A happy New Media Birthday to me.

I am a big believe in celebrating birthday weeks. One day is just not enough for recognizing the day a person was born. My birthday is November 18th and the past week was devoted to celebrating it. On Monday I took three wonderful Peabody women to a Regina Spektor concert. As girls do, we drank cocktails, bitched about men, and enjoyed laughing with each other. As we made our way into the Ryman, we happened upon an unfamiliar opening act. The band used an old television set as an advertisement for their name. One of my new media classmates leaned over and shared, "what a great use of technology. We should totally blog about this!" I could not agree more.

Tuesday, I ran to my best friend in Nashville's house after a long night of work in order to bring in the actually birth day with some beer and bad TV. While I was watching trashy reality television. All through the program, the reality stars used abbreviated language to indicated feelings and words, "OMG! Did you just see that?!" My friend and I turned to each other and simultaneously exclaimed, "New Media!" Then we fell over in drunken giggles at our revelation.

Wednesday. My actual birthday. It consisted of class, more class, a tattoo, and a party. I figured it was time to cross another thing off my 101 things to do in 1001 days list and finally get the tattoo that I wanted. As I was clenching onto my friend's hand for dear life I could not help but wonder how a person begins to learn how to do tattoo art. Imagine the different literacy that goes along with learning the trade of implementing permeant ink on a person's body. Not only do you have to learn how to use the tools, but you also have to learn how to create the design in a way that fits the person's personality. For the pussy that I am, my artist knew to outline the easy stuff first in order to get me acclimated to the process before moving onto more complicated things. Thankfully, it is in a place that I will never have to explain to a future employer.

Thursday and Friday passed. Saturday I journeyed to Atlanta with a friend in order to catch another birthday concert. All along the way I was joined with a recognition of new media.

Sunday rolled around and three of my favorite people came with me to see one of my favorite indie musicians, Imogen Heap. The greatest thing about her is that she uses overlapping sound-bites in order to create the background for her music. Her whole concert is filled with technology because that is the only way to make the type of music she makes with only one person. A friend and I looked at each other and I knew what we were both thinking - New Media! I kept wondering how does one learn how to make music like that using those tools. There were sound boards everywhere and the music had to be played at just the right time in order to make it all work. Not to mention, one must learn the literacy of the actual instruments before every creating music with it. Imogen Heap knew I whole different language that I was not even remotely familiar - the language of sound editing.

New Media is all around us. The more I look around, the more I understand the importance of teaching it in the classroom. As I put the finishing touches on my inquiry project, I have discovered that it is not enough to teach using new media. A good teacher must teach the literacy surrounding new media. We must teach this new language that comes with the technology. I can make all of the powerpoints I want about books we are learning in class, but I need to know how to use and teach the language of powerpoint. I need to be able to teach the language of technology along with the English language. Book literacy and new literacy go hand-in-hand now. It is up to us as teachers to recognize that and pass that on to our students, so that one day we might be able to celebrate our birthday at a concert where a former student is creating music with the written and technological language that we taught them.

Where's YOUR head, Sir!

I must tell a story, and I promise that it pertains to literacy. It was Friday night and for some reason the band at the bar decided that this was a good night to continue playing past midnight, which meant that all of the people who went to the JayZ concert and all of the UKentucky people who went out drinking decided to come back to the hotel just before we had a chance to do last call. There are very few things that make me fuming angry. Coming to my bar as I am moping and expecting a drink is one of them. This massive flood of people come storming into the joint, demanding a drink. I was tired, cranky, my feet hurt, and honestly I could not justify staying open for an extra ten dollars. However, the other bartender thought differently and decided to starting handing out the drinks like they were free. So I was stuck serving for a whole hour on top of the previous hour I endured with the band. Mind you, we are supposed to be closed by 11:00pm. "Woopsie," is what the band told me when I explained why I was giving them dirty looks.

Finally, the crowd eased so I thought if I started mopping then the Jayz people and the Kentucky people would get the hint and leave. No one wants nasty mop water splashing on them. Unfortunately, both groups were too drunk to care, causing me to curse them silently while I tried to mop around them as best as I could. A Kentucky man walked up to me and asked me, "where is your head?" I gave him the "what the hell?" look, which proceeded to translate back to him, "keep repeating until I figure it out."

"Your head, your head, your head lady. Where's your head." Finally, with clenched fists and a clenched mouth and said, "Sir! Repeating the word 'head' back to me a hundred times is clearly NOT going to make understand. Please use another synonym."

"Your John, Lady. Where is your bathroom." For F-ing reals! You really could not say that in the first place?! No, instead you had to be all unique on me in hopes that I figure out your country ways. Shaking in anger I pointed him to the restroom. The JayZ people were laughing and telling each other about the strange interaction between me and the man, using another language entirely because I didn't understand a word they said. They kept laughing and pointing, and I kept mentally giving them the finger. (Sorry for the crudeness, but at 2 in the morning, after a ten hour shift my lady-like charm vanishes completely).

