Hippocampus Religion Class Seems Too Clunky but Thinkfinity's a Winner

We're reading The Kitchen God's Wife by Amy Tan in about six weeks. We usually look at Confuciansm how it is corrupted by Neo-Confucianism. We study Neo-Confucian sayings as a clue about the attitudes towards women that are embodied in those religions in Chinese Culture. "A woman king is like a hen crowing."

I gave the Hippocampus site a look, and noticed a religion site. Chinese religions. A lecture on "Confucius Say..."--maybe we could add this to the mix. When I tried it myselt, the quality seemed amaturish. The sound quality was low--you had to strain to pick up voices that went in and out. So, I decided, not for my kids.

Hippocampus doesn't have English lessons listed yet, nor did I see any history lessons that might help with Shakespeare or WWI or the Romantics in England. So, it seems that it's not a good fit for me.

A few weeks ago, I checked out Thinkfinity by trying out lessons for a book in the planning stages, All Quiet on the Western Front. I incorporated their lesson on irony at the end of the book into my plan. Students will use a modified version of it to write their own original ironic endings. More fun than an essay about irony.

RSS -something for English teachers and a nice blog from Ohio

Jim Burke is an English teacher, formerly of Burlingame, who likes to write about teaching English. He has a matrix of skills that English students should have mastered by the time they graduate, hands-on lessons on topics such as how he organizes his notebooks, and musings. Does anyone of our group know him personally? Here's his site.

http://jimburke.typepad.com/my_weblog/

The one blog I discovered randomly is called Erin O'Brien's Owner Manuel for Human Beings. She has 786 subscribers, one of them being me. She writes about her husband "the goat" and her child "the kid" and the new Mass. senator and what it's like to go to a transvestite bar in her sad little suburb of Cleveland. Sort of like Erma Bombeck, if you remember her. I don't think I would use it in the classroom, though.

http://erin-obrien.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

Tech Challenges for Us

Bandwidth. That's the shortage at my school. We are asked to not use YouTube or other streaming because of a shortage of bandwidth. We are warned that our phones and attendance system will crash if we do it too much.

That said, I will tentatively try to use streaming and see if the sky falls down.

Anyone else?

Happy New Semester

Wow, January used to be a "mellow month." It's easier to get the classes going in the new semester, as there are fewer new names to learn, but there are other commitments--yearbook deadlines to meet, grant applications to write, and (ahem) this class.

Final thoughts on the class

I'm pleased that we can return because now we get to try things for the next month, then come back with our questions in January.

Next semester, I want to learn how to do slide shows. I want to keep working on navigation which is fundamental but tricky!! I want to wrap my mind around organizing a class of 35 teenagers and making it seem easy--group powerpoints using Google Docs??

I plan to do the yearbook senior survey using a form, and counting the 337 votes on a monster spreadsheet. It has to beat the old method.

Here's a Fun Survey!

Try this one.

spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dFhJWFcySGJ1bGkwaFFrdHJhS3U1MEE6MA

Two Types of Wonder Wheels

In our ITEC class last time, I finally saw the Wonder Wheel that everyone said they liked. Before class, I had dutifully looked up Wonder Wheel and found on on Coney Island, pictured on the right. The Wonder Wheel of Google display is also pictured to the right. It can be a useful tool for students researching their persuasive essay topics. The limitation, of course, is it's the visible Google web database which leaves out a lot. After speaking with Dena at Aragon, I asked our new librarian whether we at San Mateo had access to academic data bases as do our Aragon colleagues. She is in the process of locating passwords, so soon, San Mateo HS students will have Wonder Wheel plus the vetted sources.