Tag: reading

Co-opting the iPod: Flashcards

Flashcard Touch for the iPod Touch

iPod Touches are quite convenient little PDA’s. Beautifully tactile, they are a pleasure to use. A few of my students have them and I’ve had to think long and hard about allowing iPods in the classroom because, for a little while there, students were using them under the table for all sorts of illicit applications (games). I was tempted to ban them outright, and I have not yet made a final decision but I thought I’d try co-opting the devices first.

So I now have a few students using the iPod Calendar, taking notes, and now one has found a nice little flashcard app called Cramberry. Apparently, the major selling point was its catch-phrase, “Studying doesn’t have to be painful.” The app costs $4.99 for the full version (the Lite version is useless). I’ve also tested Flashcard Touch myself, which is free this month (March), and it seems to work well (see the screen capture).

PDA’s are still on probation; they can be very useful. The outstanding question is one of trust. Will students use them appropriately, or are they too much of a temptation. A key Montessori principle is that students should take responsibility for their learning and trust is an essential component. I am cautiously optimistic.

“Imagine” “War”

One of the small group assignments last week was to pick two anti-war songs and present their meaning and context. They had a choice of music ranging in time from Frederick Weatherly’s “Danny Boy” to Green Day’s “Holiday”, but they chose two Vietnam Era songs, “Imagine” and “War”.

These turned out to be inspired choices. Not the least because both had music videos that closely reflected the songs’ different approaches to conveying the same message. Lennon’s “Imagine” is peaceful, aspirational, but somewhat subversive, while Edwin Star’s “War” is militant with its rejection of conflict.

The lyrics also provided an excellent contrast in the poetic use of language to convey meaning. After showing the two music videos, the students took the songs apart, stanza by stanza, and you can read the stridency in the punctuation and use of capitals in the lyrics of “War”:

WAR! good God y’all huh
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing…say it say it SAY IT!
WAR!…uh huh yeah huh!
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing…listen to me

We had a great discussion. I found this to be an excellent assignment that merged the poetry we’ve been studying in Language Arts with the history and peace education of Social World.


John Lennon – Imagine
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Desegregation of Central High School

Troops escort students to school (from Wikimedia Commons).

Recording of Eisenhower’s address to the nation on the situation in Little Rock.

In going over the timeline of human rights today, we realized that it did not have a card for the civil rights struggle of the 1950’s and 60’s. One of the key events that middle school students should be able to relate to is the desegregation of Central High School in Little Rock Arkansas. Imagine having to have troops escort you into school. Imagine having to endure racial taunts every day when you were only one of nine African American students in the entire school.

The Encyclopedia of Arkansas has a nice outline of the events of 1957 in the context of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. However, the National Park Service’s website is perhaps better targeted to Middle School age range. The video below is also a good primer, and my students found it to be very powerful.

The Eisenhower Presidential Library has some of the primary documents related to the events. They give a vivid account of the events from the perspective of what the president saw.

The Little Rock Nine (in New York, 1958)

The difference between poetry and prose

Words exist that can, when used by a poet, achieve a dim monochrome of the body’s love, but beyond that they fail miserably. – John Wyndham, The Crysalids

Gustave Dore's illustration of the Ancient Mariner (from Wikimedia Commons)

Going into poetry next cycle I’m having some mixed feelings. I like reading poetry, I love hearing poetry, especially when it has something to say. But I can’t write it worth a lick. I have a lot more practice writing prose, and, well, you can judge how well I can do that.

I’ve always wanted to be able to write poetry. I’ve always liked the John Wyndham quote cited above. Poetry can be expressive in a way that prose can’t. Yet prose can tell a story in ways that poetry cannot. There is, of course, a long history of story poems. The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner was a constant companion when I was bicycling solo around Lake Superior.

At any rate, Brian Beglin has a wonderful review of a novel written by a poet (Margo Berdeshevsky) (found via the Daily Dish). Belgin writes that often the combination does not quite mesh, and in working through why not he comes to the conclusion that poetic phrase do not work in prose because:

When poets write fiction, it can sometimes read like a transfer student trying to navigate the unfamiliar hallways of a new school. Sometimes this works to brilliant effect, as the poet can put a fresh shine on the fiction writer’s familiar tools. In Simon Van Booy’s The Secret Lives of People in Love, the sentences feel brisk, bright, exact, like blocks of ice chiseled into smooth, brimming faces. Conversely, Berdeshevsky’s sentences seem to ache for line breaks, for the leaps and turns vital to a poem but often detrimental to fiction: “There’s a noise she is not waiting for. Scratching like—a light knocking—and again a scratching, as of unsheathed nails on her door.” Craft-wise, these bursts of language are fascinating; yet they have the net effect of poetry: they stop time with their beauty. They can bring a story—which relies on forward momentum, on cause and effect—to a halt.

