Poetic License

As one who is somewhat unfamiliar with spreadsheets, I tried to create a “survey” type document that I could send out for collaboration.  I need some help with the design element, but was successful in creating the content for my Misfits unit at the beginning of the school year. I asked people to report about their experience with being called a “name”, how that played out for them, and what advice they’d have for others who shared a similar fate.  

I’ve already begun spinning ideas about how to use google docs in the classroom.

• I am using Google docs to create a plan for a unit I am coordinating with a friend in NY. She teaches The Misfits too, will teach it at the same time as me, and we will get started working on a plan for a presentation at this November’s National Conference of Teachers of English convention in Texas.
• Google docs is great for collaborative writing
• Google docs is terrific for taking the place of some departmental meetings. Put the agenda on the board, share and save time
• Keep records of all books read, blurbs and reviews – share them amongst students!!! I’m onboard with this one!
• Google docs is perfect for creating any kind of shared work in a classroom

Pageflakes took me many days to navigate, and I think I was just overwhelmed at the visual “business” of the whole thing.  I love the idea of pageflakes and initially began adding websites to my de.licio.us account that had to do with the first novel I am teaching, The Misfits by James Howe.  I’d like to build a page around the novel, but it will take more navigation and more time to get used to this interface.  I might just need to start with a scratch page rather than trying to modify what Shelley has done. 

As I mentioned, the problem for me is in the visuals. I don’t like the way the page is laid out and find it very busy and unappealing.  It helps to have more photo “squares,” but this is the same kind of feeling I got when playing around with the wiki.  As a visual learner, I find too much text overwhelming, and this is how I found the pageflakes template. I was able to modify the “theme” so that only two columns appeared instead of three, but still I wasn’t happy.

I’d like to learn more about how to use pageflakes and found another website that seems to have a similar set up (in terms of these “block” content areas) without the blank white space and text overload. Maybe someone can direct me how to make my page more like the one at New England Cable Network. Ideas anyone??

Find Something in ‘Common’ from USA Today caught my attention yesterday.  The article discusses how Flickr and the Library of Congress as well as other historical institutions have joined forces to post pictures as a means of allowing the photo-sharing community to play “detective.”  The implications are vast as there are thousands upon thousands of unidentified historical photographs which would benefit from further identification.  When I was thinking about the positive ramifications of such an alliance, Holocaust survivor photos seemed to be the perfect match. There could be, this many years later, connections made between survivor families, if not among survivors themselves.  What a positive benefit of the Internet today.