 Oct 2008 ://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=14130>.

De Bliek Jr.,Augie. “Daredevil Yellow”. Pipeline at Five A Long Look Back. Issue #262 http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=14130

Ebert, Roger. "Daredevil." rogerebert.com 14 Feb. 2003 28 Oct 2008 ://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20030214/REVIEWS/302140301/1023>.

Johnson, Mark Steven. Daredevil-Director's Cut. 20th Century Fox, Regency Enterprises and Marvel Enterprises, 2003.

Kozlovic, Anton Karl. "Spiderman, Superman---What's the Difference?." Kritikos Volume 3July 2006 25 Oct 2008 ://mailer.fsu.edu/~nr03/garnet-nr03/spiderman-superman.htm>.

Leo, Vince. "Daredevil." Qwipster's Movie Reviews. 2003. 28 Oct 2008 ://www.qwipster.net/daredevil.htm>.

Mithra, Kuljit. ""What did it mean to you personally and professionally to work on Daredevil?"." Daredevil manwithoutdear.com. 2005. 29Oct 2008 ://www.manwithoutfear.com/interviews/ddINTERVIEW.shtml?id=40th>.

Schumer, Arlen. The Silver Age of Comic Book Art. 1st American ed. Portland, Oregon: Collectors Press, 2003.

Turan, Kenneth. "Movie Review 'Daredevil'." Los Angeles Times The Guide 14 Feb. 2003 25Oct 2008 ://www.calendarlive.com/movies/reviews/cl-et-turan14feb14,0,5511955.story>.

Comic to Film Sequence

2008-10-30T14:28:00.006-07:00

As I've brought together the various pieces of this project I seem to have played with time and the natural order in the blog land. In an ideal world it would be clear that the reading order should be:

Transition
Daredevil--In the Beginning
Daredevil Today---Comic Book Version
Daredevil--The Movie Reviews
Daredevil--The Director's Cut
A Second Chance for a Daredevil Movie?
Contrasts and Conclusions
References

I look forward to comments and questions!

Daredevil - The Director's Cut

2008-10-30T14:15:00.000-07:00

The second chance for the movie comes with the Director's cut. This DVD adds about 30 minutes to the film. According to Director, Mark Steven Johnson, the additional footage provides a lot of backstory that is meaningful to comic book fans. The changes from the original theatrical release moved the PG-13 rating to an R. Evidently, additional brutality and strong language were to blame. I wonder about the different impact of seeing 'hand-drawn still pictures' of violence compared with a movie version, with (somewhat) ordinary humans, spewing copious amounts of blood, and most disturbing of all, complete with exaggerated sound effects.

The Director's cut of the Daredevil movie fills in a lot of missing comic book essentials--- but still can't reveal all. Events are compressed. According to the editor/producer, the intellectual content is not as important as pace."For example, Elektra seems to be someone Matt meets for the first time at the coffee shop, but in the comic book they first meet in highschool. Even in the Director's Cut it isn't explained why she is such a great fighter, nor why she seems to have a ritualistic dance in preparation for going after Bullseye--the man who killed her father.

The Director's Cut
Because if "Daredevil" seemed serious for a comic book, it is uninterestingly cartoonish for a movie. Its villains, from Michael Clarke Duncan's plus-sized Kingpin through Colin Farrell's over-the-top Bullseye, have a shopworn air about them, and the script's dialogue and situations have generic written all over them. That "Daredevil" should turn out to be neither daring nor devilish is somewhat of a surprise because filmmaker Johnson has been a washed-in-the-blood fan since he was a child. Not the obvious choice because of the nature of his previous work (writing both "Grumpy" and "Grumpier Old Men" and writing and directing the egregiously sentimental "Simon Birch"), he impressed the producers with his knowledge of and zeal for the material. Maybe it's that zeal that turned out to be the problem. Maybe the comic book mythos is so firmly entrenched in Johnson's head that he doesn't see that his screen version is only sporadically involving and not really compelling to those without that previous interest. This is Daredevil's world, after all, where things do not have a habit of working out as planned.

Another point that intrigued me in the movie was the Catholic element. In the Director's cut version, there is a scene with a mystery nun kissing young Matt on the forehead as he recovers in hospital. Is this a Madonna-mother-of-a-saviour moment? The priest who offers Matt/Daredevil an opportunity for confession intrigues me, too. Why doesn't Matt take him up on it? Wouldn't it be a great relief to share this burden of vengeance in the name of justice with at least one other person who would keep his secret? Johnson (the director) explains his original vision of the movie using phrases like "All that tortured Catholic stuff which is so great" and Frank Miller told me you're breaking my heart when you cut out the scenes with the nun" who seems to watch over both the child Matt Murdock at the time of his accident, and grown Matt as he attends church, but refuses confession

Contrasts and Conclusion

2008-10-30T06:54:00.000-07:00

After diving into the world of the Daredevil comic book fan and immersing myself in responses to the movie I've learned that many people are passionate about Daredevil, his world and the many interpretations of it all.

The strength of the traditional comic book format is the room it provides for backstory. The detailed universe is complex and flexible.The characters move forward and backward in time at the whim of the creators. Multiple writers and artists have different eras---with fans downright fanatical about particular writers and artists, (e.g. creators, writer-editor Stan Lee, artist Bill Everett, Wally Wood, John Romita Sr., Gene Colan and Frank Miller). The fans of the comic book format are deeply invested in the world of the comics and they love the conventions of the genre.

The movie format is much more focused.Ultimately one vision, the director's/producer's, is what we see. There are all kinds of amazing special effects that physically impact the viewer. Sounds--we can hear and feel the punches land in the fight scenes. The lighting and camera work focus our eyes exactly where the director wants us to look. The music provides a pulsing background that affects us subliminally. Viewers are given warnings of impending action when the music rises. Even the opening scenes with the names of stars, directors and producers appearing in cgi Braille, give a depth to the experience that is different from that available to a reader.

One challenge of the movie business, though is target audience---young males. The Daredevil film was trimmed to 100 minutes because that's what the movie-going public wants. If the story is filled with too many important-to-the-fan details the story lags (according to the producers).

When I watched the movie and read the comic books I enjoyed both experiences AND found them quite different. Because I am not long-time comic reader, I really enjoyed the movie--especially the villains. Collin Ferrill as Bullseye was maniacal and over-the-top and I loved it. I also enjoyed Jon Favreau as Matt's long-suffering friend Foggy. Joe Pantoliano as Ben Urich the investigative journalist whose articles tie the mystery of this story together was key in helping me understand the intricacies of the plot and Daredevil's world.

I think that this comic book made a pretty good transition to film---but it could be better. 'Whose' version of better is the ultimate questions.

A Second Chance for a Daredevil Movie?

2008-10-28T20:42:00.000-07:00

This article explores the possible ( a remake of Daredevil) without sugarcoating the reasons for the original flop.

Op/Ed- Movie Mulligans, What Else Hollywood Should Do-Over
By Michael Avila
posted: 20 June 2008 04:56 pm ET* (for full article follow link)

.....Who’s out there that could get a second chance. And who actually deserves one?

We’re talking about one of Marvel’s Old Guard, one of its most grounded-in-reality characters, with a history of rich storylines. The 2003 film wasn’t terrible, but writer-director Mark Steven Johnson’s fanboy-ish determination to squeeze in too many plot threads and an absurd number of in-jokes ultimately ruined it.

Marvel Studios’ brain-trust should ditch the S&M dungeon red leather jumpsuit, get an actor to play Matt Murdock who’s not dating a paparazzi fave and hand the franchise over to a director like Peter Berg or Joe Carnahan. Jon Favreau could ace this project but a clean break is needed for any reboot and since he played Foggy in the first one, he’s out. And leave Elektra out, too. The ill-conceived spinoff with Jennifer Garner ruined that character.

But the first Daredevil made $102 million despite awful reviews. Imagine if the film would have been any good?

What interests me here is the recognition of the deep history of the Marvel comic hero, and the story lines that hold solid appeal. The suggestion that part of the reason the movie wasn't good was the director's attempt to put too much history, too many comic book references and too much story into the movie, underlines some major differences between movies and comic books. To make a good movie, you need to make some tough choices---more (plot, characters etc.) is not necessarily better. With a comic book you can spin a story out over several issues, following a story arc suited to the format.

The second paragraph raises some interesting issues about costumes and actors. In comic books, it is a given that bodies are exaggerated (i.e.more muscular if male, more buxom if female). In a movie, even a superhero movie, characters should look human, not like completely computer generated images with unbelievable musculature. Computer generated images also brings to mind manufactured Hollywood movie stars. Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner (and their budding romance at the time of filming) detracted from the story being told. In my opinion, Affleck looked more pouty than vengeful. As for Warner, she played an Elektra that was unlike anything in the comic book. The plot line of the movie left some gaping holes about who Elektra was, how she came to be such a skilled fighter, and how she and Murdock/Daredevil came to be entwined.

Daredevil--In the beginning

2008-10-28T17:22:00.000-07:00

The Marvel Universe website and Daredevil Wikipedia entry, provide the most detailed overviews of the Daredevil character imaginable. For copious information check them out. For the purposes of this comparison, I've selected two articles that give the devoted fan flavour of the Comic book superhero, Daredevil.

The first article, places Daredevil as the 3rd most popular superhero character in the combined Marvel and DC universes. This is major endorsement of Daredevil as a character who has withstood the test of time (and of multiple artistic visions). Since Daredevil's creation in 1964, many different writers and artists have put their imprint on the character. In fact, finding out exactly how many had contributed to the vision became an impossible task! (For more details about most of the contributors check out The Man Without Fear). The recap of the Daredevil story below, hits the high points of a very long and convoluted series of stories, (much like all successful comic book series).

Comic books share some similarities with the soap opera genre: characters surmount incredible odds, succeeding beyond incredible obstacles...only to eventually fail miserably....then overcome all difficulties once again, in time to find true love... only to have the beloved brutally murdered by an archenemy. Frequently (and miraculously), characters return from the dead, or from some secret incarceration. The realism of the world doesn't apply---high drama rules--and that is half of the fun.

Daredevil

by Brian Cronin
Thursday, September 27th, 2007

Created by Stan Lee and Bill Everett (with help from Jack Kirby), Daredevil made his debut in the pages of his own self-titled comic book in 1964. Matt Murdock was a successful attorney who was secretly the superhero Daredevil.

The catch?

Matt was blind.

When Matt was a kid, he saved an old man from being hit by a truck, but the truck was carrying radioactive materials that splashed on to Matt, blinding him for life. However, the materials also ended up giving Matt a kind of superpower - all his senses were heightened, to the point where he could read newspapers just by reading the ink on the page with his finger.

In addition, he gained a sort of Radar sense, like a Bat, only not sound-based, Matt just basically had a supernatural sense of where people were around him. It was how he was able to operate as a superhero, and how no one was able to connect him with blind attorney, Matt Murdock, because how could a blind guy do this?

Matt was a basic superhero for many years, during which time he was notably involved with his secretary, Karen Page, and the superhero Black Widow (they even shared his comic for awhile, as Daredevil and Black Widow). Matt’s law partner, and best friend, was Foggy Nelson.This all changed with the arrival of Frank Miller as the writer of the book. Miller introduced an old girlfriend of Matt’s called Elektra, who was a dangerous assassin. He also made Matt into a sort of a ninja, introducing a heretofore unknown sensei of Matt’s called Stick. Miller also made the Kingpin, a Spider-Man mob villain, into Daredevil’s arch-nemesis, while cementing the supervillain assassin, Bullseye, created a little while before Miller took over the book by Marv Wolfman, into a force to be reckoned with, even to the point of having Bullseye KILL Elektra.