The next day I was telling my mother the story. In her loving motherly way she said, "Kimberly, you know that if you plan to continue residing in the South you need to learn these types of slang." Wow! I thought I was getting by with knowing what Sears-suckers and meat and threes are, now I have to learn a whole new language? I found it interesting that the way I felt towards the man was the same way I felt towards the help forums when I was trying to figure out a program to create my video essay and all I was coming up against was advanced and unnecessary technical jargon. Can you please just use plain English and I will understand? But, what is plain English anymore? What is plain teaching anymore? All of the southisms are nothing compared to the language of technology as it pertains to everyday life and the classroom. What if a student informs me of a new program I had never heard of, does he have to repeat it a hundred times for me to understand or reach into his memory for an ancient terms that compares hypertext to a type-writer on speed (yes, I have heard this comparison before). Also, where do we as teachers draw the line when it comes to slang? At what exhausting point do I flip the mental finger and internally scream, "learn English!"? I hope that it never gets to that point, but I can guarantee there is going to be a large Old School Thesaurus in hand and my students are going to learn how to use it well.

Reach the ah ha!

The reason this post is a little late is because I wanted to capture the whole experience of making our video essay for class. At exactly 11:52am my partner and I finished our projects. Fourteen hours staring at a computer screen produced a product that is more meaningful to me than any essay I have ever written. I have also never felt more like a student in my life.

Three weeks ago we were given a daunting assignment: create a video essay about new media. The look on every face in the classroom was shear terror. We are all graduate students, who got into the top education program in the country, and yet the thought of facing something new broke out the cold sweats. Periodically throughout the weeks, everyone stubbly asked our classmates how their videos were coming. The same look of "girl, please!" answered back from every face. One thing was clear, we were all lost and no one wanted to start drowning just yet. Therefore, the weekend before the project was due caused a wide-spread panic. We have to do this video NOW! It is amazing how people put off the scary or unfamiliar. Not facing whatever it is that has us in a panic is better than diving in head first. Unfortunately, when something is left to the last minute, diving in is the only solution.

On Saturday morning, two bright-eyed girls faced each other and said, "let's do this." The first few frames were a piece of cake. The animation went smoothly, and we were so enthralled in the process that we completely lost track of time. Both of us are products of the computer generation, yet we still have a fascination for what can be done. At one time it was said, "the mac is only as limited as the imagination." I guess our imaginations turned off because our once clear vision turned into a massive blur. We were hitting roadblock after roadblock. Every minute was a new frustration. You know it is bad when you start actually talking to your technology, begging it for help, "PLEASE work with me!" One of us would think of something brilliant only to find out that you have to jump through twenty hoops to make it happen. Apple support became our best friend. Also, why is it that the coolest and easiest applications cost an arm and a leg? After eight straight hours of working we decided to treat ourselves to some trashy television and pizza.

Sunday came along and two glazed-eyed girls dragged their feet back to the project. The progress of the day before seemed irrelevant. New roadblocks formed and old ones still were not resolved. They started asking friends, relatives, the entire internet for advice. Facebook statuses included, "does anyone know how to download a youtube file onto imovie?" Slowly, the movie came along but it still wasn't up to par. Unfortunately, I had to go to work that night. We vowed to meet for two hours Monday morning and get everything accomplished.

The bar was slow so I decided to use the time to figure some things out. Slowly, everything started making sense. Maybe it was the change of scenery, but things became easy again. Not wanted to jinx the good luck, I showed up this morning with written out directions on how I figured everything out the night before. In two hours we had a movie. After a few fine tunes and some voice over, me and my partner sat back watching our creation with an overwhelming sense of pride. We created this video from nothing: no background knowledge, no prior experience. We were not only proud of ourselves, but of each other. When one of us got frustrated, the other would calm the storm. When one of us was too tired to type correctly, the other took over. It was a collaboration unlike any other I have ever experienced. Both of us brought our strengths and weaknesses and it worked out. No matter what happens, we made a movie and we are proud of it.

Now that I have had a little time to reflect I realized that this project replaced me back to the position of student. For the last few months we have been taking about teaching. We are teachers. We are leaders. We are capable of reading theories and understanding them, discussing them, writing about them; but it is rare that we place ourselves back in student mode. As I student, I remember things coming easily to me. The only subject I really struggled in was math. I made it up to Algebra II and then goodbye easy street. No matter how hard I tried I hit roadblocks that were impossible, at the time, to overcome. Everyone once in a while I would finally "get" something and once I did, I never forgot. Making this video was similar to that feeling of accomplishment. I forgot how good it feels to get the "ah ha!" moment when the youtube video downloads perfectly as an mp4. I forgot how amazing it is when you know that you created something great. Most of all, I forgot how much I learn from figuring out puzzles. Although my eyes are now crossed from staring at the computer, and I am pretty sure I destroyed my kidneys from all of the Tylenol, this was an experience I will never forget. It is also a tool that I will take with me into the classroom, because I now know what the potential roadblocks are so that students are relieved of some of the major frustrations when given an assignment like this one.

I can't wait to share our video with the class. I will post it on the blog after we get feedback.

