My final project

I can't remember all the questions I was supposed to answer in this, but here's hoping I'm comprehensive enough to answer them without realizing it! Here is the plan:

I am going to design a unit plan that will focus on language as identity. Doing a very basic google search turned up this: http://www.ncsu.edu/linguistics/filsoncurriculum.php To quote Andy Dwyer, "Awesomesauce!" Obviously there will be more poking around, find out what's being taught and what I would want to do.

I want this unit to get high school students thinking about language and how it is used. Some of the things we've done in this class could be brought into a high school setting. I think looking at pieces of dialect literature would be able to help students get an idea of how language is a part of an identity. By looking at these pieces of literature, the students could infer where the author (or speaker) is from, their race, possibly their social class. I think there could be some writing involved. I really enjoyed the activity we did in class earlier this year about writing in a dialectal style. I think that's something students could do at the high school level. It may be a formative assessment to see if students are getting the idea that 1) dialects have rules and 2) dialects can relate to identity.

I was also thinking of having the students look at their own language. Take note of what they say to their peers, to their parents, to other authority figures, and see if there are differences.

Because I like the idea of having a companion novel, I was thinking I'd teach Huckleberry Finn. In a different unit I'm designing, I am reading the novel first and then taking a look at some of it's themes in the following week. I'm thinking a similar format might come into play here, where the class would read Huckleberry Finn, paying attention to how language is used as an identity, and then over the next week or so having them explore that idea more in depth.

I've chosen this topic because I think that it is something that not a lot of people think about. We use different language in different situations without thinking about it. I feel it might be interesting to high school students to take a look at this phenomenon. It would give them an idea of how powerful language can be. I think this could also very easily tie into the question that some others are wrestling with of "how do you accept dialects while teaching Standard English?"

There are several different ways to go with a unit like this, but I was thinking of focusing more on how language can define race and class. If students wanted, they could focus on how language defines other aspects of their life such as gender, age, or social group.

It was suggested in my group that a website might be an interesting way to format this project. I think it could be an interesting way to put the information out there, but I'm not sure if it's the direction I'll take. Perhaps it will depend on how quickly the research goes!

Your feedback in the comments is always appreciated. I'll do my best to reply.

Write me a letter
And post it on my refrigerator door,

Alan

Thoughts on discussions

A few things that I noticed during the class discussions:

~ There was a lot of "half-thoughts". A student would say something and then trail off a bit at times. Perhaps through their actions they conveyed their point, or were only wanting the teacher to realize what their point was, and once it was established that they had gotten their point across, they'd stop talking.

~It happened on a couple occasions, but I enjoyed when teachers would add in something that had nothing to do with the discussion, such as "did everyone sign the reading list. I wonder if there was a point to throwing in this bit of class business in the middle of the discussion. Maybe to get the attention of people drifting off or maybe to make sure those that are really engaged don't forget to do something simple and not get credit (that has happened to me).

~I think you could really tell when a teacher had a goal and when they didn't. Teachers could really steer the conversation to where they wanted it to go, but at other times teachers were just content to let the class figure things out. Something that I've started to notice my professors saying is "I'm not looking for one answer", to help keep the conversation going and encourage more participation.

~I felt that the high school transcripts displayed a lot more familiarity with one another than the few college transcripts we had. Students and teachers knew each other better in the HS setting and it showed. I thought the conversations flowed better there than they did at the college level.

What I want from discussions:

I want discussions in my classroom to be a way for students to learn. There are days that I like to just sit back and listen to what fellow students are saying so that I can get a handle on their thoughts. It can help me analyze a text better, for example. So I want my students to feel that they can learn in these discussions. I want to explore the issues in literature that we've read and help students make sense of it.

Now, how does one make sure that discussion is worthwhile? I think developing that report, getting students comfortable with talking in class is essential. It takes time, I would not expect great discussions right off the bat, but I think that as students get more comfortable in the class than they'll be more likely to take part. From that discussion would come the generation of ideas, and that becomes part of the learning process. I think it would be important to guide conversation when necessary, but other times let things ride. Knowing when to do which is probably a skill honed over the course of several school years, but I think its an important one to develop so that students get the most education out of class discussions.

CCR (ENGL 338)

So, what does it it mean to be "College and Career Ready"? It seems like it should be such a simple definition. As teachers we must make sure that our students are ready for their next step in life, whether it be going off to college or entering the workforce. This doesn't sound as much of a common core requirement as much as it does a job description for teachers, so in reality it must be a bit more complex than this.

The trouble that I have with this requirement is that it makes it seem as if our students will know for sure what they want to do with their lives after high school. I, for one, am getting my second degree and working towards my second career. Who is to say that our example student in class today, who is going to be a mechanic and work at Jiffy Lube for his career doesn't have a change of heart later on and decides to pursue something else, possibly higher education. If we only focus on making him career ready, have we not robbed him of the skills or confidence he needs to make a change? Yes, we will develop relationships with students and their families and maybe everyone thinks that this student needs to only be so proficient in something, but I think this definition of "College and Career Ready" opens the door to short-changing some students by not believing that they will or want to go onto careers that require a high level of literacy.

