This project, I have to request, could seriously use more guidelines next semester. I found it difficult to do the project, because all I really knew about was the blogs. The internet is so vast that it’s really difficult to just feel your way around, figuring things out as you go. Now that the PLN project has been more flushed-out, it’d be useful to set stricter guidelines for future students.

Like I said, around the beginning I didn’t keep up with my blog at all. I had a Google reader, and used my delicious account, but it was hard to really work beyond that. The English Comp. Ning was something I occasionally browsed, but beyond that I didn’t do much.

But as the semester went on I began to get more and more into the project. I took time at the end of each day to sort through my new RSS stories, and even shared a few with the class.

I consulted the E.C.Ning frequently to get ideas for things to talk about during my LL ED classes. It really helped me spark thoughtful discussion, and was a really reliable go-to resource for my little English questions.

LinkedIn, I have to admit, seemed a little awry. I kept getting emails that people who I didn’t even invite to friend me accepted my request to link up. My mom received an invite from me, but she doesn’t even have an account with LinkedIn. Perhaps I set something up wrong, but the entire linking system seemed glitchy. I didn’t really use that too much, because it seemed a lot more superficial of a networking site than facebook which offers many more features than LinkedIn.

I mainly used my blog as a sort of thought journal. Some entries were about articles or stories I had seen, but mostly I used it as merely a way for myself to write down thoughts that occurred to me, and ask probing questions to my classmates. So while there was really no hard-core information or evidence in my blogs, it was an awesome way for me to throw out random ponderings to my peers.

Overall, I think I did an OK job. I was hardly the star of the class (I can name a few people who really went above and beyond on this project), but I didn’t shirk my blog entries or anything. Even though my PLN took a few weeks to take off, I really stuck with the project after that, and was able to explore the internet with enthusiasm! Since I have to assign myself a grade, I’d say a B- at the highest. Like I said, I was hardly the class star, and compared to those who really went all-out with this PLN thing, I feel like I hardly have any right to say different!

But is it really alright for us to make the use of technology mandatory in our classes?

I don’t say this from the standpoint of a teacher, but from an American who knows how hard it can sometimes be to access technology. When I was a kid, my family couldn’t afford a computer. Using my gram’s computer was like a trip to an amusement park because it was the only time I had access to a PC. I didn’t, however, have any idea of how to use it, and relied on my gram and my brother to “show me the ropes” on PC use.

At that point in my life, if a teacher had asked me to type a paper, or asked me to blog about a class discussion?…

I’d have been screwed…

I think that what many technology-enthusiasts overlook is the fact that some of the poorer districts of America have students who can’t afford a computer, let alone a printer. If one’s family doesn’t have an internet connection, how should he or she write a blog entry and comment on other people’s blogs?

I, Colin Lee Hill, would like to state–before I delve into the chunk of my blog– that this blog post is not meant to target or attack any iMovie fanatic, any avid blogger, or any  LL ED, EDTEC, or EDTHP teacher in particular. This is just the ramblings of a student who’s a bit confused about the current situation in Teacher Education.

Luckily us students at Penn State have access to funding and scholarships that give us access to laptops and top-of-the-line computer labs (although I still believe that, if we’re going to pay this whopping tuition, they could at least share the wealth and give the Chambers building computers that process faster than 2mph). Since we have access to these–what are quickly becoming–neccessities, we’ve had access to blogs and RSS feeds that have led to some interesting research throughout the semester.

And while this PLN has shown me just how powerful the connectivity of the internet is, I hesitate to assume it can be applied to every classroom across the U.S.A.

Many are trying desperately to work towards a U.S.A. in which every child has a laptop, but until that happens, and until we’re sure that every student has equal-access to these wonderful electronic gifts from God:

Shouldn’t we also stress some alternatives to electronic media?…

Let’s face it, it’s not fair to expect students to spend hours in the computer lab after school while others can complete their homework in the comfort of their own home. We shouldn’t penalize some of the students because they only have access to computers during their local-library’s open hours; I don’t mean to preach that more funding needs to be put into giving students laptops (though I believe that it does), or that technology is the devil, or that parents who don’t run out to Apple and buy their child an iMac are failing parenting 101, I just think that many teachers could stand to focus on a broader spectrum of class-possibilities, and less on the oncoming of technology. When the day comes that one of us is teaching in a school with a 90+% poverty rating, we’ll appreciate it.