Later on, Miller returned to the character, as Karen Page (who had left years ago to become an actress) was now a drug addict who sold Daredevil’s secret identity. It got to the Kingpin, who then proceeded to tear apart Matt’s life. In the end, though, Matt was too strong, and along with Karen, he began a new life.Eventually, he even regained his law license.Sadly, Bullseye struck again, this time killing KAREN, as well.Reeling from her death, Matt was spiraling. He had his identity published in the papers and he even attempted to put HIMSELF in place as the new Kingpin of Hell’s Kitchen. During this period he married Milla Donovan, who is also blind. Matt was able to recover from this period, and even was able to refute the identity issue (although everyone pretty much thinks he is Daredevil now). He is now back to doing what he does best, practice law and patrol the streets as Daredevil

This next article, written by columnist Augie De Bliek Jr., for Comic Book Resources, shows just how seriously devoted fans take their superhero stories, and how much they enjoy and distinguish the efforts of different writers, artists, colorists, and in this case, book designers.

Daredevil Yellow
Augie De Blieck Jr., Columnist, Comic Book Resources--Pipeline, Issue #262

For those who might be coming in late, Marvel originally presented DD: YELLOW as a six-issue mini-series with story by Jeph Loeb and art by Tim Sale. They went back to Daredevil's origins and crafted a remarkable love story between Karen Page and Matt Murdock. That's the mostly-hidden arc for the series. What you see is a lot about Matt taking up legal studies in an effort to avenge his father's murder, some early superhero hijinks, and the start of Nelson & Murdock.

The thing that the story keeps coming back to, though, is the love triangle between Page, Nelson, and Murdock. It's the focus of the doomed ending of the fourth issue and the heartbreaking ending of the fifth. It's the point of contention between Nelson and Murdock, and it's the part that grounds the story to a level of normalcy. It's not all super powered heroics, and even those bits cross over into the romance. But that's OK. It all fits. Murdock has to learn to balance his career and his vigilante-ism. In fact, it's about the only missing point in the book for me: How can a man who's passed the bar and knows the law inside and out also engage in a form of vigilante justice at the same time? It's probably the most fascinating part of his character, but something that would require a book of its own. This was not the place for it. It's also something that's being touched on in the current DAREDEVIL series. Loeb and Sale have been working together long enough now to know each other's strengths. Loeb can create snappy dialogue and a story with heart. Sale can inject it with the right amount of mood and a strong sense of realism or surrealism, depending on what's needed. In the case of DD: YELLOW, it's definitely a realistically-drawn story. You will believe every brick is on that building and that every ceiling tile belongs on the ceiling. You believe that because Sale isn't afraid to draw it and, even more remarkably, the pages don't clutter up with it. Indeed, the larger format to this hardcover only helps to bring out the detail. The larger format is a big aid to the storytelling. On some of the full-page splashes, you'll think you're looking at an art book.

Sale's art hasn't looked this impressive since SUPERMAN FOR ALL SEASONS. In DD: YELLOW it's his use of the ink wash technique that sells the book. Not only does it look impressive, but it also helps set the book in the past with its murky and muddy tones. The story takes place not just at the beginning of Daredevil's career, but also at the time that the origin was created, in the early 1960s. From the cobblestone streets to the fancy dresses and the period hairstyles, Sale leaves no stone unturned. Sales' inkwash (combined with the meticulous colors of Matt Hollingsworth) helps to sell the book as looking a little "older" and realistic.

I remember picking up the hardcover printing of Loeb and Sale's BATMAN: THE LONG HALLOWEEN. I said at the time that it was the standard of what a comic book (book with a capital "B") should be. It looks like a normal prose book. It's got a nice dust jacket. It prints a large story. It fits well on your bookshelf. It's reasonably priced. SUPERMAN FOR ALL SEASONS and BATMAN: DARK VICTORY followed the same format. Now, we can add a book from the competition to that same section of bookshelf.

Marvel has one-upped DC in recent months with their hardcover program. Not only do they create attractive hardcovers that are nicely designed, but they pack them with bonus material at the end where available, and even print it on larger paper. Right now, ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN Volume 1 hardcover is the single best use for the format. Books like DAREDEVIL: YELLOW may be smaller, but they're no less impressive. This book includes a little behind the scene piece on the making of the comic, including a look at the original script, some pencil sketches, and the final ink washing.

But it's still the story that takes the show. DAREDEVIL has had a lot of good ones lately. Heck, even the Frank Miller run is available again. For a character that was all but written off a few years ago, it's been a heck of a comeback. DAREDEVIL: YELLOW is a great addition to the collection.

(The book, I should add, contains one of my favorite funny sequences in modern comics. In the third issue, Matt Murdock takes on a pool hall filled with some wisecracking college kids. Not only does the blind Murdock turn around and demolish the punks in a round of billiards, but he deflates their barbs with his own series of Helen Keller jokes. It reminded me of one of my favorite movies of all time, Steve Martin's ROXANNE, where Martin's character reels off a list of 21 jokes about having a large nose as a means of deflating the bully at the bar. That movie, of course, is based on CYRANO DE BERGERAC.)

Daredevil Today---Comic book version

2008-10-28T16:41:00.000-07:00

Hot off the press is this October 26th, 2008 of the most recent Daredevil Comic book--- issue #112. Writing in CBR reviews, Timothy Callahan, offers an overview of the long arc of the Daredevil story. He underlines the influence of multiple writers and artists, each taking the character in different directions, through different eras. This issue is interesting in that it introduces Lady Bullseye, a deadly female version of the maniacal Bullseye we met in the movie version. (Same sculpted forehead scar). Callahan writes:

As dark as this issue is, and it's literally very dark -- full of heavy blacks and plenty of night scenes -- "Daredevil" feels more vibrantly alive than it has in a long time. This is a far cry from a light-hearted comic, but it seems to have shaken off the shackles of the burdensome melodrama. Brubaker and Lark have embraced the Frank Miller building blocks of this series, adding 50% more ninjas and giving Daredevil a mysterious new costumed foe who just happens to be a beautiful, and deadly, woman. Perhaps it's not that Brubaker is taking this series in a new direction, but that he's returning it to its roots, and doing it in his own particular way. Without a doubt, though, "Daredevil" has now regained its status as one of the must-read Marvel comics. It's the Brubaker/Lark "Daredevil" comic that you expected a couple of years ago, finally free of the Bendis influence.

This is a big theme to fans of comic books---different writers and artists do very different things to beloved characters. Fans (and reviewers), have strong reactions to changes. Many fans have a detailed knowledge of the Marvel universe so opinions about different character interpretations ring out loud and clear.

Transition

2008-10-28T14:46:00.000-07:00

I'm picking up where I stopped blogging last April as I concluded my Information Technology for Learning course (University of Alberta, EDES 545 Winter 08).

The next few postings are assignments for my second course, LIS 518 Comic Books and Graphic Novels in School and Public Libraries, (University of Alberta, Fall 08). This will be a good record for me---and presumably no one will read it unless they are interested.

This is a continuing question I have about blogs---do they ever disappear?

Daredevil - The Movie Reviews

2008-10-28T13:38:00.000-07:00

The Roger Ebert Review from 2003 is one of the more positive I've found. Ebert definitely is among the most charitable of the reviewers giving Daredevil a solid B. Ebert is a good and entertaining writer. I like his description of the relationship between Daredevil and Elektra

She and Daredevil are powerfully attracted to each other, and even share some PG-13 sex, which is a relief because when superheroes have sex at the R level, I am always afraid someone will get hurt. There is a rather beautiful scene where he asks her to stand in the rain because his ears are so sensitive they can create an image of her face from the sound of the raindrops.

Contrast this with USA TODAY review by Mike Clark who gives Daredevil a solid D+

The two leads show their love for each other by engaging in Matrix-like punches, flights and flips, already a movie cliché before the second Matrix pic can even make it into theaters. One early fight sequence is so dark, fuzzy and impersonal that the participants look like video-game combatants, which might be the point, given the target audience.

Ebert takes a poke or two at the comic genre as he explores Daredevil's human-plus athletic abilities--but to my mind movies and magical abilities are already entwined.

Daredevil has the ability to dive off tall buildings, swoop through the air, bounce off stuff, land lightly and so forth. There is an explanation for this ability, but I tend to tune out such explanations because, after all, what do they really explain? I don't care what you say, it's Superman's cape that makes him fly. Comic fans, however, study the mythology and methodology with the intensity of academics. It is reassuring, in this world of inexplicabilities, to master a limited subject within a self-contained universe. Understand, truly understand, why Daredevil defies gravity, and the location of the missing matter making up 90 percent of the universe can wait for another day.

Ebert praises the actors, too.

They play their roles more or less as if they were real, which is a novelty in a movie like this, and Duncan in particular has a presence that makes the camera want to take a step back and protect its groin.

He sums up the super-hero movie genre, the script which varies only slightly...

The movie is, in short, your money's worth, better than we expect, more fun than we deserve. I am getting a little worn out describing the origin stories and powers of superheroes, and their relationships to archvillains, gnashing henchmen and brave, muscular female pals. They weep, they grow, they astonish, they overcome, they remain vulnerable, and their enemies spend inordinate time on wardrobe, grooming and props, and behaving as if their milk of human kindness has turned to cottage cheese. Some of their movies, like this one, are better than others.

In the Daredevil movie, the vision is mainly that of one man, screenplay writer-director Mark Steven Johnson.

Daredevil succeeds, for the most part, because the creators aren't just filmmakers, but actual fans of the comic book. Scattered throughout the film are homages to the comic book's glory days, name-dropping such famous writers as "Miller, Mack, and Bendis." There are some visual homages to some of the more famous events in the series as well, such as the shot of Daredevil clinging to a cross, or in the confrontation between Elektra (Garner, 13 Going on 30), Murdock's love interest, and Bullseye (Farrell, The Recruit), the assassin sent to murder Elektra's father. Cameo appearances by Marvel creator, Stan Lee, and the man who helped re-popularize the character in recent years, filmmaker Kevin Smith, also should entertain those who might have a passing knowledge of the comic book character.
reviewed by Vince Leo http://www.qwipster.net/daredevil.htm

Daredevil* (for complete review follow link)
By Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer Feb.14, 2003 ... Because if "Daredevil" seemed serious for a comic book, it is uninterestingly cartoonish for a movie. Its villains, from Michael Clarke Duncan's plus-sized Kingpin through Colin Farrell's over-the-top Bullseye, have a shopworn air about them, and the script's dialogue and situations have generic written all over them. That "Daredevil" should turn out to be neither daring nor devilish is somewhat of a surprise because filmmaker Johnson has been a washed-in-the-blood fan since he was a child. Not the obvious choice because of the nature of his previous work ... he impressed the producers with his knowledge of and zeal for the material. Maybe it's that zeal that turned out to be the problem. Maybe the comic book mythos is so firmly entrenched in Johnson's head that he doesn't see that his screen version is only sporadically involving and not really compelling to those without that previous interest. This is Daredevil's world, after all, where things do not have a habit of working out as planned.

I found the 'Times guidelines' : Mild by the standards of the genre of special interest. What does this mean?What is the point of guidelines if they vary from genre to genre? This also reminds me of the Director's cut comments where Johnson explained that the Director's cut got an R rating because of added bruatlity--specifically when Bullseye stabs Elektra in the R version, he also kisses her, pulling at her bottom lip. Perhaps it is sexualized violence that is determined to be inappropriate for 13 year olds....

A heartfelt reflection

2008-04-13T16:59:00.000-07:00

Thank you Jenn, for the invitation to write a heartfelt reflection. That is about the only kind I know how to write. I've been gone from the academic world for such a long time that my formal writing muscle is pretty lax.

