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January 30, 2007
Eisner Powerpoint and Reading Update
For the Eisner article, we'll be using the following powerpoint to help focus our discussion:
After Eisner and Taba, we will read and discuss the Horace Mann except on the reader CD. For you Monday/Wednesday folks, try to have the Mann read by Wedneday the 7th. Tuesday/Thursday people should have it read by the 6th.
We will wait on the history chaper (pages 284-303) until after the first exam.
Posted by Nakia at 03:35 PM | Comments (0)
January 29, 2007
Basketball and Cribs (no, not MTV style)
Another eventful weekend that combined all the things we have going on in life right now: baby prep, some recreation, hangning out with friends, and work.
Friday was full of meetings for me: the Common Book committee meeting in the morning, followed by the College meeting, then the Faculty Conference meeting. I made it through the first two. We picked the common book (although it's not official until the President announces it. I am pleased with the selection). The College meeting was fine as those meetings go; we're having some valdalism issues in our building we're trying to take care of, so there's a hightened sense of secutirty around here.
After the College meeting, I was beat. Still stuffy and worn from a week of the same virus I get every semester, I didn't make the Faculty Conference meeting. I went home and took a two-hour nap.
Continuing the rest, Sarah and I ate leftovers for dinner and watched Little Miss Sunshine. Great movie -- well worth the hype.
Saturday I felt better. We stayed in during the morning doing some cleaning and trying to move stuff out of the study. It's hard giving up a whole room. I don't think we have a lot of stuff, but relocating that stuff in the study is proving to be a challenge. We left the house at lunchtime to run a few errands (Linens and Things and Target) for some organizational materials. We grabbed some Taco Bell, then headed to my office. It was a wreck from my hectic, sick week, so Sarah helped me clean and organize it a little better. We then walked to the Colliseum for the Winthrop-Coastal basketball game. It was too exciting for my tastes. Winthrop was up by 10 at the half, but allowed Coastal back into it and ened up eeking out a 2 point victory.
After the game, it was back to the office for a bit (we had left the car there anyway) to finish up the cleaning. We then went to eat at Si's Pizzaria. Don't go there. We've eaten there twice. The pizza is average and the service was horrible. Wesat for 10 minutes before the waitress came to get our drink order (I had to talk to the hostess to get that to happen). Our appitizer came with our pizza and that took forever. Looking around, many of the other customers faced similar issues, so Si's is officially Off.The.List.
Sunday we were up and at 9:30 Mass, then on to Matthews, NC for brunch with our friends Lee and Marianne. Lee and I went to grad school together and now he's Dean of the Upper School at Providence Day in Charlotte. They are not far away (40 minutes or so), but we don't really see them that much. We all seem to be so busy. So it was good to have brunch with them and their two children and just hang out for a bit.
Since we were up that way, we headed to Burlington Coat Factory (and their Baby Depot) to look for a crib. I really disliked that store -- cluttered, messy, and generally depressing. They didn't really have anything we liked, either. We then stopped at BabiesRUs on the way home and kicked the tires on a whole bunch of cribs.
Here is our problem: we want nice crib but have cost constraints. I would like something that's solid wood, something we can use either for future children or for a toddler bed/real bed for our little girl. I don't need anything super-fancy, but something safe, sturdy, and that looks like it is safe and sturdy. Those things cost a lot of money, apparently. The things we really liked cost $400+, which we can't afford to spend. (This is my general problem with furniture in general, btw. I see furniture as an investment, something that should last for a long time. I don't want throwaway furniture. But such furniture is beyond our reach at this point).
Sarah and I did more research when we got home, using our books and the internet. We found something that we like and that is rated well. But it's only available at Wal-Mart, which puts us in a bit of a moral dilemma, as we've sworn off that store.
After all that, I was worn out. I was relaxing on the couch and was dozing off at 8:30. I was in bed by 9:30 and asleep by 10:00.
Whew.
Posted by Nakia at 11:01 AM | Comments (2)
January 27, 2007
School Choice Powerpoint
I hope everyone is having a good weekend! I am about to head to the basketball game, but wanted to make sure this powerpoint was available:
I also want to apologize for what I know was a sub-par week on my part. Feeling crappy makes it hard to teach, much less teach enthusiastically. I am feeling better and will hopefully be 100% by Monday. I appreciate everyone's patience. It seems like between the holiday, the weather, and my cold, we haven't really gotten rolling yet. I am probably going to tweak the reading schedule a bit, since we are not exactly where I would like us to be in terms of our discussions, but I'll give everyone plenty of notice and a new hard copy of major changes are made.
