Check it

You can't just push away uncertainties; you have to push through them.

~Jeff Stanzler

14

14 hour day yesterday. Arriving at the high school at 7:00AM, doing the student teacher thing, and then staying through the end of parent/teacher conferences was a bit of a struggle. I wasn't told that my mentor is typically the last to finish his conferences, well past the allotted time. I guess it comes with the territory -- he teaches three AP classes and two history classes that students need to graduate. While sitting next to him and shuffling progress reports, I looked around the gymnasium and noticed that his queue was easily the longest. I attribute this to two things:

1. AP classes are hard, and many parents are concerned about their kids' grades
2. my mentor teacher scoffs at the "6 minute conference" rule.

Regarding the second point, I support his decision. You can't cut off a worried parent nor try to get through to a kid in front of his parents in 6 minutes. Let's face it, if it took just 6 minutes for students to be metacognitive about their behavior and study habits, a lot of students would not be failing. Sometimes I think that the teenage mind is in a chrysalis-like state. Their identities are still manifesting inside of some hard and crinkled cocoon. The problem is, it can be hard to get through to them because you somehow have to penetrate said cocoon. Also, that is the second reference to cocoons I have used on this blog. Happy Cocoon Day.

I was thankful to see the whole spectrum: the aggressive, "why-is-my-perfect-child-failing-your-class," "i-can-do-a-better-job-than-you" parent; the misbehaving kid who thinks he is hotter than magma, accompanied by his take-no-nonsense mother (My mentor really leaned into him. Best line: "What you do doesn't just reflect on you. When you do bad, you don't just make yourself look bad, you make your mom look bad, and everyone else who wants to see you succeed. You don't want to do that, do you?" SMOKED.); the conference where the kid is so worried about his grades and his parents' reactions that he bursts into tears; and the three minute chat with the parent of the kid with the highest grade in her class.

I hate to add another hat to the pile, but as a teacher it is completely necessary to be a diplomat. We need to be able to diffuse potentially volatile parents but still stand our ground and communicate that there are certain things that their child needs to comes to terms with before they can be successful. We need to have the savvy to convince a poor student to change his ways, cut the crap, but still inspire them to persevere. We need the empathy to build up the confidence of the kid who is failing, to make them understand that regardless of the letter grade they are receiving, we believe in them and know they can improve, as long as they keep trying.

Keep trying. My brother sent me this link the night before my fourteen-hour day, when I was up exceedingly late wracking my brain over just how I was going to teach about the Muslim caliphates. In a nutshell (or a cocoon, maybe), it's about how success often does not come without failure. The money line is at the end:

But despite their many advantages, Randolph isn’t yet convinced that the education they currently receive at Riverdale, or the support they receive at home, will provide them with the skills to negotiate the path toward the deeper success that Seligman and Peterson hold up as the ultimate product of good character: a happy, meaningful, productive life. Randolph wants his students to succeed, of course — it’s just that he believes that in order to do so, they first need to learn how to fail.

I can't tell you how much this struck me. Maybe because I understand the gravity of that lesson -- the first-hand experience of failure, and then, the process by which we dust ourselves off and find the necessary strength to rise above.

So I went in that day, ready to teach about the Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphates, the qualities of a good empire, and the reason why empires fall. I made a handout. Also, I completely bombed it. It was awful. If you don't believe me, I recorded it. Yes, there is a video record of me failing to teach why empires fail. This lesson had many levels.

But I took that failure, and over the next two hours, tweaked the lesson, and come 4th hour, I was able to reach my teaching objective. The kids knew what I was trying to make them understand, and the best part about it was, I didn't tell them what I wanted them to know. They figured it out on their own.

It was weird then, talking to their parents later that day during conferences. Well, I actually didn't say anything. My mentor did all the talking. But if I did say something, I would have told my 4th hour students that the lesson today was the result of me failing. By failing, I was able to troubleshoot my weaknesses, and then go back and repair them. School -- heck, life in general -- ain't about succeeding. It's about improvement. We must measure our worth not by how high we go, but how far we have come.

And to my 1st hour students, I would have told them I'm sorry. And to read their textbook.

SES

I'm in EDUC 606 (Educational Psychology) and we're talking about SES. We were just asked if we knew what "SES" meant. I do:

I love the eternal relevance between education and Korean pop music.

