Tweet, Tweet

The following articles came from my Twitter feed, and are posted in no particular order.

• From Cat in the Stack: “Learn Intellectual Property By Doing It” by Cathy Davidson

• “That's a fabulous learning experience by any estimation, but the HASTAC way is to not just create new technologies but to think critically about those technologies, what they mean, how they apply to society or to individual rights and aspirations.   It is also important to transform creating and critiquing into pedagogical practice” (Davidson).

• From You Can Teach Writing: “When writing a literary analysis: Use thesis + support (persuasive pattern)” by Linda Aragoni

• From Stuff.co.nz: “E-book limit upsets apple cart for local iPad users” by Claire McEntee

• Just a quick reminder that the (technological) world apparently revolves around the United States, as illustrated by Australian and New Zealanders’ frustration over time lags for e-books.

• From StatesmanJournal.com: “Video: What eReader is right for you?” by Barbara Curtin

• From Doyce Testerman: “The Life of a Furtive Writer” by Doyce

• From The New York Observer (Media Mob): "Jane Pratt Teams Up With Teen Blogger For New Magazine” by Hunter Walker

• From The Spy Report (News from Media Spy): “US: Amazon to increase Kindle royalties to publishers” by bacco|007

• From Miami Herald: “In digital world, Miami’s book fair still bedazzles” by Connie Ogle

• From PCMAG.com: “Our Favorite Blogs: 2010” by Eric Griffith

• Sweet Valley Confidential (Book Excerpt – Chapter One) by Francine Pascal

• From copyblogger: “How to Put Yourself into an Effortless Writing Zone” by James Chartrand

• From Whatever: “The Man in the Frey Flannel Suit” by John Scalzi

• From New York Magazine (Books): “James Frey’s Fiction Factory: The controversial author is hiring young writers to join him in a new publishing company.  The goal is to produce the next Twilight.  The contracts are brutal.” By Suzanne Mozes

• From hindustantimes: “Is your child a hypernetworker?” by Sanchita Sharma

• From HASTAC: “Digital Humanities Sessions at the 2011 MLA” by Mark Sample

• I might have had to wipe the drool from my keyboard after reading through the panel descriptions.  And in the words of Liz Lemon, “I want to go to there.”

The following articles came from friends, Facebook, and my own web browsing.  These too are posted in no particular order.

• From MatadorNetwork: “20 Obsolete English Words that Should Make a Comeback” by Heather Carreiro (Thanks Jessica for the link!)

• From The Huffington Post: “An Appeal From Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales” by Jimmy Wales

• From Guardian.co.uk: “What’s on the next page in the great ebook race?” by Justin McGuirk

• From The New York Times: “Great Holiday Expectations for E-Readers” by Julie Bosman

• From Lost Angeles Times: “Libraries reinvent themselves as they struggle to remain relevant in the digital age: They’re preparing for a future in which materials can be checked out and read from a home computer, smart phones or e-reader.” By David Sarno

• From lifehacker: “Top 10 Tips for Better Writing” by Whitson Gordon

• From BitchMedia: “Past Imperfect: The Feminine Mystique and the persistence of nostalgia” by Eryn Loeb

• From BitchMedia: “House Proud: The troubling rise of stay-at-home daughters” by Gina McGalliard

• To quote Battlestart Galactica, “All this has happened before, and it will happen again.”  That quote was running through my head as I read this article, which provoked a riot of emotions and to be honest, made me queasy.  The attitude of the fathers (and husbands) in this article immediately made me think of Cotton Mather, feme coverture, and the idealized motherhood of the republican mother from post-Revolutionary America.  This is not good, not good at all.    

• From Jezebel: “Popular Female Evangelist Claims That What God Really Wants Is For Women To Shut Up” by Morning Gloria

Vive La Revolution!

As a future educator in the making, I found this video incredibly important and informative.  I can’t take credit and say I found this video on my own – friends posted it to Facebook.

My breakdown of the video:

1. Public education – economy link
2. Public education – cultural link
3. Past vs. Future (methods of education)
1. 18th century / Enlightenment
2. 19th century / Industrial Revolution
4. Gene pool of education
1. Academic = smart people
2. Non-academic = not smart people
3. This model causes CHAOS
5. ADHD issue – a modern epidemic?
1. Standardized testing – ADHD link?
2. Geographic (increases as you move toward the east coast)
6. The Arts are victims of this mentality
1. Aesthetic experience: senses operating at peak
2. Anesthetic experience: senses shut off/deadened
1. ADHD drugs do this (deaden the senses)
7. Education modeled as interest of industrialization and image of it
1. Like a factory / production line mentality
2. Standardization – getting away from it is the key
8. Divergent thinking ≠ creativity
1. Divergent thinking defined: essential capacity for creativity
2. Test for divergent thinking in Break Point & Beyond
9. Gene pool of education (academic vs. non-academic) = MYTH
1. Collaboration: great learning happens in groups; the stuff of growth
2. Culture of our institutions: 
1. The habits of our institutions
2. The habitats they occupy

What do you think about this video?  Are the arguments Ken Robinson make valid?  What do you think of his criticism of schools as factories?  Why do we group children by age in the classroom instead of by their individual progress?  How many of us knew a classmate who skipped grades?  What will it take to overhaul the current education system?  Who stands to lose and who stands to win by not making or making radical changes to America’s educational structures?


