Se Hace Camino Al Andar

So, here’s my slice…three days late. It’s been a nutty week. Renovations began on our kitchen, on Monday, so I’ve been home for a little bit but escaping outside frequently to give myself a break from the noise and chaos. The work does seem to be moving swiftly, though so the disruption should be short-lived.

Last week, I started the Commenting Challenge but I’ve been finding it hard to keep up. Instead of feeling guilty about not checking in with daily activities, it’s easier to just drop the endeavor. I have enough to do online to keep me busy, though the challenge did have the benefit of making me more conscious of my commenting behavior.

Speaking of lightening my internet load, I also dumped Word Count Journal. It was starting to feel redundant, given that I have plenty of other places to bust my writing chops and I was tired of logging in only to be faced with days of empty journal entries that I felt compelled to fill in, in order to stay caught up, on principle. To hell with principle… better to just cut it out. I’m glad to have experience with it, though because I think the classroom applications are enormous (aside from the constant spam, which apparently the WCJ people are working on…) and it’s another tool in the Internet arsenal that I can recommend to teachers.

This week has also been about being awed at my ever-growing belly. I’ve hit 7 months and with the warmer weather, the countdown has begun and the whole thing is becoming more and more real.

Technorati Tags: slice of life story challenge

I didn’t get tagged for this meme but it’s been awhile since I did a meme and I need to exercise my writing chops this morning.

1. The rules of the game get posted at the beginning.
2. Each player answers the questions about themselves.
3. At the end of the post, the player then tags 5-6 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know they’ve been tagged and asking them to read the player’s blog.
4. Let the person who tagged you know when you’ve posted your answer.

OK, so now the questions.

What were you doing ten years ago?

Mmh… in 1998, I was finishing up my Freshman year at NYU, getting ready to move into International House at Columbia University for the summer, where I would be living while working for Jumpstart For Young Children.

What are five things on my to-do list for today (not in any particular order)*

1. Work on the NYCWP website; more specifically, do the color scheme.
2. Write my Tuesday slice.
3. Do some reading.
4. Do my Bradley Method homework.
5. Baby-sit.

What are some snacks I enjoy?

* Watermelon
* String Cheese
* Grapes
* ICE CREAM.

What would I do if I were a billionaire?

* Pay off my college loans.
* Give money to my family.
* Buy a farm and a house.
* Travel.
* Start a school.
* Donate to charities.

What are three of my bad habits?

1. Touching my eyes and ears too much–that’s why I get sick so often!
2. Spending too much time in the Internet.
3. Making too many plans.

What are five places where you have lived?

1. Long Island, NY (the first 8 years of my life)
2. Albany (the ten years of my life, plus one summer during college)
3. NYC (since I turned 18, and left Albany for college)
4. Prague, in the Czech Republic (4 months during Junior year)
5. Northampton, MA (Boarding school for a year, when I was 10)

What are five jobs I have had?

1. Teacher
2. File clerk for a chiropractor
3. Cashier at Kids R Us
4. Server at a chicken joint (that was horrible)
5. AmericaReads and Jumpstart in college

What five or six people do I want to tag?

I’ll tag 5 people, but of course… no obligation to follow through!

1. TamaraEden
2. Kim Werker
3. Bonnie Kaplan
4. Ms. Frizzle
5. Kevin Hodgson

Technorati Tags: meme

• Borderland » Blog Archive » The Mountains are High - Annotated

  tags: a nation at risk, borderland, analysis

  • So many interesting links here that I need to check out and read. - post by nbrodsky
  • 
    • While I’ve heard lots about this report, and probably read brief excerpts, I’ve never read the whole thing. Should I? Or is it enough to know the gist of the report? - post by nbrodsky
  • 
    • Is the poverty line an international standard or a US standard? Isn’t the line always changing? - post by nbrodsky
    • OECD? - post by nbrodsky
    • I think our low college degree attainmnent level, as compared to other countries, is because we don’t subsizide college educations as much. American university, even the public systems, are very expensive! - post by nbrodsky
    • I believe the decline in voter education and participation is directly related to our culture of complancency and apathy. We’ve become too comfortable with our station in life, and don’t see the need to keep the government in check. The fiction of Bradbury’s Farhenheit 451 is becoming reality. For example, the war in Iraq… it often gets compared to the Viet Nam conflict, in terms of its unpopularity and futility. The difference between then and now, though, is that US citizens were more personally affected by the Viet Nam conflict because of conscription. We had more to fight for.. today, there is no draft, and therefore, no compelling reason to unite together as a country to influence government policy and express our dissatisfaction. - post by nbrodsky
  • 
    • Is this why I haven’t read the report? Makes sense–while the report might be interesting in its own right, as it pertains to education, it doesn’t help me be a better teacher… it has nothing to do with teaching, and everything to do with politics. - post by nbrodsky

The challenge for Day 4 was to ask a question in a comment. I did this twice but when I typed up my notes for a blog post, I couldn’t remember on which two blogs I left a question. Then, I slapped myself on the forehead and said, “Duh… check coComment!”