Teaching my first lesson (and b-boying)

Taught a brief lesson for the first time today. I think I stressed about it entirely too much. My mentor had me teach a theme in Chapter 6 in his AP World History classes. I never really took a world history class, so to speak. I mean, Ive had classes that covered specific areas in the world, like Imperial China, and narratives of colonized peoples do provide insight into historical world events -- but not always in a popular manner. Therefore, I was slightly worried that these high schoolers would absolutely destroy me with their history knowledge. I spent much of my preparation reading whatever I could find on the topic at hand: Ancient Indian civilization.

I hope this isn't news to you when I say that India is freaking huge. Maybe not geographically, but their history and their people are hella deep. Not to say that other histories are not as deep, but I was supposed to figure out how to teach a succinct, 10-15 minute lesson on ancient India and all of its deepness. It was like standing at the edge of a chasm.

Luckily, I settled on a topic that I felt could be explored within my allotted time frame: the Varna system. Basically (and please do destroy me with your knowledge if any of this is inaccurate), the Varna system was a social order based on the Vedic religion, divided into strict classes. My focus question was "How did religion organize ancient Indian society?" The takeaway for my students was to understand how the Varna system set occupations to specific groups of people. A secondary objective was to teach the students how to make concept maps. I'm not a big fan of concept maps myself, but I have to admit it can be a useful study tool. This was relevant because they kind of have a test on this stuff on Thursday.

After reviewing the varnas, I related them to reincarnation and dharma. I then kind of jumped into doing concept maps as a way to organize all this information (my example above). Once I had explained the concept of the concept map, I assigned a concept map explaining ancient India's diversity. It was a little difficult for me to actually come out and say I was assigning something, like I was pulling the trigger on someone's grade.

I guess it went OK. I did it twice, but I have to admit that the first time around felt more natural. I had a plan on what I wanted to do, but for the most part, I freestyled. The second time around, I had a page of comments from my mentor teacher, as well as an appearance by my field instructor to handle. It was less freestyle. I wish I had remembered to push the "record" button during 1st hour, because I would have liked to go back and see the difference.

Regarding freestyle, I think I almost prefer seat-of-your-pants teaching. It's probably not as effective, the more structured 4th hour class' takeaway was that religion was used to control the populace by forcing them into duties and discouraging rebellion (I DID NOT PLAN FOR THAT). My preference for freestyle teaching most likely comes from B-boying and substitute teaching. Both require me to do things on the fly. You could even throw in being a radio DJ in there as well. I guess you could say that my career has consisted of not planning.

Yeah, I know. It's not good. Good planning means a lot of positive things, among them class coherence and classroom management. So I guess my question is, how do I plan a lesson well, while still allowing room for freestyle? Can I have both? Or am I hoping for a contradiction?

Good teaching? Or just dancing?

How to Make A Pot of Coffee

I tried to abstain from it. I thought I was stronger, thought I could find alternatives. I didn't want to be like everyone else, and didn't want to succumb to peer pressure. But I found that I am weak.

Teachers need coffee.

I am not naturally a morning person. The timestamps for most of these posts occur sometime between 1:00AM-4:00AM. Actually, as I read this, I guess I technically am a morning person -- a morning person in the sense that I stay up so late that I vanquish the night.

So when I stumbled in this morning on three hours of sleep, I broke down. In my moment of weakness, I had a cup of coffee. Correction: two cups of coffee. Lots of cream. Lots of sugar.

With my energy reserves safely replenished, I felt confident enough to continue with my day. However, my indulgence had a price. There was no more coffee left in the pot. I had drank too deeply and too greedily. I suddenly came to the realization that I had no idea how to create more precious caffeinated fluids. Visions of the terrible end of my placement flashed through my mind. Without coffee to fuel the teachers, the students took advantage of their weakness and staged a coup, and it was all my fault.

Luckily, a nice woman who worked in the counseling office came by, and I politely asked her to show me how to brew a new pot. For your convenience (and survival), this is what she told me:

How to make a pot of coffee:

1. Fill up the coffee pot with water. Pour it into the reservoir on top of the coffee maker.

2. Take out the coffee filter. Throw it away. Put a new one in

3. Put in 5 heaping scoops of sweet, sweet coffee grounds, on top of the filter. Put the thingy back into the coffee maker.

4. Turn on the coffee maker.

5. ???

6. PROFIT

Test

Today was my first staff development day as a student teacher. It went something like this:

I woke up at 5:30am to run five miles. This probably has nothing to do with student teaching. I enjoy running, and as the Fall semester starts up, I understand that I will have less and less time for things non-MAC related. I've also been told that there must be certain things that I should refuse to give up, activities or hobbies that I must maintain as a means of preserving my sanity. I'd like to believe running is one of those things. I've also been told to try and be optimistic.

