Foot: Online Articles

"An Oral History of the Internet"
To be honest, I was a little bored while reading this article, but it did have a lot of interesting information. It just wasn't entirely information that I cared about. I did actually know that the internet started off as a way to secure information and that it was invented in the 60s. However, even though I know that, every time I come across that piece of information, I'm still a little surprised. Like everyone else in the class, I'm sure, I grew up with the internet. By the time I got interested in going online for more than just fact finding for a school project, the internet was already a personal thing. I never really think about what went into making the internet accessible to most people; to me I just take it for granted.

I did have to do a sad smile when I got to the section about "You've got mail" as a greeting amongst a generation. It just made me think of my grandfather's email notifier on Incredimail. He had an English butler who would walk out from the side of the screen, carrying a tray with a letter on it, and say "You have mail, sir." My grandma hates that thing, but I don't think she'll change it for awhile.

Facebook
Well, after reading that article, I feel like I have no need to watch the movie. I knew some of those details previously, but Rolling Stone really went in depth. However, while the timeline is sketchy and it does sound like Zuckerberg may have taken a couple of ideas and twisted them, at the same time I can't help but not care. A lot of things are based off of other things, however tightly or loosely connected. Take Twilight for example. With the exception of the vampires sparkling, it's not like that plot is that original. Either way, while I can envy him for being so successful so early in life, I can't help but feel like if I met the inventor of Facebook, I would want to hit him after a couple of minutes. The article, whether basing your opinion of him off of the quotes from people who are suing him or from Zuckerberg who says he's just an innocent little kid, made it seem like he would be really annoying.

Foot: Little Brother

I finished this book a couple of days ago, just hadn't found the time to blog about it yet. I really liked Little Brother. I thought the concept of the book was pretty fresh; not over played like a lot of the novels we see today. I'll admit that a lot of the technological sections went over my head and a lot of them, while relevant to what was going on, didn't really further the plot, so I could have done without them. Also, as I said, I really did like the book, but at the same time, the longer I read it (for more than an hour or so at a time) I found it harder and harder to concentrate and would have to re-read. Maybe it was just me, but I think the book works in little increments at a time.

While the book is fiction, the way Doctorow wrote made the book seem like it was true, or at least something that could become true, like The Handmaid's Tale. We are all aware that there are a ton of ways the government and other factors like that can spy on us, if they choose to, and this book brings that fear to life. Because the plot does involve so much technology (heck, that's the main point of the story), this is a great book to use in multi-modal classrooms. Marcus discusses a lot of different types of technology, from movies to books to video games and the like, which in turn introduces these technologies to students. I also think this book would be able to interest a lot of reluctant readers. Besides the bits about technology, the reading doesn't get that involved; it's pretty quick and easy to read. I think a lot of boys would be interested in it because the narrator is a boy, and the book, as I've mentioned, includes stuff like video games. Not to say girls wouldn't be interested in the book, but, generally I think, boys would be more interested.

I would definitely try to use this in my classroom if I could, probably as a choice reading or something like that. I don't know if it's something I would spend a lot of time on, but I might include it as a part of a longer unit or something.

Foot:: Pleasure Reading

Over the semester break, I read a series of short stories by Dan Chaon, entitled "Among the Missing." Chaon also wrote You Remind Me of Me, if anyone is familiar with that novel. Anyway, "Among the Missing" is really great collection of short stories by him and most of them are sort of scary, in a mental type of way. By this, I mean it's not some guy running around and killing people. I guess if you were to compare it to a movie, I would say something like Mr. Brooks, Disturbia, or even Zodiac. The terror comes from knowing that something out there isn't right and you're involved somehow.

One of my favorites was the opener, called "Safety Man." It's about a woman whose mother sends her one of those dolls that are supposed to look like real people.In Two and a Half Men episode I saw recently, Rose had a similar doll that she pretended was her husband to make Charlie jealous. Anyway, the woman and her husband treat Safety Man as a kind of joke until the husband dies and the woman starts to depend on the doll to make her feel safe. Without giving away too much, the story is mostly about how the woman deals with her grief and becomes so dependent of Safety Man.

My other favorite would have to be "I Demand to Know Where You're Taking Me." This is also about a woman, but mostly deals with the terror she feels about her brother-in-law, a man who has just been accused of rape, and I think murder (it's been awhile). While he's in prison, she has to take care of his macaw which repeats a lot of the brother-in-law's phrases, such as "Smell my feet." It sounds funny, but the story hints at a foot fetish the man had and the bird is really just creepy to read about.

There are of course many more really good stories in this collection and I highly recommend it to anyone. Dan Chaon is also an Ohio writer and a pretty local one at that. According to his biography in You Remind Me of Me he lives in Cleveland Heights and teachers at Oberlin. I think he is a really good write and his books, while not classics, would be interesting to teach in a class because there is so much going on.

Final Reflection

I really enjoyed this class, although I think the class time is to long most of the time. This class, along with Principles of Teaching, were my two favorite classes this semester, which is a relief because I usually find my education classes are a bit of a waste of time. I love that Dr. Pytash read aloud in almost every class and I'll definitely have to read at least some of those novels. I liked being introduced to different reading strategies and will definitely use at least some of them in my future classrooms. I can't wait until I can help students find books that they enjoy and seeing their faces light up when they get involved in a story because I feel like then I'll be a successful teacher.

Chapter 14: Finding the Right Book

This chapter had a lot of information in it about helping students finding books they like to read. Beers gives tips about finding great fiction and non-fiction books. She again stresses that students learn about reading by doing it, not just learning about it, which is why having SSR or going to the school library is so important. I really liked her suggestions of having a "good books" box and found it really interesting. That seems like a great to figure out what types of books reluctant readers enjoy, as seen in the example with the girl who always choose mysteries. I really enjoyed this chapter and loved George's little crack at the end.

Chapter 13: Creating the Confidence to Respond

This chapter is about increasing student confidence so that they are willing to learn. While we may admit that a text is hard, we shouldn't say to our students that it's so hard we'll skip it. I think that we should be realistic about our texts and tell our students something along the lines "Yes, this text is pretty hard. But if we work together, I'm sure we'll be able to handle it." Something that tells the student, yes, this text is hard but it's not unattainable. Also, another important section was about making sure the students know they belong. The teacher and the students should know each others' names because this help creates a sense of familiarity. As Beers points out, it's easier to critique negatively the unnamed student, but when we know that kid's name is Joe, then we are more likely to realize that this student is a person as well and deserves respect. Beers also stresses the importance of connecting students with the right book. While a student may have a positive attitude toward reading but don't seem to read a lot, they may simply have not found a book that interests them.

Chapter 10: Fluency and Automaticity

This chapter mostly concerns itself with, as the title suggests, fluency and automaticity. Automaticity, in this situation, is when students can recognize a majority of words with little or no problems. They have seen the word so often, they see it as a whole and not in separate units, as seen in the example of /window/. Fluency comes out of automaticity and is when a reader is able to read the text smoothly and at a good pace with good phrasing and expression (i.e., not in a monotone with tons of pauses). This ability develops as students begin to recognize more and more words and don't have to spend time sounding out the word. Beers also discusses how to measure fluency, such as oral reading rates which is not always useful, simply because there are so many different factors that can affect the student's reading, such as the content. Obviously, since the content is new and may be more difficult, most people will not be able to read it as fluidly as something they have read before. There is also the silent reading rate, similar to that "test" we took in class where we read a passage, counted the number of words we read in a given time, and then recalled information from this passage.