Following yesterday’s post, Jill Walker Rettberg dropped by to let us know that the slide wasn’t original to her, but was from a Flickr set she found. Check out her comment for the link to the Flickr set. (And if you’re not already reading her blog, check that out, too. You know, she’s the person who came up with the definition for “blog” for the Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory.)
Also, I got an e-mail from the people who create the online work Inanimate Alice. I taught IA to my TAP seminar last semester, and the freshfolk weren’t terribly impressed, but according to the IA blog:
They are all high school special education students, many with learning disabilities, and many that really dislike reading and writing. When I first discovered the Inanimate Alice episodes, I thought they would be perfect for my students. I made up a Unit for them, including some ideas from the educational pack your site provides and adding some of my own ideas. The images, sound, and interactivity truly engaged them and still lent itself to “teaching” literary elements such as setting, mood, characterization. When we completed the 4 episodes, my students couldn’t stop asking, “When is Episode 5 coming out?” I finally said, “You guys are going to create your own!” I had 4 different classes, each working as a collaborative group. They used a program called PhotoStory 3, which I’m guessing is similar to iStories. My students wished they could have had their episodes “do more”, such as moving text, or clicking on objects, etc. Overall they were happy with their results. I actually had them use an evaluative rubric to score them to see which episode “won”. It was a great learning experience. Have a look at these links to see what the students have created.
http://aronowsenglish10.blogspot.com/
http://aronowsenglish11.blogspot.com/
And some of you may have wondered why I reacted so strongly to Jim’s video of the exploding chair. Here’s why.
Gizmodo is reporting that: “A 14-year-old boy in China was killed when his chair exploded, sending chunks of metal into his rectum. The bleeding this caused killed him. The alleged explosion came from the gas cylinder that was in the base of the chair, the part that allowed the user to adjust the seat up and down.”
Gizmodo wonders whether the story is legit, but the posting-trail seems to head back to a Japanese blog, which means that’s where my investigational skills stop.
Joanne mentioned links to online short stories in her presentation. Here’s a new one with very short stories — Brain Harvest. The stories selected so far aren’t exactly my favorites, but they’re certainly interesting. In a sometimes head-scratchingly sort of way.
And finally, for today, Bill Simmons at Candleblog posted this a while back, and I’m still not sure how to respond. Here’s a how-to guide for presenting while your audience is Tweeting their brains out. (And why that might not be a bad thing.) What do you think?