Some articles related to America’s school systems:

• From The Chronicle of Higher Education: Innovations (blog)

• From Cat in the Stack:  by Cathy Davidson
• “We The Teacher” 

• “Four Indispensable Methods for Organizing Group Attention”

• “How To Crowdsource Grading”

• From Ed.gov (U.S. Department of Education): “U.S. Department of Education’s Open Innovation Portal Hosts NEA Foundation’s Challenge to Innovate”

• From Slate: “A Private Matter: Am I hurting my local public schools – and hurting America – by sending my kids to expensive private schools?” by Patty Stonesifer and Sandy Stonesifer

• From Slate: “The Educated Child: Keeping Public Education Vital” by Peggy Kaye

• From Slate: “Rethinking the School Desk: Is the best way to fix the American classroom to improve the furniture?” by Linda Perlstein

• From Slate: “Classrooms With a View: Innovative school design is hard, but it doesn’t have to be.” By Ronald E. Bogle

• From Slate: “Brilliance in a Box: What do the best classrooms in the world look like?” by Amanda Ripley

[Edited on 13 November 2010 to add 2 more articles from Slate.]

• From Slate: "The Fifth-Grade Exploration Studio: the winner in Slate's contest to reinvent the American classroom." by Linda Perlstein

• From Slate: "The '21st Century Classroom' Finalists: The 10 finalists in Slate's competition to improve the American classroom." by Linda Perlstein

Sites:

• Open Innovation Portal

• Challenge.gov

• DonorsChoose.org (My absolute favorite charity.)

Bits and Pieces

Articles:

• From The New York Times Review of Books: “Toward ‘the Digital Public Library of America’: An Exchange” by Tony Simpson and Robert Darnton [original “Can We Create a National Digital Library”] 

• First of all, I love that Jessica saw this article and thought of me.  

• Second, yes, we can and MUST create a national digital library.  One thing that stood out to me, and maybe this is because I’m so incredibly immersed in women’s writing, the female homosocial, and the lesbian continuum because of this project, is that Robert Darnton only quotes MEN in his original article – Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams.  And to that, I call shenanigans.  Last time I looked, plenty of women in our past wrote about the link between shared knowledge, literacy, education, and the democracy (and we continue to do so to this day!).  And in fact, women are completely absent from his article, unless we are counted under the gender-neutral umbrella of “citizenship.”  

• Despite my anger at the distinct lack of women, past and present, from Darnton’s article, yes, I agree – a national digital library, connected to a larger international library (an index of ALL digital libraries) needs to happen, as soon as possible.  Cooperation is needed on all levels – state, federal, private corporations, universities, colleges, the government – I think you get the picture.  And obviously, copyright is one of the biggest hurdles we face, so why not start with texts with expired copyrights, or texts that reside in special collections?  You can see that Darnton has the same idea in his reply to Simpson.  Anyways, read the articles and tell me what you think.   

• From Gizmodo: “Attention: The Web Is Not Public Domain” by Brian Barrett

• From Mashable / Social Media: “7 Fantastic Free Social Media Tools for Teachers” by Sarah Kessler

• From Jezebel: “What Facebook Does to Teenage Girls” by Irin Carmon
• Remember the articles about the Facebook movie, The Social Network, as a male homosocial network?  I thought this article was an interesting contrast.

• From The Frisky: “’I Am A Girl’ Documentary Looks Like A Sobfest” by Jessica Wakeman

• From Slate: “Who Gets To Be a Feminist?” by DoubleX Staff

Cool sites:

• The University of Michigan: Eighteenth Century England: A Site Created by and for Literature Students at the University of Michigan

• I found this site by accident the night my contextual documents assignment was due, Friday the 5th.  I Googled something like “essays on female friendship by women” and this popped up in the results.  It’s amazing!  I already posted the link to our WebCourses discussion board so my classmates and Dr. Logan could see it.  I’m hoping that Dr. Logan and our English Department will grant us permission to create a shell page on the UCF server that will link to all of our projects, as well as Dr. Logan’s students’ previous digital projects (whew, that was a mouthful). 