There have been some real lows in my experience, mostly related to my anxiety about doing it (everything) properly. This is too bad, since I know just plunging in, and doing something advances my learning. In fact, I would say this experience has been transformative. I began my first on-line course at the University of Alberta very aware of some major holes in my knowledge base and here, at the end of this part of the journey, I have lots of new language, new ideas and new tools---all kinds of resources that will continue to impact the contribution I can make as a teacher.

First, the low points.

*My confidence plunged pretty regularly. I kept forgetting my intention to be playful in my learning. I kept forgetting to allow myself to be a beginner.

*Getting used to the online course was the first tech challenge for me. I took quite a bit of time to understand where things were and how to access them.

* I needed more human contact at the beginning. I was disappointed in myself for not just reaching out. (Every time I did I was encouraged and supported)!

*I found it very frustrating to spend so much time looking for things---again, when I asked for direction it was offered freely. I spent a lot of time feeling stupid (which is the antithesis of the zone of proximal development). A counter-productive use of energy.

* I loved and hated reading the other class blogs. I was impressed and amazed by the quality and variety of the offerings...so I frequently felt that mine was inadequate, which contributed to my mountain of self-doubt. Not that I needed any help with that! I thought a lot about the powerful experience of learning from others, the knowledge of the collective. I felt privileged to read my classmates' blogs.

* I struggled to get everything read--course readings, blogs, research. I appreciated receiving comments from others, but I struggled to find time to make comments myself. I thought a lot about making useful comments but again, didn't feel that I had new or insightful comments to share.

*I found the pace quite overwhelming. There are many things I want to go back to, to play with and learn more about, outside of the structured time-line. The RSS was especially confusing.

The Highlights

*One of the highlights was working on the wiki project with Elizabeth and Ronda. I learned so much from each of them. In one phone conversation we planned how to bring our different pieces of the wiki pie together. Because Elizabeth had created a wiki before, she jumped right in and got us started. She was also brave enough to change hosts when it became apparent that the wikispaces site was not too user-friendly. Ronda took the lead on the Asselin research article, summarizing and synthesizing a lot of dense material. Working together shifted my sense of isolation and I learned so much through the process of creating together.

*Following conversations on different wiki topics was eye opening. The posts seemed vividly connected to the real world of teaching. I preferred the wiki format to the discussion board because it was easier to follow the thread of the discussion--both visually and thematically. (The dense text on the discussion board hurt my eyes! I'm sure I will eventually learn how to make an adjustment to what I see on my screen, but this is another area where to figure out how to change the screen image, took time I couldn't find).

Things I loved about wikis--

*Having the ability to contribute from different places was amazing. This opens a whole new world of group possibilities.

*The shared conversation was powerful. Scheduling the presentations and discussions over several days brought a real focus to the experience. With the discussion board system our class conversation was more scattered, though once I realized I could follow a 'thread' I had an improved experience.

*As we moved through the different wiki presentations I felt more connected to others, began to see aspects of personality (which made it less intimidating for me). The personal stories are profound.

*I deeply appreciated the richness of reflection from teachers in the field--because I don't have all those teaching years behind me these professional conversations helped me gain a more current understanding of educational realities.

*At some point Jenn reminded me that the research based on my experience was valuable. I realized then that lots of people are like me--not technology experts, but open to the possibilities. The fact that researchers are actively seeking ways to help adult learners develop the interest and ability to use Web 2.0 tools is exciting. Being involved in an innovative area makes me feel like I'm making a useful contribution.

*I really got to love playing around with the blog. I love writing informally, with a focus on reflection. I enjoyed bringing my personality to the blog. Creating a learning log of my experiences will help me remind myself that I've come pretty far from where I started.

*Having my kids help me with different aspects of the class was amazing. Right from the start, Thomas helped me get going on the new computer, got me established with the U of A site, and was available for answering my frequently befuddled queries. Basically he helped me through a lot of stuff that the HELP desk never could.

*Daniel was my in-house go-to-guy.There are some deep chasms in my understanding of all things computerish. Daniel's calm, unflappable ways of talking me through times of intense distress when I 'lost' something I'd spent hours on makes me want to send him directly to the faculty of Education. The guy is a born teacher.

*Sarah was my Facebook and photo expert. She very gallantly let me use pictures of her in my Voicethreads piece. In fact, watching her play with my mac helped remind me that this technology stuff could be fun.

*Creating the podcast with all three of my kids was a real high point. Because Thomas is podcasting regularly he really knows the ins and outs of editing and posting. Trying a podcast without his support would be quite a different experience. Reading about the challenges and frustrations other classmates experienced as they fought to bring their podcasts into the world made me appreciate the gift of technical expertise he shared with me.

*I liked the regular, specific feedback. My entries improved once I had a better understanding of the format.

* Realizing how far I've come is the ultimate highlight. At the beginning of this course I didn't know how to create a hyperlink, or add a picture to my blog. I had never used any of the tools we explored. No photo bucket, no facebook, no youtube, no RSS feed... you get my drift. Just re-reading my own blog is a highlight!

My final highlight is the sense of gratitude and appreciation I feel toward my classmates and instructor for their company on this learning adventure.

Sharing the treasure--Welcome to Wikiland

2008-04-13T15:30:00.000-07:00

This assignment has been bubbling away in the back of my mind throughout the course. I've been looking at the systems in place at school, the technology that is used regularly and creatively, and the places where it is just plain avoided. One thing I notice is the wide range of interests and abilities among the staff. At one end I see lots of teachers still struggle with the basics of using the First Class email system and the on-line databases. At the other end of the spectrum are the media teachers who are operating in another sphere entirely.

Since my own journey into techland only dates back to the start of this course, I know which group I will have the most impact on. I've been thinking about the best ways to demonstrate some of the possibilities of the new Web 2.0 technology tools, and how I might ultimately entice participation.

The web 2.0 tool that I would like to introduce to staff is the wiki. Most secondary teachers operate in (relative) isolation. I can see different departments using wikis initially to share resources, to organize themselves, and to communicate. Of particular benefit would be keeping a log of departmental decisions and goals from year to year.

Based on my experience, I know having support, the opportunity to play, and the incentive to produce something useful is motivating. The way I plan to lure them into playing with the technology is to offer to set up a wiki for different departments. Some departments are full of teachers who are already technologically inclined, using the internet in many creative and powerful ways as individuals. I would propose a wiki as a way to bring some of these web adventurers together for collaboration and as jumping off points for departments. I think that the collaborative possibilities will appeal to these teachers and that will lead eventually to an interest in using wikis with students.

Scenario One

The science teachers (10) share an office. They form a cozy little pod unto themselves. They already share resources, ideas and technology as it applies to their area. They don't frequent the library, but they have already created a web of support for each other. I think this department could use a wiki as a place to:

• house information for new teachers and interns
• schedule use of labs
• gather useful weblinks by topic and grade
• store literacy techniques and practices
• share the most successful lesson plans, best practices
• follow breaking news science stories
• publish safety rules for labs

With this group, a conversation and a bit of planning with the department head, followed by a short in-service presentation during a department meeting, would probably be enough to set them on their way to successful wiki use. I would offer to create the wiki and enter some initial information, but they are technologically savvy enough to take it from there.

In my presentation I would use the Wikis in Plain English video and references from my favourite source, Will Richardson's Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms:

So let's take a minute and imagine the possibilities here. Your students, with just a little help from you, could create book report wikis, what-I-did-this-summer wikis, brainstorming wikis, poetry wikis, notes-from-class wikis, sixth-grade wikis, history of the school or community wikis, formula wikis, wikis for individual countries they might be studying, political party wikis, exercise wikis... you get the idea. And you could create similar spaces for colleagues to save research or do articulation or much, much more. Whatever topic might lend itself to the collaborative collection of content relating to its study, wiki is a great choice.

Scenario Two

The English Teachers have no common (physical) area to share, so the monthly departmental meetings are about their only chance to be together. The responsibilities of department head are shared by two teachers each year, and rotated through most members of the department. (There are a few lone wolves....) Full attendance is difficult since many teachers teach classes outside the timetable. They do some communicating by email, but this too, is a challenge for them. For the most part, these are not folks who enjoy using technology. Playing with technology will only happen under duress--- (and I believe duress invalidates the possibility of play!) These too, are creative people who would soon dream up hundreds of powerful ways to use wikis with students if their initial experience with wikis was positive. This is where I would bring my special gifts of empathy and gentle support onto the scene. I would offer to set up a wiki for them, and include some basic, useful information, like department literacy goals, which novels are taught to which grade, number of texts available, department meeting minutes, etc. Then I would spend time with each member of the group, exploring the document with the learner 'driving the mouse'.

My actions would be supported by the research we looked at on our wiki and by common sense. Just offering to check in with people as they learn how to use a new tool provides a bit of a safety net. I would never present myself as a tech-expert, but as a curious and interested companion for the adventure.

A final aside

There is a lot more detailed support for introducing Web 2.0 tools into the school that I want to gather and organize, but my time is gone, and I know that I'll never be finished. I resolve to take this next step of introducing others to these tools and concepts, sharing my (incomplete) knowledge and my enthusiasm. I know that by sharing I'll deepen my understanding, and by working with others intuition and synchronicity enter the equation and who knows where that will take us!

Blog Reading for Professional Development

2008-04-06T12:33:00.000-07:00

I must admit that when our instructor, Jenn, asked us to establish an RSS feed from Google Reader, I did just that--but I didn't really understand what it was or how it was going to help me. I remember being a bit confused about just who to subscribe to, and just what it was I was signing up for. I remember checking through the weblinks provided on Blackboard and subscribing willy-nilly to anything that sounded remotely useful. And then I pretty much forgot about it as I lurched from week to week trying to figure out the new Web 2.0 tool du jour. Occasionally my google reader page would appear as I roamed cyberspace looking for suitable materials for my blog. Sometimes I even found something directly related to my task-at-hand, and began to think 'hey, this really is useful---I have to remember this'.

What I'm confessing is the fact that I didn't really understand that I was supposed to check this page regularly--daily even perhaps! At this point I'm only beginning to read particular blogs regularly both for pleasure and for professional development. The pleasure comes from enjoying the personal styles of the writing and the professional development comes from knowing that I am responding to the thoughts and themes of the gurus in the world of Teacher-librarians and Information Technology.

The gurus are key. One of the biggest challenges for me, is knowing I've found a reputable source. The volume of information on the web is mindboggling--- 50 million blogs already??? Who should I pay attention to and how will I find them? Plunging into this program, is key because I have an instructor I trust to show me the way. I have frequently felt lost and confused. Remembering that our instructor was available for amplification and re-direction helped tremendously.

A frequent experience for me of reading blogs for professional development is getting sidetracked. Because bloggers have the ability to add a hyperlink to their writing I am frequently lured away from the blog I'm reading to explore a connected site. This is both positive and problematic. Quick explanations and clarifications are available at the click of a key and that is a good thing. But the trip to the hyperlink can lead to another, and another, and pretty soon an hour or two has passed and I've read some very interesting things, BUT I haven't got through the material I needed to cover, and I'm still not sure what was essential. Nonetheless, I have gone a lot of interesting places on the web and the cumulative effect of all the reading I've done means that the language and themes are sounding less foreign. I guess I'm still thinking about this as an immersion experience...

One of my favourite sources is Lee Lefever, who along with his wife and partner Sachi, produce the In Plain English videos. Their videos are for those of us who are new to technology-land but ready to begin using some of the Web 2.0 tools. I recently heard LeFever interviewed on Spark, a CBC radio program and podcast. He explained that they try to whittle away the extraneous, to focus on how this tool can be used---not a detailed technical explanation of how it works.

LeFever writes on his blog how his own education shaped his thinking about effective ways to present information. He described the problems he encountered whenever new information and ways of thinking were presented without context.

