It’s about time. . .

“Animal School” is quite an allegory.
This is not an assignment, but I’d love to hear your thoughts in “comments”.  Maybe you’ll want to show it to friends, parents, or teachers.  Do you recognize anyone in this school?  (No names.)
I’d also like you to notice the form of expression.  Would this be as effective without images and sound?  (Notice, it is still a piece of writing, beneath it all.)

The movie is here.

This is a cross-post from spells, my English classes’ class blog.  You should see it too.  Show your parents.

This video has been seen on the web thousands of times. It’s by Karl Fisch, a school technology coordinator outside of Denver, Colorado. (Karl hooked us up with the 1001 Tales Denver students we’re writing with on the wiki). Karl’s blog was so rich with ideas, I blogged reflections on them for about a full week during Winter Break.

Somehow that led to us networking–a real world example of how blogging with a purpose, an identity, and with care can lead to unforeseeable and very cool things.
Watch the video. Think about how it would be different if you just read the information on a Word document. Also, think about how this is still simply a Powerpoint presentation–but not your average one. What makes it different?

Finally–think about what it says about the future world and workplace you are entering. Maybe then you’ll understand, if you don’t already, why I, as a teacher, include so much digital work in what you do…

…that we started blogging–about time. And time-travel. Which is what, through the magic of words on paper, history is: time-travel.

I know: bo-ring. Nothing can be more dull than history. Who wants to waste their time on a mountain with a view of everything that happened in this planet’s past, listening to the voices of great people long dead? Give me TV any day: everybody knows that Friends and Family Guy (which I like, by the way) are much more interesting than, oh, I don’t know:

Michelangelo painting himself skinned in Jesus’ hand on Judgment Day.

Leonardo sketching a helicopter 500 years before it was possible.

Luther running from the Pope’s police after standing up to Church corruption.

Socrates drinking poison rather than apologize for showing how ignorant the “experts” are.

Jesus trying to make people love and explain that “the Kingdom of Heaven is within you.”

Copernicus pushing the earth into orbit and the sun to the center.

Galileo seeing heaven through a toy, and noticing how different it looked from what everybody “knew.”

Heironymous Bosch painting another weird nightmare.

Mohammed delivering Yahweh/God/Allah’s latest message to an unbelieving world–and winning a large part of the world.

Buddha sitting under a tree for 40 days to conquer fear and desire, “wake up,” and announce an “eightfold path” to inner peace.

Bruno burning to death for asking if maybe there was life on other planets, and noticing there’s no “absolute up or down” in the new universe.

Henry VIII starting a new religion so he could get a divorce.

Aztecs greeting Cortes as a god before he destroyed their civilization.

Columbus giving Caribbean natives funny hats before enslaving, then converting, them.

Da Gama capturing Indians on a boat, tying them up, then chopping off their hands so they couldn’t untie themselves as he set the boats they were on on fire.

Charlemagne giving the conquered Saxons a religious “offer they can’t refuse.”

Gee, the list could be longer–I haven’t talked about Henry the Navigator, the Crusades, Newton, and more–but this is just too boring.

Especially because Friends is on. I wonder what that whacky Phoebe is going to do on this episode!

I think you get my meaning.

So here’s your assignment for the rest of the year (beginning the first week of February) UPDATE FEB. 23: You have your research blogging project right now, so ignore the parts with a strikethrough below.

You’re going to have your own blog, linked to this page, where you write about something–anything–from our readings, class discussions, and your own thoughts about history and this planet that is interesting to you. the progress of your research.
You will write three times a week, around 15 minutes for each blog post–that should be around 200 words each. (A week is from Monday to Sunday).

Right now, let’s see if you can write freely, without me giving you assignments to write about. Call it an online journal.

And that journal will reflect NOT just what we’re learning, but the meaning that your mind makes of it all.

How will it be graded? (Horrible question, but:) You’ll choose a number of posts–maybe five–that you think are best at the end of every month or so. I’ll look at the rest and take points off if you’ve been lazy for all the other ones.

What counts as good? Here are some guidelines:

• Ideas: focus on one idea, person, or event for each post. Write about it freely, at length, letting your ideas wander around it. Not just what happened, but what it shows us about how people and the world really are, as opposed to what it pretends to be. Writing about one thing for 15 minutes gives much more depth to your thinking, and should surprise you (and me and your other readers) with what comes out. Somebody said, “I don’t know what I think until I start writing.” That’s so true. Let your ideas flow out without knowing them beforehand.

• Make connections between different periods of history we studied–patterns across time and space, and interesting similarities and differences in these patterns are where the fun starts.

• Discuss how you, yourself, are a product of history. How?

• Style: write informally (but maturely, with no chatroom spelling and all that stuff). Aim for irony, emotion, wonder, wit, humor, philosophy. Take risks with ideas and language. Did you notice my use of irony writing about Friends above? That’s an example. Show your personality. Don’t be boring. And give your posts good titles.

• Design: find a nice theme for your blog (under “presentations” on your dashboard). Upload pictures sometimes, videos, audio. Make it look good.

If you have any questions, click “comments” below and ask them there.

Happy writing. I look forward to reading you.