Her district sponsored a conference with national prestige, but when people wanted to use Twitter to have a a backchannel discussion of the keynote address, they found it BLOCKED. It was confusing and dismaying, but a great deal of good has come from that event.

Writes Ms. Kolbert, “I’m particularly pleased to see the conversation take a turn to how teachers can begin to stop suffering in silence and seek a role in advocating for the very change they are seeking. It is always my contention that we should not “wimply whine.” We must take a part in finding a solution. If you are unhappy with the level of security placed on your desktops at your schools, what are YOU doing about it?”

I think this can be universalized for all the faculties and staffs in relation to a whole host of concerns. The issue of filtering is especially important, but issues like assessment, programmatic issues, even scheduling should not simply be whined about but should be researched and concerns presented to administrators in a cool and professional manner.

Overclocked: Stories of the Future Present

Publisher: Perseus Publishing

ISBN-13: 9781560259817

This is a collection of short stories that was really challenging and enjoyable. Two of the stories “Anda’s Game” and “When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth” were moving in cyberspace context. The former is an expose of cyber sweatshops where third world denizens labor to win prizes and make money for people who want status in a given game, but would rather pay then paly themselves-the exploitive element is wrenching. The latter  chronicles the effort of the system administrators left alive after an apocalyptic bio-terror attack to maintain the World Wide Web. It is moving, quite moving. One other story that bears mentioning is “After the Siege”. This story is based on the reminiscences of the horrors that Doctorow’s grandmother lived through in the Siege of Leningrad in WWII. It has all of the ‘magic’ to make it scifi, but the gritty details are universal in the human suffering and loss that is the core of war.

Little Brother

Publisher: St. Martin’s Press

ISBN-13: 9780765319852

The title is a pun on the ‘villain’ of 1984, Big Brother. The protagonist, Marcus, a seventeen year old from San Francisico, uses ‘w1n5t0n’ for his handle on line, making the connection with Winston Smith in 1984.

Mary Quattlebaum notes in the Washington Post: “His whole world changes when he and his friends find themselves caught in the aftermath of a major terrorist attack on San Francisco. In the wrong place at the wrong time, Marcus and his crew are apprehended by the Department of Homeland Security and whisked away to a secret prison where they’re mercilessly interrogated for days.” Marcus is radicalized by the experience and dedicates himself to bringing the Department of Homeland Security.

I Think Doctorow has done an excellent job in rendering the life we have been facing since 9/11 and the issues concerning personal freedom by overstating, exaggerating what would happen if wholesale carnage again occured in the United States.

The Graveyard Book

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

ISBN-13: 9780060530921

This is a middle-grade novel with illustrations by none other than Dave McKean. This ‘team’ is so good and gets better and better. Nobody Owens, Bod, is the protagonist of this book. He is the only living resident of a graveyard in England. He came to live there under unusual and tragic circumstances. His guardian is Silas, a vampire, who ‘lives’ there, as well.

The novel is terrifying at times and an endearing coming of age story at other instances. There are wonderful ghouls, spirits, and humans. I think anyone will enjoy the book who enjoys Neil Gaiman or J.K. Rowling.

I have been both a teacher and student in online learning milieus. I have launched experiences, as teacher, individually online in Moodle (on a 3rd party site) and other ventures, as well. I am today going to focus on VHS.

Virtual High School is well into its second decade of existence. They offer well over 300 courses and have been exceeding over four thousand students per semester for the last two years. I think it is an ideal addition to almost any school, but especially for smaller schools. If you have fifty seats per year it is well within the realm of possibility that your student s will take fifty DIFFERENT courses in the course of a school year-Think of how that broadens horizons.

The school has four membership options, as copied from the VHS site as follows:

• “Fully Participating School – Our most popular option!
  Sponsor one VHS course and provide 50 students (per year) the opportunity to experience an online course through VHS.
• Student Only School
  Provide 20 students (per year) the opportunity to experience an online course through VHS.
• Individual Student Tuitions
  Try VHS by purchasing one or more seats for a semester to see if VHS is right for your school.
• Consortium Memberships
  We offer a volume discount option for Educational Service Providers, or for a cluster of schools interested in creating a VHS consortium.”