• The University of Michigan site is cumulative – so far, 143 students have contributed 54 projects, working in groups from 1999 through the present.  It’s quite impressive, especially when you see the levels of cooperation – professors, undergraduate students, graduate students, and doctoral students, as well as interdisciplinary cooperation (different departments).  

• What I love most about this site is that it is student driven and created – these are our peers, our equals.  I think sometimes that scholarship can seem intimidating because of the author, or difficult to understand (or unpack as Dr. Jones says) because of all the jargon most of which as students we’re still learning about.  These pages, on the other hand, are written in the same language and style that we are familiar with because it is our own.  So please, take a couple of minutes to explore their site and let me know what you think.

• Beeskep: 18th-century American Women

• This site also popped up in my Google results for “essays on female friendship by women” and I thought my classmates would enjoy looking through it.  The author, Beeskep, has three other sites that straddle the time periods of our class, which I’ve listed below.

• Beeskep: Early American Gardens

• Beeskep: 17th-century American Women

• Beeskep: 19th-century American Women

BFF 4 Eva!

It’s Female Friendship Week over at The Frisky.  What, you ask yourself, is Female Friendship Week all about?  Let’s take a look:

Besties, frenemies, sisters, and groups of gal pals.  Explore the joy, the sorrow, and the everything else of the female friendships in our lives.  Let’s face it, dudes are much less complicated creatures.  But they could never replace the ladies in our lives (The Frisky).

Ah, I love it when modern connections to the female homosocial and lesbian continuum found within MMMB drop into my lap without any effort on my behalf.  

Speaking of (literary) sisters, I’m going to take the opportunity to share an xkcd comic about Emily Dickinson, a Jane Austen PostSecret card, and the article “Jane Austen’s Well-Known Style Owed Much to Her Editor, Scholar Argues” from The Chronicle of Higher Education by Jennifer Howard.


From xkcd:

[click for larger image]

From Post Secret (tumblr archive):

[click for larger image]

From The Chronicle of Higher Education: “Jane Austen’s Well-Known Style Owed Much to Her Editor, Scholar Argues” by Jennifer Howard


Also, Jane Austen’s Fiction Manuscripts?  Amazing.  Simply amazing.  What a beautiful and stunning example of digital humanities.  Now anyone with a computer, not just scholars with access to expensive databases and journals, can see Austen’s manuscripts, over 1,100 pages worth.  The site also allows you to view, side by side, published editions and Austen’s handwritten manuscripts.  And unlike the (Emily) Dickinson Electronic Archives, there aren’t entire sections subject to restricted access.


Enjoy.  


Works Cited:

Anonymous.  Jane Austen Is Better Than Sex.  Digital image.  PostSecret (Tumblr Archive). 16 June 2010.  Web.  25 Oct. 2010.  <http://postsecret.tumblr.com/post/704140943>.

Munroe, Randall.  The Carriage.  Digital image.  xkcd.  03 Sept. 2010.  Web.  25 Oct. 2010. <http://xkcd.com/788/>.

Re-Imagination and Disney Princesses

[This post is dedicated to my sister Erin, the most Disney Princess girl I’ve ever known. She’s all about Belle.]


Dr. Logan structured our course so that each of the ten students presents a text to the rest of the class in a 30-45 minute presentation; we are also responsible for the creation of a handout to guide and focus our discussion of the selected text.  Last night’s class was on The Female American, attributed to Unca Eliza Winkfield.  Spencer was our presenter, and on the handout, he included an art deco image of Pocahontas.  In The Female American, Unca Eliza’s Native American mother is a Pocahontas figure, saving her future husband from death at the hands of her tribe, of which her father is king.  Unca Eliza, a bi-racial character, frequently references her skill with a bow and arrow, which makes the selected image particularly suitable.

 [click for a larger view]

Part of our assignment included browsing through the images in Edward J. Gallagher’s Pocahontas Images gallery to acquaint ourselves with the ways in which the persona and image of Pocahontas has been appropriated by cultures throughout time.  There is an astounding amount of images available on the site, and apparently, Pocahontas can, with the stroke of an artist’s paintbrush or pen, transform from a Native American woman into a hybrid into a white woman.


So, during our class discussion (or was it last week’s discussion?  Oh old age, you are wrecking havoc on my memory), the subject of the Disney princesses came up, and Dr. Logan asked us, “Do any of them end their story not married?”  As we sat there thinking, we realized – no, all of the princesses, except Pocahontas, end up married.  However, even Pocahontas cannot escape the fate of a Disney tale, and ends up married in the sequel, Pocahontas II: Journey to a New World (thanks to Jen for saving the day with this trivia tidbit).