Bud the Teacher

The Podcast: Conversation Stream

   

This podcast, recorded on my way home from Learning 2.0: A Colorado Conversation, is just a stream of consciousness reflection on the day.  I am humbled to be in community with so many wonderful , talented and devoted educators, both here in Colorado as well as around the world. 

Need to Know

    Lee LeFever is a master at sharing complex information in simple, easy to understand ways.  No surprise, then, that he's able to assist in sharing some valuable information especially essential right now. 

    Let's be careful out there. 

The Memory Business

Ken Burns on his new WWII movie:

I'm in the memory business, and each time a person dies, it's a whole library of memories that leave.

I hope we're all just a little bit in the memory business.  This week's U.S. News & World Report features a collection of WWII memories as well as some information on oral histories for folks interested in recording their own. 

Been Listening to . . .

    The runaway podcast of my summer and soon-to-be-fall is WNYC's Radiolab.  The podcast, a fabulous collection of fun at an editing board mixed in with science and philosophy (or maybe it's the other way around), has been a must listen whenever it appears in my aggregator.  I love how the show's producers blend interview with narrative to make an enjoyable listen out of sometimes dry, but fascinating information.  There are digital storytelling lessons here, I think. 
   This week's show should be downright required listening.  Here's the description:

Forensics, archeology, genealogy, and genetics are devoted to figuring out what really happened. In this hour, we hear surprising stories of playing detective, and find that what really happened in the past is not always what you'd expect. We start at a trash dump in Egypt, where we find Jesus, Satan, sissies, and porn. Next, the mystery of how hundreds of old letters written to the same woman were discovered on the side of Route 101. And lastly, a blood sampling tour of Asia reveals a prolific baby-maker and a potential world conqueror.

The old letters story, my favorite this week, involves a teacher, serendipity, and some intriguing creative writing.  What podcasts are you loving that I should know about? 

King on Rowling: The kids are alright

    This is a little less timely than I would have liked, but I've been working through quite a hefty "to read" pile.  (You can check out my online "toread" pile, if you'd like - if anything on there's no good, let me know so I can save myself the trouble!)
    I've quite enjoyed reading and re-reading Stephen King's piece "The last word on Harry Potter" from Entertainment Weekly, where he writes a regular column on pop culture.  In the piece, he speaks to the successes of J.K. Rowling's series as well as her strengths as a writer.  (One big one, according to King, is she allowed her characters to get older.)  He also writes about how strong many kids' reading habits actually seem to be, and closes beautifully:

But reading was never dead with the kids. Au contraire, right now it's probably healthier than the adult version, which has to cope with what seems like at least 400 boring and pretentious ''literary novels'' each year. While the bigheads have been predicting (and bemoaning) the postliterate society, the kids have been supplementing their Potter with the narratives of Lemony Snicket, the adventures of teenage mastermind Artemis Fowl, Philip Pullman's challenging His Dark Materials trilogy, the Alex Rider adventures, Peter Abrahams' superb Ingrid Levin-Hill mysteries, the stories of those amazing traveling blue jeans. And of course we must not forget the unsinkable (if sometimes smelly) Captain Underpants. Also, how about a tip of the old tiara to R.L. Stine, Jo Rowling's jovial John the Baptist?

I began by quoting Shakespeare; I'll close with the Who: The kids are alright. Just how long they stay that way sort of depends on writers like J.K. Rowling, who know how to tell a good story (important) and do it without talking down (more important) or resorting to a lot of high-flown gibberish (vital). Because if the field is left to a bunch of intellectual Muggles who believe the traditional novel is dead, they'll kill the damn thing.

Worth your time.

Reflecting on Web Presence

    I'm at the airport in Hartford waiting for my ride to Denver (NOTE: I began this post there.  Finished it @ home. - BH).  I'm sucking down podcast updates on the free wi-fi here at the airport so this seems like the right time to try to capture some of my thinking about the web presence retreat before time gets in the way of the learning that happened this weekend.

    This post is probably more useful for those of you who are affiliated with the National Writing Project in some way, as I'm going to slip into NWP-speak a bit.  Ask in the comments if something doesn't make sense.  One note as I begin.  When we (those folks who are writing project people) usually talk about those entities that are affiliate local writing project organizations, we call them local sites.  So, for example, I work for and with the Colorado State University Writing Project.  I usually call CSUWP my "local site."  When you start to talk about websites, then it gets tricky.  "Let's take a moment to think about our site's site."  Get the point of potential confusion?  So we on the planning team for this event began to distinguish between a web presence and a local site.  So throughout this post, I'm going to refer to a local site's web presence, meaning the web stuff associated with a particular local site.  The larger point here is that with any group or network, there's a shared language that can sometimes be both an aid and an obstacle to understanding.

    I want to remember that and try to use language precisely, as jargon can make things helpful -- or can completely destroy meaning for folks.  But anyway -- on with my reflection.