There are several considerations that should taken into account:

• The cost of training (a one-time expense) and paying a Site Coordinator;
• The cost of a one time of and mailing materials for the course that is being sponsored if the course your sponsoring uses materials that are not online;
• Mailing cost for sending back materials your students have received from other teachers;
• Paying the annual fee to VHS;
• Paying for the training of your teacher and VHS for the sponsoring course development; A semester course for developing an additional section of an existing offering; A whole year to develop a brand new course. The annual expense of paying the teacher needs to be included.

In the best of all possible circumstances, in my opinion, a school or district would have the same person be the Site Coordinator and teacher. VHS would be a regularly scheduled class, with independent study allowed on a case-by-case basis.

The teacher would develop an additional curriculum component or use the services of VHS to extend the class for the full school semester.  VHS offers class fifteen consecutive weeks with NO BREAKS, so the students are at loose ends if nothing else follows the completion of that course.

This is the matrix for a small school in Washington state, except that the teacher teaches two online classes that provide the students with a hundred seats in VHS per year in any course in which they may enrol. This is a full-time position – two classes a day for the students in her school, two periods a day for her to teach her online students and one period for her coordinator and admin work.

On the other hand, if the Site Coordinator’s duties and teacher’s responsibility can be a part of the school day by reducing the face-to-face responsibilities, that ongoing cost would be negligible.

An amateur is a person who does what they does what they do for the love of it. The word was coined toward the end of the 18th century in France.

Remember, as well, that a profession, in the sense commonly used in our culture is only the third or fourth definition, attributed to the word. The first have to do with making vows, keeping vows, and communities where such things are done.

If being an educator is a professional, no teacher is truly a professional unless they are an amateur, too.

I think of what brings true joy to me in my life as a teacher and it is all about being fulfilled, not paid. When there are dry times, a check does not bring rain. When there is a peak experience for my students and me, it is not because of what I earned or the scholarly article I’ll be able to write about it.

How about you?

I fear that if I don’t strike a balance, all my living, learning, and teaching will end up being dust in the wind.

I need to post. I need to get out of this fix that I’m in. Whether I change jobs or not, I have to stop being wrapped up in what’s going on in my life and my career, and be ready for those who need me to be ready for them.

I’ve been trying to find a position in technology since the end of my first year as an English teacher at Hinsdale High in Hinsdale New Hampshire. I love being in the classroom. Every student is special for me. I feel  for them and with them as we move through this existential drama called life in the metaphor of education.

However, it looks like I am again going to fail to get a position anywhere in technology. Eight of them will be either left unfilled or dissolved in the HUGE fuel cost increases. And I have a terrible case of the “poor me’s”. I have almost completed my pre-school year preps to continue as a teacher in Hinsdale, but I have to recommit.

I can’t, however, because there’s still one more slim chance that a position may be offered to me. I know this will seem petty to anyone who reads. In fact, it is petty to me, but I’m in a terrible funk, and, one way or another, I have to get out of it. I have to get out of it for the sake of each student with whom I’ll be studying, their folks, my colleagues, and especially my dear, sweet wife.

Have you ever been in a predicament like this?

His ground-breaking “Thin Blue Line” is still causing waves 20 years after it was created. It was the firat documentary to use footage composed by the author to illustrate the crime. If yo have seen this film, you will recognize this image-

As I said, there is still controversy boiling up about this film. Morris has recently been blogging for the New York Times and the interactions have been exaulting and harrowing. Take the time too read the blog entries and comments, please:http://morris.blogs.nytimes.com/.

 I saw his latest fiction ‘reviewed’ in Wired. I liked the review so I bought it and before I was a day into started ordering what turned out, for the most, a backlist of his other novels and short story collection. His newset book is Un Lun Dun, a through-the-looking-glass sci fi adventure, with a political subtext for precocious junior readers or adults who may navitate to it via the Harry Potter River. Zanna finds the entrance to this world quite improbably in her neighborhood and finds a place that is not just London’s mirror twin, but the whole world. I persuaded only one of my students to read it in my ‘Rhetoric of Sci Fi’ course, but she wholeheartedly loved it.

Some of his other work is bleak near future, catastrophic worlding and some really strange, over the edge sci fi. Some of the places he takes you have more than rough edges. Frankly, one of the novels had an ending which I found really silly the first time I read it, but it grew on me. These works include Looking for Jake: Stories, King Rat, Perdido Street Station, The Scar, and Iron Council. The last was the only one I had to really stretch to embrace.

-Skip