Read. Write. Think

I was searching through several websites this week, trying to find ones that connected nicely with my inquiry project. I didn't realize how much material there is for English teachers. One website would lead me to the next. With each click of the mouse, I was creating my own research story. I don't even remember what I googled, but I ended up coming across TEWT (Teaching English with Technology), a fantastic website for English teachers.

For those of you who want to play around with it now, here is the link:

http://tewt.org/lessonplansites.html

I searched through the numerous lesson plans the site offers for numerous common texts that are taught in English classrooms. There is information for poetry, ESL, grammar, and other links for more lesson plans. I had a choice: do I continue on this site or explore some more? I ended up following the link to another site called read.write.think. It is a collaborative website created by the International Reading Association and NCTE. This specific website concentrates on connecting technological lessons to the standards. It is great for public school teachers.

Of course, I immediately clicked on the Student Materials tab and started playing all of the interactive games. Who knew that there is an actual website that helps you create book covers! My favorite was the fractured fairy tale tool. It first helps define a fractured fairy tale, and then helps the student create a fractured fairy tale of their own. By entering information, the tool produces a hilarious fractured fairy tale. The student can decide what to keep, change, or discard so the story becomes their own. It would be interesting to see if students learn fractured fairy tales as effectively using the tool as they would sitting in a group with a pen and paper, writing out their own tale.

After wasting a significant amount of my "school work time" I decided to move on to the lesson plans. They are set up by grade level, making it easy to sift through the elementary lessons. I came across a specific lesson that really caught my attention. The topic is "Protest Songs" and the lesson included students looking through Wiki pages for specific songs. The students are required to write down the sources the author used, located at the end of each wiki page. Then the students do their own research and see what materials were used (scholarly/popular). This is a great lesson when it comes to Wikipedia because as the lesson specifically states, almost every student will run across one or two sources that are not very good for research and informative purposes. However, this is not a lesson on why students should never site Wikipedia, it is a lesson about understanding protest songs through research. Long lesson short, the students eventually write their own wiki page on a pre-established class wiki about their specific protest song. Then the students classify each song in order to find the significance of the general protest song. What a fantastic lesson!

I think the reason behind my excitement is because this lesson allows students to take control of their own lesson. We all search wikipedia in order to find the latest information about our topic, but most of us don't actually write responses to the wiki's or correct information we know to be false. This lesson proves to students that even they can participate in an information gathering site. They can be the authors of their own Wikis just as the protestors of authors of their own songs. Any lesson that causes a students to read, write, and think is a great lesson. The three components of English are not separate so they should not be treated as such. Sometimes I find teachers organizing class lessons in such a way that each time slot is compartmentalized - Reading. Writing. Thinking. Instead, this website encourages English teachers to mesh the three components of learning into one - ReadWriteThink. Every lesson incorporates all three, so that students are engaged in numerous activities at once without realizing that they are reaching higher levels of thinking for an extended period of time. I highly recommend this website for that reason, not to mention the easy step-by-step lesson plans that are easy to understand and accessible to all teachers. This is definitely one site that I am keeping bookmarked for future use.

I don't wanna grow up... What do you mean I already have?

It is official, I am old. The two wrinkles I found in the mirror the other day is just the beginning. What was I thinking when I decided that doing a teen podcast was a good idea?! I have not been a teen in, well, okay three years, but really nineteen and eighteen don't count so five whole years! When did I grow up and completely miss the fact that young adult literature is no longer beautiful and innocent? When did I become so OLD!

I finished four podcasts so that the library could launch an entire month without worrying about delays. I finished the facebook page, the twitter page, and the layout for our weekly polls that go along with the podcast. I thought I was the coolest, hippest, new media-ist teen podcast host in town only to have my sixteen year old brother explain that I was totally lame when it came to teens. I believe his exact words were, "you just sound too old." Well, shoot me in the face now because I am not getting any younger, pal!

Nevertheless, my brothers words got me thinking, do I really understand teenagers today? Sure they have the same relationship issues I had (I love him so much...DUMP!) and acne, low self-esteem, and self-doubting have not gone away with time. So why is it that whenever I read a new young adult book I cringe a little? The Twilight series was not just bad writing it was, in my opinion, way too mature for a middle school audience. I recently read a book called Last Night I Sang to the Monster which displayed the f-word numerous times. A great book, but I kept asking myself if it is appropriate for the group it is aimed towards. Oh dear, not only am I old but I am also a prude! Me! Miss anti censor is wondering about the appropriateness of young adult books! And if I feel this way about books, how do I really feel about the big bad scary internet? Have I gotten older or have teens finally figured out that they are one of the largest consumer groups, therefore authors and publishers now have to present actual themes that teens want read about and deal with on a daily basis. Looking back, my teenage life was not Anne of Green Gables perfect. Nor was there always a Little House on the Prairie moral every time I was faced with a difficult choice. I guess teens finally got smart and said, "sorry, but we aren't going to read if you don't start writing for us."

That is exactly what I now have to do: write my podcast for teen. It is out with the old and in with the new. I may be grown up but so are teens and they are capable of dealing with the same issues that I deal with regularly. It is not as if the teenage brain stops developing in literacy because parents, and teachers, and certain groups of people don't think they are capable of dealing with adult themes. I say, if you are able to understand what you are reading, go ahead and read. I guess we all have to go through a bit of READ-hab, even the old farts like me.