    Saturday was a very long day, as we began to walk the retreat participants through a process of examining their respective local sites, thinking about what they do, why they do what they do, how they work, and who they're made up of.  We intentionally spent the first half of Saturday away from our websites, asking folks to think about who and what is important in their local WP sites.  As a way to model everyone's thinking, we asked the local site teams (each local site that participated had a team of two people there at the retreat) to build a visual representation of their local site.  (Yes, there was yarn involved.  I'm beginning to wonder if I should own some stock in a yarn production company.)  The end product of all that examination was to develop an inquiry question that would help to guide the rest of the time we spent together. 
    I was really struck by the depth and the range of the questions that folks were and are asking.  Some sites wanted to know how to turn their great resources of people and programming into useful online tools and resources.  Others were interested in using their web presences to develop communities that would support the work that their members were doing as well as to help them keep in touch.       

Once we had a handle on individual sites and the work that they do, we moved off to a computer lab to explore various research interests arising from the inquiry questions that we created for ourselves.  From there, we asked each site team to think explicitly about how they would go back to their local sites and further the conversations that we were only able to begin.  I do hope that folks returned home feeling confident that their time was well used.  I got the sense that most people did.

    There are plenty more details that I'll be thinking further about and digging out of my notebooks and notes over the next few weeks.   But for now, I want to share a really great metaphor for thinking about web presence that Symmetris and Amanda from the AAMU Writing Project came up with during the visual representation section of the day.

    They thought about their work as a house with two stories.  The first story is where everyone is invited over to share and to take part.  When you have a party, you don't have it upstairs -- you invite your friends, neighbors, business acquaintances over to your house and have the party in the living room or the dining room.  Some folks get to go upstairs in the house, but not everyone. 

    The first floor of that house can represent the very public work of a WP site - sharing writing resources, working with schools and teachers and principals and everyone that wants to come over and dig in.  The second floor of the house is for the work that WP sites do that is not necessarily for everyone.  Invitation only workshops, institutes, programming, etc. 

    Thinking about the web presence of a WP site, or of any project, as the windows in that house is very helpful, I think.  The windows on the first floor are usually more open.  Perhaps the blinds are raised so that lots of light can get in and people can see in or out.  The windows on the second floor are more thoughtfully open.  Not every window is open, some are obscured by blinds, but they're still there.  We share lots of information about the first floor stuff and less about the second floor. 

    But we still have windows upstairs.  That's important, and I'm glad that Symmetris and Amanda were able to help me think about that.

    I'm not articulating that metaphor as well as I would like to, but I will be returning to it in my thinking over the next few weeks.  I hope that others will share their experiences and learning from the retreat, too.  We'll be sharing some of that work via listserv, as it was a second floor or upstairs experience, but I do hope some of it makes its way to the various web presences of those folks who were there.  I learned a great deal, and I hope to continue to.  More information and resources are available at the wiki if you're interested.

    On a side note, it was a special treat for me to get to meet some of the folks in my blogging network.   Kevin, Gail and Bonnie have all taught me a great deal, and it was a pleasure to chat face to face.  (I promise my ABC movies will be in on time, y'all.  Well.  At least close.)   Susan is becoming a blogging comrade, too.   Now if I could only get the rest of the folks that were there to start a blog, or to tell me where I might find theirs  .   .   .   .

A Choral Contradiction -- Poetically Speaking, of Course

    As National Poetry Month draws to a close, I wanted to share this most excellent three-voiced poem by Kevin.  It's called "The Creator: a poem for three voices and one person", and is an excellent piece about the layers of creativity that can compete -- and cooperate -- all within one person.  The best part is that he's recorded a reading of the piece using Audacity.  Head over and check it out. 
    Great stuff.

Shorter's Better

    I really enjoyed trying out the first assignment from our class on digital storytelling.  (I'm going to keep calling what we're doing digital storytelling, even thought we don't have pictures.  Fair enough?)
    My piece is too long, and a little repetitive, but it's a first effort.  The next one will be better.   Promise.

Promiscuity in Prose & Poetry

    I might need to create a category just for Jonathan Lethem.  He's doing some interesting work.  (And I like his writing.  Especially Motherless Brooklyn.)
    Here's a link to and a description of his Promiscuous Materials Project.   Might be of interest to those of you interested in digging a little deeper into his ideas on appropriation and art leading to more art.   Basically, he's released some of his writing for others to use in different formats.  Here's that description:

I like art that comes from other art, and I like seeing my stories adapted into other forms. My writing has always been strongly sourced in other voices, and I'm a fan of adaptations, apropriations, collage, and sampling.

I recently explored some of these ideas in an essay for Harper's Magazine. As I researched that essay I came more and more to believe that artists should ideally find ways to make material free and available for reuse. This project is a (first) attempt to make my own art practice reflect that belief.

            

I especially like that he's published some of what's been done with his words.  I first caught this on an interview he gave to Fresh Air, and got to hear a chunk of John Linnell's version (at the top of the page)of one of Lethem's songs.  Good TMBG-y stuff.

The Podcast: Telling Stories with Technology

    This podcast, a follow up from the other day, is about further thoughts on how we plan to teach digital storytelling at my school in the next several weeks.  If you want to listen to my thinking on how and why to teach digital stories, this is the podcast for you.  For links to resources, I'll refer you back to the notes from the last podcast.