Taking a look at my coComment page, I see that I asked a question on Bonnie’s blog, which she answered either in an IM or in a comment on my page…can’t remember which. I also asked a question on Technology Twitter, but I haven’t gotten a follow-up comment yet.

I guess the best way to get a dialogue going is to be conscientious about following up on the comments people leave, as well as checking in on the comment you’ve left on other blogs!

On to Commentful:

I tried it out yesterday and had one glitch, on my part. The way Commentful works is that an bookmarklet is installed in the toolbar of the browser, which you click every time (in the same way one uses the coComment bookmarklet.) Commentful then records the blog post on your watchlist, over at their website. The first time I tried it, it didn’t record the link. The second time, it worked. The third time, no go. I experimented the fourth time and found that the key is to click the bookmarklet AFTER I’d already posted my comment. In any case, choosing between Commentful and coComment is easy. I’m sticking with coComment. Despite coComment’s annoying ads, the features it offers really makes all the difference. Commentful is too barebones and not integrated enough into the browser, plus it doesn’t have the tagging feature. So there you have it… my two cents on these two comment tracking services.

Technorati Tags: comment08

Ha. I’m ahead of the game here. Today’s activity is to sign up for a comment tracking service. Of course, I’m using coComment for this challenge, because I already had an account, and because I wasn’t aware that there are other comment tracking services. I have to say, I’m not wild about coComment… the ads drive me batty, and the technorati-coComment sync process has a glitch that is preventing coComment from listing my claimed blogs.

Commentful rated a favorable review on Mashful, with the caveat that it doesn’t have as many features as Co-Comment. I am going try out Commentful and see if it annoys me less than coComment. Either way, I wish both of these services offered a plug-in that works with Safari. I find myself switching over to Firefox for the convenience of using the extension but I’d prefer to stay in Safari (less buggy than Firefox).

Technorati Tags: comment08

Today’s challenge activity was to comment on at least one new blog. Seems simple enough. It’s been a long day, and I have an early call in the morning, so I questioned whether I had the energy to seek out a new blog. Good thing the new blog came to me, in the form of a comment on my last post from a fellow challenge participant. 

I headed over to her blog, and read the first few posts on the page. The most recent ones were related to this challenge and I could’ve probably responded to those but I found the third most recent one more interesting– her work with wikis in the classroom. (It was Ms. W, by the way.) I found myself being super conscious of the comment I was leaving. I read the previous comments in the thread, to make sure I wouldn’t be repeating myself. For some reason, I felt the need to note how I ended up at her blog. I also wanted to say something more than just “great idea!” so I professed my admiration of her idea, then took it further by thinking aloud about what exactly resonated with me in the post–in other words, why did I find so interesting?

I think I left a productive and constructive comment, that could continue the conversation in progress. 

Technorati Tags: comment08

I’m a sucker for wanting to be included on everything that the internet is doing, so when everyone kept talking about the commenting challenge on Twitter, I was like, “what is that? what is that? why don’t I know about it?!” Finally, Bonnie asked me if I was doing “the commenting challenge” and I got my chance to find out what all the buzz was.

So, here I am. I’ve installed Co-Comment on this blog (I had it on my old blog but never moved my account over to this one) and my first assignment is a Commenting Self-Audit.

• How often do you comment on other blogs during a typical week?

Mmh. Not that often. I tend to be a lurker, I admit. I don’t like to comment just for the sake of making my mark. So, most often, I’ll comment when something in the post resonates with me, or if I can answer a question/offer advice/etc.

• Do you track your blog comments? How? What do you do with your tracking?

I did track my blog comments on my old blog, with Co-Comment. I still do now but it’s harder without Co-Comment. If there’s a post I’m particularly interested in following, I’ll make a point of going back every once in awhile to that post to check out the direction of the discussion.

• Do you tend to comment at the same blogs or do you try to comment on at least one new blog per week?

I’m a creature of habit, and I’ve been blogging for so long, that I rarely seek out new blogs, so I tend to comment at the same blogs. Because of the Slice of Life challenge, I’ve found some new blogs and I try to comment on those blogs when the writers post their weekly slices.

Hey! Surprisingly, I do well!

Stay on topic. Check.

Contribute new information to the discussion. Check. In fact, I end up not commenting at all when I realize that I’m just agreeing with everyone else, unless the poster is looking for affirmations and weigh-ins.

Don’t comment for the sake of commenting. Check.

Know when to comment and when to e-mail. Check.

