The Wikiness

as I procure my students digital culture.

In all the discussion of what a teacher work-week is really like (Mayor Daley recently said teachers did 30 hours a week–and of course no work during summers) I am reminded of a previous post in which I tabulated the multiple extra, off-job hours it takes to do this job.

Working for my students as a digital scribe, curating and procuring culture, I take endless extra hours providing my language-limited students with .mp3 files  I do it in the simplest way that I can engineer:

1. purchase and download Audible audiobook (30-60 minutes)
2. burn onto CDs from Itunes (120-180 minutes)
3. bring into 32 minute chunks into Audible (10 minutes each)
4. process separate .mp3 files for each 32 min. chunk (processing time per file = 10 min.) x Book/32 minutes, but usually there is a snafu with one or more files, and so you must factor in that time.
5. post up on Edmodo (10-15 minutes each)

But it’s for a four-hour book like The Great Gatsby, we’re talking about at least eight hours of recording and curating. Whether you’re using an optical, magnetic, or a solid-state memory system, this kind of creation takes time, and considerable multi-tasking capacity (cycling efficiently through fore-grounded and back-grounded activities in one extended work session).

Whew! Digital sweat. But also success. As one of my teens remarked today, success means “being able to overcome obstacles in life and achieving your goals.” In its own small way, providing my language-limited students thes audio files is I hope a successful educational act.