I arrived at Thurston High School on time. I had visited twice in the past to interface with my mentor teacher, so there weren't any problems getting there. I was more or less ushered into the school cafeteria, where much of the day's agenda would be held. School cafeterias carry a large significance for me. They are the school's social proving grounds. Real life experience and "High School Musical" has taught me that population is segregated by lunch table. Popular kids sat at the popular table. Jocks sat with other jocks. Just as we are tracked academically, schools have a peculiar way of sorting us socially as well.

Being a student teacher, I was neither popular nor jock. I found myself latching onto a fellow MACer and meandering over to an empty table, surrounded by veteran teachers and other school officials engaged in their own conversations, sitting at their own tables. I was essentially a freshmen. The superintendent came over to me to introduce himself and welcome me to the district. I asked him if he could smell my fear. He said yes.

After a morning of speeches and an ACT practice test (I got one wrong), we broke off into our departments in order to incorporate more literacy practice into our summative assessments. In plain terms, we took passages out of the textbook and wrote three questions that would require students to practice reading strategies with course relevant content.

I want to relate how extremely difficult it is to write test questions. Before my hands-on experience, I thought that the hardest part about designing questions was applying Bloom's Taxonomy via Anderson and Krathwohl's theoretical framework. I was surprised to realize that requiring students to use higher order thinking when answering questions was not necessarily the most difficult part. That honor belongs to thinking up the answer options for multiple choice questions.

It's like this: ideally, we already know what the students should know, since we designed the curriculum. Sit-down tests are opportunities for students to confirm they know what they should know. Yet, the test questions and answer options must be chosen carefully. If the options make the correct answer too obvious, students are not being effectively tested. If the question and options are hard to understand or misleading, students may still answer incorrectly even if they can recall and transfer the knowledge being tested.

But that brings me to another point. After learning about the inconsistencies of standardized testing, I found it unsettling to learn that teachers are almost obligated to "teach to the test." As I mentioned earlier, I spent the morning writing and rewriting questions that simulated the questions found in the ACT. This Fall and Winter, I will be student teaching for a mentor teacher who teaches advanced placement courses -- courses literally made for the sake of doing well on a standardized test.

I'm not sure how I feel about this. On one hand, I understand that because so many advantages are born out of scoring high on standardized tests, it would undermine student success to NOT teach according to the test. However, as a teacher, how can we be instruments of reform if there is greater incentive for perpetuating inadequate systems of instruction and assessment?

Or maybe, this is as adequate as we can get?

I'll let you know in six months or so.

Hostage By Singularity

It is 2:18am and I'm finally starting this blog post. I swear, procrastination had nothing to do with it. I love blogging. It has been my truest and most trusted friend. When I am sad, frustrated, angry, or worried, I blog. I've learned that sometimes there are problems that you can't necessarily tell people about. Blogging (and journal writing in general), allows you to say exactly what is wrong, and through the process of naming your oppressor, you can gain insight on how to make things better.

Since this is a blog, and the name of this blog is "Record of Praxis" (whatever that means), I will name my oppressor for the sake of consistency:

BLOGGING, YOU ARE MY OPPRESSOR.

Yes, I did just say I love blogging. We are college buddies. We've had some great times together. However, the best part of our relationship is that it is completely natural. Easy, like Sunday morning. When blogging starts making demands, then the joy of it is gone. Obligation is the nemesis of recreation. Ask any game tester if they love their job. By making the maintenance of this blog a graded requirement, I feel like I am hunched over the keyboard with a gun to my head. I am not blogging for fun and therapy anymore; I am blogging for a credential.

But, wait. Suddenly, I am in a garden. It is a warm Spring day. I have long blonde hair and am wearing a frilly blue dress. Out of the corner of my eye, I catch something dash into the bushes to my right. I am young and curious, so I decide to investigate. I crawl headfirst into the rhododendrons and see what looks like a white rabbit, wearing a waistcoat and glancing anxiously at his pocketwatch (because only boy rabbits wear waistcoats, duh). His red eyes grow large as he realizes the time, and darts into a nearby hole in the ground. I approach the hole on my hands and knees, soiling my dress. I want to know where the white rabbit went. I want to see where this hole goes. I jump in:

TECHNOLOGY, YOU ARE MY OPPRESSOR.

