In class today, I gave you a heads up that English-language Wikipedia and other sites would be going black tomorrow to protest SOPA and PIPA. (I suspect that students’ lack of access to Wikipedia would delight some teachers, but that’s another post for another day.) Once the general cries of outrage subsided, we talked a bit about why Wikipedia was protesting these bills. There are lots of thoughtful, detailed posts about SOPA and PIPA on the web, but I couldn’t find a concise summary that would be accessible to you, so I’m going to attempt one.

SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act), a bill in the House of Representatives, and PIPA (Protect IP Act), a bill in the Senate, were written to try to address the issue of internet piracy. Piracy occurs when people post or sell content that isn’t theirs to use under US law. Lots of different actions can constitute piracy, from using an artist’s song in a video without their permission to making bootleg copies of DVDs.

Under current laws, if someone posts a copyrighted work without permission on a site, the site isn’t liable (they can’t be fined or successfully sued) if they take down the content as soon as they are notified about it. Some people feel that additional tools are needed to fight piracy, which is why they are supporting these bills. Some companies are also supporting these bills because piracy costs them money, and they think these bills might change that.

(A quick side note- Issues related to piracy and sharing have been around for a long time, but as a result of the growth of the internet, they’ve become more pressing, especially for people and companies who make money by selling copyrighted works. Think, for example, about where you get most of the music you listen to and whether you pay to access it or stream it for free. Artists have different views about what copyright laws should be in the US. Some choose to license their art using something called Creative Commons licenses, which allow people to share artists’ work for free, so long as they follow certain guidelines.)

Many of the sites that host pirated content are outside the reach of US laws, so the government can’t go after them directly. Under the proposed laws, companies could sue search engines and other sites that host or link to content from these sites. Originally, the bills contained provisions that if a website was found to contain pirated content, it would have its DNS blocked. That means that if you typed in the URL of the site, you’d be redirected to a page that said that the site was being investigated for possible violations of the law. That’s been taken out now, but companies could still sue sites for hosting or linking to pirated content. There are also other provisions in the bills, such as allowing internet service providers to block certain sites, and some people are worried that internet security might be harmed as people try to find new ways to access these blocked sites.

To avoid violating these proposed laws, sites claim they would have to monitor every post to their sites. Imagine if Twitter or YouTube had to approve every tweet or video to make sure it didn’t violate copyright restrictions. These sites, and others like them, are arguing that this would be virtually impossible to do and still allow people to have the kind of free information sharing they expect and enjoy.

So, why are Wikipedia and other sites “blacking out” their content tomorrow? They’re doing it as a reminder of how important the content on the internet is for many of our lives and as a way of showing that they oppose these bills and what might happen if they become law. If the bills pass, Wikipedia might be affected if users post content that they don’t have permission to use and companies sue Wikipedia. Wikipedia and other sites don’t support violating US copyright law, although some would like to see it changed, but they disagree that the current bills are the right way to go about it. You could think of blacking the site out as a way of going on digital strike.

Other sites, such as Google, also oppose SOPA, but they have decided not to black out their sites tomorrow. Instead, they will provide links to information about SOPA on their site and the reasons they oppose it. Tomorrow in class we’ll talk about whether you think Wikipedia’s strategy, Google’s strategy, or some combination is the best way to approach opposing legislation with which they disagree.

Yesterday afternoon I had the good fortune to be invited to a tasting for Cocoa Cinnamon, a soon to be lounge/shop in Durham that will sell coffee, tea, and chocolate. In addition to being a tasty experience, it was also a great reminder of the power of a lesson offered by those who have a great passion for their craft and skill in conveying to others.

Throughout the tasting, Leon and Areli offered bits of information about the inspiration for their creations, often related to the ingredients’ origin or historical importance. As someone who teaches World History, it was cool to hear many of the places and people that we discuss in class mentioned.

On some level, you might imagine that it’d be hard to screw up tea, coffee, and chocolate, but the danger for people who feel passionately about those things is that they can come off as elitist or snooty. On more than one occasion, I’ve been tasting or sampling something which was accompanied by a ridiculously complicated description that zapped all the joy out of the discovery.

During this tasting, rather than launching into a long spiel about roasting and brewing, Areli and Leon set two coffees in front of us and invited us to taste them. Then Leon asked, “What do you notice?”- the perfect question to invite our reflections without making people feel like there was a right or wrong answer. It turns out the coffees were the same coffee, just brewed differently. It was intriguing how different they were just because of the brewing process.

The final part of the tasting process was sipping chocolate. We were encouraged to play with combinations of the spices in front of us, with only the caution that combining too many at once, like mixing all the colors in a paint palette, might ruin the taste. We used spoons and tiny stirrers to craft our chocolate creations.

In addition to being the experts, Leon and Areli were just as interested in learning as the rest of us around the table. At the end of the tasting, we kicked around ideas for the shop and their upcoming Kickstarter campaign.

I often hear folks talking about the importance of teachers being learners, but I hadn’t really thought much about the importance of proprietors being learners as well. At one point, Leon described how much there is written and known about coffee, tea, and chocolate. He said, “I love that excuse to keep on figuring out what’s happening.”

P.S. The tasting was held at Fullsteam R&D, a tavern run by Sean Lilly Wilson. Sean’s a great teacher and learner as well. I love his willingness to experiment with unusual flavors and admit when things don’t go exactly as they’d hoped.