An honest tale speeds best being plainly told

I wonder what would happen if Shakespeare was given the opportunity to return to the world of the living for a day in order to see what has become of his work. What would he think about the abundance of adaptations of his work that are floating around? Would he want to kill Kenneth Branagh for his musical interpretation of Love's Labour's Lost or congratulate him for his creativity while asking for a share of the profit? Would he have stormed on stage during this years Shakespeare in the park's seventies interpretation of Taming of the Shrew and demanded that the entire production be shut down? Worse, would Shakespeare walk into any middle or high school classroom in America and start crying? See Occupation Romeo

Shakespeare is one of the most, if not the most popular author taught in schools today. It is expected that every American child walk away from school with a least the ability to summarize Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet or A Midsummer Night's Dream. There is so much material out there for teaching Shakespeare that a teacher can go an entire career without coming up with his/her original lesson plans. Ironically, Shakespeare is also one of the least understood authors. Because there is so much material (including video renditions, graphic novels, abridged text and adaptations) that many teachers see Shakespeare as an easy teach. Plop in a movie and the kids are set AND bonus! you get points for using technology. WOOT! All I have to say is shame on you teachers!

The works of Shakespeare is one area I am looking into for my inquiry project. The best thing about Shakespeare's work is that most of it is very similar. He recycled many of the themes and character traits so one lesson for one play can be transfered to another without much modification. The English Journal is very interested in the use of Technology in the classroom, especially when it comes to Shakespeare. Joshua Cabat gives several unique and interesting technologically centered exercises that correlate with Shakespeare. (I will discuss them in detail in my project presentation.) One aspect of his article, "The lash of film: New Paradigms of Visuality in Teaching Shakespeare"that I found interesting was his quotation,

The arrival of visuality means that students are now able to manipulate images as easily as text. The first is that the use of images in the classroom no longer represents a kind of supplemental or ancillary literacy: it is literacy... (p57)

The reason this was so interesting to me was because we had talked about some of the questions that came to my mind after reading that quotation in class. First, what happens with copyright? If my students take a version of Shakespeare and manipulate the visual to fit the assignment, and then post it to youtube are they plagiarizing? Does the school need to pay royalties to the original production company of the chosen film? Can other teachers use what my students created as a tool or model in their own classroom? These are questions we as teachers need to ask ourselves and copyright issues become more and more relevant to public domain texts, visuals, and website like youtube.

I also really had to wonder about the idea that "images in the classroom no longer represents a kind of supplemental literacy." That is my whole project--How can technology supplement classical texts. If I am forced to think of technology as its own text, its own literacy then that is a whole new can of worms we are dealing with in education. It is easy for teachers to see technology as a supplement. It takes the pressure off of teachers if they don't feel like they need to literate in another form of literacy. Technology is for the technology classes not English. However, what Cabat is suggesting that visual literacy is in fact its own standing component within the subject of English, which means English teachers are going to have to teach visual literacy instead of just incorporating it as a supplement to classical literacy.

Although this is something to consider, I think I am going to stick with my topic of technology as a supplement. We cannot ignore the fact that Shakespeare is still going to be taught in classrooms regardless of the fact that visuals may be a part of the next generation of English standards. As teachers we need to suck it up and teach Shakespeare, but it doesn't have to be a chore. With technology we can create unique and fun exercises that engage students into understanding Shakespeare, not just summarize the plot of Hamlet. The technological tale may not be plainly told, but it definitely speeds best.

The power of Youtube

The two articles "Youtube vs. Boob Tube" and "Youtube and the Cultural Studies Classroom" bring up important issues regarding online video (specifically youtube) use in the classroom. The article in Wired, "Youtube vs. Boob tube" doesn't explicitly comment on youtube in schools, but it raises questions that pertain to teachers. The focus is on youtube as a social medium; an instantaneous world that elicits popularity through what others deem as entertainment. The article points out that 65,000 videos are uploaded every single day, but only a fraction of those videos collect enough views to be considered a meme. The first video it presents is "boom goes the Dynamite," a painful sportscast from a college freshman. I don't know what was worse, watching the entire 3:45 hoping that things would get better or reading the especially lame comments such as, "he must be a virgin." Like Wired, I too find it interesting what becomes popular. Who would have thought an obese teenager dancing to a Romanian song would become one of the most viewed videos on the internet. It just goes to show that the line between quality and popular entertainment is obscure.

The question is, what place do these pop culture youtube videos have in the classroom? Am I the cool teacher for knowing the entire Numa Numa dance, or will I be viewed as another lame adult trying to be "cool"? What place do memes have in the classroom? I really cannot come up with a lesson that can incorporate a tumble video. It is funny, but now appropriate for the classroom. Students can create their own youtube videos for assignments, but that brings up permission issues. Do teachers need to get permission from parents to publish a student's video on youtube?

