Update: I discovered a new comic site (abstruse goose) that I like almost as much as xkcd… it’s more ribald and there are a number I could never show my students. Which is a good thing! An example below:

Update 2: xkcd has a forum with math jokes.

I’ve been doing a lot of “internetsing” in the past few weeks. Some things of note:

1. Math Teacher Mambo’s “volumes of revolutions” project [here]
2. A superduper awesome puzzle to give to your students when learning trigonometry: “explain this crop circle” [here]. If I gave extra credit, I would probably give it to the student who could explain the math encoded within it.
3. Wordle [here] creates clouds from texts — text frequency. I love the idea for using this to create images for a English class website (different word clouds, different books), or for the cover of a dissertation or a book. I created the images below. Guess which books they are for? (I got them from Project Gutenberg.) An interesting English discussion could spring out of this type of word counting…
4. SensibleUnits.com [here] converts standard distances and sizes to things we non computers understand.Example: 500 gigabytes is 17 dual layer HD DVDs, 160 Human Genomes, 62 Window Vistas Installation, 190 English Wikipedias (without images)
5. For an English or History class, have students design a facebook page for famous authors, poets, scientists, political figures, etc. Look at this one for Einstein on DaleBasler.com [here].

Ho hum. I don’t know what to do with my days, and I’m only really on day two. I tried watching TV this morning… Tyra Banks and Divorce Court just don’t capture my interest.

I can’t seem to read more than 10 pages of a book before I get tired of it. I’m in the middle of three different books now.

I suppose I should shower, now that it’s 1 o’clock. I think I’m going to go to my school campus to spend some time before I meet up with some friends at our local watering hole. Let’s hope that won’t be how I pass most of my time in the next few months.

Note: I do have a whole list of school related and non-school related things to do this summer. But it’s hard to take that first step… or in my case, scooch out of bed.

Come on a digital journey with me

Stop 1: Watch this

Stop 2: Read this

Stop 3: Listen to this: click

Stop 4: Get the idea to make a derivative video and song about myself! Because I’m a narcissist! And it sounds like hella fun! Yeah! And heck, maybe I could show it to my class on the first day of school as an introduction.

Stop 5: Watch this

Take the truism about playing around with technology to heart: yeah, it’s fun, but if you’re going to use it in the classroom, make sure it’s for the students and not (only) for your own narcissistic pleasure… schools tend not to discriminate between good and bad uses of technology in the classroom… “you’re good if you use it, whether it results in student understanding or not”… don’t get sucked into that praise.

Stop 6: Seriously decide to learn how to deal with sound, images, and video. I want to go from having learned to do this…

…to get to someplace better, and to turn that into something teaching-&-learning related. Pictures and sound and videos are powerful resources. Not only do they have the power to make something more interesting, but they have the power to make something more memorable and understandable. Or at least get you to ask questions. Case in point, make the next stop.

Stop 7: Watch this.

Can’t get a better opening hook than that. (And you don’t even need to say anything.) You know how I know? Because I thought, as you probably thought, “Awesome,” followed by a “What the heck?!” and “How’d that happen?!”

Now all I need is a lot of spare time to fiddle around with my computer. And a video camera. And to get over my fear of seeing and hearing myself electronically.

I returned from new teacher boot camp (read: Collegiate Summer Teaching Institute) and I’m exhausted. It was intense, and we did a lot of work, had a lot of fun, and I think I came out a better teacher. I know I came out knowing myself and my craft better — which is almost the same thing.

I might post some final reflection about the experience (namely, the part that was most revealing to me was being a student again, and all that came along with that). But I would definitely say if you know any people of color (and that doesn’t mean only black, but it means everything from asian to hispanic to half-this-half-that) who are thinking of going into teaching in the independent school world, or have one or two years under their belt and want to hone their craft, it might be worth shooting off an email to them at least they know about this program.

I was catching up on some of my olde internet haunts, and came across two posts in kottke.org which are definitely “things that make you go hmmmm.”

(1) Winners of the Penguin book design contest

(2) Books summed in 3 lines or less

The Great Gatsby

NICK: I love being rich and white.

GATSBY: Me, too, but I’d kill for the love of a woman.

DAISY: We can work with that.

Both could be parlayed into great exercises for students.

The first could be an assignment for a high school English class — create a book cover for the novel which exemplifies the theme, mood, or a pivotal moment in the book. Write a page explaining your design. (Of course, there are a number of students who aren’t artists, nor do they know how to use design programs, so I think it would have to be one of a couple choices of projects/assignments for the class.) I don’t know why, exactly, but I love the idea.

The second could be used as a “do now”, or an class discussion opener for summer reading. Give everyone five or six minutes to condense the book to what they think is essential. Then use those wee bits, and the differences among them, to lead into a discussion of the book itself and its themes. (I suppose that after the book unit is over, it might be interesting to have students re-write their three lines if they think they are different.)

Look ma, teaching ideas are everywhere!

So today we start teaching our demo lessons to real students at New Teacher Boot Camp. We continue teaching demo lessons tomorrow too. I don’t have a lot to say, except for some reason, I’m super nervous. I know I’ll never see these kids again (they volunteer to come in for community service credit for their community service requirement), and I know my performance doesn’t really matter in the long run, but I’m nervous nonetheless.

Maybe it has to do with the fact that they are there specifically to evaluate me, and the tables have turned. I’m not the only one doing the evaluation. Maybe it’s the fact that some of my new teaching peers are going to be watching me teach too. I don’t know. But hopefully it’ll be over soon enough!