Internet Archive: podcast host

I'm testing out the Internet Archive as a host for our podcasts. This is a student effort from last year.

Word for the day

Demonym, as is these examples.

Google Links

I'm excited about proposing that our PhysEd Golf class design a number of community golf courses using Google Earth. Yardage, terrain, water hazards; it's all here!

The words I mean to say

I enjoyed the closing piece in the NYT Book Review about the speaking ability of many writers. Gifted as many authors are when writing, many make poor conversationalist or less-than-inspiring extemporaneous speakers. The author of the piece posits that despite issuing from the same head, words for speaking and words for writing are distinct processes:

"There seems to be a rhythm to writing that catches notes that ordinarily stay out of earshot. At some point between formulating a thought and writing it down falls a nanosecond when the thought becomes a sentence that would, in all likelihood, have a different shape if we were to speak it. This rhythm, not so much heard as felt, occurs only when one is composing; it can’t be simulated in speech, since speaking takes place in real time and depends in part on the person or persons we’re speaking to. Wonderful writers might therefore turn out to be only so-so conversationalists, and people capable of telling great stories waddle like ducks out of water when they attempt to write. "

Elegy for Overheads

I overheard these overheads
reflecting on the past -
and about the future
(how neither seems to last).

Their conversation clattered-gasped
as they each recalled
how their forty(?) years of service
was now permanently stalled.

They reigned supreme at Afton High
surpassing chalk and slate,
but now the SmartBoards have arrived
to make them out-of-date.

Each step and leap of learning
trades on what we’ve learned and know.
“The media is the message”
and so it has to grow.

The question is, like pens and chalk,
do they belong in a museum?
Or should we keep them close at hand
where we can use and see ‘em?

Size Large

After reading the cover story in the National Geographic about redwoods, I did some further research as I was interested in the girth of these trees. When I found out that the "General Grant" redwood had a diameter of 29 feet, I taped it off on my library floor. Quite a show-stopper.

My Day: Monday

I began my day by sending a Joanne Jacobs post (What is Arts Education) to our Art chairperson. I also sent environmental link recommendations to a science teacher: gas-drilling from ProPublica and a NYTimes series on Toxic Waters.

Returned a Kindle to our Special Education Office after loading some books on it for them to practice with.

Responded to a morning email by a parent to update (!) the menu on our school website. Updated it with Google calendar. Shrimp poppers, yum.

Z-imported a bunch of MARC records from the Library of Congress for new book arrivals. Got the books barcoded and the titles posted to our "new arrivals" listing.

Placed two Inter-Library Loan requests forteachers' aides.

Discussed a challenged book with administration.

Delivered a laptop and projector to the Guidance Office for tomorrow's MS assembly.

Pitched the use of Lulu.com to our English chairperson as a motivational tool for literary magazine-type publications. Showed her a sample publication.

Spent a few minutes reviewing features of Microsoft Publisher for tomorrow's Health class projects.

Broke out the chessboard when I found out that our exchange student was a player.

Our library as an Athenaeum

The new library at Goucher College is called the Athenaeum because it hopes to be the heart of the campus; assuming many of the roles of a classic athenaeum as "a central gathering point where people came for a variety of purposes—serious, frivolous, cultural, artistic, and social."

To that end it features not only book stacks and computer labs, but also an art gallery, a restaurant, an open forum with seating for 700, and exercise machines. The college is trying to anticipate the boundaries of what a library might be by revisiting an old idea that funneled social interaction, the arts, and learning into a place that was as much a concept as a building.

I like the idea that to accommodate our digital-networked lifestyle they are willing to try an ancient solution.

CCCD Art Books

We scored some great art books this time around with our library's CCCD funds. The gorgeous Abrams book on Rauschenberg is very readable and has some real applications to Global Studies with several entries about the artist's ROCI program and his visits to China.

We also added to our collection of Andy Goldsworthy titles with Wood. I think his work provides a very accessible entry into "modern" art. It also speaks to craftsmanship, environmental awareness, the hidden opportunities of our own rural setting.

Add to these Lucien Freud, de Koonnig, Rossetti and others; and we bring a rich awareness of the breadth of visual arts to Afton.

Comparing Dubai

The August issue of Architectural Record has an article about how the architectural profession might adapt its curricula to learn from the cauldron of creativity, labor, urbanism, and "eneven rates of modernization and change" that is the building boom in the economic Oz of Dubai.

As I read about the situation, it seemed that it would serve as a powerful comparison for high school students of New York City at the beginning of the 20th century. Enormous wealth, a rampant abuse of imported labor, sprawling development, environmental disdain, and little strategic thought to what a city is supposed to be for all of its inhabitants. Add to these common themes the unique political and religious parameters of Dubai and students would have rich resources for analysis, comparisons, and recommendations.

Dubai. The new New York?

Let us now praise FAM

The Fenimore Art Museum has inspired and altered my appreciation of an artist by exhibiting a series of breath-taking large-scale prints of his work: Walker Evans: Carbon and Silver.

I'm telling you! Standing in front of the prints, many that I first saw years ago when reading Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, now nearly poster-size with intricate detail, was a revelation.

I was especially taken with two huge prints; one of a repair shop with a syncopation of tires and hub-caps at works across the facade, and the other a "combine" of two prints joined to create a panorama of a street-life scene. In both, Evans manages to make us acutely aware of the content of the image (poverty, place, plot) and at the same time treating the image as an intricately designed tableau of textures, shapes, dark & light, rhythms; entirely "modern," like a Rauschenberg.

I think this show helped my enjoy that balance in his work more than ever. Well done, FAM. And thanks!

Summer reading: The Oregon Trail

Among the bag-full of books I took home to read over the Summer was Francis Parkman's The Oregon Trail. Written in 1847, Parkman recounts his day-to-day activities as he takes a six month explore of the West after graduating Harvard. While neither a homesteader, mountain-man, Indian fighter, or buffalo hunter, his experiences living among these remarkable people, as well as the Sioux, river-boaters, soldiers, and n'er-do-wells is a sobering and eye-opening first-hand account.

But it is unrelenting Nature that is the main character in his book. And it was brought home to me that it was the actual geography and terrain of the country that defined the challenge of westward expansion and that is beyond our grasp today. Travel was measured from water to water. Rivers were obstacles, God-sends, guides. Mud, head-high grass, shattered rock, and cactus were daily variables to traverse. And always the punishing prairie sun, the no-holds-barred quaking thunderstorms, and sheer expanse of the unknown were active participants in each day of life.

I think there is much in the book to recommend it as a required high school read. It has so much to say about goal-setting, overcoming adversity, personal frontiers, prejudice, the measure of accomplishment, journal-keeping, let alone American history. I could see this and Two Years Before the Mast as anchoring an exploration of 19th century "passages."

Lulu trial

I'm excited about the school possibilities of Lulu.com; the self-publishing site. I gave it a try myself and am tickled with the ease of submitting work and with minimal cost and nifty product. My 75 page 6" x 9" paperback book of poetry with a glossy color cover cost me under $6 to order. It arrived by Priority Mail 4 days after I ordered it.

If you search the site for "school poetry" you'll find that schools are using it for creating their literary magazines, classroom writing projects, etc. It seems like a great way to motivate student writers, to create a modestly priced yet professional looking product, and to remove the hassles of production and distribution. I think it offers some good avenues for fund-raising too!