The article also brings up another great question: With 65,000 video uploads a day, how long do these meme videos continue to be memes? What is the life expectancy of a youtube video? I wonder what percentage of my first classroom of students will even know about the Numa Numa dance. One minute, a youtuber is a star for uploading a video about a baby brother biting the finger of an older brother, and the next minute youtube viewers have moved on to funnier material. Is there ever going to be a time when the material has run out of entertainment? Youtube is an exploding world of shared content. Whenever a vast amount of people are constricted to one place, there is bound to be some issues. The second article touches on those issues.

Christopher Conway's article matches the content on youtube with classroom content. His article focuses on Higher Ed, but there is a lot that translates over to secondary education as well. The first is the idea that teachers can use youtube videos as a supplement to lessons. He gives examples of videos that he used in some of his classes. Ironically, as I clicked on the links in the article I found that a number of the videos he uses have been taken down because of copy-right infringement. If I want to show a clip from a Shakespeare film, am I going to have a problem accessing the clip because of copy-right? Conway was able to show videos to his college students without any problems, but as a secondary education teacher in a public school am I going to have to get parental permission for every youtube video clip I show? It is not like youtube videos have ratings and many school districts mandate that teachers can only show 'G' ratings without parental permission, so how will I deal with youtube. Also, many school have firewalls that prevent sites like youtube from being accessed. Am I even going to be able to get the clips at school?

After reading the article I began searching for videos in my content area. It struck me as funny that I had never actually searched youtube for readings of poetry or animated novel clips before. Usually my experience with youtube involved funny clips that were shared with me or hours of searching for "best TV bloopers" in order to save myself from boredom. Conway is correct in the fact that youtube is a place with rich materials for teachers. You can find anything on the site. I can show not one but hundreds of clips from different versions of A Midsummer Night's Dream. And the clip of the woman reciting her Ode to Dickinson is an incredible way to show students how to mimic poets. Youtube is a great source for visual supplements for classroom lessons, but there are many issues that go along with the open social network. Conway brings up many of these issues at the end of his article.

I especially appreciated his pointing out that copy-right is going to be an on-going issue for youtube users, especially now that google owns it. I also don't want to show my students a clip only to have advertisements scrolled all over the page, or deal with obnoxious comments that distract from the overall content (see Yo comments are Whak!). I think Conway is right, there is a place for youtube in the classroom, but there are also going to be some major changes that we must acknowledge and deal with in order to fully take advantage of the opportunities that youtube provides.

Why I blog

I have been thinking about some of the things that were discussed in class. I really enjoyed hearing the different perspectives about blogging. I have blogged off and on for the past three years. It started when I decided to move to Italy and was informed by the parental units that I had to pay for my experience myself. I wondered how I could reach the most amount of people in the shortest time. A friend of mine, who has blogged regularly for the past five years introduced me to the medium. I created a blog and asked people for a donation as they followed my journey in Italy. It was called "Buy a Share." People bought a share of the experience by basically paying for the right to follow the blog. That meant that I had to paint pictures with words. I am the worlds worst when it comes to taking "memory photographs." There were numerous occasions where I would completely forget my digital camera at my apartment, so any experience I had would be shared via words. I found out that adjectives were my best friends. By the third week, I was no longer writing for my friends and family but for myself. My blog was like my own personal diary about my trip. Of course there were a few personal things I left off, I mean what mamma doesn't know doesn't hurt her, but for the most part I was honest about every mishap, embarrassment, and joy that Italy gave me. My followers experienced language barriers, Italian grocery shopping, and meeting new neighbors through a bathroom window while washing a cut foot in a bidet (long story). I was able to share my journey with numerous people at one time, and I now have a printed out copy that I can refer back to for my memories.

It amazed me to hear the different takes on this specific assignment, especially from a few of my peers who are having a hard time blogging; not in the sense of writing things down, but in the sense of only being able to view the concept of blogging as an assignment. Because several students only saw their blog as a potential grade, it changed the entire way they wrote, experienced, and shared. I am not able to associate my blog with a grade, nor do I want to. I know at the end of the semester I will be graded on the content I shared, but this blog and every blog I create is my own - my "personal" space to share my insights and experiences on a particular topic with people who are willing and dedicated to read what I have to say. And even if no one reads my blogs, they are tangible pieces of my memories that I can refer to anytime I want.

The negative feelings that my classmates related to blogging made me wonder if I should ever assign a blog in class. Will I completely ruin the experience for my students if I make blogging an assignment? Is there a way to set up a journal-like assigned blog without emphasizing the assignment part of it? I would rather my students have a place where they are comfortable writing, where they can share what they are experiencing without worrying about grammar and spelling and whether or not they correctly guessed what their teacher is looking for. I would rather they discover a medium, like blogging, on their own then me ruining a medium by introducing it in a classroom. It will be interesting to see how I react to new technological experiences that are part of my assignments. Will I be totally turned off from fright, or will I find a new love and hobby? We shall see...

Doesn't this just make you sad!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8284509.stm

And yes, I have And Tango Makes Three if anyone would like to read it!

Who the heck can talk for 30 minutes?