The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary defines oppression as "a sense of being weighed down in body or mind." Just as I am being oppressed by blogging, I am being oppressed by technology. In class, we talk about what it means to be a 21st Century learner and the necessity of incorporating technology into the classroom. We made Blogger and Twitter accounts. We submit our assignments via CTools. Laptops and video recorders are required for the MAC program. I have to register for classes via Wolverine Access. I fill out my financial aid forms online.

I can see the usefulness of technology in our daily lives. It makes things easier, and gives us ways, as educators, to improve upon our practice. But with so many forms of technology offering a multitude of functions and services, how can we decide which to use? Or do we just take them all?

Enter the singularity. You can clicky-click on the linky-link if you want to read more, but the "technological singularity" is basically the hypothesis that if technology reaches the point where it becomes more intelligent than humans, it will develop faster than human beings can understand. After this point, the future becomes impossible predict, because we cannot comprehend the capabilities of such technology. I used my computer to look up that succinct definition, because I had forgotten. YouTube teaches me how to do the dances for Korean pop songs. The explosion of technology in the past decade or so was unimaginable two decades ago, and we really have no idea what to do with all of it. The singularity is upon us.

This wouldn't be a problem if we practiced a little moderation, but we don't. We feel obligated to consume the latest gadget or widget or whatever they call it nowadays. We have twenty thingamabobs, but we don't care. It's no big deal. We want more. Our justification is that it can "make things easier," or that we are "keeping up with the times." But does maintaining all of those online accounts, worrying about identity theft, and affording all that hardware really make it easier? And if we are trying to keep up with the present, isn't your purchase going to be obsolete in six months anyway?

One of the basic rules of childhood is: "If you make a mess, clean it up." A fine mess I've made here. I argue that we are being oppressed by technology, so unless I want to get grounded, I had better come up with a solution, right?

I think that in order to make sense of the future of technology (and education, while we are at it), we need to look to the past. In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paulo Freire introduces the "banking" model of education: the learner is an empty bank account, and teachers deposit information into them, leading to the perpetuation of oppressive attitudes and practices. Freire rejects this model, which is a metaphor for traditional education, and claims that it results in dehumanization: the elimination of individuality, creativity, and compassion. In regards to technology, this is all true. Technology is willingly deposited into us, and we are getting dehumanized as a result. In order to combat this, we need to be more critical about what we consume, and remain conscious of how it is practical to society.

Education? Being critical of what we consume? Practical to society? Where have I heard those terms before?

With the advent of democracy and modern industrial conditions, it is impossible to foretell definitely just what civilization will be twenty years from now. Hence it is impossible to prepare the child for any precise set of conditions. To prepare him for the future life means to give him command of himself; it means so to train him that he will have the full and ready use of all his capacities; that his eye and ear and hand may be tools ready to command, that his judgment may be capable of grasping the conditions under which it has to work, and the executive forces be trained to act economically and efficiently. It is impossible to reach this sort of adjustment save as constant regard is had to the individual's own powers, tastes, and interests - say, that is, as education is continually converted into psychological terms. In sum, I believe that the individual who is to be educated is a social individual and that society is an organic union of individuals. If we eliminate the social factor from the child we are left only with an abstraction; if we eliminate the individual factor from society, we are left only with an inert and lifeless mass. Education, therefore, must begin with a psychological insight into the child's capacities, interests, and habits. It must be controlled at every point by reference to these same considerations. These powers, interests, and habits must be continually interpreted - we must know what they mean. They must be translated into terms of their social equivalents - into terms of what they are capable of in the way of social service.

- John Dewey

I feel better already.

I AM THE INTERNET

This is a screenshot at my desktop at the very moment I begin this post. This could also be a screenshot of my desktop any given day, if my computer has a power source and a relatively stable internet connection. My browser has at least 5 or 6 tabs open to various websites, which I switch between every few minutes. I constantly check my email accounts and respond to chat messages. You could have probably guessed it after reading my post about how I am suddenly in love with Twitter. I still maintain my blog on Xanga. I was on Facebook when it was in its infancy. Then, it was MySpace. Now I am on Blogger and Google+ (add me to your circles, yo)

Hello, my name is RJ. And I am a Seeker.

Emily Yoffe's article -- hold on, let me Google her real quick -- and the reading on Generation "M" spoke directly to my soul. My podcast is an oral history of my addiction. But then again, is it really an addiction? If we live in a wired world, why not be plugged in?