For my Assessments class, we listened to an episode of "This American Life" that talked about how students learn and succeed. One of the things that I took away from it was that there are several "non-cognitive" skills that factor into a students' success. As they say in the program, we consider a student who passes their GED to be on par with a high school graduate intellectually, but students who get their GED's tend to not find much success. It becomes apparent that there is something other than getting the right answer that factors into someone being "college and career ready".

I think getting students "college and career ready" must be more than simple academics. I think it might be related to pushing students to be their best, to challenge them. It might be to help them develop these "non-cognitive" skills that will help them succeed later in life.

My writing fear

National Novel Writing Month is coming up in 19 days and I'm debating whether or not to take part in it. This really shouldn't be a debate. I'm taking 18 credits, 3 lit classes and have more to read and write than I could possibly ever want to do. But, I really, really, really love writing so there is that.

("But you can write on your own time whenever!"someone is surely saying. To which I say, "shush")

Quite possibly the only thing that is keeping me from fully committing is that I don't know what I want to write about. My previous two successful attempts had a game plan (of sorts....as close to planning as I get. Outlines are for suckers!) I knew what story I wanted to tell, the themes that I wanted to convey, and then I let things take over from there. I have three half-baked ideas for my next attempt to half-write the Great American Novel.

1. An urban fantasy story which combines a wee bit o' string theory in with the land of Faerie.

2. A fictional account of a person who grows up in a country that has recently seceded from the United States, paralleling their experiences growing up with the new country gaining its footing in the world.

3. A revival of my lone failed attempt at NaNoWriMo in which a small town bartender learns the value of working in his community, and to not overlook it just because its small.(He ends up becoming a teacher, for the record)

And here's the thing: those brief notes are about as detailed as these stories are right now. They aren't anything more in depth than that. #2 may be the most thought out of the bunch, honestly.

My fear, which I suppose is shared by a lot of writers, is that these ideas will never be more than ideas. I rarely get fixate on the right word or sentence in a story, but I will lie awake at night trying to coax the other half of these ideas into existence to make the story whole. There are these ideas that get inside your head and for whatever reason they stay there. They won't go away. (and if you ever see me scribbling furiously in a notebook during class, chances are I'm working on one...I never was much of a note taker) For me, it is a fear that these ideas that stick in my head won't flush themselves out.

Maybe these ideas need to be written down to achieve that. Maybe I need my fantasy troop to go out and find Higgs Boson to figure out why this idea has any significance. I don't know if it is just a matter of sitting down and seeing where the story takes me. Perhaps the reason why my last two stories aren't completed is because I had the end in sight. Maybe I need to start from the beginning and just write till these stories finish themselves. That may be the only way I ensure these characters don't die inside my mind.

Maybe I need to stop saying "maybe".

I'll keep you posted.

If he's not here, than where...

Alan

Defining literacy (ENGL 338)

It is a bit tricky to define literacy and literate, as a simple "able to read" doesn't cut it. I think it would be fair to say that this could tie into reading levels. Your class might have a certain reading level it needs to get to in order to be considered "proficient" and your students might have varying degrees of literacy.

It would also not be fair to call a person illiterate simply because they cannot read English. They may be highly proficient in reading another language (or braille, if you'd like to go that far.) However, with a rise in audio books, who is to say that someone who cannot read the letters on the page cannot pick out themes and meanings from the words that they hear?

I think in that sense then, literacy means being able to discern meaning from a text. I understand that this definition might create a bit of a problem if you had a beginning reader attempt to take meaning from a Dicken's novel, but I also feel that if you don't look at this as an either/or situation, and instead view it as there being degrees of literacy, then it isn't as problematic as it would seem.

Your take in the comments, I'll do my best to respond.

Grammar in the classroom, initial thoughts (ENGL 338)

When I was reading this article, a Douglas Adams quote popped into my head. "Isn't is enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?" Now, of course, Adams is not talking about grammar, but I think there's sort of a parallel here. Do we have to understand grammar in order to write well or understand a text? The answer, as the article shows over and over again is no. 

Picture posted solely because of the
Douglas Adams quote. 

I believed grammar to be important, but the article got me thinking about my own educational experiences. I did not have a formal grammar class until last spring. Last January was the first time I ever diagrammed a sentence. However, we understand what grammar is, and how English should operate in its standard form just by interacting with the world. Textbooks are written grammatically, newspapers and books follow these rules. The rules of grammar and language can be, it seems, learned by osmosis. We may need to clear up some points, and offer guidance, but I don't know that we need to have students work tirelessly at grammar. 