Picture it, Nashville 2009. A fair technologically competent woman sits down in from of her computer in order to create a new podcast. She is very excited about this podcast and has been thinking about it for weeks. The time has come and she is ready. Okay, go. No really, GO! No, that didn't work. Okay, maybe if she googles podcasting that will help. Okay, maybe if she googles podcasting on a mac that will be even better. Okay, maybe...

You get the picture. After searching for a good thirty minutes I decided on using garage band as my podcast creator. I had never used garage band before, so it was a whole new experience. I did a few test runs and was getting more comfortable as time went on. So it was time to sit down and just... talk. But wait! I totally need music. Every good podcast has music, right?! Thirty more minutes of searching for free podcast-safe music I was ready for action. So now it was time to sit down and just... talk?

Wow! I did not realize how hard talking to your computer was. I mean I am a great talker, maybe even borderline obnoxious so why is it so difficult to just talk? I am interested in the topic, I know what I want to say, but each time I get super flustered and end up editing out more than I actually put in the podcast.

Alright, plan B = script! So thirty more minutes later I have written out a very beautiful script. It is funny, entertaining, and definitely aimed towards teens. I mean, I even wrote out the word "like" to seem authentic. Hi Ho, Hi Ho, back to garage band I go. "Hi my name is Kim and you are listening to READ-hab bla bla bla bla bla bla bla (you get the jist)." I read the script flawlessly! I mean I emphasized the correct points, I used emotion like Merryl Streep on steroids, and I didn't have to stop the recording once. I was so proud of myself and was about to celebrate with a victory diet coke when I looked down at the time --WHAT DO YOU MEAN IT IS ONLY 10:46 long! There definitely has to be a mistake. I mean that recording was at least 20 minutes long! There are musical interludes and everything!

Then it hit me... of course it is my computer. I probably didn't download garage band correctly. So back I trek to Google, only to find out that garage band is already installed on the mac once you buy it. Darn it! So after literally staring at the script for ten long minutes I decided that there is no way a person can physically talk to their computer for 30 straight minutes. All of those hour long podcasts are multiple people talking or computerized. Yeah, that's it. People are podcast cheaters. And besides, it is better to have ten minutes of great material rather than 30 minutes of crap. This is also the first podcast. The introduction is always the shortest. When I move on to the actual material they will get longer, and this time I will already start with a script.

Time spent on podcast:

30 minutes searching google

30 minutes searching music

30 minutes writing script

1:30 minutes recording

20 minutes trying to "fix" garage band

10 minutes brooding

20 minutes figuring out how to burn podcast to a disk

TOTAL: 3:50

Also, whoever gets the reference in the first sentence gets a gold star!

A great podcast and website

I was getting some inspiration for my new podcast and found this website

Read/Think/Write

It is aimed at students and encourages self teaching beyond the classroom, especially during summer. Their podcasts deal with numerous important and difficult issues. This one in particular talks about reading and technology. It highlights some of the dangers that comes with instant publication.

Enjoy!

Text Messages Podcast

what happens when Kim is stuck at work with homework and a computer.

After viewing everyone else's blogs I decided that I need some pictures for my title. This is what I came up with. Way to much time on my hands when the bar is empty because of football!

Have no fear! The title picture is subject to change. I typically have trouble picking just one as the be all end all :)

Fun with Fonts

I never really thought about computer writing versus paper writing until I took this class. When I first started using the computer, I had it in my mind that paper writing was for school and computer writing was for fun. I think that is why I enjoy blogging. Actually using a computer in or for school did not occur until my Junior year of high school. There was always a significant emphasis on writing on paper because that is what was required for the AP tests and the standardized writing test. NO COMPUTERS ALLOWED actually hung over the door to my sophomore English classroom. So after I read "Seeing and Writing" I discovered a whole new concept of computer writing that I had never though of before. Who knew that by studying the history of printing one could depict the movement of computer writing?!

When I lived in Italy I loved to walk into the different museums and see the pages of bibles that were hand written by monks. They were always elaborately decorated with pictures and colors. The more important the patron, the more intricate the details were. You can see where mistakes were made and where the colors faded over time. To think that monks sat for years making the biblical pages into works of art is incredible, especially now when the click of th

e mouse can turn one word blue and the next red. One doesn't realize how significant the earl

y forms of print is to the computer. The idea of spacing and text and pictures and design are all possible on the computer because of early printers and typographers. Every word I type,

very picture I insert, Every font I use creates a bridge back to the roots of writing.

However, J. David Bolter points out that there is a significant shift through computer writing: "The new technology thus merges the role of writer and typographer that had been separate from the outset of the age of print." He brings up an important question that the class has been asking since the beginning... what does technology do to ownership and copyright? If a person like myself can now get on a blog, chose my fonts, text size, pictures, even video to publish to the world wide web, there is certainly no need for typographers. If that is the case, what will happen to the publishing industry as a whole ten, twenty, fifty years from now? Playing around with fonts and text is fun but will there ever be a time where an author decides that green is the new black? Is it possible to take the concept of hypertext a step further and create several completely different stories through colored text (the red one make you angry, the blue text calms you down, etc.). What do you think?