The arguments I have heard against over-connectedness are not unlike the arguments I have heard against video games, and they boil down to this: seekers and gamers could be using their time to do other, more productive things. I won't raise my hand against that statement. This is true. Instead of being bathed in the cold light radiating from your [insert device here], you could be [insert any other activity here].

Instead, I will offer an alternative hypothesis. Those other activities -- like running and dancing -- are hobbies. They are things that some people like to do during their free time. Some of those people might even attach those activities to their identity. One who runs might refer to themselves as a "runner." A person who likes to dance could say they were a "dancer." People associate themselves with people with like interests or shared values. It is the very reason why churches and clubs and furries exist. I believe that in order to realize our sense of self, we need to define what that means in relation to others. The internet has made the world a very big place and a very small place, at the same time. Therefore, defining yourself is both very difficult and very easy.

The methods of doing this are outlined by Klapperstuck and Kearns (pause while I Google). We use social networking sites to tell the world who we are and meet others like us. We keep in contact with our friends via text message and chat. We blog in order to make our thoughts and feelings public, hoping to somehow feel some empathy (and certainly not because we are being graded on it). Somewhere within all those servers and databases, in between the nooks and crannies of hashmarks and at-marks, is our identity.

We have become the internet.

P.S. Emily Yoffe definitely has more Facebook friends than I do. Did you know she took a vacation at a nudist colony?

He saw the symbol on the warning sign and understood

I'm beginning to think they purposely limit the number of EDUC 504 classes we have during the summer. It is a conspiracy built upon the laws of supply and demand. Scarcity causes an increase in demand, which in turn increases value. Therefore, every one of our six meetings becomes precious, each like a grandfather's silver pocket watch wrapped in an oilcloth and tucked safely into the corner of a desk drawer.

The value of Friday's class was in its dichotomy of activity. One half of the class was spent learninghow to use Aviary's Myna tool to build a PSA, preliminary practice for making the podcast due at the end of the week. Back in the day, I did that sort of thing on a regular basis, so it was exciting to see a modern application for tired, old skills.

The other half of class was a discussion on the video game readings. Or was it? The first part of the discussion dealt with deciphering an excerpt of Xu Bing's "Book from the Ground." A sample of the excerpt is shown in the picture above, except without the convenience of a written translation. We delved into the origins of literacy and language, surmising that human beings have a natural instinct for language structure. Our difficulty in understanding different languages arises from our solidified language schema -- we become comfortable within the structures of our primary tongue and run into obstacles when we encounter languages that do not fit within our established structure.

I found that the first part of discussion loosely connected to the second part, which was actually about video games. I mentioned that we become comfortable within our primary language, thus making other languages sound like shit. Learning, be it other languages or how to win at a video game, involves a certain amount of risk taking. We must necessarily depart from our comfort zones in order to make sense of the unknown. In order to form new schema, we cannot always be dependent upon the supports of the old.

Gee

During the entirety of the Gee reading, all I could really think about was this:

Gee gee gee gee gee

So I'm glad I got burned, think of all the things we learned for the people who are still alive

About a year ago, film critic Roger Ebert stated on his blog that "video games can never be art." During a conversation with video game producer Kelli Santiago, Ebert said:

"No one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great poets, filmmakers, novelists and poets." To which I could have added painters, composers, and so on, but my point is clear.

Former attorney Jack Thompson, an anti-video game activist, refers to video games as "murder simulators," and blames them for three shooting deaths in Alabama committed by a 14 year-old boy in 2005.

The video game industry gave him a cranial menu that popped up in the blink of an eye, in that police station. And that menu offered him the split-second decision to kill the officers, shoot them in the head, flee in a police car, just as the game itself trained them to do.

The societal value of video games is still up to interpretation, and Gee's article adds to the debate. The above video clip is from "Portal," a game released by Valve in 2007. As demonstrated by the clip, the beginning of the game consists of a series of tests where the player has to perform tasks in order to move on to the next level. Each test is a lesson that teaches a particular skill or game mechanic, and builds upon previous lessons. As the player progresses further in the game, the lessons stop and he/she must apply skills and use knowledge of game mechanics in order to succeed.

According to Gee, "good video games incorporate good learning principles." In order to see if Gee is correct in his statement, we must verify whether or not "Portal" was indeed good and had good learning principles.