I would hesitate to say though that teaching grammar is not important at all. There are some students who will struggle with grammar, but I think the key is not overload them with the subject. Instead of seeing grammar as the foundation to good writing, perhaps we should look at it as insulation. It is important, but it isn't the biggest concern. Good grammar can help to make a good paper a great one, because good grammar won't distract from the paper's ideas like bad grammar will. However, as teachers (as was mentioned in class) it should be more important to focus on how a paper is organized and how its ideas are articulated rather than comma placement.

I think that another important thing to take into consideration is that no matter what your stance is on grammar, whether you believe it is important or not, as teachers we must be unafraid to teach grammar. Students will ask questions about how sentences are constructed and why we use I in some cases and me in others. We should be able to engage in these discussions. Grammar is a tool to use to write better and communicate better, and we should be able to help students with their grammar. At the same time, we must realize that grammar is not the only tool to be used to accomplish those goals and that each student may need something different.

Bedtime stories (ENGL 338)

So, I'm late to this discussion (sinus infections are just the worst for productivity) but I've been thinking about not necessarily my own reading experiences with my parents, but the ones that I have with my nephews who are probably my favorite people in the world.

Getting to read to my nephews is something I look forward to whenever I see them. I don't exactly know what it is about reading to them, but it is something special. But, reading to a child is so much more than just reading the words on the page. You use different voices to make characters come alive, different inflections to express mood, but most importantly you use the pictures to help the story become more interactive.

Many books that I've read to my nephews ask the reader to find something. Maybe its a mouse hidden on the page or trying to find 9 oranges. Or, you can pose the question yourself, "What is this?" you might ask, pointing to a dog. "What color is it?" The child will (hopefully) answer "a dog" and "brown". It is something so simple, but it is education at its most basic level. The child shows that they know what a dog is or what the color brown looks like and can relay that to you. (This becomes not so fun when you read them a book that they've seen 30 times and have pointed to the mouse before you can say, "do you see a mouse?")

So, while it is true as was said in class that nobody's family talks like a textbook, simply reading to a child helps facilitate the educational process. The child knows what to look for and how to answer a question, and that can give them a head start when they enter a classroom for the first time.

Reflection on Hinglish project (ENGL 338)

I felt the project and presentation went very well. It can be difficult with group projects (especially with six people) to find time to meet up and work through it. I thought we did well with the time we had.

That said, I'm a bit skeptical to the relevance of all of this. I'm not sure if there was anyone in the class that was unaware of dialects before this project started and our discussions on AAVE should have cleared up any misconceptions regarding grammatical rules in these dialects. Perhaps soon this will all come together as something that can be used in the classroom, but right now I don't feel that it is anything more than a warning of something to look out for. "The students exist, so be prepared!"

Book Review: The Postmortal

The last time I did one of these book reviews, I added that I would write up my review of The Postmortal the next day. Then school had to start and there went all of my free time, even though these things don't take all that long to bang out.

Anyways....The Postmortal.

This book is about as opposite as Drew Magary's first book: Men With Balls, which is a how-to guide of being a professional athlete. It is full of the humor that one would be used to from reading his posts at "Deadspin" or elsewhere on the Internet. And yet, there's nary a poop joke or dick joke to be found in The Postmortal, at least none that I can remember since I read the book two months ago.

This novel deals with a hypothetical, and a major one at that. What if science could make you more or less immortal. You take a shot and never age. Old age cannot kill you. Your body won't break down. Other things can kill you, but never your own body. "The Cure" as it is called is highly controversial, and even after it is legalized many fight against its use. Magary takes political imagry of today and puts it into his fictional story, adding a bit of realism to the story that sometimes falls flat. (Things get a bit too coincidental for me at times in the book).

One review I read took up a point that Magary briefly addresses the effect such technology would have on sports records. The passage the reviewer references is a one-sentence blip in a "links round up" (the book reads as if it was someone's blog) about the baseball home run record falling. This, complains the reviewer, is expected. Magary is a sports guy, why wouldn't he throw in this little bit? (Never mind that anyone who reads Kissing Suzy Kolber knows that Magary does not care for baseball in the least).

I actually think that this little blip added a bit of world-building to the novel. Due to its nature, the story doesn't really allow for much more than glimpses into the rest of the world. There are the wars in Russia and a crisis or two mentioned, but nothing is ever truly flushed out.

If the world of the Postmortal is something Magary wants to return to for a future book, taking the sports aspect could be a fun way to go. Maybe he wished to avoid it, given all the controversy surrounding steroids, but a sports science fiction book, something that blends Magary's first two novels together, could be a fun read.

Question on bidialectism in the classroom (ENGL 338)

Is there a way to promote code-switching, or teach code-switching skills? My take from reading the article was that no one wanted to just promote SAE and no one wanted to ignore AAE, so how can we improve upon both? I don't think that SAE is a tool of white supremacy and I doubt that many English teachers use it as such (if there are any, then they really shouldn't be teachers, now should they?).