I hope to see some of you at the basketball game and all of you next week.
Posted by Nakia at 03:04 PM | Comments (1)
January 26, 2007
Against Open Enrollment
We've been discussing open enrollment in our larger discussions about school choice. Open enrollment is also being advanced by our governor as a solution to consistently failing schools. This editorial in The State, written by a Furman professor, takes issue with open enrollment; note that he says many of the same things we talk about in class.
Posted by Nakia at 11:19 AM | Comments (0)
Service Learning Annoucement
I know a number of people have yet to be contacted about their service learning. Don't panic, especially if you signed up to work in a public school. Due to the bad weather last week, the public schools are behind in getting their programs running. Just be patient and you will be contacted soon.
Posted by Nakia at 09:32 AM | Comments (0)
January 25, 2007
I am not sure why I find this so cool.
Apparently, you can learn about Roman history from Peter Weller, the guy who played RoboCop:
And, okay, I find it cool because RoboCop is working on his PhD. That's pretty cool.
Posted by Nakia at 03:53 PM | Comments (120)
January 23, 2007
Powerpoint 1 for Chapter 4
There are really two big issues we will be discussing in Chapter 4: The Purpose of Schooling and School Choice.
Here's the Purpose of Schooling powerpoint:
The Purpose of Schooling
The School Choice powerpoint is coming soon.
Be alert for a slight schedule change with the reading, as it make take a couple of days to get through chapter 4. I'll let everyone know about any change as soon as possible.
Posted by Nakia at 10:36 AM | Comments (0)
January 22, 2007
A Weekend of Media (and chicken wings)
It seems like Sarah and I spent most of the weekend watching movies, listening to music, watching TV, or reading.
Friday: Watched The Last Kiss which led to some minor freaking out about fatherhood on my part. Good movie.
Andre arrived about 3/4 of the way through it. He was going to a BBQ judge-certification class on Saturday, so he spent the night with us.
Saturday: Ate breakfast with Andre, then he was off. Spent most of the day looking for reasonably-priced yet stylish yet safe baby furniture, with none to be found. Took Sarah to Pasta and Provisions, where she worked for a few hours. I went to Joseph-Beth bookstore to kill time, wandered around SouthPark Mall for awhile, then ended up reading 100 pages of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius while sitting in the mall's center court. Picked Sarah up, then we went and saw The Good Shephard. A nice film -- Matt Damon was very good.
Sunday: Slept in and, as a result, missed church. Felt a little gilty. Went to Target, Lowes, Best Buy, and BiLo. Bought the new John Mayer CD which is really good. Got home just as the rain started. It continued all afternoon and night. Made my own chicken wings (which turned out really well). Watched NFL playoffs. Sorry to see the Saints lose, but happy the Colts won. Pulling for the Colts in the Super Bowl.
To sum up: no baby furniture, two movies, one CD, six hours of football, homemade chicken wings.
Posted by Nakia at 12:30 PM | Comments (5)
January 19, 2007
Looks like I will have to get HBO
According to Variety, there is a production deal in the works (done?) for a series based on A Song of Ice and Fire. Hopefully, he will finish writing the damn books so I can read them AND watch them all on HBO.
Posted by Nakia at 01:00 PM | Comments (3)
January 18, 2007
Teach for America and Value Added Assessment
A student in the 2:00 class yesterday asked about Teach for America and their success at recruiting and retaining persons of color. I didn't have a good answer to her question, so I did some quick checking. The 2006 Corps has 28% of its members as persons of color. That may be due to an agressive recruting effort and a visible emphasis on diversity within the Corps.
I found these details at Teach for America's website. Clearly, there is a higher percentage of people of color in the Corps than would be suggested by the % of college graduates that are people of color (9% of the Corps is African-American, while only 6% of college gradautes are African-American).
Beginning today, we are going to talk about Robert Holland's article "How to Build a Better Teacher." In that article, he talks a lot about value-added assessment. Some quick google searching revealed additional resources about VAA (since I didn't think Holland did a very good job of explaining it). Pennsylvania is using VAA, so here is a very comprehensive page about the methodology by the Center for Greater Philadelphia. There is also a good basic explanation of it in this article by John Holloway.. The later article is particualrly interesting, as it is housed on the NEA website. Holland is very cirtical of the NEA in his article, intimating that they are opposed to value-added assessment. That doesn't seem to be the case.
Posted by Nakia at 09:42 AM | Comments (0)
January 17, 2007
Are record stores dead?
