Category: Uncategorized
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2014: a personal Year in Review
YCHS students at work on our new garden. Seasons Greetings, Wikiness reader! Forgive my poor posting frequency in 2014. As you will read below, my lack of posting was not caused by idleness. My varied endeavors precluded more frequency. But rest assured, long-time readers: my fuel has been spent in ways consistent…
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Jimmy Driftwood, American Edtech pioneer
Good teachers know how to use convenient and effective media to jar their learners out of inattention, and focus them on content or skill learning. And Wikiness readers know of my interest in the technology of music. Imagine my delight, then, to learn from my friend Wilson Ramsay of Jimmy Driftwood, who in 1936, as…
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Yes, I’ll take some of that 20% Time, please
Wikiness readers know how I feel about the tough job public school teachers do, specifically HS English teachers. I have posted about the increasing oppression of the factory model in education, and in an effort to publicize a social ill, I have solicited English teacher data to understand how widespread my challenging working conditions were. But on this Memorial Day,…
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Hilarious, but oh, so wrong for school!
L.A. Comedian Greg Edwards‘ Thug Notes is not safe for work, what with Sparky Sweets, Ph.D. (gangster literature professor) and his casual use of b-words and other profanities. But his notes are as accurate in their summaries as Cliffs’ or Spark’s and–perhaps for a lot of students–as helpful in their analyses of HS English books.…
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A Call-to Arms for Introverts: review of Susan Cain's "Quiet"
As someone who listens well, and does not talk over other people in conversation prefers not to engage in “small talk” until after important issues are discussed enjoys his solitude in general, prefers one-on-one conversations to group activities is described as “laid back” and “mellow” tends to think before he speaks is happy to eat…
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Early Childhood Education: the elephant in the room of education reform
“Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. What you gain at one end you lose at the other. It’s like feeding a dog on his own tail. It won’t fatten the dog.” Mark Twain,- Speech 11/23/1900 By the time they get to high school, kids lucky enough to have…
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As the need arose, the tool emerged
For those of us born in the 1960s, the tools of today feel miraculous. They allow me–one person in one time/space context–to teach in more than one time and space, simultaneously, on-goingly! Of course I still work in a school building–my classes meet in real time–but they are largely web-mediated and increasingly “flipped,” so that…
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The Edible Schoolyard at Green School, NOLA
In the summer of 2012 I had the privilege to travel to the Green Elementary School in New Orleans, Louisiana. Here are images of the Edible Schoolyard that was planted there. Visitors cannot but be impressed with the organized, systemic structure of the garden. The students decorate the garden with signs expressing their sense of…
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What is a sonnet? And how to analyze one? A "flipped" English 10 lesson
In an effort to outfit myself with the skills teachers will need in the future and to give kids a quick way into the sonnets they will analyze and discuss, I have produced this “Sonnet Overview” video. Originally 9 minutes long, I figured out how to increase the pace of my narration by 50%, resulting…
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Digital Composition Course–advertisement
Two wonderful colleagues and I have successfully proposed a course in digital literacy for the English department at my school. The class, open only to juniors and seniors, promises the “tools of tomorrow” in the hands of students “today,” a global audience for meaningful communication, and guidance in using digital composition tools safely and effectively.…
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