Here is a list of awards "Portal" has won (from Wikipedia):

• At the 2008 Game Developers Choice Awards, Portal won Game of the Year, along with the Innovation Award and Best Game Design.^[107]
• IGN.com honored Portal with several awards, for Best Puzzle Game for PC^[108] and Xbox 360,^[109] Most Innovative Design for PC,^[110] and Best End Credit Song (for "Still Alive") for Xbox 360,^[111] along with overall honors for Best Puzzle Game^[112] and Most Innovative Design.^[113]
• In its Best of 2007, GameSpot honored The Orange Box with 4 awards in recognition of Portal, giving out honors for Best Puzzle Game,^[114] Best New Character(s) (for GLaDOS),^[115]Funniest Game,^[116] and Best Original Game Mechanic (for the portal gun).^[117]
• Portal was awarded Game of the Year (PC), Best Narrative (PC), and Best Innovation (PC and console) honors by 1UP.com in its 2007 editorial awards.^[118]
• GamePro honored the game for Most Memorable Villain (for GLaDOS) in its Editors' Choice 2007 Awards.^[119]
• Portal was awarded the Game of the Year award in 2007 by Joystiq,^[120] Good Game,^[121] and Shacknews.^[122]
• The Most Original Game award by X-Play.^[123]
• In Official Xbox Magazine's 2007 Game of the Year Awards, Portal won Best New Character (for GLaDOS), Best Original Song (for "Still Alive"), and Innovation of the Year.^[124]
• In GameSpy's 2007 Game of the Year awards, Portal was recognized as Best Puzzle Game,^[125] Best Character (for GLaDOS), and Best Sidekick (for the Weighted Companion Cube).^[125]
• A.V. Club called it the Best Game of 2007.^[126]
• The Web comic Penny Arcade awarded Portal Best Soundtrack, Best Writing, and Best New Game Mechanic in its satirical 2007 We're Right Awards.^[127]
• Eurogamer gave Portal first place in its Top 50 Games of 2007 rankings.^[128]
• IGN.com also placed GLaDOS, (from Portal) as the #1 Video Game Villain on its Top-100 Villains List.^[129]
• Gamesradar named it the best game of all time.^[130]

Wired considered Portal to be one of the most influential games of the first decade of the 21st century, believing it to be the prime example of quality over quantity for video games.

Good? Check.

As for good learning principles, I was originally going to launch into an in-depth discussion and analysis of "Portal" and Gee's learning principles, as well as fit it within the framework for Bloom's Taxonomy. However, while I was doing research before launching headfirst into what I am sure would have been a fantastic essay, I stumbled upon this:

A Portal to Student Learning: What Instruction Librarians can Learn from Video Game Design

I will save you the trouble of reading the entire article. The author cites "Portal" as an excellent example of how new media can be used to engage players "in the difficult process of learning new skills and making difficult conceptual leaps." (Schiller 2008) Players are scaffolded as new knowledge is introduced and supports are removed once proficiency is successfully demonstrated. Eventually, the players become completely independent from the instructional structure and left to strategize and apply knowledge on their own.

Good learning principles? Check.

Also, the article is totally about librarians, written by a librarian. Knowing my audience is an important pedagogical skill. WHAT UP KRISTIN.

P.S. Before I start getting suspicious sidelong glances during class, below is the ending theme song to "Portal," which is referenced by the title of this post:

My Favorite Superhero

Summer is well underway. The Art Fest is in full effect, basically turning the streets of downtown Ann Arbor into an open-air market. I believe it is a distinctly American habit to make ritual and celebration out of things that are never cause for ritual and celebration any place else. Here, when people sell homemade trinkets from stalls that line crowded streets we call it a "festival." In a lot of other places the world, the people there call it "a living." I feel the same way about apple picking. Listen, I am not going to go on any kind of "hayride" under the working condition of "ALL-U-CAN-PICK" unless I am guaranteed some kind of union representation.

At the same time, I think our culture tends to take for granted things that do indeed warrant celebration. Wireless internet connectivity is a miracle. We have at our disposal relatively tiny machines that literally pluck millions of bits of data out of thin air, but feel frustrated when this marvel is not running at peak efficiency. We complain about fluctuating gas prices, but forget to be thankful that we own cars. And, we turn to schools to remedy all of society's ills, but tip our teachers with apples. I suppose I could look at the silver lining and be thankful that most of us have some kind of union representation.

Summer also brings us superhero movies. We've had the X-Men: First Class, which sounds like a movie about education (it isn't). We saw Thor, who seems to be cheating at the superhero gig (he is a god). Now, it's Captain America, who is just a big guy with a shield. However, my favorite summer superhero is not any of these guys.

It is the librarian.

It just got real.