Talkin' Bout My Education By leelefever on March 27, 2008 - 10:56am

Looking back, context is what I have always missed in education. If someone could put a new idea in the context of the real world or show me how it enables other things, I would get it. It's just my learning style - I need the big picture before the details make any sense. By diving directly into T accounts and least common denominators, I got caught up in trying to memorize instead of understand. What I needed to know was why - why this works the way it does - and why it matters to me.

So, I think the connection to our style of videos is obvious. They are based on all the things that don't work for me in education. When I see explanations on the Web, the remind me of school - they assume too much. They sometimes dive directly into how something works and spend little time on context.
For me, it's a big problem - a problem that I believe others feel too. When it comes time for me to try to explain something, it just feels right to look at the world from the perspective that would have made sense to me that first day of accounting class - build meaning with context first, then explore details.

Reading LeFever's blog has helped me think about the ways video can be used in education. The low-tech look of the videos models a way of sharing information that is accessible to students and teachers. I especially like the fact that you don't see any part of the speaker except his hands. We are so bombarded by perfect images of perfect bodies it is very refreshing to see how effective simple visuals are. In fact, I can imagine making a video in this style myself.

Joyce Valenza' s blog at School Library Journal is another that I read regularly. She helped my organizational challenges, by starting off the year with a detailed and hyperlinked list of major themes for school librarians and Web 2.0 technology. As I progressed through this course, looking at one new Web tool after another, I found myself returning to her site, and this particular blog entry, over and over.

That said, I do find the frequency of her posts a bit overwhelming. Maybe it's because of her high level of expertise and involvement in the field, but sometimes I don't really understand what she's writing about. She uses so many acronyms that don't mean anything to me (yet). A lot of her topics really remind me that she is writing about the school library world in the United States. I would really like to find a Canadian version of Valenza... For example, one of her recent posts explored copyright issues, something I'd really like to understand better, but I'm still wondering about the Canadian application. At this point in my learning, spending more time at her virtual library would probably be more useful to me.

Will Richardson is another blogger I like to read. Something in his style leaves me feeling more reflective, more part of the conversation. Maybe his posts are a little more philosophical. When I read Valenza I feel kind of frantic---like there is no way I will ever absorb all this important stuff, whereas with Richardson there is lots of new information but it is presented in a more bite-sized way. Of course I'm also fond of Richardson because I found his book, Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for the Classroom extremely helpful. Being able to re-read, and highlight the text is still works for me.

There are many more blogs out there to read, but for me, too many, quickly becomes too much. I will close with the insights presented by Mike Curtain, writing on RSS and Blogs as Professional Development, who acknowledges my blog fatigue AND reminds me that the complexity of the diverse voices ultimately will benefit me as a learner.

For a long time I’ve been looking at models of professional development that go beyond the one-shot after-school workshop. As I’ve studied models of adult learning and become more familiar with the ways that teachers are successful at improving their practice, I’ve realized that good professional development experiences share a few core qualities:

They are sustained, occurring over weeks, months, or even years.
They are gradual and incremental, involving a lot of short but connected steps with moments of reflection and integration in between.
They are collaborative, involving questions, support, and conversation with other teachers in similar situations.
They directly meet the teacher’s needs, offering solutions to real problems in our every day experience in the classroom.
Over time, they change the way we see the world and therefore what we do with our students each day in the classroom.

As I become more invested in reading and tracking blogs through RSS, I’m coming to realize that those 15 minute sessions browsing headlines in Pageflakes and posting comments on blogs are starting to add up. Every day I have a little opportunity to see what others are doing and to ask myself why I do what I do and how I could do it better.

When a teacher starts using an RSS aggregator to keep on top of news stories, blog posts, and wiki updates, she is really taking the reins and becoming the editor-in-chief of her own professional development journal. “I want to learn about differentiating instruction in a social studies classroom and using a SmartBoard. I found six or seven experts in each area and they are going to be frequent contributors to my journal. When I don’t understand or disagree, I’m going to let them know and listen carefully to their responses and the comments of other people like me. At the end of the year, I’m going to know a lot more about these topics than I do now.”

The best part of it is that the singular voice of the workshop lecturer or methods text (shudder) gives way to a cacophony of differing agendas, viewpoints, backgrounds, and ideas. We are forced to confront the complexity of our classroom experience and to forge - and frequently thereafter to re-visit and re-evaluate - our own understandings and practices. Simple answers provided by gurus don’t long satisfy intelligent teachers: they need to pick and choose from a buffet of best practices and ideas. Our RSS professional development journal does just that.

RSS feeds --what are they and how do they work?

2008-04-06T10:04:00.000-07:00

RSS stands for Real Simple Syndication, a Web tool that helps us consume information in efficient and relevant ways. Will Richardson calls them 'The New Killer App for Educators', and he has devoted a whole chapter to this topic in his book, Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms.

In simple terms, Weblogs (and an ever-growing number of other sites) generate a behind-the-scenes code in a language similar to HTML called XML. This code, usually referred to as a feed (as in news feed), makes it possible for readers to subscribe to the content that is created on a particular Weblog so they no longer have to visit the blog itself to get it....the content comes to you.

Remembering which websites I want to check in with regularly by going to the different sites takes time and a good memory. Even if I remember to bookmark useful sites, and arrange them by topic, I still get overwhelmed by the numbers and I run out of time. I'm never sure if I've read the most current information or just the top of my list.

The RSS feeds allow me to use a feed collector, a type of software called an aggregator.
Here's some more information from Wikipedia:

RSS

RSS

Screenshot of an RSS feed as seen in Mozilla Thunderbird

File extension .rss, .xml

MIME type application/rss+xml (Registration Being Prepared)^[1]

Extended from XML

RSS is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines, and podcasts.^[2] An RSS document (which is called a "feed" or "web feed" ^[3] or "channel") contains either a summary of content from an associated web site or the full text. RSS makes it possible for people to keep up with web sites in an automated manner that can be piped into special programs or filtered displays.^[3]

RSS content can be read using software called an "RSS reader", "feed reader" or an "aggregator". The user subscribes to a feed by entering the feed's link into the reader or by clicking an RSS icon in a browser that initiates the subscription process. The reader checks the user's subscribed feeds regularly for new content, downloading any updates that it finds.

The initials "RSS" are used to refer to the following formats:

Really Simple Syndication (RSS 2.0)
RDF Site Summary (RSS 1.0 and RSS 0.90)
Rich Site Summary (RSS 0.91).

RSS formats are specified using XML, a generic specification for the creation of data formats. Although RSS formats have evolved since March 1999,^[4] the RSS icon ("") first gained widespread use in 2005/2006.

RSS

Screenshot of an RSS feed as seen in Mozilla Thunderbird
File extension	`.rss, .xml`
MIME type	`application/rss+xml (Registration Being Prepared)^[1]`
Extended from	XML

Of particular interest to me is learning about the icon , and learning to watch for it when I see a blog I would like to receive regular information from. Noting that the icon has only recently gained wide usage in 2005/2006 reminds my just how new this tool is, and that helps me be more accepting of my fumbles using it.

I found it easy to sign up for a feed reader from google, and at first I received a good flow of information (Okay, it was overwhelming but I was pleased that the tool seemed to be fulfilling its function). Then about the middle of March the information stopped flowing. I've spent quite a bit of time subscribing and re-subscribing, but no luck. When I can find the time, I will consult my local experts. I'm having that feeling regularly with the technology tools I've explored in this course. I'll need to go back and play with everything to feel more comfortable using Web 2.0 tools.

Video: RSS in Plain English

2008-04-05T12:27:00.001-07:00

Lee Lefever does it again!

Facebook reflections

2008-03-30T13:14:00.000-07:00

Social Networks are one of the Web 2.0 tools I actually knew a little about at the start of this course--Why, you wonder? Isn't Facebook more of a teen thing? Yes indeed, I feel like a real geezer when sign into Facebook. My own personal use of Facebook has remained very limited. I've connected with a few friends who live far away, and that's kind of nice, but that is pretty much it. Oh, and I'm connected to a lot of my kids' friends and to my nieces and nephews.Sometimes I find the news feed on their activities quite jarring--- and I'm pretty sure they're not that interested in my activities, but they wouldn't find out much from my profile anyway. It is just one more thing that I don't really have time or energy to invest in---but I do see the power it holds the younger people. It really seems to help them with their search for identity, which is the main task of adolescence.

Because I live in a home that has been full of teenagers for the last 11 years. Ive been hearing and seeing little bits about Facebook and related things like Instant messaging and email for years. Because I was an at-home Mom our house was frequently the gathering place for a pack of teen-aged boys and interactivity was the word. Our basement rocked to the sounds of teens playing a multi-player video game, hooting and hollering about every heroic conquest. Anyone not playing was on the computer sending email, instant messages and eventually updating their Facebook profiles. What I noticed was the more technology involved the better----soon of all the guys had cell phones too, so texting, picture taking, bizarre ring tones--basically lots of noise---has always been connected to technology in my mind. What impressed me most was that the web of connections must be maintained at all times. The kids always know where everyone else is, and they are highly skilled in organizational planning. My teens can plan all kinds of activities through Facebook--ranging from social gatherings to carpools for soccer. I think they prefer to plan on Facebook--more efficient use of energy!

Both my sons and daughter became involved in performing at some point, and I think that comes in really handy these days because teens seem to spend so much time as the hero of their own story, documenting both everyday events and rites of passage. Facebook helps them get their experiences out there to the audience of the larger world.

By contrast, I noticed while doing my Voicethreads creation how difficult it was for me to record my voice and thoughts---I spent a lot of time rejecting the 'spontaneous me'--revising and cringing in equal measure. Put me in front of real people that I can see and make authentic connections to and I'm comfortable and stimulated by visual and auditory interactions with my audience. But me and the machine---not so much.

My kids, part of the Facebook generation, avidly share images, thoughts and tidbits of information that I would never put out to a large audience. In a strange way I think they are liberated by their lack of inhibition--and this connects to the theme I've returned to every week--there is such an ocean of info out there--who really pays attention to all this stuff? Is it really that different from the gossipping I did with my highschool friends in person and on the phone?

Of course there are some significant differences. Anyone who wants to share personal details on the web needs to be aware of safety issues-- and that kind of information literacy learning needs to begin as soon as a child starts using the computer, both at home and at school. Certainly school administrators and teachers have developed lots of ways to protect their students and the creators of the Web 2.0 applications put tremendous energy into security features, too but cyber-bullying is a real issue. I also wonder about the long term effects of inappropriate Facebook material that is perused by future employers. Time will tell, on that score.

Social Networks--how to stay connected 24/7

2008-03-27T10:11:00.000-07:00

Social Networks are nothing new. People have been finding ways to be and stay connected since the dawn of time.Whether we gathered around a campfire, at the matriarch's cave, on the village green, at the harvest field , at the church for communal rituals, or in hordes at the mall, humans have been ingenious in devising ways to share personal information.

The digital natives have created a new form - online social networks for communities of people to share interests and activities.

According to Wikipedia:

Most services are primarily web based and provide a collection of various ways for users to interact, such as chat, messaging, email, video, voice chat, file sharing, blogging, discussion groups, and so on. Social networking has revolutionized the way we communicate and share information with one another in today's society. Various social networking websites are being used by millions of people everyday on a regular basis and it now seems that social networking is a part of everyday life.

The main types of social networking services are those which contain directories of some categories (such as former classmates), means to connect with friends (usually with self-description pages), and recommender systems linked to trust. Popular methods now combine many of these, with MySpace and Facebook being the most widely used in North America,^[1] Bebo^[2], MySpace, Skyrock Blog , Facebook and Hi5 in parts of Europe,^[3], Orkut and Hi5 in South America and Central America,^[4] Friendster, Orkut and CyWorld in Asia and the Pacific Islands.^[5] Vkontakte.ru and LiveJournal in Russia.

