A Podcast

No one actually follows this part of the blog, so it really doesn't matter how lame this podcast is... but, just in case you expected something decent, it's pretty lame.  Just sayin'.

You know what kids love?  Podcasting.  Creating a video as silly as this requires some research, script writing, rehearsal, and concentration to stick with making a video about one topic in its entirety.  This can help teach creativity, technical literacy, videography, public speaking skills, the list just goes on and on!

<{[(By the way, this isn't actually a podcast because... anyone?  Anyone?  Bueller?  That's right, its not linked to an RSS feed.  Apparently one needs XML coding to do that, or money to have Apple do it.)]}>

A podcast is basically any multimedia file that someone puts on the internet, but is different from other uploaded files – like most YouTube videos – because podcasts are maintained on the viewer’s computer or personal media device – assuming that they subscribe to a podcast ….. by an RSS feed that automatically syncs new episodes as soon as they’re posted.  Podcasting is different from normal streaming of sound or video in that way.

Podcasting began to catch on around 2004, and Apple created a version of iTunes, 4.9.0, in

2005 that effectively ended advancement of podcast media by independent developers.

Podcasting is like an “online prerecorded radio show,” according to Wikipedia, and traditionally included only an audio feed.  A little more recently, with the advent of vloging, or video blogging, for the less "nerd-literate," many podcasters have become vodcasters, meaning that they feed audio and video files. (like that video!)

A little less high-tech is an enhanced podcast, where still images are included with the audio feed,

But those aren’t nearly as cool as using real video.

Another interesting development is the podcast novel, where up-and-coming authors read their work

To the world via their computer microphones, hoping that they’ll get enough fans that it’ll be

Worth giving their work out for free.

Podcasting can be used in the classroom to make stories come to life with sounds – or even videos!

This is a great option to differentiate for auditory learners, and we’ve all heard how super-important differentiation is.  Another use of podcasting in the classroom is to help sick kids stay caught up with classes by getting the lectures online – it can also help kids who do come to class but don’t care enough to pay attention figure stuff out later.  I mean, in an ideal world they’d care enough to watch the feed.

Podcasting class information can also help kids review for tests – so they know exactly what to study

Although, my problem with all this is why would they pay attention in the first place when they can just get it right before the test on my podcast?  

A great way to extend kids' thinking using podcasting is to actually have them design and record their own podcasts to share with the class; this encourages creativity, technical literacy, and keeping up with the trends of the current generation!


This was all for my Technology in Education class, just by the by, in case anyone ever comes across this and cares.  K, have nice day!

Something Actually New!!

The first story I've written for fun since the summer!!

I'm a fan of it, myself...

Check it out!  It's a second person pick-your-own; you don't see many of those anymore!

Wait a Second – Where are My Pants?!

Oh, I meant plans. :P  Don’t be a perv, your day has soooo much more potential than that.

Anyway, I think I just realized something.  I was supposed to be a rich writer by now.  I never even really planned to go to college, but to be living as a hermit somewhere in Alaska in a modest cottage.

 

It seemed ideal when I was nine…

And now that I want to be some kind of teacher, how am I going to manage?  Is $30,000/year enough to live on?  Probably, yeah.  But what if it isn’t?  How will I continue to live in the manner to which I’ve become accustomed?  The truth of it is if I still want to be rich and/or famous, I’ll still need to write the next Great American Novel.  Or invent something.  Or go into a field that actually pays well.  How come people become corporate millionaires every day for selling us expensive stuff while educators shaping the future, frankly, aren’t become millionaires each day?  We’ll just have to start charging for teachers by the gallon, just like gas.  My body is (about!) 21 gallons.  Anybody want to ante up? 

Actually… that means I cost about as much as a fill-up for a truck.  Never mind; let’s not do that.  I didn’t want to teach inside a running internal combustion engine, anyway.

I guess the bottom line is that I want to do something fulfilling, and yet I also don’t want to starve, but that’s pretty much the choice I’d make if I didn’t immediately soar as a writer, anyway.  That’s a choice a lot of people have to make.  When faced with this, look to your heart, and do both!

 

Not literally.

 

Seriously.  I don’t want to have to fall back on something I’ll hate to do, do you?  Follow your dreams...

Speaking of dreams... sigh... here's a picture of me wondering where my pants are (pervs)

Luckily, I had the foresight to wear shorts for this picture XD

Addendum

So I just realized that that pic I posted could be taken in… different ways.  Because I’d kind of like to start a meme or something, here are a few ideas you can look to for inspiration:

 

Oh. Um, never mind, I guess.

But DO enjoy. And remember, don't annoy your drawings!

The Path that Forks About 9178395012349 Different Ways

The following is a reprise of my side of a conversation I pretended to have with a few dozen of my closest friends.

Hey. *shifty eyes* Are you alone? *cranes neck up and down hallway*  Okay...

You can't tell anybody else about this, understand? 

What do you mean "why is it in a blog post, then?"  That's totally not the point.  You can tell whomever you want.