What becomes tricky to me is that while it is apparent that AAE has a place in education and if it were used in the classroom could benefit its speakers, SAE is dominant. We can criticize society all we want for being (or at least pretending to be) dependent on one dialect, but that does not change the fact that SAE is vitally important. I think as educators, we have to make sure that our students are gaining knowledge and that they will be prepared going forward. This is why I think code-switching may be a way to get the best of both worlds. Does the use of AAE alone promote code switching, or are there tips that teachers can use to promote it.

Language barriers in the classroom (ENGL 338)

I might be at a bit of an advantage, as I've read ahead a little in the class. I read through "The Linguistic Features of the Language of Schooling" and will be using some of that text in my reflection.

The question posed is how do we, as English teachers (or any teachers, for that matter) over come language barriers, such as dialects, in our classroom. Given the controversy over the use of AAVE in Oakland, this is an important conversation to have.

The first thing to consider is that the language used in education is much more lexically dense than the language students use on an every day basis. While this is partly because of the academic content in education, there are gramatical differences. These differences, in some ways, make education less accessible than it could be. A text book might be to hard to read or might be written in a way that does not engage the student. I don't feel that this is a student-specific problem. I think everyone has read a text book or essay and just wanted to get to the end because it was dense. This problem is amplified if the students engage in a dialect such as AAVE. If the language used in academics is already denser than what "standard English" would be, then these texts and lectures could be all the more dis-engaging to students fluent in a dialect of English.

What I thought was very important in the discussion of the Oakland AAVE classes is that teachers that engaged in AAVE and worked with it, as opposed to those who suppressed it, saw reading and writing skills improve. That essay also points to work done in Norway, where regional dialects are used in classrooms, but students are gradually taught a standardized Norwegian.

I think one way to do this in an English classroom is to not instantly say that something is wrong (doing so might make a student shy in the future), but instead use it as a way to show that language is alive and changing. It could make for an interesting side lesson on how AAVE functions grammatically. In addition, if students are able to see how AAVE (or their dialect) functions grammatically, and that there are "rules" to their style of speaking, than they may pick up on the rules of what we consider "standardized English".

I don't feel though that teaching standardized English in this way would necessarily demean other dialects. The essay on AAVE alludes to a "code switching" of sorts, that speakers of AAVE can also speak in standardized English. Students will be expected to communicate in standardized English in certain situations (such as job interviews) and as English teachers we should give them the tools they need to be able to do so. At the same time though, we cannot be insensitive to their culture and demean their language. Instead, we can show how their dialect works, how it compares to the standard, and have discussions on why the dialect is important to the students.

A less than formal introduction (ENGL 338)

Yes, I do own this tie. Yes, I look awesome in it.

My name is Alan Hoffmann. This is my second go-around for college. I graduated from Southern Illinois University (go Salukis) with a journalism and radio-television news degree. The idea was to use said degree to cover sports for a living. The reality was, I got to attend lots of really, really boring meetings. "My job is to go to public meetings and get bored so the public doesn't have to," I joked.

In between my two radio jobs, I lived at home. I even, just to be as cliche as possible, set up my computer in my parents' basement. I did complete National Novel Writing Month that November, but the best thing I did while hunting for my next job was to be a volunteer cross country coach. I called the head coach before the season started and asked if I could help out. He said yes. Simple as that I became a cross country coach. It was about three weeks into this that I noticed that I really enjoyed being out there. Not just the running aspect (which was also fun) but interacting with the kids, teaching them, seeing them develop their running skills, watching them interact. It was at about this time that another friend of mine (who was coaching football while looking for jobs) and I decided that we needed to do this for a living. We had to teach. Even though both of our fathers (maybe because both of our fathers) were teachers, we never considered the idea. Well, career choice #1 didn't work, but here was something exciting. 

Well, just as I was about to enroll somewhere and work on an English ed degree, I got my second radio job. So, off to Havre I went. I moved there in the winter and the temperature did not get above freezing for a month. I once called a 19-degree day, "nice". The next winter it got to be 40-below. Lest you think it was all bad, I did meet my wife while living there, so there's that. At any rate, I got tired of covering boring meetings and as soon as I was able to get in-state tuition, I moved to Bozeman and enrolled at Montana State. I'm the fifth family member to go to school here, which is more or less why I chose MSU. 

A few other fun facts....

~My wife and I got married this summer in what I called "the longest, shortest day of my life". Seriously, it is exhausting getting married, but it was a blast. Kodi is beautiful, smart and awesome and I couldn't be going to school and work without her.

~I work the night shift at the C'mon Inn. In a related story, caffeine is great.

~I'm a huge Seattle sports fan (well, not UW. They're evil, as I root for Washington State. My sister went to WSU, Go Cougs!) and against better judgement am a diehard Seahawks fan. That team will be the death of me.