The librarian is truly great. She is the master of information, which in my opinion, totally trumps all the other superpowers combined. Like a superhero, the librarian has also evolved into someone superhuman. The X-Men inherited their abilities through genetics. Captain America was injected with a super serum. Librarians used to be those nicely dressed people who sat behind the circulation desk at the library, book scanner in one hand and due date rubber stamp in the other, head full of thoughts of the Dewey Decimal system. Then, the world changed. Technological breakthroughs have led to a flux of information. We can read books without actually physically possessing a book. We can learn about virtually any subject in a matter of seconds. We can create and publish our thoughts on anything. However, this horde of information is wild, a mass of gibberish that can overload the senses and assail the mind. Who will save us as the world falls under the dark shroud of over-information? Who will help us determine reliable sources from the flim-flam?

It is the librarian. She cast off her cat-eyed glasses, pulled the pencil from her hair bun, and emerged from behind the circulation desk. She traded the scanner and rubber stamp for a MacBook Pro and a smartphone.

I never really understood what librarians could do before I encountered Marija and Jan. When I refer to librarians as masters of information, I do not mean to imply their omniscience. Again, information is everywhere. Librarians' mastery of information lies in their mastery of the technology used to retrieve, organize, and create that information. I am consistently amazed almost every week. First, I discovered how RefWorks can produce instant bibliographies. Then, I was shown the multitude of databases within the Internet Public Library (ALL-U-CAN-PICK). I once made the mistake of saying the word "microfiche" while suggesting primary sources for the tsunami lesson plan, and was immediately disintegrated by Jan's eye lasers.

From the perspective of this teacher-candidate, my future career is pretty dire. I must simultaneously be an educator, a researcher, a reformer, a politician, a colleague, a savior, and a scapegoat. When I do a good job, there is no cause for celebration, because compared to art fests and superheroes, I am nothing special. It's a living. But as long as I have a librarian in my corner (to hold me), everything might actually turn out OK.

Twitter-pated

Friend Owl has listed the symptoms: weak knees, head in a whirl, air-walking, knocked loops, and lost heads. The prognosis? I think I love Twitter.

I know this is bad. My reputation is on the line. Why, it was just in my last post that I was publicly declaring my love for Facebook and how Twitter was deficient in so many different ways. Now, through the medium of HootSuite, my impressions have completely changed. Twitter is no longer the clunky, poor excuse for a social networking site that I have always believed it to be. Now, it is quick and fun. I can set up multiple streams that automatically retrieve tweets containing keywords of interest and display them in an easy to read format. I can see a list of my tweets that were re-tweeted by others, so I can more or less calculate my net social worth. I have hashmarks and I am not afraid to use them.

Meanwhile, Facebook thought it would be a fantastic idea to change how their chat system works, much to the chagrin of the world. Seriously? When it comes to social networking sites, I like to enjoy a certain level of customization. I want to be able to display information that I either want to display, or has some particular use to me. I like features to be easy to use, without the need to navigate cluttered menus. But above all, once I have become comfortable with the look and feel of a site, I do not appreciate it being changed, especially without notice or consent.

I tend to see connections between relationships and things that normally shouldn't be connected with relationships. For instance, I once related concept maps to serious relationships: I want them to work and I see their worth, but I don't seem to be any good at doing them.

In application of that same sort of metaphor, I feel as if Facebook and Twitter are fighting for my affections. Facebook and I have been going strong for too long, but sometimes I wake up and feel like I don't recognize it anymore. Back in the day, we were exclusive and had a simple relationship. Gradually, things began to change. First, it started seeing a lot of other people, offering itself to high school students and people who worked for different companies. Then it started playing games with me. Now, we can't even talk anymore. I mean, I admit that Google+ and I have been hanging out a lot lately, but honestly I was thinking of you the whole time.

Twitter and I met a couple years ago. We both had similar interests and we knew a lot of the same people, but we didn't really hit it off right away. Looking back, I've noticed that Twitter was present at some really crucial moments in my life. I tweeted when I found out my family in the Philippines was OK after some major flooding. I also randomly tweeted on the very day I decided that I wanted to become a teacher. Class last Friday really helped me see Twitter in a new light. Twitter is accommodating in that it lets me do my own thing, but is always there for me when I need it. Twitter always has something interesting to say. Twitter might be involved with a lot of other people, but it still makes me feel special. Twitter doesn't play games. In terms of my own professional development, Twitter provides me with a community of educators who are available to guide me and support me, cradling me in digital arms and letting me know that despite what we learn in EDUC 649, everything is going to be alright.

