I was on-line viewing some sites

recommended in the texts, thinking I'm writing so often in front of a computer these days, staring at the monitor and typing more recently than the sum of all my typing in my previous school experience; let me see if any k-12 language arts sites have any thing to offer me in maintaining coherence at least. So I turn to a site recommended in my Integrating Technology text and it reads the following:
9. Reading and Language Arts Resources on the Internet

Reading and Language Arts Resources on the Internet offers an annotated directory of reading and language arts sites found on the World Wide Web. This site contains many valuable resources on topics ranging from what to read to and how to encourage reading to reading disorders.

What's wrong with this final sentence? And they're 1 going to give me advice on writing and 2 tell me that using the computer doesn't effect you in unexpected ways sometimes? After all this is an educational site and no-one bothered to correct that unintentional Gertrude Stein-ism.

All of this wundertech

is fascinating, vast, and if you let it be all consuming. I can spend hours on the sites we've been introduced to. From tapped-in interactive and synchronous to Discovery Unitedstreaming. And it's definitely demonstrated it's educational value. But for an analog brain that enjoys the contrast of the electronic, this exponential educational digitalia is a lot to upload and it's getting crowded in here. Each day I get a little more accustomed to addressing things digitally, but until I get more comfortable with it, I'll suddenly get the anxiety level of gondolier steering a cruise-ship.

I viewed

some of the video cases in the Grabe text today, to put some of these issues we're covering in a classroom context, since I don't have a classroom experience to reference when I consider the material. One, "Process Writing" employed a sort of artificial method that seemed to overly dissect the young student's writing. On the other hand, it provided them concerted attention in their writing exercises and brought what the teacher's (their audience) found impressive to the attention of the writer. I found something really encouraging about the "Peer Editing Process" video case (pg. 88), because it piggy-backed constructive criticisms by fellow students on what they thought a particular student writer did successfully. The teacher very insightfully explained that as a student's self-expression is valued and enabled, they develop the confidence that their expression will have a place in the world. For me, that humanizes the objectives of using technology educationally. I need that reassurance as I spend more and more time in front of my computer.

There's something awfully proxy

about going on these game sites. Even the educational ones. Today I went to Whyville, a nice enough children's game site. You take tours and they don't condescend to children and you're spoken to in captions whose delivery is still flatter than comics. Comics whose lack of motion somehow causes your mind to envision more motion and emoting than the simulated stuff. The maturity of the dialog with your virtual counterparts and characters as well as some of the topics are instructive. So if you're going to play you'll get some learning out of it, but many games seem like neither fish nor fowl, not real but not fantastic enough. Panwapa impressed me but it was done by Sesame Street with decent audio and has accompanying videos. It's interactive so you engage, but it just seems to be pleasantly retrofitting a good old didactic edu tv or film program. Some interesting educational potential though. Lastly, the most effective I saw was Darfur is Dying: interactive animation to take you through the horrors of those everyday people (you play one of them) in the crossfire of war, the winners being the Darfur'ns whom you can donate to online when you're good and sickened by the discreet atrocities; as if to say "and you thought gaming was only for fun, conquests, virtual money, and knocking stuff over for points". I couldn't have said it better myself. I've got to think this medium over.

Today is the day

and that's an understatement. I went to tek serve to see about upgrades to handle Second Life. No doubt, gaming can put learning in the hands of those, notably youths, who game. What it may do to your nervous system and sitting and accustoming yourself to that style of learning is any juvenile diabetes specialist's guess and remains to be determined. I do see the 3-D pluses, it's just that THAT WORLD is so unreal to me. And I usually like the unreal except when it's trying to be the consensus real. gonna look for more links about this and post what washes for me.

You guessed it...

No coffee today. Coffee. What coffee? I didn't see any coffee around here. And that's fine except that I'm tying to get signed up for Tapped Into, a synchronous dialoging portal with my peeps from another edu-tech class. And I usually tap better, louder, harder and more nervously, be it my feet, my fingers, other's shoulders, or in this case my keyboard when I drink coffee. That cup will just have to wait after yesterday. Besides, it's time to get some sunlight before my eyes become a screen-saver.