Blogs vs Social Networking

I found a great wiki here which outlined some educational perspectives on uses of blogs and social networks. Of special interest is this description of why the social networking sites are so appealing---

Many parents understand the appeal of social networking sites, as they are used to the lengths that youth will go to receive attention--whether positive or negative. Our individual needs to be acknowledged, to be valued, and to be part of a group are heightened during teenage years. Social networking sites provide a fast and effective way to give and receive attention, and not all of it appropriate.

and why kids often behave inappropriately online---
Because technology often provides 1) a perceived buffer from regular consequences and 2) a real buffer from traditional social cues, people will say and do things through technology that they would not do face-to-face. (The scientific term for this is "disinhibition.") If this is apparent with email, instant messaging, and text messaging on cell phones, it seems even more glaring on social networking sites. Youth who do not have any real understanding of the dangers or consequences of certain behavior will often talk openly about sexual issues or post provocative pictures online. While this may sometimes reflect their actual behavior, it is believed that many youth are being provocative in order to gain attention--not realizing how dangerous this actually is.

I found another great resource for parents and educators on Doug Johnson's site--a series of lessons called Raising Good Citizens for a Virtual World an excellent description of the ways we model and teach ethical behaviour, calling forth the best that is in our children and youth. The optimist in me really believes that most people want to treat others the way they'd like to be treated themselves and this golden rule extends to the virtual world. When we take time to share with our children our own beliefs and values we give them something to hang onto as they navigate the tricky road of adolescence.

My favourite article echoes the Bonnie Raitt song I Jazzercized to so many years ago with the title:Let's Give Them Something to Talk About by Ashley Jones. EContent. Wilton: Mar 2008. Vol. 31, Iss. 2; pg. 10, 2 pgs.
Retrieved from Proquest, March 29, 2008, from ABI/INFORM Global database. (Document ID: 1442269341).

This one hit the high spots for me. Jones writes that "humans, by nature, are social beings. Teenagers, by nature, are social machines." She quotes a new study released by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, "Teens and Social Media," which reveals some distinct differences between the ways teens and adults use social networks. She writes:
"90% of online adults are merely lurkers, and only 10% actually contribute to the Web 2.0 movement. In contrast, according to the report's findings, 64% of online teens have participated in a content-creating activity on the internet, up from 57% of online teens in 2004...

Most of the content creation among teens today occurs on social networking websites like the aforementioned Facebook or MySpace. In fact, according to the study, 55% of online teens ages 12-17 have a profile on a social networking site. Mary Madden, a senior research specialist at Pew and one of the writers of this report says, "This survey discusses the conversational portion of social media. We found that teens want feedback, and they can get that feedback on social networking sites".
When it comes to social networking sites, feedback comes in many forms. Wall posts, photo albums, comments, blogging, and video posts are among the most popular, and the report from Pew finds that not only are teens in general using social networking sites to interact, but the type of online interaction varies depending on gender.
Girls have always demonstrated a more aggressive adoption of online messaging in general. Prior to Web 2.0, it was instant messaging, and now it is seen in the forms of writing on friends' walls and blogging. It seems that girls are more focused on verbal expression.
In contrast, teenage boys are posting video files more readily than girls. While the study states that 57% of all online teens watch videos online, teenage boys are twice as likely as girls to post video files (19% versus 10%). "There is a fascination with visual media, especially among boys, today," says Madden.

The endless loop of feedback that teens long for, comes in the area of comments. I can vouch for the importance of this based on the amount of time my 14 year old daughter spends posting and collecting comments. According to the Pew study:

89% of teens who post photos online say that people comment at least "sometimes" about the photos they post, and 37% of those teenagers say that their audience comments on their photos "most of the time." Further, 72% of teen video posters report receiving comments "sometimes," and 24% say that people comment "most of the time."

Another article I read, by Michael Stephens (2007). Social Networking Services. Library Technology Reports, 43(5), 45-51. Retrieved March 30, 2008, from ProQuest Education Journals database. (Document ID: 1341876331), went into a detailed analysis of the strengths and weakness between MySpace.com and Facebook.com, with Facebook coming out ahead on most points, for security, ease of use, design layout, the fact that you are connected to your actual real friends, news updates and messaging. What intrigued me most is that several libraries and librarians are using Facebook in creative ways to interact with students (teens and college students).

Libraries and librarians are adding their presence here, too. Robert J. Lackie, associate professor/librarian at Rider University in Lawrenceville, New Jersey, posted at the LibraryGarden blog about his use of Facebook:As a librarian and professor, I joined Facebook last year when I found out that the students in my public speaking class were communicating with each other via that tool, instead of our university's email system. It was amazing how much more open and willing the students were to sharing information about each other and their individual and group projects in our class, via Facebook. They were thrilled that I was willing to join Facebook, and they loved that I used it to find out and celebrate their birthdays, for instance, as they came up during the semester
The author concludes with a list of suggestions for possible ways to use social networking systems for libraries:

* Investigate some library MySpace profiles and create one for your library. Follow the lead of HCPL and PLCMC and create an extension of your library in users' space.
* Create a Facebook page for yourself. Add as much personal information as you'd like. Find colleagues to "friend." Try some of the applications and features. Then, follow the advice of librarians like Brian Mathews and engage your users in a conversation.
* Create a Ning social network for your library staff (or department, branch, agency, etc) and explore the features of a do-it-yourself SNS. Create groups for your library teams. Manage projects and communication channels for library-wide initiatives.
* Create a Ning site for your library users, such as a readers' community, homework or coursework help site, or technology support clearinghouse. Promote it. Invite participation.
These suggestions are quite ambitious, and intended perhaps, more for university and public libraries. A lot of the features of the virtual libraries we explored a few weeks ago are more likely to be useful in the elementary or high school school setting, but the idea of going where the users go is sound. Facebook has only been in existence since 2004. As with any other evolving use of technology, things are bound to change!

I came across tassl.com an application that uses Facebook to keep detailed track of your classes at university, connects you with other members of your classes, and includes contact with your instructors. This makes sense to me since a new university student could feel isolated. Lots of profs are using Facebook at the college level and are delighted with their ability to connect with individual students. At the High School level, use of social network sites is usually blocked--though students are very adept at finding ways to get around this hurdle. In High School, I think that an academic focus while using school computers is most appropriate. Social networking so far, needs to happen from home, with parental interest and monitoring.

Connections

2008-03-24T18:26:00.000-07:00

Another piece of the multimedia explorations involves revisiting some Information Literacy essentials. Creating a Voicethread is fun and can demonstrate learning, but it also means students are looking critically at the ways media can be manipulated, because that is what they are doing themselves. Lesley Farmer in I see, I do: Persuasive messages and visual literacy. MultiMedia & Internet@Schools suggests a variety of activities for students to engage in that will help them flex their critical thinking muscle. For example, students can:

manipulate images using photo editing to present both pro and con sides of an issue
videotape their neighbourhood and then compare the different subject matter and perspective chosen by each film-maker
look at on-line sites and evaluate the sources by considering what perspective most benefits the creator
download raw footage from a rally or protest and then use that footage to target a particular audience (e.g. seniors, single parents, students).

Mary Burns, in A Thousand Words: Promoting Teachers' Visual Literacy Skills, MultiMedia & Internet@Schools reminds us that:

Both still and moving images ...serve as powerful shorthand for communication. These images are concise. Images are not bound by language. Their very imprecision renders them more evocative and open to subjective interpretation...schools must begin to introduce concepts of visual literacy and methods for understanding, applying, analyzing, and synthesizing visual information.

Using multimedia applications is appealing, understanding the power of this tool is essential.

Voicethreads victory!

2008-03-22T19:37:00.000-07:00

I really enjoyed poking around on the Voicethreads site. I saw lots of examples here of educators and students using this medium in exciting ways. Technofeeb that I am, I really appreciated the simplicity of the whole experience. Basically, if I can figure it out anyone could. I think Steve Muth and Ben Popell were thinking of me when they decided to use the amazon.com site as an example---2 or 3 clicks and you've succeeded in your quest! The site allows you to create something with layered complexity, but the new user is their guide.

What's a Voicethread anyway? offers some great examples of what kinds of things are possible with Voicethreads. Some examples:

multiple family members' comments on a vintage family photograph
a young artist's (age 5?) description of a drawing he'd made
a teacher's lecture and slides,
a school project media mash up of Catcher in the Rye,
a demonstration of how to do the Hustle
a book review by several students
a comparison of a book and a movie exploring the strengths of each

This list will undoubtedly grow as more people interact with this flexible format. It is easy to see every department and curriculum area finding useful applications for Voicethread projects. Voicethreads could be used in Math, Science, Home Ec, Woodworking, P.E.-- any area where a demonstration is used either to help with instruction or to demonstrate understanding. Distance learners would also benefit. In fact, part of the reason I found this easy to use was because of the tutorials that showed exactly which button to press to carry out an action.

The One Minute Voicethread gave simple enough instructions that even I managed the set up and creation of my masterpiece Swirly Sarah. Okay, it's not a masterpiece but it is a start. For someone who has never even attempted a powerpoint presentation, not too bad!

Jumpcut Jaunt

2008-03-22T12:55:00.000-07:00

My first question is what the heck is a jumpcut?

According to Wikipedia:

the name is derived from the jumpcut, a video artifact that results from the splicing together of two separate parts of the same shot, or similar sections from two different shots".

I still do not feel very enlightened and this does not bode well for my adventures with video. Jumpcut.com boggles me from the beginning. I am not someone with a little stockpile of movies that I'm keen to edit and re-form. I made the attempt however, because I know this is something that students do love. As kids who've grown up watching music videos, they see movie making as an accessible artform. It is also a natural format for creative expression and demonstration of learning--very suitable to the world of education.

One of the things I liked about Jumpcut.com, (a common feature of the Web 2.0 world) is the emphasis on sharing--if you make your videos and photos public, others can use them to make movies of their own or to enhance their own creations. Joining jumpcut.com is easy, and they do their best to make the instructions clear.

Alas that wasn't quite enough for me.... At this point I just explored the site and found lots of images that were unappealing and inappropriate for students. It is my understanding that there is movie-making software aplenty that would be more useful in a school setting. When I recover from my technology trauma after this course is over I will learn how to work with video---probably engaging some experienced student as my guide. Giving a student an opportunity to teach me is pedagogically sound, right?

Multimedia Today

2008-03-18T18:56:00.000-07:00

To begin we start with Wikipedia's definition of multimedia--

media that utilizes a combination of different content forms. The term can be used as a noun (a medium with multiple content forms) or as an adjective describing a medium as having multiple content forms. The term is used in contrast to media which only utilize traditional forms of printed or hand-produced text and still graphics. In general, multimedia includes a combination of text, audio, still images, animation, video, and interactivity content forms. Multimedia may be broadly divided into linear and non-linear categories. Linear active content progresses without any navigation control for the viewer such as a cinema presentation. Non-linear content offers user interactivity to control progress as used with a computer game or used in self-paced computer based training. Non-linear content is also known as hypermedia content.

This definition is quite a bit broader than the mixed media presentation I know from the art world where a variety of art forms are mixed together, e.g. dance performance combined with visual images and music, or an installation piece at an art gallery that might combine film or traditional paintings with soundscapes. We've known for a long time that the artist's statement has a stronger impact on the viewer as more senses come into play. So, it is too, in today's world of multimedia.

The big difference between a mixed media presentation of old, and some of today's multimedia experiences, is the addition of two powerful new tools-- interactivity and hypermedia links.
The addition of a viewer (or learner) controlled aspect to the experience moves learning into a brave new world that is self-directed.