~I love to read and write (an English major with those hobbies?). I really like science fiction and fantasy. As for the writing side of things, I do have two unfinished novels (both National Novel Writing Month efforts. I got to 50,000 words but not the end of the story). I have a tentative deadline of "Someday" to finish them.

~I also like to run and I'd like to coach cross country and track when I become a teacher. 

~I spent a semester of College Part One in Australia and it was one of the greatest experiences of my life. Seriously, if you get a chance to study abroad DO IT. Also, I sometimes slip into Aussie speak and will refer to people as "mate" and say "no worries". I will even refer to things as "dodgey" at times. 

~There were some perks to working as a reporter. I've met 4 U.S. Senators and a handful of U.S. Representatives. That was fun. One time, I called Brian Schweitzer's office for a quote from one of his press people and they said they'd just have the governor call me. Considering my last job was in Illinois, having the governor call me back was really cool. (Ironically enough, the most boring part of the job was school board meetings. Those are the worst.)

I think that's about it. Any questions, just leave 'em in the comments. Or talk to me in person, though a warning: I'll talk your ear off if you give me the chance.

I'll be educated well

Learn about delicacy

I'll be wearing pin-striped suits that say

"Renaissance is me"

Alan

(I will occasionally do lyrical sign-offs)

Language in Mark Twain's True Story (ENGL 338)

The first thing that stands out in this short story is how language is used to illustrate class. We don't know much about the narrator, but we can assume he is white and privileged to some extent. In a way, Twain also masks where the narrator lives as his few lines of dialect do not have any accent to them. "Why, I thought—that is, I meant—why, you can't have had any trouble. I've never heard you sigh, and never seen your eye when there wasn't a laugh in it." Compare this to Aunt Rachel, whose words are often misspelled and punctuated in such a way that makes her accent come alive even through written word. "Has I had any trouble? Misto C—, I's gwyne to tell you, den I leave it to you. I was bawn down 'mongst de slaves; I knows all 'bout slavery, 'case I ben one of 'em my own se'f." The second sentence there indicates a lack of formal education (or else she might have said I am going to tell you, and then I'll leave it to you.") Given her background (a former slave) we can use these contextual clues to key in on the character of Aunt Rachel, but the language and how it is written allows that to come alive that much more. It should be noted that her words aren't necessarily wrong. Aunt Rachel does communicate effectively, but how she speaks does give us more insight as to her background, especially when compared to the narrator.

I think: What English teachers should be teaching (ENGL 338)

(Note: Since I originally set this blog up to chronicle my journey to get an English Education Degree, I figure I could just incorporate a required class blog into this existing one. If you're new here, feel free to read my previous posts. They're mostly just book reviews.)

I've often asked myself what I want to teach when I get a classroom (a science fiction genres course if I could swing it, if you're curious. Read my book reviews, you'll notice a trend in what I read!), but rarely have I asked myself what I should teach. I think ideally what an English teacher should teach can be broken down into a few groups: basics, creativity, and exploration.

The basics are things such as grammar. Knowing how to write and speak correctly is an important skill. I think students should know how the parts of speech operate, how punctuation works, and how everything connects together. Taking a grammar course last year, I liked learning about how English works (sometimes in its own special way). Beyond that, knowing the basics gives students the tools they need to take on bigger and more complex ideas.

Creativity is letting students (as much as you can, anyway) find things that interest them. Reading is a great way to learn more about the world and one's interests, and I think that as English teachers it would be alright to embrace our students' interests and let them find stories and books to read that they'll engage in. I think that would make it all the more likely that a student picks up valuable reading skills. In addition, I think having freedom to write is another great way to shape skills. This is not to say we shouldn't teach some stuff universally (for example, I feel Romeo and Juliet should be taught to everyone. Some stories are so engrained in our cultures, that its important to look at where it originated from. Once could argue that such teachings could be listed under "the basics"), but giving students some control over what they read and write about could have benefits.

And finally exploration. One thing we talked about in class today was the differences in English in different parts of the world and country. I think exploring these differences and looking at how language works around the globe can open up the world of language to a student. Teaching students about regional dialects would also expose them to a kind of diversity that is often overlooked. You can also look at different writing styles and see what the style can tell you about the time and place of the writing. I think its neat to look at how English has changed even from the 1800s (the Journals of Lewis and Clark, for instance) to now.

