It's the books, stupid!

Carville keeps the Clinton staff on track
photo credit: kipbot.com

      Hopefully, all of my students know enough about contemporary American history to know about "It's the economy stupid!"

      Bill Clinton was trying to keep things in perspective during his first presidential run.  He knew that while Bush and the GOP were trying to make the election about a number of different things (taxes, defense, etc.), what Americans really cared about, and still care about, is jobs and the economy.  James Carville, a young politico at the time, now a famous pundit, put it up in the war room to keep everyone on track.

      I have been inundated by similar distraction lately, and I want to get myself on track.  My distraction has taken the form of the following, amazing, game-changing items.  I highly recommend them, if you have the means...

   Number 1: Motorola's Droid X.  I am now as cool as my students.  It's a slight improvement over my old flip phone with a broken casing and no battery life.  It takes HD video.  The display is absurd.  I can upload pictures directly to the web.  I am constantly connected to both my e-mail accounts, twitter, facebook, and every piece of information in the world.  Disclaimer: battery life is very poor.

photo credit: wired.com

    Number 2: A new Samsung netbook.  This I really like.  It's exactly what I need: portability, the internet.   I'm really committing to "the cloud" so a piece of hardware that gives me access to that is perfect.  It's not going to run Fallout 3, but that's probably better for me and my students.

photo credit: slashgear.com

   Number 3: An HD Flip Cam.  Lots of applications, especially for school.  I'm thinking about recording some lectures/discussions, putting them on the wiki.  It's great for personal use too.  Portable, easy to use.  A great tool.

photo credit: focalpoint-studios.net

   So where does "It's the Economy, Stupid," and "Pee Herman's Technological Playground" meet?  Glad you asked.

   During the break I've also been reading a wonderful, startling, captivating book called The Book Thief.  No spoilers, but it's set in Nazi Germany, it's narrated by the Grim Reaper, and it's stylistically fascinating.

Photo Credit: thebooksmugglers.com

A quick excerpt.  Death writes about the holocaust:

Please believe me when I tell you that I picked up each soul that day as if it were newly born.  I even kissed a few weary, poisoned cheeks.  I listened to their last, gasping cries.  Their vanishing words.  I watched their love visions and freed them from their fear.

...

They were French, they were Jews, and they were you.

  Books like The Book Thief are why I love teaching.  A book that is so wonderful and terrible.  So beautiful and scary.

   A book should make you 10 years old.  It should make you wonder without shame or cynicism.  The Book Thief put me back to my childhood, trying to make sense of the world while staring through the glow-in-the-dark stars of my bunk bed.    

   Trust me, English class is about the books.  It's about experiencing a group of thoughts and words that stir something in you that is both transient and timeless.  It's about reading something that changes you.

   Technology and education is important to me.  Keeping my classroom  relevant is a priority.  Creating an educational environment that is about learning how to succeed tomorrow, and not yesterday, is critical.  Teaching a 16-17 year old in a way that makes him comfortable (rather than me), is a no-brainer. To do all of this, you need tools.    

   But, this is a reminder to myself.  And to you.  It's not the gadgets.  It's not being able to check my twitter (though communicating with Peter King and Laurie Halse Anderson is pretty cool).

 It's about the books, stupid.  It's always been about the books.  It always will be.

  I love Angry Birds, but it won't stir the soul...

Search for word frequency in over 5.2 million books? That looks marginally interesting...

This is the most amazing thing ever

Google Labs created a device that allows you to about 5.2 million digitized books for a single word in less than a second.  Let's go over that again, 5.2 million digitized books, less than a second.

Why is this important?  Well, let's say, like I did in college, you're studying the use of the word "monomania" in American culture.  You'd get an image like this:



Monomania is a term that became extremely popular extremely fast.  Invented in the 1820s, it grew in popularity with the reform of insanity and the creation of the asylum in the 1830s.  Panic in the lead up to the Civil War represents the pinnacle of fears regarding monomania.  

Let's say you're looking to compare the major sports in American culture for the last 200 years?



Baseball is a more published term than football?  Soccer is more written about than hockey?  No one cares about lacrosse?