Of particular interest is the ways that educators and students are using multimedia creations in the Web 2.0 world to create some amazing experiential documents. Document is perhaps not quite the right word, because the most interesting feature of all is the interactive aspect. Using Voicethreads or Jumpcut people can easily connect still images, sound, animation, video and allow viewers to respond with either spoken or written comments.

As Joyce Valenza reminds us in:

Top School Library Things to Think About in 2008

"The end-product of research and inquiry should be communication of knowledge. And the options for communication exploded this year. ... We can reform PowerPoint for presentation and we can explore a wealth of other creative Web-based presentation options. .... VoiceThread is just one powerful option with nearly no learning curve."

I like this introduction from the VoiceThread site:

‘Participation is not optional’

A VoiceThread allows every child in a class to record audio commentary about the ideas and experiences that are important to them. Whether it’s an event, a project, or a milestone, children can tell their story in their own voice, and then share it with the world. For teachers, a VoiceThread offers a single vessel to capture and then share all the diverse personalities of an entire class. A VoiceThread can be managed with little effort, creating an heirloom that can be shared by students, parents, and educators alike. You can hear the pride and excitement in their voices as the students “publish” and archive their work. Behind every photo, drawing, or project, is at least one story, and often many more. VoiceThreads offer a simple way to capture and share them. This act of ‘publishing’ a creation which can then be seen all the way from Cheyenne to Shanghai, strongly reinforces the message we try to send to our children everyday, that their work is great, and worthy of the world’s attention.

I listened to a podcast at the Technology Shopping Cart site where co-founders of VoiceThread , Steve Muth and Ben Popell described the intent of their creation, and further provided details of Ed.VoiceThread , their new offering for educators that includes many new safeguards put in place so that this tool can be used with accountability. They describe their idea of letting students get their ideas out into the wide world, the global village---to receive feedback and enhance learning.

"The Ed.VoiceThread network is a worldwide community where safety is built upon a foundation of accountability. All users are known users, responsible for their content and behavior. Access is restricted to K-12 educators, students and administrators, and all content is created exclusively by registered members of the community. Web services offering free accounts are blocked in many school districts because of child online protection policies, and are not eligible for federal eRate monies. For this reason, there are no free Ed.VoiceThread accounts and student email addresses are not required. Educators must pay a one time $10 verification fee to become a member of the community, with no recurring costs."

Another feature that I liked on the Ed.VoiceThread is that a student's work can be saved from year to year:

As long as a school or class remains a subscriber to the network we continue to store student work indefinitely. Because our pricing is not based on 'seats', log-ins, or users, every year you can add new student users without deleting the old ones. This is critical to the goal of building year-over-year student portfolios.

For my purposes the free version of VoiceThreads was fine, though Muth and Popell discussed the fact that Voicethreads is often blocked in schools. Both the tech folks and administration need to see the value before changes are made to the system. Ed.VoiceThread offers a secure alternative for an affordable price. For more details and comparisons check About VoiceThreads .

pb wiki-Is pb wiki easy?

2008-03-12T15:36:00.001-07:00

Wikis in Plain English

2008-03-12T15:23:00.001-07:00

lee lefevre's great explanation

Time well wasted?

2008-03-09T20:33:00.000-07:00

Just a note to self--if I can't be a good example, at least let me be a horrible warning! I have spent so much time today trying to find pictures that will tart up my blog.I can see how much more fun it is to read a post with images, BUT I am very keen to use images that are not violating copyright. I seem to be pretty confused about the topic. I began this course with limited computer skills so every week I know that I'm learning plenty, but I waste a LOT of time trying to do things for the second and third time....I expect to remember, but I don't.

Wiki Wacky

2008-03-08T14:52:00.000-08:00

This week's topic is the wiki so I begin with a connection to the mother of all wikis-the original wikipedia

The essential ingredient inherent in the word wiki- is quick. Using wikipedia is a quick, ballpark reference for students of all ages. Using wikipedia as your ONLY source is not recommended, but when we're engaged in helping students develop their critical thinking abilities, using wikipedia as one of several sources can be instructive. At the high school where I teach, I notice that students in the library, busy researching any topic, seem to always start with wikipedia. It is quicker than walking all the way to the reference room to pick up a physical encyclopedia, and will quite certainly be a more current resource. That's one of the very cool things about wikipedia--it's alive! According to the helpful information on the wikipedia site,Using Wikipedia as a research tool:
As a wiki, articles are never complete. They are continually edited and improved over time, and in general this results in an upward trend of quality, and a growing consensus over a fair and balanced representation of information.

I found more defining details on the librarian's wiki LISwiki:
Wikis are, in general, online content repositories that allow others to contribute and modify entries. The name comes from the "wiki wiki" shuttle buses at the Honolulu International Airport.

Wikis are online, collaborative environments that allow anyone to add, edit, or delete pages. Some Wikis require registered membership, and others are private, but many allow anyone with access to the Web to contribute. Wikis use a simplified mark-up syntax that allow users to contribute without special knowledge of HTML. Many Wikis now also offer What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get (WYSIWYG) editing, similar to a word processor, which makes it easier for some users to contribute. However, many experienced Wiki contributors prefer Wiki syntax.

I had been wondering what WYSIWYG meant! In truth, since I could be the posterchild for inexperienced users of technology, it's a great thing to know that using a wiki is so accessible. I found the pbwiki youtube video bolstered my confidence even more. If these people could use a wiki so could I!

More research support from the librarian's wiki:

Though Wikis do require some experimentation, they are easy to learn for the average, computer-literate user (Chawner and Lewis 2006, 33; Raman 2006, 60).
Many free or inexpensive Wiki engines and Wiki farms are available (Casey and Savastinuk 2006; Raman 2006, 61).
Wikis support communication and knowledge sharing (Raman 2006, 63-64).

There are lots of educational uses for wikis ranging from teacher collaborations, student group projects, class creations (e.g. a wiki of book recommendations by individual students), administrators (e.g. school plan collaborative documents), Parent Advisory committee minutes and projects, etc. The possibilities are only limited by imagination and one's attitude of techno-bravery.

Since Elizabeth took on the leadership role in creating our group project wiki, I still needed to fully experience the process of creating a wiki in order to demonstrate my learning. Following Ronda's advice, I checked out the wiki matrix. Here I answered about 10 questions that got me thinking more about how much and/or how little I needed to understand to use a wiki. The questionaire helped me narrow it down to 20 wiki styles. I chose one that was recommended, but that I hadn't seen much about before. Wetpaint.com:

Wetpaint (www.wetpaint.com) lets anyone create a free hosted wiki website in minutes. Wetpaint sites are different from other wikis because anyone can easily add text, photos, or links to other websites just by clicking on the "EasyEdit" button and typing. Wetpaint eliminates the need to learn wiki syntax which significantly increases the number of people who can participate in helping grow and edit content to the site.

Okay, I chose wetpaint.com because of the name. Anything involving/evoking wet paint has got to be fun and creative, right? As I moved through the wetpaint.com site I was offered lots of information... but not too much, if you catch my drift. In fact, I tried to shut down my critical, cautious brain and just go with the flow.

Elizabeth was right--the hardest part was choosing a name. I had to think about what I might actually use a wiki for, non-professionally. I wanted to give myself the chance to just play with the format---without creating extra pressure.

I decided to make a wiki for my book group and came up with the descriptive, if somewhat dull, name of Victoria Book Lovers.The lovers part is a sly reference to the fact that we are a bunch of married couples who meet monthly to socialize and talk about the books we've chosen to read together.

We have been together 4 or 5 years and try to read a book a month. One of our founding members is a trained librarian (not me). She diligently keeps track of what we've read. I think the wiki would appeal to the members of this group because everyone can't be at every meeting, but people still like to comment on the book under discussion. Some members have emailed in their thoughts from as far away as New York and South Africa.

I can see just having a page for each book, maybe rating each one--thumbs up or down, and writing about how the in-person discussion changes how we think about books. I would also track the books that people had the most trouble reading---an awful biography of Jack Nicholson comes to mind. I think only 2 out of 12 made it through that one....I set up the wiki in under 10 minutes--seems easy---but when I try to return the next day I can't find it. Wetpaint.com starts to lose points for reliability. Obviously not completely user-friendly!

So I give it another try.This time I see that it is advertising-heavy and not as simple to use as pbwiki. Certainly less appealing for a school setting. I can imagine setting up a wiki in the school library for book reviews or recommendations.It would be quite straightforward to show students and staff how to access and contribute. No doubt many students could 'pretty it up'. I wonder about multiple editors and how that would play out in a school-wide context. I need to do more research and find out my details about school technology policies.

In sum, my favourite part of the wiki experience has been getting to hum wiki wacki woo* along with Jim Kweskin all week.

* a few of the lyrics from Irving Berlin's song:

Maybe she'll sigh
Maybe she'll cry
Maybe she'll find somebody else
Bye and bye to sing to
When it's cool and shady
Where the tricky wiki wackies woo
If you like-a ukulele lady
Ukulele lady like-a you.

Copyright 1925 Irving Berlin Inc - The ukulele was brought to Hawai`i from Madeira, Portugal in 1879. Three immigrants are credited with introducing the stringed instrument: Manuel Nunes, Augusto Diaz and Jose do Espirito Santo. These three played for the royal court and performed throughout Hawai`i. King Kalâkaua and Queen Lili`uokalani both played the ukulele and were instrumental in promoting it's popularity. There are three theories on how the ukulele (jumping flea) was named. 1) Playing of the instrument was described as finger movements jumping like fleas; 2) Edward Purvis was nicknamed the ukulele and the instrument was known as "Ukulele's instrument; 3) Purvis's fingers looked like jumping fleas when he played.

Virtual libraries--To Infinity and Beyond!

2008-03-01T09:37:00.000-08:00

To Infinity... and Beyond --- the real world of virtual libraries.

I begin with a quote from a favourite philosopher, Buzz Lightyear. Buzz says it all when he invites us to infinity and beyond ---there is so much out there that it literally makes my head spin.In truth, I'm complaining about my health----I keep having major dizzy spells that must be part of some weird virus. I've been home most of the week sleeping and reading--but most of the writing I tried to Friday disappeared into the Blackboard-abyss, so today I still feel crummy AND I'm still behind. I'm quite disappointed in myself because I was so determined to stay playful and positive, NOT take it all too seriously.(Hopefully that explains all the cartoon images I've used this week). I guess I can decide that analytically, but my body has other ideas.

I know I'm a bit of a one-note Johnny when I keep underscoring the essential aspect of playful learning, but as I contemplate introducing web 2.0 tools to some of my non-techie colleagues I know that there will be resistance. They are hesitant to embrace all of the new web 2.0 options---just like me. As I ponder the challenges of making professional development effective, I keep the leery learner in mind. But I digress, this is topic 2 musing....

So, back to the world of virtual libraries. My first research stop was at the Teacher-Librarian guru, Joyce Valenza's Springfield Township High School library. My first impression was funky, fun, inviting. I would definitely enjoy accessing this site whether I was a student, a teacher, a parent or visiting TL. I especially liked her design layout--artwork courtesy of a relative-- very Magic Schoolbus/Mrs. Frizzle--

tons of cool and extremely useful stuff.
But as I kept poking around I began to get overwhelmed. I thought WHOA! This is a galaxy of stuff to sort through.

This of course, is the same response I've had pretty well every week of this course. Too much information is almost as bad as too little, (not really!), and it can eat up a LOT of time and 'product hours'. For example, if I'm at work exploring virtual libraries to research the upcoming changes to our school website, at what point does the value of fresh inspiration and learning end, and the time-waster function commence? We think about TV as a time-waster, but of course the internet trumps TV (to emulate Doug Johnson's pithy comments). Suddenly I'm doing an old Brittany Spears song: 'Oops, I've done it again.