Not having read the books he references I can’t opine on if he’s right or wrong, however, it is a beautiful distinction he makes: poetic sentences stop time with their beauty, but you don’t want to stop anything when you’re telling a story.

Rock band and the choice of poetry

Popular music lyrics have been used to introduce students to poetry (Brenda Guerra has a nice lesson plan on the subject). We recently had an overnight at the school and the students elected to play Rock Band. It was clearly indicated that the songs they played would have to have language acceptable to the Middle School. Among the song choices they made was Bon Jovi’s “Living on a Prayer”.

I’d considered “Living on a Prayer” as one option for poetry reading but rejected it because I wasn’t sure that lines like, “she brings home her pay for love” would be quite appropriate. What I found most interesting was that even though they sung the song, they did not actually know the words. The game appears to only require them to make sounds of the right length and maybe pitch. So the singing sounded like, “Tommy used to blah blah blah blah.”

So now I think I’ll use the song, but I’m curious to see the response. Will the fact that it’s something they are aware of and play in a game make it more interesting to them? Or will it work the opposite way? We’ll find out.

This song also introduces issues of unions and the way the arts reflect society, both overtly and, in this case apparently, hidden in the music.

Best science fiction? (without John Wyndham and The Chrysalids?)

Triffid nebula (from NASA).

I discovered science fiction in my early teens but it was always hard to find the great stories in the midst of a lot of drivel. This list of 100 good science fiction and fantasy books seems to be a good start. Most of the books on the list are worthy, but it completely misses John Wyndham (The Chrysalids among others) and Brian Stableford (e.g. War Games). There are also a few that bored me to tears (Bradley’s Avalon) and some that I did not think were very well written (Crichton’s Sphere).

I like science fiction because it tends to deal with some of the big issues that adolescents are facing. Who am I, what’s the future going to be like, what does it mean to be human, what’s my place in society, and of course, wouldn’t it be nice it everyone just disappeared and I had the world all to myself? You also get to tie it in to the Natural World and Social World curriculum.

The Chrysalids is a great example. A post-apocalyptic novel, it looks at, among other things, institutional discrimination, the conflict between science and religion, and evolutionary theory (with it’s darker side eugenics). Wyndham addresses these issues with interesting characters and wonderful, intelligent storytelling (with a heroic journey). I’ve used this book as part of the life sciences curriculum for the tie-in to evolution, and to the history of the Cold War. But I also bring it up when we discuss human rights and discrimination.

Auto-Tune and the trajectory of fads

This intelligently done history of Auto-Tune is wonderful for several reasons. First, it has a simple, elegantly executed story arc, where it describes the trajectory of a fad from introduction to over-exposure to parody/remix and finally to a new equilibrium. And it discusses these concepts in a clear and entertaining way.

Know Your Meme: Auto Tune (featuring “Weird Al” Yankovic) from Rocketboom on Vimeo.

Second, Auto-Tune is a great example of something that was created for one purpose but finds a new life in a completely different discipline. The technology was created for analyzing seismic signals in petroleum exploration before being applied to music. It is amazing what can come from working with people of diverse backgrounds, and having a broad appreciation of the world. Group work is important.

Third, in touching on parody, it brings up an issue that adolescents, in particular need to understand; parody is not just a cheap joke, it has something important to say. It uses humor to address significant issues:

While making fun of something is easy [mockery], parody requires a study of both technique and form, before creating its own recontextualization.

Third, the overexposure stage of fads and memes is something everyone should be aware of. The meme infiltrates so many aspects of the culture that it becomes irritating. As a Middle School teacher I see it primarily in the language my students use. By introducing this concept to my student, we now have a common language for talking about at least one type issues in the classroom.

Finally, equilibrium. An important concept in natural and social science, the concept is neatly encapsulated in how the fad starts off small, overshoots and gets smaller but does not disappear as there remains some lower level of use.

Silk

How to make silk using the traditional method, by the American Museum of Natural History.

I’ve loved Barry Hughart’s novel, “Bridge of Brids” from the first time I read it a number of years ago. It is the story of a peasant boy, Number Ten Ox, who, with the assistance of the drunken sage Master Li, has to save the children of his village by unraveling the mystery of the powerful Duke of Chin. Not only is it beautifully written, with a poetic story arc and engaging characters, but it also has a wonderful description of initial stages of the silk making process, even though the book describes itself as, “A novel of an ancient China that never was.” The descriptions of Chinese traditions are accurate and detailed enough that you learn a lot about the country. Pulling apart what is historically accurate and what is fiction makes and interesting challenge but is not too difficult.


Spider silk from Madagascar.