I read: Roadside Picnic

Are you ready for some rapid fire book reviews? Because while I have been reading this summer, I haven't been writting about it. So, here's the first of three book reviews: Roadside Picnic. Roadside Picnic is a Russian science fiction novel by Arkandy and Boris Strugastky. I came across the book through the absolutely awesome blog, io9 and the concept seemed like an interesting one. Aliens have come, they left without saying anything, and now in order to figure it all out, people go (often illegally) into the zones where they landed and take stuff out. A point is made in the introduction of my copy that in most sci-fi novels with an alien encounter, it is the result of something heroic. Our brilliant scientists have communicated with them. Our brave soldiers have fended them off. Our wise president has negotiated an agreement with them. But, what if they just came and left? The thing that the story does that I really enjoy (and is also pointed out in the introduction) is it looks at how this event, a global event, one of the biggest events in human history, impacts a commonor. The main character, Red, takes advantage of the situation by being a stalker (someone who enters the zone illegally and sells artifacts on the blackmarket)as well as working for a scientific agency devoted to the zone. He's not a scientist, really just someone who goes in and out of the zone. Through his eyes, we see how the visit has impacted other parts of society: there are abandoned cottages, the scientific inquiry into the area leads to a slight population boon (though in other parts of the world, no one is allowed near the zones for quite some distance). The story focuses on Red and his day to day life, inserting speculation on the visit and commentary on things happening elsewhere are sprinkled in from time to time. Seeing through Red's struggles and triumphs makes his wish of "happiness for everybody, free, and no one will go away unsatisfied" all the more enduring. This was my first time reading anything Russain, and it was very enjoyable. I thought the ending was beautiful. But would I reccomend it to a high school student? Possibly. The version I bought has an afterword from the authors detailing why it took eight years to get the novel published. Soviet censors had no qualms with the subject of the book, or its message, but rather the swearing and questionable actions by the heroes. As a teacher, I would have nothing wrong with a book with heroes that do questionable things (I do love Breaking Bad, for instance) but the swearing might put this book out of my comfort zone for teaching it. I personally am not opposed, but for job security sake I'm not sure this one would make my bookshelf when I get a classroom. Though, would I reccomend it to a mature student? Absolutely. Next up (tomorrow, maybe!) The Postmortal

I read: The Rook

I was reading The Rook on a visit home, and my Dad asked what I was reading.

"The Rook," I replied. "Its fantasy...and weird."

He laughed, saying something to the effect that most fantasy is weird.

I suppose he's right. It is, after all, fantasy. The genre is not necessarily bound by the norm. My favorite fantasy series, Game of Thrones is fairly down to earth, you know once you set aside the freakishly long winters, dragons, white walkers, people coming back from the dead, and the ability that some characters have to jump into the consciousness of animals. Other than that though, it reads like historical fiction.

The Rook though is WEIRD. It centers around Myfanwy Thomas, a woman who has lost her memory who happens to be a high ranking official in a secret government organization that deals with the super-natural. When I found it on Amazon, I thought The Rook sounded like "The Bourne Trilogy meets the X-Files" and was intrigued.

The thing that threw me off a bit though was the book is, or tries at least, to be funny. At times, Daniel O'Malley reminded me of Douglas Adams. Not that this is a bad thing (Adams is one of my favorite authors) but, it wasn't expected. If I knew that The Rook was going to be as light as it was, I may have found it more enjoyable. There are times when the characters seem so nonchalant about their situtation that it can be very frustrating. "They seem to be taking this Belgian invasion of Britain kind of lightly," you might say while reading this book. In one particular maddening point, Myfanwy decides that, in the face of this impending invasion and trying to figure out why she has lost her memory that she'll reconnect with her long-lost sister by going clubbing.

This may have been the case of expectations clashing with reality. What I expected from The Rook is not what I got. This isn't to say it isn't enjoyable or there's a good story in it. Its just that the story sometimes doesn't take itself seriously. I don't know if O'Malley was striving for supernatural thriller or something akin to Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, but combining the two didn't work for me. That said, I feel that O'Malley could pull off either style should he commit to one or the other.

I Read: Throne of the Crescent Moon

Oh, so glad it is summer and I can read what I want! I was able to finally read something that I downloaded to my Kindle in February, and Throne of the Crescent Moon provided me with an awesome escape for a few days.

I don't know if it would be fair to say "With great power comes great responsibility" is a theme in all fantasy novels, but it is a theme that keeps coming up. Throne of the Crescent Moon is no exception. In the novel, a lot of people have power. It could be political power, such as the Kalif or the Falcon Prince hold or it could be magical power like Abdoulla the ghul hunter and his companions hold. What these characters do with that power is telling.

Right from the start, its established that Abdoulla is aging and maybe not up to the task of killing ghouls as he once was. But, time and time again he talks himself into doing it because 1) someone has to and 2) there aren't many left like him that can dispatch ghouls. I think this contrasts neatly with the Kalif and the royal family who, while not getting a lot of time on the page, are referred to often usually along the lines of "the Kalif's doctors could have saved the child..." In fact the whole motivation for The Falcon Prince boils down to what he would do with the Kalif's power, power that is known and unknown.

For that serious of a tone though, the book does offer some really fun moments. After all, this is a place where the spells are cast to make the palace smell nice (and, consequently, route unpleasant smells through other parts of the city). It has a character that can turn into a lioness. Abdoulla cracks jokes all the time. There's a lot of fun to the story.

