Pleasure Reading The Dresden Files

I adore reading and though I am a firm believer in "meat and potatoes" reading aka reading the books that actually make you think I also believe in having a little desert. That is where the Dresden Files by Jim Butcher come in.

There are 13 books thus far in the series and the 14th is set to come out in July. The books follow the life and adventures of a wizard named Harry Dresden who lives in modern-chicago and works openly as a wizard and private investigator. Fighting against the forces of evil with a blend of sarcasm, wit, and fantastically exciting magic. These books literally hum with energy and wonderful writing - Jim Butcher's characters are lovable, believable, and over the years that I've read them they've become like friends.

Here are a list of the books in the series so far:

Storm Front	Fool Moon	Grave Peril	Summer Knight
Death Masks	Blood Rites	Dead Beat	Proven Guilty
White Night	Small Favor	Turn Coat	Changes

There was also a short-lived tv series on SciFi which I would not recommend as the books are about a billion times better. Trust me. But, here's a link to the show's trailer anyway.

For more information about the Dresden Files or other books by Jim Butcher go to Jim Butcher's website.

*Following any of the links provided by the book covers will lead you to Jim Butcher website and information about that book*

Foot - The Battle for Facebook

I was late joining the Facebook world and three years after I joined deleted my profile.That's right; I deleted my profile never to return to it. And it has been absolutely fantastic not having everyone know exactly what I'm doing at all times. I'm not saying there is anything wrong with Facebook, I'm just saying it's not for me anymore.

So, reading the article about the battle for Facebook was interesting, but sort of disconnected for me. I don't have anything personally invested in Facebook anymore, but it was still cool to learn about it's founding and the personal wars that rage/raged throughout its short history.

I also decided founder, Mark Zuckerberg, is a big jerk. The article describes how he used many people to further his Facebook project without apparent concern for the effect it might have on those people. Allegedly he stole the idea of Facebook from three fellow Harvard classmates. One is quoted as saying, "We got royally screwed," Divya Narendra. According to these students, they had a plan for Facebook, but needed Mark's help to get it up and running. He said he would help, but kept putting it off until finally he revealed he had created his own Facebook website.

Facing these allegations Mark has, "presented himself as the aggrieved party: "I try to shrug it off as a minor annoyance that whenever I do something successful, every capitalist out there wants a piece of the action." The idea of a social-networking site, he told the Crimson, was in the air at Harvard. "There aren't very many new ideas floating around," he said. "The facebook isn't even a very novel idea. It's taken from all these others. And ours was that we're going to do it on the level of schools.""

Later in his career Mark burned another friend. Enuardo Saverin, Mark's suite mate in college and one of his closest friends was enlisted by Mark to help incorporate the site. Later in both their careers they had a falling out which led to a transfer of, "intellecual-propery rights and membership interests". This transfer, made by Mark, caused the, "value of Saverin's stock [to become] unhinged from any further growth of Facebook, and Saverin was expunged as an employee."

Throughout the article a clear path is burned through Mark's friends and associates which shows that Mark's drive to make Facebook the next "MTV" was uninhibited by personal feeling; nothing was going to stand in his way. "The lesson to those around Zuckerberg was clear: Nobody, not even the college roommate who had once been his closest confidant, was going to stand in his way. "It seemed like in all his dealings, it was a big deal to him that he be the CEO when he got the first round of financing, and that he maintain control of the company," says Haggerty. "He knows where he wants to go: Facebook everywhere.""

I stated at the beginning of this blog that Mark Zuckerberg was a jerk. And though the article does prove he was ruthless in his endeavors to make Facebook the best and brightest social network, perhaps Mark wasn't so much a jerk and more like a good businessman.

According Forbes Magazine, Mark Zuckerberg is worth 6.9 Billion Dollars and counting (http://www.forbes.com/profile/mark-zuckerberg). Mark is nothing if not a shrewd businessman. He is ruthless, but business isn't about personal feeling; it's about success. Or is it? At 24, Mark has amassed a large amount of enemies, a large amount of wealth, and a large of amount of both respect and disrespect. Should a business be run on integrity? Or has integrity become an antiquated word in todays business world? It will be interesting to see Mark and Facebook in the future and see where Mark's ambitions have led him.

I've also hyperlinked to the trailer for the the Golden Globe winning movie The Social Network which chronicles the story of Facebook:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lB95KLmpLR4

Foot - An Oral History of the Internet

I was not too interested in reading this article from Vanity Fair, but after I got into it I was completely hooked. I think my favorite part about the entire article was that is was an oral history; directly from the mouths of those who created the internet all the way to people who created blogs and lots in between.

The internet was originally created for military communication purposes and as a tool in the Cold War, but Leonard Kleinrock, a professor of computer science at U.C.L.A, and an instrumental creator of the earliest computer network, saw the internet as not just a military or university tool, but something for all people, "he also foresaw a great change in the way activity would take place: education, creativity, commerce, just general information access. He foresaw a connected world of information."

I just finished reading and blogging about Dr. Kist's book The Socially Networked Classroom and after reviewing all of the exciting ways teachers can use the internet and technology it is really cool to read how the internet got started. It is also amazing that Leonard Kleinrock's vision of a "connected world of information" has come true and we can use it in our classrooms!