But what if we transform that garbage into gold? Today while walking across campus a thought popped into my head: why not take the mindless television that our students tunes in to on a daily basis and turn it into fodder for a meaningful lesson? When most kids are watching television, they’re brains are practically turned off (save for the breathing and blinking sections). I want to respect a kid’s love of television, and turn that into homework. Instead of allowing our students to watch television with their noggins on auto-pilot, let’s have them watch television with new eyes!

Hear me out! Television is story put into images. Some shows start out as prose, then become a script, and then turn into the shows that we watch on the telly. Teaching kids to watch television, and think about it in the REVERSE order of it’s production provides them with prompts for writing that are endless!

“Ok, class. Tonight for homework…”

“Watch an episode of your favorite television show. Choose your favorite scene from the episode, and rewrite it as prose: choose a point-of-view that you think is appropriate.”

“Watch an episode of your favorite television show. Take a piece of dialogue from that episode, and rewrite it however you want. Work to make the dialogue more powerful, or funnier, or more logical.”

“This week, watch an episode of two of your favorite shows. Now switch the characters, and write a short story of how you feel these characters would act in their unfamiliar situation.”

Etc. Etc., yadda yadda yadda.

The minute the students hear “Watch an episode of your favorite show,” they’ll not only be intrigued by your assignment, they’ll be excited to complete it!

This is, excitingly enough, only the germ of a much bigger idea. I’ve quickly become fascinated with the idea of teaching students to think of their favorite visual media in a whole new light. It’s an idea that isn’t widely practiced, and will make students eager to write, and encourages students to be creative with their fiction.

There is a wealth of advice and information lurking all over the internet just begging to be harvested. But there’s also a wealth of knowledge hiding away in the for-the-most-part-unused Patee library, and each and every professor strolling around campus is a well of knowledge and wisdom. Believe it or not, professors, for the most part, love talking about what they’re interested in, but for some reason students prefer to consult Wikipedia to just going to office hours every once-in-a-while.

What I’m trying to say—in so many words—is that PLNs can be great, but they’re not some sort of all-encompassing entity that’ll solve all of our questions and put us on the easy street to intellect. Lots of what is on the internet is incorrect or just altogether worthless (let’s be frank here). Relying solely on the abstract intelligence of the internet is risky business, and will most likely leave one misinformed or ignorant of the big picture. I plan to encourage my students to look beyond the keyboard for their information needs, and I hope you all do too.

Things are changing. The internet is an important tool, and I use it to gather a lot of information that I use in my work, taking tidbits from here and there, using the internet for maybe 60% of my resources. Thinking that you can see something from every angle simply via the internet, however, is a horse of a whole different color (and one I’d prefer not to ride).

I’ve said before in my previous blogs that this new age of technology is scary to me, not because I’m one of those old fogies who’d prefer a manual typewriter simply out of a fear of trying a laptop, but because I feel as though we’re all losing touch with our past, and the genius of the centuries before us is being lost in this technological whirlwind. Some people don’t pick up books anymore: they rely on books on CD, or their digital books. I personally love the satisfaction I get out of picking up an old book that I’ve read dozens of times, and seeing all of the notes I’ve written in the margins. I am one of those people who write all of my random thoughts in the margins, because books make so much more sense, and take on a whole new meaning, when you’ve read and commented for the umpteenth time.

Technology adds depth in many places in society, but it also makes it more superficial in others. Who needs speech? We’ve got Facebook walls. Who needs grammar lessons? Weave got Microsoft Word to cheque are English. Who needs a library? We’ve got user-generated Wikipedia. Who needs a social life? We’ve got forums! Forums about anything you can imagine! Forums about things you didn’t even know existed! Forums populated by people who would rather spend hours blogging about World of Warcraft than get outside an take a breath of fresh air.