By making the connection to Doug Johnson's article, Dangers and Opportunities:Challenges for Libraries in the Digital Age Ive started to side-track myself again. There is so much fascinating stuff to explore, but the ability to re-focus on the task at hand is required. (As a teacher, I want to know more about the ways we help students develop this skill because internet use is a daily part of student life).

Back to Johnson for a moment.When he quotes Michael Jensen's list of the number of ways in which one type of information is becoming more valued than another by today's searchers, his comments are most pertinent to the evaluation of a virtual library. Jensen's list:

Free trumps cost
Open trumps firewalled
Easy trumps intricate
Fast sufficiency trumps clumsy quality.
Integrated/linked trumps siloed
Findable trumps precise
Recommended trumps available
Updateable trumps static

Every item on the list is an aspect of the ideal Virtual Library.

The virtual library is an amazing resource that can:

level the playing field for access to resources
take users on a journey of connection as they follow link after link
locate the actual (physical) resource in your library
teach users how to search online databases effectively
model and/or showcase best practice whether it's the best way to write a blog or research a social studies topic
highlight new books and other resources
offer on-line collaboration options e.g. wikis which then form a library of shared resources.
inform users about school policies, procedures, and news
publish student and staff creative work( links to videos, podcasts, poetry, essays etc. ad infinitum)
assist students with homework outside of library hours
advertise special events that take place in the(physical) library, i.e. visiting authors, book club discussions, workshops
quite a few thousand more things I haven't thought of yet...

Not surprisingly, Valenza's site hits the bull's eye. I continued my search for other good sites. I found a directory that listed virtual library sites from around the world. I checked out the Canadian sites and was especially impressed by the site created by Judith Comfort at Dr.Charles Best Secondary School Library
Some of my favourite features were a Should we buy these titles? link on the teacher resources page that listed 5 titles (and the links to Amazon with more product information). Getting feedback from other staff about prospective titles is a great idea. Of course what really sold me was the question posed 'Virtual tools speed up your life but do they improve it' with an invitation to leave a comment just below. Another feature, Behind the screen - for teacher-librarians, led me to a million more reasons to frequent this site.

All this leaves me back where I started, slightly overwhelmed with all the possibilities there are out there for amazingly useful, vibrant, stimulating virtual libraries. Make that overwhelmed, inspired, and motivated to keep learning.

A note about Tumblr.

2008-02-25T06:07:00.000-08:00

To post my podcast I used Tumblr.
I tried Richardson's suggestions, but my podcast guests had other commitments so we went with the one that Tom uses all the time. If you listen to my podcast, and I hope you do, you'll hear some savvy young folks talk about the technology they use and some of the ways they see media evolving. At the very end of the piece they give a plug for their videogame website. Or check it out @ quiksave.net

Podcast adventure

2008-02-24T15:07:00.000-08:00

To prepare for my podcast adventure I did more reading (and highlighting) of Richardson's book-BLOGS, WIKIS, PODCASTS and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms- my EDES 545 bible. Reading about how easy and versatile podcasting is, made me feel quite hopeful that I could DO this and maybe even enjoy the process. Of course my confidence was also boosted by the fact that my podcast subject was an interview with my three kids. My eldest son, Thomas, podcasts regularly, so I knew that expert technical assistance would be close at hand.

Back to Richardson for a moment. His description is "Podcasting is basically the creation and distribution of amateur radio, plain and simple....you do not need a lot of technical expertise to make it work." He lists the requirements needed to create a basic podcast:

a digital audio recorder to create and MP3 file (I used my Mac)
space on a server to host the file ( I used Tumblr because that's what my son Tom uses)
a blog ( got that a while ago!)
something to say

Another description of podcasting that I liked came from tech-guy and podcast pioneer, Leo LaPorte who says podcasts are TIVO for the radio. As a rabid CBC listener, who went from full-time home-maker to full-time teacher, the ability to listen to my shows when I can, instead of when they are on is a much appreciated gift. I asked for an Ipod for my last birthday just so I wouldn't have to miss Writers and Company with Eleanor Wachtel

The educational possibilities are very exciting. I can imagine students loving the medium enough to be excited about whatever content they are demonstrating mastery over. My own children, are involved in the performing arts so I can imagine podcasting concerts to share with out of town grandparents, doing a podcast-interview with performers in the musical theatre shows, jazz band concerts etc---though I suppose video would be another option.

I was keen on Richardson's suggestion that the school news/announcements could be podcast. He describes Lincoln (NE) Southwest High School podcast that offers " Feature reports by students on upcoming events, interviews, reviews and whatever else might be of interest" http://lsw.lps.org/dhersh/podcast.html

But there are many more educational possibilities for language, social studies, science classes that Richardson describes, and my brain is cooking with possibilities. The main thing I see as a Teacher Librarian, is now that I know how easy it can be, I will encourage, demonstrate, (and hand-hold if necessary) to help my colleagues use this amazing tool.

That's the great thing about this course as a piece of professional development. I am trying all kinds of technology that I would have avoided like the plague because I would have been afraid of looking stupid, of breaking something etc., all that fear based stuff. My big aha! as a TL is that by collaborating with teachers, especially in the use of technology, I can make using new technology less intimidating and less time-consuming to my already very busy colleagues. Even better, I don't have to be the expert, I can turn to my students for expertise with the technology. In truth, they are the self-trained media specialists.

A family podcast!

2008-02-24T12:14:00.001-08:00

You can find the audio file here!

Too much

2008-02-09T10:51:00.000-08:00

This past week has been all about too much. Too much at Stelly's Secondary library, too much illness and foreign vistors at home, too much yet unknown in this course. Not an auspicious beginning, but that's life. And of course, things are always connected in my world. So hang on gentle reader, let's see if I can make the connections clear to you.

At Stelly's this week marked the beginning of semester 2. In the library that means that all the textbooks we attempted to collect the week before (approximately 6000), had to be checked out to new users this week. It is a physically rigorous process that 3 people undertake. I spent the first 3 days in what I call 'the bookhole' --a small airless, windowless room stacked to the rafters with textbooks. The students file in pick up the books they need for this particular class, proceed to my circulation station, and then we (hopefully) checkout their barcoded texts. Sometimes a student has not yet returned his or her texts from the previous semester so they are not allowed to take out their new books. The intent of this delay is to encourage students to return their books so the next student can receive a text. (Students who haven't returned their books are often extremely creative storytellers).

The best part of this process is that I get to connect with every student in the school( around 1100). I get to know their names, something about the courses they are taking, and establish a new relationship or build onto a relationship that is already begun. I love this part! When there isn't a student standing in front of me, I schlepp textbooks onto shelves. This is physical work, but with all the adrenaline of this chaotic time pumping, it too, is kind of fun.

Everything else that I usually do doesn't happen for the entire week.

This work is not really 'teaching' work, but it is one of the things the Teacher Librarian does to remain visibly essential in the school. Textbooks are still a mainstay of the educational experience in high school---but that is changing. More and more classes have online components. Along with up to the minute information, online databases and other sources mean no textbooks for students to lose or damage---and to have to pay for. Educator and Web guru, Will Richardson, author of Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms writes about the California Open Source Textbook Project " COSTP is projected to augment the current K-12 textbook supply chain, be self-supporting within 18 months of starting up and save the State of California upwards of $200M+ per year for K-12 textbook allocation within five years".(COSTP 2005)Wow!

So while I was in the bookhole enjoying the irony of my situation, I was mulling over the things I've been learning about in this class---new technologies that offer students so much more than just a text. In particular I was thinking about FURL and del.icio.us, the social bookmarking sites we are to explore this week. How amazing it is for students to access 'the collaborative construction of knowledge' referred to by Will Richardson in Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts.

Like the regulation 'digital immigrant' that educational theorist Marc Prensky describes, I spent most of my time reading about ways to use del.icio.us, Furl, Jots.com etc. to help me manage my information overload. And the overload is very real. Perhaps because of the challenging life circumstances this past week I feel darn close to giving up. At this point, I try to reconnect with the kind of learner I want to become---an adventurer who is able to give this a whirl knowing that by continuing to play with this stuff I will figure it out, if not now, sometime soon. I don't want to be that digital immigrant who turns around and heads home. I want to model for my own kids that I can reclaim my playful attitude, live with being less than perfect,(far less), and carry on.

Actually, once I can incorporate the use of the social bookmarking technologies into my practice, I will have something even more valuable than the ability to manage information. These tools will give me the ability to connect with other learners who have similar interests, and to benefit from their explorations and discoveries. Del.icio.us in particular, will help me make connections with what like-minded souls are reading.

At this point I've watched the recommended youtube video by Leelefever (Social bookmarking in Plain English) 3 times and read the whole of Richardson's book, Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts putting my highlighter into overdrive. I understand the process, though I'm still very clumsy at using it. I like the idea of becoming adept at using the folksonomy. The traditional taxonomies don't even seem to work that well for the trained professionals, I've noticed. Folksonomies will have their weaknesses, but the more people who contribute to them the more accurate they will become, (a la wikipedia).

Richardson describes using both FURL and Del.icio.us. Both are web-based, so they can be accessed from any computer. They are another development in cloud computing. I first heard about cloud computing while listening to Spark, a CBC show hosted by Norah Young. She interviewed Nicholas Carr about his new book, The Big Switch, "which is about the massive changes this move to what's called 'cloud computing' may have. For Carr, its effects go beyond the business of technology. Just as electrification changed North American life profoundly, the 'big switch' will change economics, culture, and society, raising questions about security, privacy and more."

I'm betting that the transformation of learning that will happen when we focus on connections between ideas, passions, and learners as opposed to the more traditional learning where a student works in isolation, is mind-boggling.

Alas, today I feel like a learner in isolation, banging my head against the digital wall.

A confession

2008-02-04T06:45:00.000-08:00

Somehow as I was posting little bits of my tube adventures they got out of sequence, so diligent, sleuthy reading will be required. It is kind of mindboggling that I can play with time and sequence on this blog. I have the power, evidently, just not that much skill! Oh well, I know I learn the most when I make mistakes, so another big day of learning for Steph!

YouTube Adventure

2008-02-04T06:43:00.000-08:00

As I explore the intersections of Youtube and Education, I begin by looking at the ways Youtube has been used by family members. First up is my middle child, Daniel.

Last June Dan graduated from high school. He and two friends spent their early post-school energy making money and planning a train trip across Canada, down the eastern seaboard of the US, as far south as Austin, Texas, then west to California, north along the west coast and home again to Victoria B.C. filming as they went.

Youtube entered the picture before they left home. Their pre-adventure trailer was created in the wilds of Central Saanich (i.e. the high school field) and gives the flavour of their mindset and intentions. What I loved about the whole process was that for this generation documenting their adventure was almost as important as having the adventure. One of the ways I see Youtube as an educational tool is as a vehicle of expression. An incredible amount of creativity is unleashed when you offer students the opportunity to create films. The sky is the limit. I'm thinking of high school here, but of course almost all ages could use the technology that keeps getting easier and easier to use. (Yes, I know, hard to believe it's Stephanie saying this). For the net-generation, using technology is second nature, not intimidating in the slightest.

So, even though I say :
YES, the creative expression opportunity Youtube offers is great
AND I think getting useful feedback is helpful
STILL I know that lots of Youtube stuff is awful, so for an educator's purposes Teachertube is a better place to spend time.

Another Youtube (guilty?) pleasure is the link to the Evolution of Dance. This is one of those comedy bits that is so clever and funny that it entertains both our kids and us. The fact that the very talented comedian/dance/inspirational speaker, Judson Laipply, looks so much like my brother-in-law is just a complete bonus.

Another perspective, offered by my oldest son, Thomas, is that a lot of the comments on Youtube are nasty, racist, sexist, etc. This may not be the place to post for the younger set, for all kinds of reasons.