I'm so aggravated..

I have so much to do or - with better framing - to look forward to; but I made an average cup of coffee when I usually expect my afternoon cup to take home prizes. It didn't and I had the obstinacy to drink the thing instead of wasting it, yes, and making a new one. I don't want to talk about it anymore. I don't even want to type about it because my patience is even thinner than my coordination which is almost non-existent in this condition. I don't want to talk about it. How are you?

In an attempt to orient and situate myself in the new world

of (on-line) learning, the Dabbagh readings I'm doing suggest that essentially if the online distance-learning student has an evident issue or problem they want to address, they stand a good chance of targeting their search, and having found the answer to a concern of theirs will deem the process(learning) relevant. Relevance promotes a more successful learning experience. This is an ongoing process for me. Enhancing education with technology is the noble goal behind my pursuit of this program. I can recognize the relevance of every pedagogical application of technologiy-based learning I've been introduced to so far, like digital storytelling, blogs and wikis, and the dense discussion forums (I mean that in a good way) to this "noble goal['s]"' end. Every day I find a way to relate or compare some of this learning to my prior education experience. As far as solving student's problems or particular teaching challenges, this is becoming less abstract. But I'm still not teaching in a class room so I don't have that immediate source of relevance. It is a fascinating field whose potential can't be ignored. Like technology does in general, it's particulars inform and complicate education with every added development, and that goes for me as an on-line student. Just a little lite banter to start the morning...

moving right along

Today I feel a little more acclimated. I'll try to stop the amphibious metaphor before it becomes extinct, ahem, if I can milk this metaphor at least 10 or 20 more times. I am finding myself more comfortable with life on-line, checking my discussion forums with less reticence, almost as soon as I wake up, splash my face, and realize I'm not on-line. I'm not scrambling quite as hard to find where I left off. Not a fatalist, but as soon as I say that undoubtedly they'll be another terra-incognito rearing up on me. Like yesterday when I waited and then panicked for over an hour when trying to upload a photo still I'd made that I thought would be, correction know would be more interesting than one of me. I had no trouble uploading it on other sites I'd been using recently. But this is the learning process. If it had been a camera or apparatus I would have checked to see compatibility or parameters. Instead I converted the file of the picture in every conceivable way, only to realize that I should check if they're are any limitations I might be ignoring (more about that later). I was. It only took photos of 50K . Mine being a video still was more than that. Word in your ear...Continued best wishes to my class mates. Give me a holler out hear before I start having asynchronous anxiety. And you don't want to be around when that happens. It's worse than existential anxiety!

anotal or digilog?

From my experience, many blogs just seemed like an activity for people with too much time on their hands, writing about writing about themselves, or some such exercise in self- absorption. No offense. Admittedly it is an up to date way to reflect, muse and raise a point. If anything, I don't need much encouragement to reflect, muse and raise a point, or to otherwise think about what, how and why I'm thinking about (something). But the fact that I'm making the evolutionary transition from the analog "water" of of pen and paper and traditional educational moorings and "immigrating" to the digital "shore" is worth posting on. I've ben thinking of myself as an early amphibian (my friends have probably always thought of me this way - boy if I could read their blogs!...) -check this link to get a better idea (http://www.backyardnature.net/amphibs.htm)- coming to land because of larger gills (technology) for more nourishment. That analogy suits me because as someone who's always loved the better science fiction; J.G. Ballard, Philip K Dick, Brian Aldiss, and enjoyed electronic music since hearing the therimin, that ethereal vocal sounding thing in thriller and space movies with no doubt Steve McQueen or Michael Landon in their first film roles, I've always craved the arrival of this fascinating miniaturized, electronically advanced era. Something about me and electricity was love at first sight. After all our brains and the rest of our body run on it. However I've spent most of my years in more analog atmospheres. Acclimating and adapting, particularly with the baptism (oh wait that's going into the water- well you get the picture) of taking all my classes on-line has so far been and should continue to be exciting, or do I mean harrowing?... The real question is am I an anatal or digilog? How 'bout you?