The thing is *starts eating peanut butter sandwich* I like writing.  I really do. *takes another bite of sandwich* But I don’t see the point of majoring in it at college anymore.  *astounded gasps from all writers within earshot* (dude, you don’t understand how passionate we can be) *light cursing by writers* *one or two writers start to smoke cherry pipes * *etc*

This shouldn’t be a huge shock to the people who really know me, but I want to be a teacher, *knowing nods from about sixty people* or maybe I’ll work in children’s ministry at a really cool church, like CCV.  *shocked looks from several, facepalms from one or two, extremely pleased nods from just a few*

You can’t be afraid to follow the path you think is right, even if you have to get airlifted over a few hundred miles of jungle to get to a new path once in a while.  We meet some good pilots in life.

*Most just shrug*

I mean, I’ve been writing for almost 12 years now, writing PASSIONATELY.  I’m not just gonna stop, but I want to do something else with my life.  And my college.  I’ve heard too many people say a writing degree will get me a “great” position flipping burgers.  And now that I finally have some notion of what I want to do as a real job, well, I want to head toward that.

You gotta do what you love, and I think I love teaching more than writing.

<{([So, technically, the pretend conversation ends here; I don't usually insert web links into my daily conversation])}>

On that note, I highly recommend this article.  It's actually quite insightful. WARNING: it contains some bad words.  But it's worth it.  Unless you're very easily offended, though it's really hard to live life like that, especially in college.

See?  It'd get weird. The thing about linking, not being offended. That'd be... bad... to draw.

But seriously, try and figure out what you want to be when you grow up.  I've been at it for almost 20 years and I still might not have it right. My mom has been trying for over 50 years and she's still looking. I think most people are looking for what they want, wishing they knew what it was.

Games We Play

I walked into the Pre-K classroom of my church the other day; it was the beginning of second service, when there are usually something like forty kids in the class, and there were only two in there.  It was really close to the beginning of the service, but I was still a little surprised.  I ignored the ferns hanging from the ceiling and the front end of a Jeep parked onstage (I had taught in that room the week before so it was nothing new to me) and sat down with the two kids.  They were playing this board game called Cross-Over or something.  It was some kind of math game, but these kids can’t even read yet.   

 

Extremely rough (hence the eye-patch and scars) likeness.

The one kid, Cole, who was probably three and looked a heck of a lot like my older cousin had at that age, asked my name and if I wanted to play with them; I said I’m Alex, and sure.  Cole showed me how to play; he catapulted this translucent blue die into the board so hard I thought it might explode, but it didn’t.  He looked around for a little and then pulled down a few numbers – 6, 7, and 8 – on my side of the board (it was a square board with ten movable number pegs on each side) and said it was my turn.  I threw the die at the board as hard as I could, but it still didn’t blow up.  I rolled a 5 and he started looking.  “Where is that one?” he asked as though he really knew the rules to a game like this.  Finally, he pulled down the 9 and 10 on the side where no one was sitting and said I’d gotten a 12.  Now that I think about it, he was probably just copying behaviors from his parents, but he sure had me convinced. We played a few more rounds – never apparently keeping score and ending the game when all four sets of ten pegs were pulled down – and I was convinced that we were doing something right.  The second kid – a girl named Ava whose brown hair was short but with bangs that neatly covered her eyes – seemed to agree with everything Cole had to say, but I’m not sure she was really paying attention.  She mostly wanted to pull number pegs down and say “you got 20!” she certainly seemed to like the game.

 There are 10 ninjas in this picture.

After the large group lesson someone else got ahold of the board, a somewhat older – something like 4 and a half – girl named Macy.  She plunked the board down on a grey plastic school table and said I should play.  Her version was a little… lacking, shall we say.  She still tossed the die at the board with intent to kill in her tiny hand – but then she only turned down one wooden peg, the 10, and then with each throw, she turned down one more, six, eight, seven, six, and so on.  For some reason, she always read the 9 as a 6, but never the 6 as a 9. 

So there you go – a three-year-old with a mind for creating his own complex board game and a four-and-a-half-year-old who thinks counting down from 10 is the same as keeping score.  On the same game board, they may just create some beautiful bridge of understanding.  Or kill each other with dice. 

In this pic, there is only one ninja. I think.

Thirteen Days of Summer

So, I have to go back to college in two weeks, putting an end to my nice, long summer.  Or, on the other hand, I get to go back to college in two weeks, finishing off my nice, long summer.  See how different those are?  Oh, you don’t care.  Maybe you will when you have to write an essay in a few weeks.

But it feels like I’m being pulled toward a black hole and I just crossed the event horizon yesterday, when I realized I only have one full Sunday left to hang out with little kids before I go.  I had planned on having two more, but then some fool decided to have us go back to school on a Sunday, with classes starting on Monday.  Why’d they have to go and cut up the most important day of the week?

 

It’s really sad. 

And now it feels like everything I do with the rest of my thirteen days of summer (could be the title of a great short film) will be overshadowed by going back to school.  The whole process looks something like this:

 

Poorly drawn? 

And I think this is something everyone going back to school or work or college or the icy rings of Jupiter feels, although they don’t see it as such a draining thing.  They look forward to it.  And it’s not as though I’m really dreading school: I, too, am excited about going back; but it’s always such a choice to make.  People who leave their lives behind for business or missionary work or extended steamy affairs in Brazil know what I’m talking about. 

I should just go home every Sunday.  Six hours in the car isn’t too much, right?