There are some things that get kind of repetative throughout the novel though. About halfway through, you might say something like, "I get it, Abdoulla is old," or "I get it, Raseed is conflicted,". Raseed might be the most frustrating character in the book. He's very religiously devout at the age of 15, and despite following Abdoullah around for some time never seems to loosen up. I think he takes himself too seriously and feels that even at his young age, he should know all the answers. I suppose this is how a lot of teenagers feel though. The world makes sense to them, and why does the world keep throwing these change-ups at me?

As far as world building goes, the story is fairly localized but the map at the beginning of the novel hints that there might be a larger story to tell. Indeed, this is the first novel in a trilogy, and I'll be looking forward to the next offering by Saladin Ahmed. The stakes seem fairly high in book 1 and I can't wait to see how they're raised in the second act.

How do I cite this?: E-readers

I might make this a running feature. After all, nothing says "exciting blogging" like how to cite random things. But, in this one instance I think it is important to have a discussion about how to cite something because frankly, there's not a lot out there on the subject.

How do I cite e-readers?

Let me start by saying that I love my Kindle. Instant access to books for cheaper? Yes please. I wish I had more time to read more things on the Kindle. I sort of jokingly kept asking my fiance if she got me one for Christmas and then, because she is awesome, she did so. I've been in love ever since (with the Kindle, love with fiance already established).

One of the things that I really like about the Kindle is that old books are cheap. Sometimes they're free. I know some of the first books I downloaded were Treasure Island and The Art of War. I downloaded them because they are famous books and the latter I've been meaning to read. I also downloaded them because they were free.

For my Classical Foundations of Literature class, I am writing a paper on the political themes within the comedies of Aristophanes. Wanting all eleven of his surviving plays, I went online and sure enough, Kindle delivered.  For 95 cents, I had all eleven plays (I later found that I could have ordered Volume 1 and 2 separately and saved the 95 cents, but oh well.)

So, I read all eleven plays, laughed a bit, highlighted key passages and got set to write my paper until I thought of something. How do I cite this?

There are no page numbers on the Kindle. So, if I cite a passage (which I will undoubtedly do), I have no frame of reference. My usual go-to place for how to cite anything, the Purdue OWL can tell me how to cite a tweet, but has nothing on e-readers.

The best solution I can come up with is that the Kindle does have "locations", which are like page numbers. They are smaller though (my last highlight comes from Location 8,009) which makes it a bit tedious, but I think it will work. I think a note in my works cited page will be in order just to clarify what is going on.

It is tricky because its something that Academia simply hasn't caught up to yet. This surprises me, considering that libraries have been lending out e-books since 1998, so we've had over a decade to figure it out. And I don't think e-readers are going away and will be making bigger strides into education soon. I personally prefer a hard copy if its for a class (will probably do a post on this later), but may try and go the e-reader route in order to lessen my cost and physical burden when buying books next semester (18 pounds of reading!).

What do my readers think? How do e-readers fit into education? How should they be cited? Any other problems you foresee with tech and education merging?

Digital Story

In my Integrating Technology into the Classroom class we made digital stories. I chose to do mine on one of the themes in Michael Crichton's books, namely that a lot of them are "cautionary tales" or "what could possibly go wrong? .... all of this". Here's my vid.

I can see how I could use digital stories in the classroom. Just using book themes as an example, having students use pictures and quotes from the book in order to demonstrate theme. I don't think that it is a replacement for writing a paper, but it could be a way to get a student started on such a project.

Your thoughts?

I Think: The difficulty of staying home

Montana Population Shifts (U.S. Census Bureau)

This semester I'm taking Regional Literature, which means a lot of reading about the west. We haven't gotten into any fiction yet, but I have enjoyed the essays we've read so far. Most deal about water. Water creates a problem for the West, in that there is not very much of it.

However, I don't want to talk about water here. Mostly because I took part in an hour-long discussion about it earlier today. Instead, I want to talk about something that has been a minor theme so far, but one that I feel resonates with a lot of Westerners today. It may even apply to you folks on the East Coast too.

Sometimes when you read an essay or story, a passage just jumps out at you. It resonates so strongly with the experiences that shape your world that the words stick with you. This happened to me while reading "The American West as Living Space" by Wallace Stenger. Mixed in between the talk about water rights and how public lands are good, there's one passage in particular that stuck with me. In his essay, Living Dry, Stegner writes:

Whether they are winter wheat towns on the subhumid edge, whose elevators and bulbous silver water towers announce them miles away, or country towns in ranch country, or intensely green towns in irrigated desert valleys, they have a sort of forlorn, proud rightness. They look at once lost and self-sufficient, scruffy, and indispensable. A road leads in out of wide emptiness, threads a fringe of service stations, taverns, a motel or two, widens to a couple of blocks of commercial buildings, some still false-fronted, with glimpses of side streets and green lawns, narrows to another strip of automotive roadside, and disappears into more wide emptiness.