My Bloglines feed lead me to this Wired article which linked to this article in the Chicago Sun-Times about the survival of the record store in a digital age. Music sales are up. CD sales are down. Tower records has closed. Manifest was sold. The gist of the articles is that record stores can and will survive because of two factors. One, people will still want CD's (at least until the people of my generation all die off). There's a permanance to a CD that digital music does not have. There's complete ownership. And there is ease of transportability. Let me explain that last one. I have a second generation iPod (four buttons and a wheel) and a iBook. The hard drive on the iBook is full, mostly with music. The iPod is not full, but is beginning to fail -- battery issues and screen visibiltiy have rendered it all but useless. What am I supposed to do with the music that is on there? If it were all on CD, I'd have no problem putting it all onto a new computer and iPod. There would be labor involved, of course, but there is labor involved in any transfer, even a digital one.
The second reason record stores will stick around is they serve a communal function. People can come to the store and hang out with other people who like music. In a way, it's a niche. The record store serves people who want to physically come together to buy, learn, and talk about music. It's the Long Tail in action, sorta. Whether that niche is profitable is another matter.
I hope it is, because I'd like to see the record store stick around. Personally, though, I cannot remember the last time I was in a real record store. I've come to the realization that I am just not that into music anymore. I still like music, of course, but I lack the time, energy, wherewithall, or effort to hunt down new stuff, to stay current or do much exploring. It's laziness, I know. And I feel a bit bad about it, since music used to be so important to me. There are times when I want to buy new stuff, to learn more about new artists or a new genre (jazz is still untapped for me). But I've yet to really muster up the focus or energy to do it.
What about you? Do you still buy CD's? Do you visit the record store? Heard any good new music lately?
Posted by Nakia at 10:49 AM | Comments (1)
January 14, 2007
PowerPoint for Chapter One
Here's the Powerpoint for this Tuesday& Wednesday's reading
Note that this is typical of how class will go. I can't cover everything in the reading in my powerpoints and lecture, so I highlight some important stuff and try to weave a common thread through it all. If there is something you really want to talk about in class that we don't get to, bring it up! If you have a question about something we don't focus on, ask it anyway! But please note you are responsible for all the material, not just what we talk about in class. My job is to help you synthesize and understand what you have read, not just explain the reading over again.
Posted by Nakia at 05:54 PM | Comments (0)
January 11, 2007
New book (and what I've been reading)
I wrote this entry almost a year ago, where I promised to do better about reading and writing about it. Obviously, that didn't work out too well. So I thought I would try again.
I received a $50 gift card to Barnes and Noble for Christmas. Sunday I used it to pick up A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by David Eggers. This was a book I have waffled about for some time. I wanted to read it, but everyone was saying how great it was which made me nervous and I was concerned that Eggers may be too talented and pretentious for his own good. The book sort of seemed pretentious, with the notes and charts and everything in the preface and acknowledgments. Now I am a little ways into it and have changed my tune. It is good. Further report when I have finished.
2007 books bought: AHWOSG, Shame of a Nation by Johathan Kozol
Recent (Fall, 2006),Books Read: The Long Tail, The Tipping Point, The World is Flat
Posted by Nakia at 04:56 PM | Comments (0)
January 10, 2007
Wil Wheaton on ST:TNG
I'm a fan of Wil Wheaton's blog. I think he's a good writer and strikes the perfect geek chord -- enough for you to empathize, but not overbearing geekiness. Checking in today, I found out he's been writing reviews and commetary on Next Generation episodes for TVSquad. Good grief, they are funny.
And, yes, I like TNG. And, double yes, I liked Wesley Crusher as a character. Of course, I was 11 when the show premeired, so that explains a lot.
I think "Wesley Crusher" should be one of the "Things that everyone thinks sucks but do not, in fact, actually suck" essays Josh wants me to write.
Posted by Nakia at 04:40 PM | Comments (2)
Precis Guidelines
In class yesterday, I mentioned that I would give some additional guidelines for writing the precis papers here, as well as posting a sample. I realized I wrote an entry last spring giving some guidelines. That entry can be found here.
Here is a sample precis, focused on the Palmer essay:
This was a good exercise for me. I think I will write a precis paper every week and post them for you guys to download.
Leave some comments if you have any questions or think I am way off base on Palmer.
Posted by Nakia at 01:44 PM | Comments (0)
January 08, 2007
Welcome to the semester!