A PLN, in theory, is a great idea, but I’m not the type of person who lets Google readers plop all of my information on my lap; who only lets what somebody says behind the anonymity of a computer monitor form their judgments; who relies on Wikispaces to collaborate with others. There is such a diverse array of resources out there, and the internet is only one of them. You can google-search trees, you can watch youtube videos about oaks and pines and redwoods, and you can be a facebook fan of trees, but if somebody needed to ask you what a tree felt like or smelled like, you’d be a useless resource.

If we rely on the internet content generated by others to get our information, and others rely on others to generate their information on the internet, then pretty soon we’ll be a world populated by ignorant people co-relying on other equally ignorant people for our information. Moral of my story: PLNs are effective only when they’re paired with other outside resources.

Don’t get me wrong: I love the internet and will continue using it as a resource, but I die a little inside every time I meet a kid who can hack computers and can write computer viruses but doesn’t know how to use a card catalogue (but I guess those are all on the internet now too, aren’t they…).

But yes, I really didn’t accomplish all that much. Most of break I was sick as a dog, hacking up my lungs and catching up on sleep, and the rest I spend making a 26 minute iMovie for LL ED 480. Whoever said that spring break was fun never experienced my kind of spring break.

One interesting vlog I found was Rocketboom, a youtube channel dedicated to an awkward mix of arts and news. It seems like a pretty homemade show: a British woman delivering news in front of a huge map and delivering quirky news stories. But if you want to get some worldwide news and get some refreshing arts and humor, Rocketboom’s worth the look.

I don’t have the time to write a proper update, but I’ll update later tonight, or possibly tomorrow. Being back at school makes me a little sick to my stomach, but the snow being gone is a nice change of scenery.

“my shows averages about 1.2 million views per episode. Bill O’Reilly averages 900,000. Currently Larry King’s getting only about 400,000″

So I think it’s obvious that our news media have taken a drastic turn. It was only several decades ago that the television came into vogue and the radio was no longer the master of home news. Now television is paling in comparison to youtube videos made in peoples’ bedrooms in front of their computers. Then you’ve got the newspaper whose sales are down the toilet. An article written in April of 2009 wrote that,

“The New York Times reported a smaller decline than the industry average, as weekday circulation fell 3.6 percent to 1,039,031, compared with the previous year” (New York Times, Arango, Fall in Newspaper Sales Accelerates to Pass 7%, April 2009)

Sounds a lot, if you don’t mind a stretch, like Feed. This internet medium has taken over not only our country, but the whole world! If more people go to homemade youtube videos and blogs written at a person’s kitchen table than they do to Fox News, that says a lot about how we, as human beings, like our information: fast, easy, and however we want it. Why search for bargains when websites can compare prices with the click of a mouse? Why hire a travel agent and mess with those annoying appointments when travelocity, priceline, and expedia can do it cheaper and easier? I’m not trying to make it out to be a bad thing that we’ve become info-hoarders, but a world where you can get pictures from the earthquake in Chile a few hours after the disaster struck (I’ll provide some ways below to donate money to help Chile).

The world is mostly covered by water, but with the ease of connection around the world, it sometimes feels like there’s nothing separating us anymore. Video chatting with students in Sweden was a calm, nonchalant affair, something that could not be done in the past. It was great to get to see my old friend Beth Kopay, because she’s been abroad for months, and with video chatting, I could easily see her everyday if I wanted to. The centuries of isolation are over. The world is becoming more and more like one big nation. It’s confusing, it’s sometimes frightening when you think about it, but it’s amazing.