Bolter certainly concludes with an important point. He states, "[Authors] must envision what the reader will see at each moment and how that will will accord with what comes before and after. Authors in print or manuscript must also conceive of their text as unfolding in time, but they have little control of the reader's pace. The electronic author who chooses to animate must bear greater responsibility for the reader's temporal experience, because he or she can regulate the flow of text and images on screen."

So I ask... What does this mean to you?

convert what?

I rented a Digital Audio recorder from the Peabody tech service in order to start doing my podcast. It was an Olympus DS-30 and it was AMAZING! I am thinking about getting one of my own for personal use. I had been using the recorder for many different things throughout the week. I interview a principal and teacher for one class. I interview my mother and brother for another class. All the while I kept adding folders onto the recorder thinking it would be easy to upload the audio files to my computer. I decided to test it out before I started working on the podcast. I figured it would be better to figure everything out first, that way I can focus on my content and presentability.

I plugged the USB into my mac and poof...NOTHING! So I tried clicking on random things. Still nothing. So I tried googling DS-30 and itunes. (I love that google is now a verb!) One website said I needed to buy a converter program. Another said I needed to download Windows Media Audio. After several more searches I discovered that this amazing little device only records in WMA's meaning they are useless to macs, unless I use a third party to convert the files to mp3s. So this is all over my head! I am on the phone with my techie step-father trying to get him to speak in English to me about what I am supposed to download where.

First I download "Switch" and then find out that I have to download a separate program in order to allow the converted files to play in iTunes! What a big fat mess. After I finally figured it all out I was so tired I couldn't even do my podcast. I guess it is one more thing to add to the list of things to do tomorrow. It just proves that thinking technology is going to be easy only curses the user. The only upside to this whole fiasco...I didn't have to pay for a new program.

What's in a name?

What's in a name, Romeo? A whole freakin lot! Naming digital/technologically based things is one anxiety attack waiting to happen. I search and search my brain, trying to come up with that amazing name that will capture everyone's attention only to change my mind for the four hundredth time to something new. Even this blog got a name make-over two posts in. God only knows the mess I am going to be when I have to name my first child. After learning what my job will be for the Nashville Public Library, I went home and wrote down at least 25 names for the new podcast. Some were clever, most were lame. My mother actually gave me the inspiration for the "chosen name." (That sounds so Chaim Potok). While talking to her on the phone she mentioned that she loved the song "Rehab" by Amy Winehouse because of the catchy beat. I am pretty sure I squirted Diet Dr. Pepper out of my nose. This is the woman who has never listened to anything other than the three C's - Country, Christian, and Classic Rock. Long story short, after hearing her talk about it, I thought about the lyrics to the song:

They tried to make me go to rehab but I said 'no, no, no'

Yes I've been black but when I come back you'll know know know

I ain't got the time and if my daddy thinks I'm fine

He's tried to make me go to rehab but I won't go go go

I was specifically interested in the first line of the stanza. They tried to make me go to rehab but I said 'no, no no.' The reason I was interested in this line was because if you add a few letters to rehab you get READ-hab. They tried to make me go to READ-hab and I said 'no, no, no.' How many times have teens/tweens said they were not interested in reading because schools and educational programs are too "old school." As a young adult you are not interested in reading The Scarlet Letter or writing a paper on The Diary of Anne Frank. We all went through middle and high school and even the dorky English majors like me wanted to die when these pieces of literature became the current unit of study. Schools need to go to READ-hab if they are going to engage students. I am not saying 'kill the classic!' All I am saying is, if you are going to teach King Lear to eighth graders at least have the decency to give them the graphic novel by Ian Pollack along with the original text. Give students of today material that they can relate to today.

So, I presented my idea to NPL. This is how it went..."I want to call the podcast READ-hab. I know the connotation is not the best, but the teen/tween listeners will love it and will relate to it. I promise I will annunciate READ so angry parents don't call about appropriateness. But, I want to prove to students that a)reading and teen/tween literature has gone through a huge change b)The library is no longer grandma's library but has revamped its atmosphere and materials - It is a brand new reading HABitat and c)That the different types of literacy out there can be access through so many new forms of media, including a podcast (wink wink).

The director thought it was the greatest idea, but I had to do some convincing and serious groveling for a board approval. I still don't know if I have a go ahead, but we shall see after the first podcast. Cross your fingers because I really think this can be huge. To be able to relate to teen/tweens on their level without being seen as cheesy is going to be the biggest challenge. And going back to what I said before, it all starts with the name.

Total Time at library: 3 hours

Get Excited! It's Practicum Time!

I met with the Public Information Officer of the Nashville Public Library in order to discuss my new position as the podcast host for the teens and tweens of NPL. The first thing I did after moving into my apartment was get a library card. I have always loved going to the library, even when I was little. There is something so sacred checking out a book from the library. You don't know who had the book before you and you don't know who will have it after you. It is like being in a private book club that is instigated through the book itself. Teaching has always been my first choice when it came to my future profession. If I were ever going to change that profession I would get into teen/tween literature. So, when I walked into the administration part of the Central branch of the library I was in a complete state of awe. I was met at the door by the PIO. Walking past the cubicles I realized that these were my people. Posters of original jacket covers of Jane Austen books hung on the walls and silver Curious George figurines adorned desks. I was completely in love already. Here were my book loving, language obsessed nerds! I could not contain my excitement. The PIO and I spoke for 45 minutes before actually getting down to business. Basically, I have found my new dinner buddy!