Remember that nobody likes a know-it-all. Check.

Make the tone of your message clear. Check. This can be difficult but with proper punctuation, and word choice, I think I make myself pretty clear.

Own your comment. Check.

Be succinct. Check.

Cite your sources with links or inline quoting. Check.

Be courteous. Check.

Don’t post when you’re angry, upset, drunk or emotional. Check.

Do not feed or tease the trolls. Check.

If I could add anything to this list, it would be to consider the context, always and know your audience. In other words, take context and audience into consideration when choosing your words (and yes, choose your words– don’t just type mindlessly. Rhetoric counts).

And there’s my audit. That didn’t hurt so much!

Technorati Tags: comment08

Yesterday, I bought a paper before heading into the city. It was Monday and I always like to do the Monday crossword. I can always finish it and that makes me feel smart, it does. I get dumber and dumber as the week progresses. In any case, after I finished the crossword, I settled into the rest of the paper during my train ride, and while I ate lunch. I accidently left most of my paper on the train (I don’t know how that happened), much to my dismay, as I realized I was left with only the front page. It was just as well. The big story of the day was a long feature on Debbie Almontaser, a NYC educator. The article held my attention all the way through as I learned more about the story of a teacher who wanted to open an Arab-language school in the city. This story first broke sometime last year, then died down a bit after the initial frenzy. 

The story filled me with a sense of loathing and frustration. I thought the Times did a pretty good job of remaining objective on the issue but it definitely made me feel sympathetic towards Debbie Almontaser, and only served to increase my hatred of Randi Weingarten, and of the DOE. Maybe hate is a strong word but it’s definitely more than just dislike… disgust might be a better word. 

If you missed the story, you can read it here. (You might need a NY Times registration to read it.)

Of course, there are many sides to a story but I find it ridiculous, the insistence that Debbie Almontaser had some kind of hidden fundamentalist agenda with the goal of turning NYC kids into little terrorists. We have Spanish-language schools, we have Chinese-language schools, and so on. Arabic is just another language, and one that happens to be widely spoken in our city, and one that comes in handy as global interest in the Middle East grows. To suggest that a language is synonymous with terrorism is childish, small-minded and immature.  

I’m behind Debbie Almontaser 100%, as an educator and as a Jew. 

Technorati Tags: slice of life story challenge

Our internet connectivity is competing with the satellite on the roof, so it’s been iffy at best though I’ve managed to get some pictures uploaded. I have a Tuesday slice of life challenge to publish but I think I’ll hold off on that until I get back. I have other things to share… like a poem I wrote this morning. 

I had a dream that I wrote a

sad poem. 

I stood in the middle of a grass field

to read that sad poem. 

But some of the lines were grass

and wouldn’t translate. 

I skipped that section, frantically

searching the page for the appropriate

place to pick up a new line. 

A piano began to play. 

Someone circled me, 

waiting for her turn to 

stand in the middle of the grass

field. 

In my hand, I held the sad photographs 

to go with my sad poem, my voice

breaking as I brought my poem to

its shuddering end, my fingers clutching 

the photographs and my eyes scanning the

crowd for approval. I got indifference. 

I walked off the field 

and woke up. 

 

Technorati Tags: poetry

I had some notes for this post but now, I don’t know what I want to write about. First off, let’s start with the fact that I’m slightly annoyed that the poem I wrote in the previous post apparently got cut off by WordPress or something else. At first, I thought it was a Safari problem but it showed up the same way on Firefox. In any case, it’s all fixed now and I feel better. 

This post is several days late. We just got back from the Cape and our internet connection was interminent at best. I was able to check e-mail and chat online but writing a blog post proved to take up too much bandwidth. 

The vacation was really for Henry, and I came along for the ride. Technically, I’ve been on vacation since January, right? But, still, it was a nice reprieve from the city and from all the endless little demands and errands that get placed on my time (er….maybe some of that is my fault!). I started and completed a little project, which I’m calling TimeStamp. I found myself waking up at the same time every morning, so I took a picture of the cove as soon as I woke up. It turned out to be interesting because there are day to day variations in the light and color on the cove, depending on the weather conditions. The difference between a rainy morning and a non-rainy morning is amazing! You can see the set here. In Photoshop, I signed the bottom of each with a timestamp, then I sent them off to QOOP last night for printing. Next is picture frames and figuring out where to hang the photos. I might give them to my mother to hang in the cottage. 

Now, we’re back in the city, back to the grind but slowly. Today, we have a Bradley Method class, I have an errand to run at Target and my goal for today is to sand down the wood we bought for closet shelving, so that Henry can start building out the closet and get it done before the kitchen construction starts this week. (See what I mean? Endless demands on my time, but my fault mostly… I admit that!)

Technorati Tags: slice of life challenge