Here are a few numbers for you to contact if you want to help out those in Chile (numbers courtesy of Philip DeFranco)

Text CHILE to 90999 to donate $10 to the Red Cross * Text CHILE to 25383 to donate $10 to Habitat for Humanity * Text CHILE to 20222 to donate $10 to World Vision * Text CHILE to 50555 to donate $10 to the Friends of World Food Program * Text CHILE to 52000 to donate $10 to the Salvation Army * Text REBUILD to 50555 to donate $10 to Operation USA * Text 4CHILE to 50555 to donate $10 to Convoy of Hope * Text CHILE to 864833 to give $10 to the United Way

Watching “Dangerous Minds,” it really got me to thinking about the teacher/student relationship, and just how much a teacher should care for his/her students. Lou-Anne (played my Michelle Pfiffer) knew that a teacher had to be caring to reach troubled students such as her own.

But loaning $200 to a student to keep him from getting killed by a street peddlar? Letting students spend the night in your house? Taking a boy student out to a 5-star restaurant?

Certain things she did disturbed me in a way. I don’t think she’s a safe, or realistic, model for future teachers to follow, and as much as I would love to believe that each and every one of us is capable of reaching students so deeply, the movie taught me differently. It taught me three things:

1) To survive in an inner-city school, you have to be a marine, and you have to know karate; only “seriously badass” teachers will survive

2) The only way to earn your students’ respect is to get inappropriate with them

3) Candy makes your students participate without fail, and junkfood is the only way to deal with teacher stress

So, “Dangerous Minds,” are you sure you’re happy with the way you’ve portrayed sucessful teachers?

If you all (of my LL ED class) watched Elsie closely during the movie, she was shaking her head “no” about every five minutes, so I know that I’m not the only person who disapproved of what was expected of a good teacher.

Anyway, I haven’t checked my Google reader in about 20 hours, and I just logged on to find 220 new stories. I may need to rethink my reader subscriptions, because this is a little overwhelming.

Robert Gibbs: I’m my own tweeter

from CNN Political Ticker by CNN Audience Interaction Producer Eric Kuhn

In his first tweet, White House Press Secretary sought advice from the Twitterverse.

Washington (CNN) – It’s the dirty secret of celebrity tweeting: Many politicians and other high-profile types don’t clack out their own tweets.

Even President Obama has conceded that his fingers are not behind his Twitter account: @BarackObama.

Not Robert Gibbs.

The White House press secretary was asked during his daily press conference on Tuesday if he really tweeted from his new account.

“Inexplicably, yes,” Gibbs said.

Gibbs started tweeting under the name @PressSec on Saturday and follows 149 people – mostly journalists. “I’ve enjoyed watching you all comment on women’s figure skating and ski jumping,” Gibbs told the reporters.

@PressSec prominently states that it is an official White House Twitter account, thus “comments & messages” could be archived under the Presidential Records Act.

CNN Radio’s Bob Costantini asked Gibbs if his account, including the accounts he is following, are really part of White House records. Gibbs said he was unsure and would “check with the lawyers.”

So apparently it’s not just Miley Cyrus and LL ED 420 students who are tweeting these days. To think of how powerful Twitter, and other Web 2.0 sites, is astounding! What went from a little way to keep in touch became an internet sensation, and it’s not only for sharing juicy gossip, it’s a great new way to stay in-touch and educated!
Anyway, now that that random tanget into the White House Twitterverse is done with…

I am in love with my RSS Reader. If Google Reader were a person, I would marry it. So far I’m subscribed to roughly a dozen blogs (most of them being classmates), but on top of that, I’m subscribed to CNN’s Blog, CNN’s Political News Ticker, my favorite youtube comedian Natalie Tran’s (communitychannel) Twitter, and a blog called Boing Boing.

The name tells you nothing, and I only found Boing Boing because I randomly Googled “Popular Blogs” to try to get my RSS Reader started. Boing Boing…heck, I can’t even really explain it, because Boing Boing doesn’t have a single purpose. One entry may be the mechanics of a rigged carny sideshow, the next a youtube comedy viral video, the next a discussion about a breakthrough telescopic invention. It’s the perfect blog for random trivia, if you’re interested in that kind of thing, and I would highly recommend you all add it to your RSS Reader!