When we finally got down to business, she told me what the library was looking for, and what my role would be for them this semester. I didn't think my excitement could get any more bubbling. I was wrong. Mention of a podcast had my stomach boiling. When the fact that I would be able to really speak to the tween/teen age group however I wanted to was relayed I thought I would burst. The giggling didn't start to happen until I was handed a spring 2010 catalogue with all of the new upcoming authors and books. You mean I can pre-order teen/tween literature and review the books on the podcast? OMG!!!! I was in a complete state of high as I floated out of her office and wrote down all of the ideas that bombarded my mind.

I am so excited!!! I can't wait to start the podcast. I only hope they let me continue after the class is over. Just the thought that I can reach the age group that is totally overlooked in literature through a medium that they all understand is amazing. Look out world, Kim is going to get these kids to read without the help of sexually frustrated Vampires! HA!

Total time at library: 1:30

Reread

The assignment was to re-read a section of the readings that were assigned for last week. Well, in all honesty the section I skimmed through was the comic section. I never liked comics as a kid, and always found it difficult to read the dialogue and look at the pictures in order to get a complete understanding of the plot. I also had this preconceived notion that comic reading was meant for the kids who just couldn't or refused to read more refined literature, such as the American Girl series. Needless to say, graphic novels have never been my friends. At least that is what I thought when I first started out reading the "Time Frames" section for a second time.

The more the little time character broke down that initial comic about the photograph, the more I got into what the graphic was saying. On saturday morning, when the funny sections came out I always tried to find humor in the comics that my dad loved to read. As hard as I tried I could not read into the pictures and connect it to the humor in the words. But, once the picture was being broken down into several different meanings that reflected the concept of time, or lack their of, I was able to wrap my head around the comic or graphic. The explanation of the different symbology and line placement gave me the tools that I needed in order to conceptualize the lapsed time within the sequence. It was as if I was being handed the manual to the medium I had always misunderstood. Therefore, by the end of the strip I had a fuller understanding of what the artist/author was trying to accomplish. It broadened my whole world to the idea of graphics as a form of literacy. This concept can be used in several different ways in the classroom. I can't wait to have my students create a miniature graphic novel or comic using all of their vocabulary words. Or have them create a comic out of the plot of a novel. This is a whole different way to engage students that I never would have thought of before, if I had not tried to read the section a second time.

Oh where, oh where has my little book gone.

I distinctly remember every book we read in class. It never mattered whether or not I liked the books, but the memory of what it was like to labour over each word as I scrambled to read the chapters assigned so that I could go on to read the books that I wanted to read is very distinct. To this day I still read anything I can get my hands on. I prefer fiction, but have been known to randomly pick up a book about the Rats of New York City and nibble on it until I am a rat expert. Books are the only places I can escape and become a character, a city, a rat.

After discussing the form of hypertext novels in class, I went home and discovered that I was a completely inadequate reader. Imagine my dismay as I read through the form of the hypertext story in front of me, only to discover that I had missed a few steps and was therefore completely lost, not in the story, but lost within the cyberspace of the web. The novel was called The Heist by Walter Sorrell. To be completely honest, I chose to start with this one because it was one of the first to pop up on google when you search "Hypertext Novels." The novel is pretty straight forward until you click on the links of the names of people and places to get the background information. After several clicks I was confused, frustrated, and mentally exhausted. Granted, this was probably not the best example of a story with which to introduce myself to the hypertext novel; however, as I continued to read I discovered that I was beginning to relate to the critics of the hypertext novel. Books have been such an intricate part of my life. The sacred act reading from left to right, top to bottom only to turn a page and start all over again is an act that I relish in as I get lost within the linear story. The more frustrated I became with the hypertext novel, the more I wanted to pick up my current pleasure read and escape from the depths of the world wide web. I felt so completely out of my element that I was frightened. Although I don't think the book is doomed because of this new form of literature, there is a great possibility that teachers will be teaching from a screen instead of a paper. Student textbooks will be downloaded onto a computer or special reading device and they will have links students can click in order to read more about a certain subject. There is a great possibility that the hypertext novel becomes a tool in which I will have to become proficient as a teacher of literature. I am willing to try again, but for now I am going to stick to my page turning and linear story line.

New Media

This is a blog about my new media class. I am a Graduate Student at Peabody of Vanderbilt. I am in the Secondary English Education program. This specific class promotes the questions and concerns about new media in the classroom, so that we as teachers will be prepared for the integration of this growing phenomena in the classroom. The opinions and experiences that I relate in this blog are my own. I will be relating my thoughts and perceptions about class discussion and readings, and the practice and skills that I acquire through my practicum as a podcast host for the Nashville Public Library.

“Today we are beginning to notice that the new media are not just mechanical gimmicks for creating worlds of illusion, but new languages with new and unique powers of expression.”

--Marshall McLuhan