Thursday, June 21, 2012

What is Reading?

I've been listening to a lot of audio books lately.  I find they are great to have on my iPod as I go for walks, mow the lawn, do yardwork or housework and especially nice while I'm hobbying.  I can get the audio books free from our library's web site and they have a large selection.  I have been hearing about other people listening to more audio books and I wondered if people are listening to more audio books, is that the same as people reading more?

When we teach kids to read, we tell them that they should be seeing images of what is happening in their head.  Reading is like watching a movie in your head.  Reading is getting engrossed in a story and or a world that does not necessarily exist.  When I listen to a book I visualize what is going on and I see the images.  Sometimes, I see the images even more vividly because the actual reading isn't using any of my mind power.  That aspect seems the same.

Thinking of books as art, we are exposed to good stories about people and places and trials and errors in both audio and text format.  I don't see much of a difference here.

When we read we are often exposed to language.  We see how language should look and sound.  We also see new words and hopefully, either through context or using the dictionary, learn what they mean.  As audio books have no text, we don't get any of this.  Listeners, especially younger ones are not exposed to the structure of language or new language.  If you have ever seen young people's writing, you'll know that they should be exposed to more proper language.  Maybe audio books are leading to the dumbing down of our society.  We will write in fragments and unintelligibly. One has to wonder who will write the audio books?

I think that reading and listening to books are two different experiences.  I think there is room for both, but I sure hope that audio never completely takes over.

Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Please Don't Ask That

I haven't told you a school story in a while, so I thought you might like this.  We are studying life cycles in science right now.  Today we were talking about eggs and animals that hatch.  I was reading a book about the life cycle of chickens.  The book had stated that eggs need to be fertilized in order to grow into a chick.  I reinforced that to make sure they knew we didn't eat baby chickens for breakfast.  One of my little guys asked me what fertilized means.  I had to tread carefully.  There is a very vocal minority of parents that are very religious and very conservative.  I explained that eggs only have half of the stuff that is required to make a baby chicken.  Fertilization gives it the second half of what it needs.  As I said this I was praying to everything that was holy, that he wouldn't ask me how fertilization happens.  I really didn't feel like dancing around the birds and the bees with 6 and 7 year olds.

Much to my relief, my answer seemed to satisfy the little ones and I powered through to the next page and didn't look into their little faces to check.

Wednesday, June 13, 2012

When Does Cool Become Uncool

I've been listening to a lot of tech podcasts and reading lots of tech blogs lately.  I am astounded by the amount of money that Apple makes in a single quarter.  I'm continually amazed with the shear number of people that buy iPhones and iPads.   There are lots of other phones (not really tablets) that are just as good and in some cases better than what Apple offers at this time, but people just go in and ask for an iPhone. The theory is that it is still a status symbol to have an iPhone and that it is socially cool to have one.  People don't buy Windows Phone because you don't see anyone toting one of those babies around town.

My question is, when does cool become uncool.  We have all seen trends hit the world by storm and everyone has to have the "X".  Then once everyone has "X" it's not cool to have it because everyone has one.  The great thinkers that decide these things, make up their minds that "Y" is now cool and "X" is only for losers and old people that jumped on the bandwagon too late.  I wonder if the iPhone will ever become that thing that was cool, but now is snickered at by teenagers as something only their moms and dads would use.

Granted, the Apple ecosystem and the growing number of lemmings that are tethered to it, make it more unlikely that the iPhone would become uncool as all of your "stuff" is with Apple and in their cloud (iSmog or whatever they call it).  Apple is great at making you need more iThings and to keep your existing (or even upgrade) your iThings so you can keep having access to your stuff.  So, maybe cool won't have anything to do with it, it will be just be inertia. I suppose only time will tell.

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Welcome to Stressville. Population: Me

Well, it's that time of year again.  You know, the time that everything at work and life starts to go at warp speed.  I spent this afternoon marking writing and math assessments.  Tomorrow night I'll be starting report cards, the whole while hoping that the data entry system doesn't crash because most of the teachers in the rest of the province are also doing their reports cards.

It's also the time of year that we start thinking about what we want to do in the summer and I start to obsess over whether we've saved enough money to do it.  We're planning on going down to the Island this July for my Mother-in-law's birthday and we'd like to take a short trip to Seattle before coming back home.  This year hasn't been great for savings with job action and other unexpected expenses, so we're hoping to squeeze the most we can out of our savings.

Sunday, June 10, 2012

Identity Day

This past Thursday, our school held our first Identity Day.  The idea came from a couple of blog posts that Jen had read last year about Identity Days held at a couple of other schools.  Jen thought it would be a good idea to hold one at our school this year.  I agreed.  Jen did most of the heavy lifting, but I helped pitch it and gave her moral support.  In short, Jen deserves most of the credit.

That's mine on travel.  There's a cool slide show playing.
The premise of Identity Day is that all students would choose one aspect of themselves to share with the rest of the school.  Most of our students participated.  There were some skeptical parents and a few that were outright hostile.  Change is never easy, and I find for rural people it's harder than for most.
That's Jen's project.

The day was a smashing success.  The classrooms were full of students excitedly talking to older and younger kids alike, about their project and the listeners asking questions.  The students were engaged and excited.  We had several parents show up and tour the displays and they were all very supportive and impressed with how the day turned out.

Personally, I learned a lot about my own students, but also about a lot of older students that I really don't have much day to day contact with.  The whole idea was to build school community and I think that it succeeded in that aim.

Myself and many students are already thinking about next year's Identity Day and what we'll do our projects on.  I wonder if it's time to roll out the man dollies...