The only thing that I’m trying to deal with is the immense amounts of new items I get on my reader. After going to work for 6 hours, I came home to find 63 new blog posts to sift through. I’m still trying to work out the mechanics of Google Reader, because mine went unused for the longest time (I switched from Sage to Google Reader recently). Hopefully I’ll be able to come up with some way to better organize my subscriptions (I’ve already got them in neat little folders), and sift through the many that I don’t care to read. (and if any of you have any pointers, it’s always appreciated!

Now that my apology for my complete PLN neglect is out of the way…

I wanted to talk about some of my impressions about the book Feed, and how hauntingly parallel it is to our real world.

It seems scary when reading the book: the idea of being connected 24/7 to some feed that you can’t tune out. The fact that people can communicate stealthily via the chat and whatnot raises many questions about human interaction, because it seems weird to think of being able to talk to people seemingly unnoticed. But is it really that far off from where we are today?

We’ve all (at least, people of generation Y) been in a situation where we’re dying to gossip about somebody who’s sitting 5 feet away from us. Wanting to immediately tell your friend “OMG the man sittin next 2 me smells lke a toilet!” or “im sitting in such a boring class. wat r u up 2?” is a desire that comes naturally to us cell phone-wielding young-adults, and with the prevalence of text messaging (and IMing on cell phones) rising every day, clandestine communication is easier than ever! So if you want to tell your friend how much of a dunce your blind date is 20 mintues into the date, feel free to! Your date will never know!

And for the millions who are plagued with junk mail, we’re constantly getting bombarded with dozens of emails a day begging us to buy new weight loss suppliments–or increase the size of our… credit scores– flow into our mailboxes faster than the mighty Mississippi. I, for one, opted out of buying a smart phone, because I don’t want my phone buzzing every 10 mintues with a new email from GNC, Plato’s Closet, or Barnes and Noble, just to name a few of the perpetraitors.

While we don’t have hovering up-cars and crazy lesions strutting into vogue, we are reaching a scary level of communication ease. The rise of devices such as the iPod touch, iPad, Blackberries, Laptops, BlueTooth Headsets, etc., scares me. While it sounds cheesy and overdramatic, I want to feel safe from the connection; I want to feel like, for once, I’m safe from all of the advertisements and internet cookies and text messages. As Emerson once said,

“Conversation enriches the understanding; but solitude is the school of genius.”

And Virginia Woolf said, on a similar note,

“In solitude we give passionate attention to our lives, to our memories, to the details around us.”

So if these two (out of the masses of history’s geniuses who preached the importance of solitude for intellectual growth) great thinkers are right, the book Feed raises one pressing question:

Is all of this communication making us stupid?

What I am trying to say, in short, is that it doesn’t take a stretch of the imagination to compare our current way of life to that which is presented in the world of Feed. They’ve got MChat, we’ve got text messaging. They’ve got disposable dining-room tables, we’ve got landfills full of disposable coffee cups. I know that the author’s intention of writing Feed was to show how scary our future could be with the rate of innovation we’re experiencing today, but what I find scarier than the thought of what the world will be like in the future is how close we are to that future.

We’re already there.

Aside from having some troubles here and there with file compatibility, iMovie was extremely easy to use, and helped to make our lame topic a little bit interesting (just a little bit). It also got me to thinking of how programs such as iMovie and GarageBand can help me broaden my own personal learning network. iMovie and Garage band are BOTH great ways to pass on information to other people.

I looked at a lot of the people on youtube. I go to plenty of them when I need information. It’s easy to find what you want! That’s the simplicity of youtube. All too often people think of youtube as a place where people go to post random humorous videos and home movies, but it can also be an educational website.

I’m definitely considering starting a podcasting series for youtube. It would go in conjunction with my blogs, and just delve a bit further into what I find throughout my research in LL Ed 420. Perhaps I’ll pitch that idea to everybody in class on Wednesday…