I can't count the number of times I have been told by professors that Wikipedia is NOT a reliable source. I adhere to my professor's warnings when it comes to academic papers, but I often find useful and accurate information on Wikipedia when I am looking at things for personal inquiries. And so, I found this section about the founding of Wikipedia to be very interesting. The article explains that Wikipedia is run by volunteers and so the problems of "...maintaining accuracy...and of combating bias and even outright malice" is very prevalent; which would explain my professor's extreme hatred of Wikipedia.

Jimmy Wales, a 2001 former options trader for Wikipedia, puts it this way, "How do you innovate a social community—social rules and norms that allow for good-quality work to take place? What you have to balance there are, on the one hand, if a Web site is essentially a brutal police state where every action could easily result in random blocking or banning from the site and nobody can trust anything—that doesn’t work. Complete and total anarchy, where anyone can do anything, also doesn’t work. It’s actually the same problem we face off-line. It’s the problem of living together. It’s the problem of a good city government." It's an interesting way to look at Wikipedia, one I've never even thought of. Will Wikipedia ever become a relabel source? Should I warn my students against it as my professor's do; or should I tell them to use it as a tool but use it with discretion?

An interesting fact to be noted in this article is that all of the original founders of the internet were male as Stewart Brand states, "Anyway, we were all engineers of both ilks, the narrow-tie, nine-to-five serious engineers and the stay-up-all-night long-haired hackers who had earned their way into the respect of the engineers. And pretty much everybody was male." In the article it is not until 1996 that a female name is even mentioned and then it is Cindy Margolis, a model who became known as "the world's most downloaded woman". Why is it that there are so few women included in the history of the internet? And when one finally does appear, it is for physical appearance; what does that say about our society?

I found a story by a coffee house owner and computer-graphics co-owner, Sky Dalton, to be humorous but also revealing of how far we've come in technology in the past 20 years: "I heard about this thing called the Internet. I thought, That sounds kind of interesting. The first thing I did is I actually picked up the phone and dialed 411, and I said, I’d like the number for the Internet, please. And the operator is like, What? I said, Just search any company with the word Internet in the name. Blank. Nothing. I thought, Wow, this is interesting. What is this thing anyway?" This quote is from 1994; less then 20 years ago people didn't know what the internet was!

At the beginning of the article it was revealed to me that the internet was originally created for military use and at the end of the article it is again mentioned how the military is currently using the vast resources of the internet to combat vitrual-terroists.

It is truly amazing and exciting how advanced the internet and the technology surrounding it has become. It is also exciting to be a teacher during this time; we have so many resources available to us which will enhance the learning process for our students.

Foot - The Socially Networked Classroom

When I began reading Dr. Kist's book I asked myself this question:

"Am I prepared to teach in a technologically advanced classroom?"

As I read through the book I discovered that I did have some ideas about how I want to integrate technology into my future classroom, but I am not where I need to be in order to provide the very best learning experience for my student. And even though I am part of a very technologically savvy generation, I myself am not so savvy.

What can I do to grow into the "new literacies teacher" I need to be? One way to become more of a "new literacies teacher" is to study and someday put into practice some of the activities listed in the book that will allow my classroom to be more of a "new literacies classroom".

Here are a few of the activities that stuck out to me and I hope to use in my classroom:

"Julius Caesar, The Musical"

Looking back over the play Julius Caesar and selecting a musical piece for each scene is a great activity. Music is an intricate part of our society and is especially relevant for younger generations who always seem to have ear buds in. I like this activity because it allows students to review the play and by selecting music of their choice they have to understand what is happening in the play in order to find an appropriate selection. This activity can be done with or without a lot of technology, so it is easy to use in any classroom. Also, giving the students an opportunity to choose a "soundtrack" for Shakespeare's play makes it a little more personal and involved; after all, how many of us consider our music to be an intricate part of our identity?

"Text Categories Activity"

In this activity students are given a list of categories: for example, favorite poet, favorite film maker, favorite blog etc. The students then works on the list throughout the semester. Kist suggests adding Genre's to the list and this should include texting, IMing, and even sticky notes. At first I didn't understand why a student would need to do this activity other than it allows them to see what kind of text they enjoy; but reading a little farther I found that Dr. Kist suggests putting the lists online and making them public. I loved this idea because, as Dr. Kist suggests, all sorts of different people from different parts of the country and world will be able to read the lists and comment on them. This could lead to building a "community" and also could help expand and shape the student's list allowing them to grow.

"Canonical Text Wiki"

I actually done this activity for one of my classes and it was so much fun! I was assigned the text Romeo and Juliet and finding 20 hyperlinks was easy and actually fun. This activity is great because it allows students to explore the internet for credible sources that open up a variety of ways to learn about the text. Here is an example of one of the hyperlinks I used in my Canonical Wiki http://www.julietclub.com/index_en.asp

"Online Literature Circles"

I like this assignment because I believe discussing literature with fellow classmates or the other members of the literature circle provides the student with new views of the text and various interpretations of the text. Because the student is posting about the book to a group of people and not just taking a test that involves just themselves, the student may concentrate more on the text and attempt to understand more fully.

The above activities are exciting and fun and I hope to someday incorporate them into my classroom. I also believe these activities will better equip me when I ask the question, "Am I prepared to teach in a technologically advanced classroom?"