Because sometimes, Facebook, I just need to be held.

What did you call me?

So, I guess I'm a "tweacher" now.

Not gonna lie, I'm a little apprehensive about using Twitter and incorporating it into the classroom. Admittedly, I have a Twitter account. The content has no sustenance; the bulk of my tweets are "re-tweets" revolving around the latest happenings in the world of Korean pop music. Moreover, like a weak and starving baby bird, my tweets are few and far-between.

My biggest reason for Twitter-neglect is that I fail to see its utility. Facebook provides nearly the same function, but offers much, much, more. I don't just have to limit my information into a 140 character post. I can make a note and type to my heart's content. I can start a Facebook group or page. I am admittedly a twit (the non-tweeting kind) when it comes to Twitter, so perhaps I need to truly get intimate with it before I make judgments, but in my opinion, anything Twitter can do, Facebook can do better.

However, I must also recognize that Twitter is rather new in the social networking game and I am a human being. I am prone to homeostasis. I was extremely angry when Firefly was cancelled. Although it has been a central experience of my adult life, I am averse to change. All this talk of incorporating Twitter into the classroom makes my head hurt, like songs with auto-tune.

To tweet is to make myself vulnerable to the realization that I am growing old.

***UPDATE***
HootSuite is AMAZING. Tweeting is SO FUN,

Praxis and Teach Me How to Dewey

I googled the definition of "praxis." Here's what came up:

prax·is/ˈpraksəs/Noun

1. Practice, as distinguished from theory: "praxis of Marxism".

2. Accepted practice or custom.

I boil down our entire SMAC program experience to praxis. In the comfort of Room 2229, we familiarize ourselves with educational theories with the intention of putting them into practice. Right now, we bow our backs as we trudge through classes on research, reform, content literacy, records of practice (which conveniently provided this blog with its name), and of course, technology. One of the major benefits of having a sibling complete the program is possessing a realistic sense of the future. Soon, we will be juggling coursework with our student teaching, struggling to complete our assignments while in turn giving our students assignments. Not long after, teaching will become a full-time commitment. We will spend less time sitting inside a classroom, and more time standing in front of one. Although the thought seems strange to me at present, in less than a year our metamorphosis will be complete, and we will finally emerge from throbbing cocoons as legitimate teachers, albeit with our realized wings still moist and glistening.

I suppose I should cease my rambling and discuss more relevant things, like praxis and technology. I am beginning to come to terms with today's academic landscape. During my elementary and middle school years, I remember doing research for speeches and book reports. Back then, success in those assignments meant going to the library's card catalog, looking up your subject, and then hunting down the indicated books. Once said books were captured, you had to open them up and render useful information from their entrails. Research and its trials were a necessary part of the learning process; knowledge was wrested out of the grasp of a savage and barren wasteland.

Today, that is definitely not the case. Anyone who can manage a keyboard and decipher the glowing symbols can use a computer -- which is, I reckon, anyone aged 2 years and up. Information is quite literally at our fingertips. The research beasts of my childhood have all gone extinct. The landscape is green, lush, and alive. Knowledge now hangs low on branches like ripe fruit with fibers strained to near bursting, and the air is permeated with their aroma. The fact that I could google the word "praxis" is evidence of how much has changed.

Which brings me to Dewey. If I was writing on another medium, I would probably launch into a brief biography and then mention his impact on educational reform. But I'm not going to do that. Information is quite literally at your fingertips. Go ahead and google him. Instead, I wanted to relate his "Pedagogic Creed" to technology. I won't spend very long doing this. In a nutshell, Dewey believed that the present and real life was central to education. Since real life exists in society, schools should teach students how to interact with society in the here and now. Given that the here and now is becoming increasingly dominated by the presence of technology, it is only natural that education should make use of it.

Thus, my paradigms of how and what to teach are also becoming extinct. Book reports, in their old form, can be completed within 15 minutes without having to read the book, since key information such as characters, settings, main plot points, and themes are readily available. Up until a few days ago, I was convinced that there was a major cleavage between what students "know" and what they can look up. I've decided that there is no difference; they are one and the same. Having knowledge is simply a matter of retrieval, and whether or not it comes from long term memory or a computer database is a distinction that is steadily losing importance.

And so, this is what I am going to be focusing on during the course of the program: How can I take theory and turn it into practice? Or in other words: Teach me how to Dewey (teach me, teach me how to Dewey).