Nature Writing Reading

 Hey, all,

I have been reading a lovely tome every morning for several months. I sometimes stop at one of its brief entries, and I sometimes read two or three. I found it quite randomly, perusing the shelves at a local treasure--the Rhino Booksellers about a mile and a quarter from our home in The Nations, here in Nashville. Rhino's does have some social media identities, and a (single page) website, but seriously, the only way to "get" Rhino is to visit it. Make sure you have plenty of time.

I had been looking for anything by Tristen Gooley, having read and thoroughly enjoyed his Lost Art of Reading Nature's Signs. That accounts for my being so investigative of the nature section; but though I didn't find any Gooley, my explorations proved to my advantage when I discovered this hardcover edition of The Oxford Book of Nature Writing. It had been marked down from 11 to 10 dollars, the 11 on its liner page lined through with pencil and the 10 entered (in the same handwriting) in pencil beneath it. Whoopee! 

So I opened the book and read its brief introduction by editor Richard Maybey, a celebrated nature writer in his own right, and scanned the first few pages. They include several paragraphs from Aesop, and nearly two pages from Aristotle, 344BC. I flipped through and saw brief writings by folks like Darwin, Emerson, Thoreau, GM Hopkins, along with many from authors unknown to me. The final writing is from Primo Levi in 1985. The book is arranged in chapters, each roughly identifying with one of seven historical periods chronologically.

But I digress. Imagine that. 

Anyway, when I read these passages, I sometimes find myself reading aloud, because the language, oh, the language. The varied voices, some in translation, come alive in the reading, so so vividly and with such detail. I recorded a few of them to see if they sound as delicious as they read, and I think one could make that argument. Here's a just under 6 minute reading of one of them, credits at the end. I'm slowly creating a collection of them, and though they may sound better read by a digital voice in Speechify or another speech to text app, they are so much fun to read aloud that I'm going to share one here. I highly recommend this little book!

Nature Writing Reading 5

The Oxford Book of Nature Writing

Engaging Podcasting Workshop

Just finished a very nice session with some Vanderbilt community folks all about podcasting and to make the .ppt accessible as pie I'm going to embed its slideshare.com version right here. Audio from that class will be up at the next episode of Snacks4theBrain! by next week!

For a larger version and to download the .ppt, click on the embedded version to visit slideshare.com!

Thanks to all the attendees, and comment here if you have anything to ask or add!

Windows Podcasting1008

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: podcasting windows)

Pics from Friday's TAIS Technology Institute in Memphis, Tennessee!

Friend Julene Reed, techwiz extraordinaire and Director of Technology at St. George's Independent School in Memphis, Tennessee, sent me pics from the event I blogged about earlier and I want to share them! Here's a picasaweb slideshow. You can click on the show to visit the slideshow for larger pics. This event was a great one for me, and I'll continue to share what I learned there often and loudly! Thanks, Julene!

This looks like a most interesting day of networking with other podcasters here in Nashville, Tennessee. I'm planning to to see what I make of it. Anybody else interested in attanding? Click the image to check the "unconference" out!

Just One More Book!

Podcast shareshare time! My University School of Nashville colleague Karen Knox, also known as Comma Momma (and coincidentally the English teacher of my 6th grader son) just published an article in Borderlines, The quarterly newsletter of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, reviewing a wonderful website/podcast called Just One More Book!

Whether you're a teacher of young'uns, a momma or a poppa or any other flavor of caregiver, or even if you're just a grown-up lover of illustrated books, this project, as Karen says, "is impressive in its scope. It covers the world of children's read-aloud books with an array of authors, illustrators, publishers, agents, and others involved in children's literature."* I just listened to episode number 281 of "Just One More Book" and I highly recommend it to you. The hosts are knowledgeable, clever, and literate, and it's a shortie (~8 minutes).

Podcasts are a way to learn on the go, ya'll. If you have a long commute (or even just a short one), you owe it to yourself to treat yourself to this free, rich learning tool. Someone at a teacher's conference once made the remark that there are so many of them that "if you want to learn about cigar-smoking nuns in Wisconsin," all you have to do is seek out that podcast. While that may be a bit of an exaggeration, it is true that there are at least tens of thousands of podcasts available for free download, and most of them are free.

I have a linkset at del.icio.us that offers ways to learn about podcasts and extensive resources for learning how to do one yourself. Go learn!

*Knox, Karen. ""Just One More Book"." Borderlines, The quarterly newsletter of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators 64(2007): 1-2.

NYSACTE Video from Brian C. Smith

Here's a video from Darren Draper, a colleague of Brian C. Smith, who posted it at the NYSACTE ning.com site. The piece compiles a whole lot of current thought about education into an enjoyable, thought provoking set of comments and questions. It's resident on Brian's NYSACTE (New York State Association for Computers and Technologies in Education) conference ning. See what I mean:

Video from Common Sense Media and the Macarthur Foundation

Just got this from friend Kevin Jarret in one of my listserv group emails. This video, archived from an intense panel discussion hosted by Common Sense Media and others, is long, but if you have an hour and 15 minutes or so to listen (the video is mainly panel discussion and audience, but you'll want to pull back to your computer and watch the examples of student work--WOW), I highly suggest you do so.

Included in the panel is USN alumna Stacey Goodstein, who spoke to our parents and faculty in an appearance on campus just last month. I'm hoping to include some audio from that talk in an upcoming Snacks4theBrain!