What if you're interested in Melville studies:



Anything interesting here?  How about nobody talked about Melville until 60 years AFTER he wrote Moby-Dick?  Does his peak in popularity in the middle of WWII have to do with fears regarding dictators and the end of the world?  Is the book more popular than the author?


This is a cool toy, but what's the lesson here?

  You have resources regarding search and information that no one could have imagined 20 years ago.  Become fluent in these resources and you will find success. 

  Someone once said that knowledge is power.  That's wrong. The ability to find the right knowledge is power.  

Why this class is important and other thoughts on metacogntion



MC Escher: Metacognition
andrew.cmu.edu



  Quick vocab lesson to start: "metacognition."  Metacognition means to think about thinking.  Sounds like a very academic, stupid term.  I know the many times that I've heard it used by teachers/smart people, it's one of those cliches that mean nothing and make you seem observant.



  So why start with metacognition?  Because I am constantly thinking about your (my students, you young powerful learners) learning, your thinking.  And I think about my thinking about your thinking.  That's a lot of meta, a lot of cognition.

  I don't always come to the right conclusions.  I've had lots of bad ideas, missteps, poor lines of reasoning.  But I am thinking.  I think at home, I think at work, I think while I should probably be doing other things.  There are some drawbacks to that.  My classroom is not safe.  It's not as stable as some others.

  But I think the basic premise that teachers should be engaged in constant metacognition, constant evaluation of their classroom, of their teaching style, of their tools, their rapport with their kids, their curriculum, the books they teach, everything they do, is THE MOST CRITICAL trait in good teaching.



Evolution?
amorphia-apparel.com



   Look at other competitive fields.  In business, innovation is critical.  In coaching, teams are constantly trying to find the new best way.  In medicine, research is constantly being performed.  Animals evolve.  Things change.  

 



   Wherever you are in your life, whether you are a student, a teacher, a businessman, an entrepeneur, you better surround yourself with people who are constantly evaluating what they do.  You better be around people who are searching for new, ideas.  You better be hard on yourself.  You better question everything.  You better be willing to try 4 new things and be ok with 3 of them don't work.  Because that's progress.  That's learning. 

  That's what blogging is.  It can be trivial.  It can be informal.  It is not a 5 paragraph essay.  But blogging allows you to "teach yourself what to think."  It allows you to understand yourself, your mind, through writing.  Metacognition...dude...think about it.

Questions questions....

St. James High--Myrtle Beach SC

Here's a little bit about the school we are collaborating with...

Here's Ms. Kangarloo describing her school:

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Ms. Kangarloo to Me

Good Afternoon! I'm not sure if you know much about our area but I just wanted to share some information with our NJ classmates about our school in SC. We are a public high school in a "beach town" - Myrtle Beach, SC. We have just about 1500 students here and run grades 9-12. We are not diverse in the culture sense; however, the students come from very different households and have diverse goals. A lot of my students feel like school is a curse and we battle with dropouts throughout our area and state. What is great about this - is they are seeing that what we are doing is not unique to Myrtle Beach and I am not "hairwoman" assigning prompt after prompt :) Anyway, the kids are great though and their unique personalities (as you may be able to pick up on) make my days interesting and often times exciting.

44 minutes ago | Reply | Tag

Speak Loudly--Update

   We've been talking about a lot of important things recently in class.

  We've got the wikileaks thing going down--how wikis are going to change the world, how we are part of that change as a class.  I am amazed every day by the power of the internet.

   We're also reading Speak.  I think a lot of us are finding it a very powerful experience.  I know the poem "Listen" brought some emotions to the class that are pretty special.  It's an important book, I think many of us realize that.

   And then those two things, social media and literature combined.  I tweeted the following today:

@halseanderson I teach Speak to a class of all boys. Your poem "Listen" was extremely emotional and eye opening for them today. Thank you.

  I was communicating directly to an author.  Thanking her for her work.  Thanking her for creating art that changed my student's lives.  Amazing. 

   Better: she wrote back.

@MrFlynnWave Thank you for sharing that with me!

 Unreal...

I am so moved by this experience as an educator and a life-long learner right now, I hardly know how to express it.  I guess I just feel so blessed to be working at a time when this is possible.

  It truly is an amazing world out there.  Reading and writing helps us understand it and express it.  Days like today are why I love what I do.