Greetings EDUC 600 students! Welcome to a new semester here at Winthrop and at Professorpope.com! Professorpope.com is my blog, where I post comments, writings, and links to items that are relevant to the courses I teach (along with personal thoughts, photos, etc in other categories). I'll also post things such and schedule updates, study tips, and important material for class, so remember to check back often. Please feel free to leave comments as well. The blog is just an extention of our class community. I'll also be posting material on the blog for EDUC 110. Links, commentary, etc will likely be relevant to both classes, but there will be category tags ("EDUC 110 or EDUC 600") attached to the posts if they contain course specific info (like this post, for example).
Here's the syllabus:
EDUC 600 Syllabus Spring 07
Posted by Nakia at 12:56 PM | Comments (0)
Welcome to the semester!
Greetings EDUC 110 students! Welcome to a new semester here at Winthrop and at Professorpope.com! Professorpope.com is my blog, where I post comments, writings, and links to items that are relevant to the courses I teach (along with personal thoughts, photos, etc in other categories). I'll also post things such and schedule updates, study tips, and important material for class, so remember to check back often. Please feel free to leave comments as well. The blog is just an extention of our class community. I'll also be posting material on the blog for EDUC 600. Links, commentary, etc will likely be relevant to both classes, but there will be category tags ("EDUC 110 or EDUC 600") attached to the posts if they contain course specific info (like this post, for example).
Here's our syllabus for the semester:
EDUC110 Syllabus, Spring 2007
Posted by Nakia at 12:42 PM | Comments (0)
Procrastinating Help from the NYT
Fortuitously on the first day of the semester, I found this article in the NY Times that talks about academic procrastinating. It's a good read with good advice.
The skinny: to get things done, break down large, vague tasks into managable smaller ones that can be accomplished in a shorter period of time. Then work to complete some of those smaller tasks every day.
Posted by Nakia at 12:24 PM | Comments (0)
January 04, 2007
A dynamic syllabus?
I've spent most of the say getting my syllabi in order for this semester. The hard part is always the schedule for readings. I generally know what I want my students to read during a given semester, even if occasionally I will run across something that I want them to read that I didn't think of at the beginning. The hard part is sticking to the reading calendar, as we invariably run long on some topics, or things have to be moved around because of some event, and the reading schedule gets screwed up. Last semester, I distributed a revised reading schedule twice, then made in class modifications to the final one.
So I am toying around with an idea -- using the blog to post readings a week in advance. For my undergrad classes, which meet twice per week, I'll do an entry every Friday morning which will tell them the next week's readings. I'll also throw in some reading questions that they can think about while they read.
I am not sold on this idea yet, though. If I post on Friday, is that enough time for my Monday 2:00 section to check the blog and read? Will posting assignments week by week really help with organization? Will it be confusing for my students? Will it encourage students to actually read? The only way to really see is to actually try it out, but I am stil a little nervous.
Posted by Nakia at 02:52 PM | Comments (0)
January 03, 2007
Managing the Info Flow
Following my brother's advice, I set up a Bloglines account today. It's a great example of Web 2.0 tech; it keeps all of your blog info in one place, so all the news is in one place. Now I have one page where I can go to for everything from international news (courtesy of the BBC) to checking in on my brother and progress on his VW rebuild.
When setting up my blog feeds for bloglines, I noticed Tim blogging about Tiddlywiki (cute, huh?). It's wiki software that is very dynamic -- there are hyperlinks everywhere. Clicking on one brings up that entry in the top of the center column, sort of like a blog, but organized by topic rather than date of entry. At any time you can close one or all of the entries you've brought up. I have only looked briefly at the Tiddly, but it seems very cool. I think there are lots of educational and personal uses for such a thing, as well as some epistemological issues brought up by such a dynamic (and ideosyncratic) way of organizing knowledge.
Posted by Nakia at 03:29 PM | Comments (1)
January 02, 2007
Back to work
Ideally, I would have spent the past few weeks off engaging in reading and writing, perhaps getting ahead for the upcoming semester (which starts January 8th). Of course, little of that happened. I did finish The World is Flat and begin Shame of a Nation, both of which are related, albeit somewhat tangentally, to my scholarship and teaching. I guess Same of a Nation is more than tangential. Anway, I am officially back at work today (even if I am currently working from home). My modest goal for today is to completly redo my CV; my old one was a mess. Tomorrow, I'll get some work done on a grant application that's due in February. Thursday will be my day to revise my syllabi for this semester. Friday morning I meet with the student that's working with me on this grant proposal, then it's off to do something fun for our 5th anniversary. Then, back to the semester at hand on Monday.
I am teaching my normal three sections of 110 and the graduate social foundations course (EDUC 600) which is called Teaching in a Democracy. I really enjoyed that course last spring and am looking forward to teaching it again.
Posted by Nakia at 02:16 PM | Comments (0)