 The loneliness and vulnerability of those towns always moves me, for I have lived in them. I know how the world of a child in one of them is bounded by weedy prairie, or the spine of the nearest dry range, or by flats where plugged tin cans lie rusting and the wind has pasted paper and plastic against the sagebrush. I know how precious is the safety of a few known streets and vacant lots and familiar houses. I know how the road in both directions both threatens and beckons. I know that most of the children in such a town will sooner or later take that road, and that only a few will take it back. (Stegner, 25)

I grew up, until high school anyway, in a town much like the one Stegner describes. Technically, Highway 95 goes around Cottonwood, but it still works. If anything, living on Montana's Hi-Line gives  this impression. Chinook, a town I passed through many a time on my way to and from Malta, comes to mind.

It is the last part of the passage that really stands out to me. Stegner knows that the children will leave and most will stay away. Part of that is reality: there are only so many jobs in a small town. To a certain extent, I think people with big plans and ideas can only do so much in a small town as well.

But still, people are leaving small towns and rural America rapidly. The picture at the top of this post shows the population shifts, county by county, in Montana. I live in Gallatin County, which is the fastest growing county by far in the state. However, looking east, and particularly northeast, we see a different picture. Sheridan County has lost 21% of its population in the past decade. Its current population sits at 3,384. It was not a populous place to begin with, and now one-fifth of its population has left.

I think it would make a great journal exercise to ask students if they plan or want to stay in their hometown and why or why not. Taking it one step further, it would be interesting to follow a class and every other year or so have them write about it. Do perceptions change throughout development? How so? For older classes, why do they think this exodus from rural America is happening, does it concern them, and if so, how do you fix it?

A heads up

Do you love my blogging about education? That's odd, because I haven't really done anything yet on that topic! Anyway, I'm taking an Integrating Technology in the Classroom course this semester. For that, we have to do a blog. You can view said blog here.'

Go forth and read!

I Read: Ready Player One

First off, let me just say that having a Kindle is awesome. My fiance, who is also awesome, gave me one for Christmas. I've already read two novels on it (1984 the other, which I suppose I could review). It took me about three days to get through Earnest Cline's Ready Player One.

The novel is set in the year 2044 and the Great Recession has ravaged the United States. Gasoline is so expensive that no one drives anywhere. Most people live in "stacks", which are stacks of mobile homes placed on top of one another. Poverty is high, crime is high (at one point, the main character actually purchases a gun from a vending machine), and while there is still a government, one gets the impression that corporations are in charge.

Things are, how do I put this delicately, horrible.

Except for the OASIS, a computer simulation that makes the Massive Multi-Player Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) World of Warcraft seem like Pong. At its most basic, a person can use a pair of gloves and a visor to enter this virtual reality. At its most complex, you can use "immersion rigs" and full body suits to simulate everything that one can encounter as they enter this virtual world where anything is possible.

The OASIS has everything, including a public school system, which Wade Owen Watts (W.O.W. in case you didn't get that this book is about a MMORPG) is educated in. Commerce takes place there. Wade is raised by his aunt, whom he does not like and uses the OASIS to escape. This is one part where the book could probably do more to explain. Other than a brief appearance, Wade's aunt isn't seen and so we never get a sense as to why Wade hates her. Not much is given into life in the Stacks other than its bad.

What time Cline doesn't spend writing about the world life, he spends talking about the OASIS. When the book opens, the creator of the OASIS has died. When he did so, a game within OASIS started to find three easter eggs began. The first person to finish this game would get the creator's wealth and then be in charge of the OASIS. When the story opens, its been five years and no one has made any progress.

There are a lot of people that are looking. There are the "grunters" egg hunters, that are self-financed and obsessed with solving the problem. Then there's the corporate-based "sixers" who are bound and determined to gain control of the OASIS and then charge people for it. If all these gamers had to pay for the OASIS, they might have to go outside!

So, this hunt for the egg consumes the world. And the clues to the game are found in an almanac left behind by the creator of the game and his obsession with the 80s. Seriously, its almost annoying how 80s all of this book is. If you were a teenager in the 80s, you would love this book.

I suppose I should be rooting for Wade, but I spend most of the book feeling sorry for him. He's watched certain movies dozens of times, he's watched each episode of Family Ties multiple times, at one point, he goes six months without going outside or seeing another actual human being. He does have a love interest with another grunter, but that goes through the fairly predictable arc of interest from Wade, casual hanging out that is misinterpreted by Wade, a public "break-up", self-loathing by Wade, and then finally some reconciliation.

I did enjoy the book, its an easy read. But I think more into either why the world is in this state or more about it in general would help paint the picture as to why Wade and everyone else escapes into the OASIS.