Here's the video:

Second Life Cross-post

Check out my Second Life blog for news of an important event Wednesday night "inworld." Educators who aren't aware of the surging interest in SL as a pedagogical tool might be well served to open up a portion of their peripheral vision to the increasingly well-documented successes of the platform.

A quick googling of "'Second Life' 'Education'" might be a good starting place. Here, I've done it for you, saving you one more click :)

I was at the Conference on Information Technology Monday, cruising around gathering information for my Vanderbilt podcast, and though some of the hundreds of sessions available drew pretty good crowds, I have to say the only standing room only sessions I peeked into were those on Second Life (and one very interesting one on a 3D software platform for crime scene forensics education. I helped out a little in a session by John Miller, from Tacoma State College in Washington, about his NESIM (Nursing Education Simulation) Second Life site, and it was both fun and stimulating, not to mention enthusiastically embraced by the (yes, standing-room-only) attendees. That'll be the focus of my next podcast, due out in two weeks, with audio from the session and possibly even some video.

If all this picques your interest and you have a couple hours Saturday morning, there is a workshop inside Second Life for beginning educators hosted by Elven Institute, an association of real-world librarians. More info at the Elven Institute website.

Cheerio, ya'll.

Online Conference October 15-19 and October 22-26

Mark your calendars and peel off some multi-tasking time during the work-weeks October 15-19 and October 22-26 for the K12 Online Conference 2007. It looks like it'll be ripe with learning and sharing opportunities for anyone who can stop by. I'm also very interested in the tools that will be used for the mega-shareshare. If you see me there, say hi!




Learn more...

The official conference website has Wes Fryer asking bloggers to post three things they hope to gain by attending this year (remember, this is all online--all virtual--all digital).

Here are mine:

1) Making/renewing friendships with educators who are interested in making education better

2) Seeing how all this works, when facilitated by some of the best practitioners in the field, and discovering new tools or at least valid new use for tools I already know about

3) Adding one more thing to my already overwhelming to-do list!

Okay, the last one might be a little sarcastic, but since number 2 is really two things, I feel covered :)

"Musings--Just Learning" shareshare

I just discovered Sharon Peters' blog, "Musings--Just Learning," a refreshing set of posts from a long time English teacher-turned-consultant for LEARN, an arm of the ministry of education in Quebec, Canada. Having happily added it to my Netvibes rss aggregator, I just wanted to pop out and share it with you. Thanks to twitter pal Durff!

Now to investigate the new Google Presenter. There's always something!!!!!!!!!!

Oh, and before I forget it, an NSTA listserv email pointed me to its marvelous "Behind the Books" podcast series. Any educator can benefit from listing, especially if connected to the sciences!

New Snacks4theBrain! Podcast Features NECC2007!

Hey! Just finished posting episode number 58 of Snacks4theBrain! and thought it might be good to let everyone know here. The 20 min. podcast features snippets from Peggy Sheehy, Kathy Schrock, and Chris Dede--all three of whom presented stellar talks at the National Educational Computing Conference in Atlanta, Georgia (Chris's excerpt is from his keynote the subsequent "online learning institute" tagged onto the tail end of NECC). Go visit the S4theB! blog to listen and learn more.

Oh, for those monitoring for news of the new podcast "uber-device" to which I alluded in my Windows Podcasting talk at NECC, the current news is that its release is set for October of this year. As soon as I have leave to let out more I promise I'll do so right here (though you'll probably hear of it elsewhere as well--it's too big an innovation to escape large press).

If you haven't already, check out and keep an eye on the developments that will blossom over at the Web 2.0 in Education's week-long workshop at the University School of Nashville next week.

Big Announcement for Attendees of My NECC Windows Podcasting Tools Session!

(part of the audience!)

I had so much fun sharesharing yesterday for the ~240 dedicated teachers, administrators, and technologists who packed my Windows Podcasting: Tools, Tips, and StraTegies for Success (ISTE dropped my internal cap on the last word in its title but I thought it was cute, don't you?) and want to thank you all for being there. Please feel free to add my feed to your RSS aggregator of choice for that podcasting device announcement I teased you with!

The winners of the two giveaway FlipVideo devices (THANKS, Simon at puredigital.com!!!) were Bruce Dale, Technical Support Specialist at Rabun County Schools in Tiger, Georgia and Brenda Thompson, teacher at Madison County School District in Flora, Mississippi. Congrats!

Seven other lucky winners took home items from FTC Publishing and some random other things from my office, including a Works Suite package and a 2003 Britannica Encyclopedia on CD (the boobie prize, to be sure but most likely a bonafide antique worth keeping). I want to sincerely apologize for the pandemonium that accompanied the prize drawing process (if you can call it that) but folks, I had NO IDEA that my session would be such a sellout, and had a process prepared for drawing prizes from a pool of certainly no more than 100...

Here's the announcement I want to make today: I have 100 magnatunes.com (remember, the cutting-edge independent music distributor website offering free music to podcasters?) to give away, courtesy of the generous John Buckman at Magnatune. You have to trust that I'll work out a good way to pick the first 100 emails I received in the mad rush to win yesterday, and winners will receive an email with an attachment to save that will have a gift card number to use on the website for up to 10 dollars worth of music. Most full albums at Magnatune average a price of 8 dollars, and John's hope is you'll "get" the unique service ethic there and come on back when you want new music that hasn't been filtered by the (all caps) MUSIC INDUSTRY musicmill.

Again, thanks so much and check back for more pictures here!