TeacherTube and YouTube finale

2008-02-04T06:25:00.000-08:00

Once again, I'm still playing when I need to be finished my posts on this topic. Today is textbook signout day at Stelly's as we begin semester 2. We'll be moving about 6000 texts into students' hands over the next two days. What I like about this crazy time is I have an opportunity to speak to pretty well every student in the school. Positive interactions now mean that students will ask me for help when they are searching for books, sites, learning support in general, and affirmation of one kind or another. As I sign out their textbooks I get the chance to talk to each student, to connect their names with their faces. As a non-enrolling teacher tis is my big chance to make connections. I love it!

I will work my YouTube explorations into the conversations I have with students. I like them to know that I value their opinions and experiences and that I am a busily engaged learner, too. I know I will be spending more time on the 'tubes', learning more tricks about navigating smoothly and creatively. So of course, this isn't really a finale, just an intermission!

TeacherTube trips

2008-02-04T05:51:00.000-08:00

The videos that I checked out include a 10 minute video describing how Civilization III, a computer game, is used in history classes at Kimball Union Academy. Because I know from (parenting) experience how much kids learn and love role playing video games this really intrigued me. The concept of getting buy in from administration also interested me. Certainly we seem to spend a lot of time asking kids to stop playing games, at school--but again-- the theme of learning through play pops up. I like the learning details included, e.g. a discussion of the rubric used to evaluate time spent playing the game, and a final reflective project.

Recently a conversation between my husband, son Thomas, and I about the historical details and of 'Assassin's Creed'-- another role playing game this time based on the Crusades, got me thinking about the possibility of using games like this in the library and the Social Studies classes. It cheers me to know that these educational games are being created and incorporating so much historical accuracy.

The Teacher-Tube video is one that I would use for promoting the concept to administrators and parents.

Tags: history technology education video game simulation civilizations

Channels: High School TeacherTube Tutorials Professional Development

I include the tag and channel information for this one because I liked navigating around the TeacherTube site with some direction and assistance.

Actually using the technology

2008-01-29T07:22:00.000-08:00

Just a short note and a chortle. My assignment was to actually USE photobucket or another photo sharing site, so early this morning my trusty mac and I gave it a go. Dead easy, which is of course the point. I can now understand through experience just how easy it is to begin. I know it will be fun to continue playing and learning on photobucket. This learning carries with it the bonus insight that unless I MAKE another teacher use the new technology, they probably won't, since most educators would rather do the readings, because that's always worked for us before (e.g. all the way through university, particularly if we became adults before the 21st century). In my experience Teacher Librarians love collaborating, but it has to be beneficial to the classroom teacher and her students. So, time, critical thinking, curricular relevance and prescribed learning outcomes all need to be part of the package.

Consulting an Expert Player

2008-01-27T21:12:00.000-08:00

To help with my exploration of the world of photosharing I interviewed my 20 year old son about what photosite he uses and why. Tom is a mac-man through and through. It was his love of mac that led me to order my own, one week into this U of A course. Kind of a steep learning curve to begin exploring a new computer while taking my first on-line course....but hey, nothing like immersing oneself to see how well you float!

Anyway, Tom takes and stores photos on his mac and he seems to share images through Facebook as much as anything. He tells me he has used photobucket and found it easy enough. I gave it a whirl and found it straightforward and appealing. Lots of options to view and use(?) other people's photos. I must admit that my initial worry about being confronted with images of scantily clad young folks was somewhat appeased. Useful parts of photobucket are the links to myspace. This seems to be a full service site, but Im not sure just when you start to pay for what you use.

I spent some time on the Flickr site too. Very similar possibilities. I really liked the tour and I was immediately interested in the creative commons details. Sharing art, giving artists both credit and control over how their art is used AND the possibility of comments from a wide audience---this is the internet at its best. The possibilities for students to create, manipulate and display all kinds of work is exciting. I can imagine applications for just about every subject area. Creating videos, which we look at next, could be used to teach processes,(e.g. baking a cake, performing a science experiment, choreographing a dance, giving a speech or even researching in a library!).

My sense is that using multi- media would make any assignment more engaging for most students.

Creative Commons info

2008-01-27T17:12:00.000-08:00

Creative Commons

Many Flickr users have chosen to offer their work under a Creative Commons license, and you can browse or search through photos under each type of license.

Here are some recently added photos:

Attribution License

From Piutus

From HAM guy

From NateBeal

From lightscripture

From superhua

» 6,650,774 photos (See more)

Attribution-NoDerivs License

From Jessica DeWinter

From mtneer_man

From Pixi Toxicination

From Jessica DeWinter

» 2,234,078 photos (See more)

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License

From Joaquin Souyris I.

From Kevin Skuce

From Spikenzie

From Joaquin Souyris I.

» 20,143,066 photos (See more)

Attribution-NonCommercial License

From toniluca

From seanlisa99

From toniluca

From binarydreams

» 8,234,124 photos (See more)

Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License

From shriak

From obLiterated

From broken glass

From micstolz

From broken glass

» 16,682,983 photos (See more)

Attribution-ShareAlike License

From Chaval BR

From miniteca.org

From DanielHP

From miniteca.org

» 4,658,875 photos (See more)

"Creative Commons is a non-profit that offers an alternative to full copyright."

creativecommons.org

Briefly...

Attribution means:
You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your copyrighted work - and derivative works based upon it - but only if they give you credit.

Noncommercial means:
You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your work - and derivative works based upon it - but for noncommercial purposes only.

No Derivative Works means:
You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform only verbatim copies of your work, not derivative works based upon it.

Share Alike means:
You allow others to distribute derivative works only under a license identical to the license that governs your work.

Add a Creative Commons license to your Flickr photos.

You

play makes learning powerful

2008-01-27T14:50:00.000-08:00

I have a confession to make--I am determined to make this EDES 545 learning experience as powerful as possible for me---so that means I will learn by PLAY. In my experience, whenever I get my knickers in a knot about learning new technology, everything takes at least three times as long---sometimes more. Because of my, shall we say, vintage, technology has not always been my friend. However, I have learned a lot this last year from watching the high school students cram into Stelly's Secondary library where I work---they make a beeline for the computers--and where do they go to first?

They head for the social networking sites:Facebook, bebo, meebo. What they mostly look at is pictures of themselves and their friends. From this observation I know that using any photosharing site will have quite a bit of appeal for most high school students.

According to the 'rules of Stelly's library' students are NOT to be on these sites--mostly because it is assumed that if they're on bebo, they are not doing academic work. This is something I want to change--but I need to find the right person to collaborate with first, for what I have in mind. I want to work with the coolest First Nations teacher to design an assignment so that the FN students can legitimately be on the photosharing site. I want to use the technology to engage these students who don't have computers at home. These students want to do the same things the other kids are doing and I can imagine all kinds of powerful cultural presentations created on bebo/facebook/myspace....

I should back up here a little to talk about the make-up of Stelly's. Our school sits in the middle of farm fields,with the Saanich fairgrounds right across the street. Even though we are located only twenty minutes from downtown Victoria, BC we are a rural school. Our students come from both mutli-million dollar waterfront homes and four First Nations reserves. Some of our students regularly travel to Europe, and beyond, others don't ever leave the Peninsula. The diversity of our student composition is extreme.

I find myself especially drawn to befriend and support the students who don't have it all. So, back to bebo. The First Nations kids tend to use this site predominantly. I don't know why yet, but I want to design a project where they tell me why they should have access to this site.

2008-01-22T19:43:00.000-08:00

Process piece

2008-01-21T06:05:00.000-08:00

As I check the criteria one more time, I see that I am supposed to comment on why I chose blogger---I found it easy to use (and if I can use it it is very 'user-friendly!) I also participated in a blog discussion in a great Education course I took at University of Victoria last year,(Alternative Texts). I came to prefer the blog discussion over the classroom discussion, because some students didn't contribute much in person, but had brilliant insights and stories that they felt more comfortable contributing to the blog. Not everyone likes speaking in front of a herd of their peers---same deal with Pro-D, btw.

Finally, I am struggling with getting the RSS feed to show up on my blog, so I'll just keep plugging away at that or call in some more tech help for one of my kids!

born to blog?

2008-01-21T05:22:00.000-08:00

I think I'm starting to get the fun part of playing with this technology. I must confess---I am a dyed in the wool letter writer. I got into email many years ago because I could connect with more folks, and hear back from them more quickly. I'm starting to see how blogs connect people. As I've spent time today fumbling around on my new mac, I've enjoyed reading everyone's blogs, including comments. Of course I've stopped to make a few comments of my own, and what I sense immediately is my feeling of isolation is disappearing. (First on-line course, remember). I can tell that if I just use this blog as an old-fashioned learning log, that alone will help me grow greatly in my willingness and ability to experiment with new technology possibilities.

I have a real interest in supporting those learners who are afraid to take a chance on something new--because they don't want to look stupid. As a secondary school teacher, I see the unrelenting anxiety of adolescence every day. The students who walk the halls with their faces set firmly in the 'don't look at me' stance. I see technology as something that allows students to get past some of that fear. Because so much of the technology involves stuff that the students are already good at--media manipulation-it is a chance for them to shine. That said, as I monitor the library, I spend a lot of time telling students to shut down Facebook and bebo, since they are not doing assigned work when they’re on those sites. I have yet to see a teacher give a ‘facebook assignment’…

I am very interested to learn more about ways social network sites can be used for educational purposes. I spent some time setting my Facebook page up the first week of this course. So far I really like receiving confirmations from young people I know that they are willing to be 'my friend'---but I'm pretty sure that if I'm on Facebook the kids are onto something else.

I love making connections with others, I love playing with language and ideas, and I love sharing what I've learned with students. Unlike most of the other members of EDES 545, I have not been in my own classroom for the past (many) years. I have been living the alternative lifestyle (i.e. one income) of an at-home Mom, running our household of 5, welcoming 20+ homestay students from around the world, creating connections in schools and the community. My classroom time was spent in the classrooms of my children’s teachers: as a volunteer. Volunteering got me started in the library as well, come to think of it.

As I reflect on the anxiety I feel every time I look at the volume of readings and tasks involved in this course I give my head a shake and say 'Perfectionist get thee gone from my head! This is a learning adventure. It's going to be fun!' I see my kids and the students at school enjoying technology. Both my sons make/edit movies for the sheer joy of expressing themselves creatively. Of course they would never say it that way, but using technology is a way of life for them and their peers, it's their way of telling the world who they are. I’m in hopes that it will become my way, too.

another day , another truckload of new technology

2008-01-19T17:00:00.000-08:00

My new Macbook arrived yesterday. My very first, very own computer! Fittingly, I took it, in the box, to the home of my first born, Thomas, for my first lesson on how to use it.

Who knew he had such highly developed teaching skills? He patiently and articulately led me through the aforementioned truckload of new stuff. He intuitively knew to limit the amount of time we spent going over it all, ( i.e. we stopped before my head exploded).

And here I am, mere hours later, posting this entry on my very own blog.

I can tell that I'll need to run hard and fast to catch up to the rest of the EDES 545 class, but I'm pretty sure that learning by doing is (still) pedagogically sound.

Now we're cooking!

2008-01-17T19:12:00.000-08:00

As I jump into the world of technology I am competing for time at the computer with my teenage daughter. She has a project due tomorrow---I have a blog to create tonight! Solution, I am 'cooking up a blog' on the family room computer with two and a half men (sitcom) in the background, while my daughter writes in peace and quiet upstairs at my computer. Oh well, good training for a high school librarian.

I spend my days, at present, in the middle of a busy library, surrounded by stimulating, boisterous adolescents. There is a lot of noise and most days, lots of learning. Learning to think, compose, and produce coherent prose in the midst of chaos is a life skill required for 21st century living.