Publicizing your resolutions and goals is apparently a tricky thing because your brain derives satisfaction from telling people about your goals, which may actually make you less likely to achieve them. But it’s possible to circumvent this tendency by asking people to hold you accountable. So about March, someone should check in with me and see how it’s going I’m also thinking about documenting my resolution somewhere, perhaps on a page here.

My resolution for 2012 is 50 hikes, 50 books. It’s a stretchy goal (I read 40 books in 2010 and did probably 20 hikes), but not one that feels so unrealistic that I’ll give up before I do anything.

Hiking around here is a relative term, especially for someone who grew up in the Appalachians, which likewise those in the Rockies or Alps would consider hills, so I’m being a little loose with that term. Generally, I intend that hikes will be 3+ miles with some elevation gain/loss, preferably in the woods.

I’m not going to be too prescriptive about what the books will/have to be. I mostly just want to get myself away from reading short pieces and into longer form narrative more often.

The first hike of 2012 happens today. I’m off to New Hope Overlook at Jordan Lake.

It was a year of taking different sorts of risks, and I’m ok with that.

Click on the image to view the book. I used Lulu to put it together and Issuu for the online display.

My husband and i felt very ecstatic Peter managed to deal with his survey out of the precious recommendations he came across through your web pages. It’s not at all simplistic to just possibly be giving freely solutions that some others have been selling. We really take into account we’ve got the website owner to appreciate because of that. The entire explanations you’ve made, the simple site menu, the relationships you can help promote – it is mostly superb, and it’s aiding our son and the family understand that idea is exciting, which is certainly truly indispensable. Thank you for all the pieces!

I hope Peter and his survey are well, whenever he is, despite his mother’s description of my blog as only mostly superb

One line especially piqued my interest –

I’m not ready to argue for the elimination of discipline-specific teaching, but I do think that the “real world” doesn’t divide neatly down discipline-specific lines.

… I wonder what you see as the advantages to discipline-specific teaching… In my experience, whenever I tried bringing math into history class, I got the oddest reaction, as if students were saying “I don’t use that part of my brain in history class — what are you doing? No fair!”

It seems to me that — sticking with middle school here for a moment — if we are saying all students need to know math and science and English and history and a world language and arts and PE to graduate middle school, shouldn’t we require that all adults in the building (who have all presumably graduated middle school) be able to do the things that we require of all 8th graders?

This seems like an important question I need to think about — and I’m wondering why you see value in having the “social studies” teacher label, rather than the English teacher label. And when you teach about the environment, for example, aren’t you becoming a “science” teacher?

I get that your graduate work prepares you for teaching humanities more than it does for math/science, but if pressed, I’m betting you could learn about and teach any math or science lesson in middle school (in high school, I tend to agree with you — there’s more value in discipline specific knowledge).

I think that there is a difference between being able to do things and loving them. The value for me doesn’t come in the label of being a social studies teacher, but in loving and feeling confident in what I teach. Feeling confident doesn’t mean imagining myself the expert by any means, but it does mean having a framework of knowledge for a given topic above the level at which I teach.

I love teaching, period. But having had the experience of teaching third grade (math, language arts, social studies), fifth grade US History, sixth grade history and language arts, seventh grade World History, and eighth and eleventh grade US history, I believe that I am a more engaged, happy, challenging teacher when I love both the content and teaching. I could teach a lesson with heavy math or science content, but I’m less interested in that way of thinking about the world.

This all comes with the very strong caveat that I don’t believe that teachers should close their doors and should instead actively seek out opportunities to collaborate with their colleagues. Better to see teachers teaching what they love and working together.

I would push you to articulate why you think discipline-specific knowledge is more valuable at the upper school level. That seems to short-change middle school students. I would suggest that even at the lower school level students benefit from teachers who have the time and interest to be, not just competent, but scholars of what they teach. If anything, upper school strikes me as the very place for inquiry-based and interdisciplinary learning.

I think Paul and Andrea were pretending to type

I took the opportunity to “hack” the NY Times webpage to date it a day forward in tribute to my favorite 90′s TV show, Early Edition, and to replace some of the ads with Buy Nothing Day logos. With so many people on the Corner Bakery wi-fi we were draining it, so instead of tweeting out a pic from my page, I took a pic and tweeted it out.

On one level, it was a futile activity. Other than a screenshots we took, there was no evidence of our work. Using hackasaurus doesn’t actually modify the website, but just the way it displays in your browser. It’d be easy to say, “That sounds fun, but what’s the point?” For me, mucking around in the HTML was like making bread from scratch or changing a tire. They’re activities in which I want to engage as an act of understanding and joy, not necessarily of utility or efficiency. I think for ourselves and our students understanding the means of production are important, so that we can be responsible and thoughtful teachers, students, and humans.

I thought- Thanks, Jim. That’s exactly what I need, more pressure when it comes to writing. If writing is a public performance of my intelligence, then what does it say for all the times that the page is filled with garbage, or even worse, blank? 

It didn’t matter that Jim then followed that slide with a hilarious story about burning his own poems in his backyard when he was in high school or acknowledging that we are always at risk of feeling stupid when we’re writing. I still had that first slide burned into my head.

But then Jim said, “If the page is blank, that’s evidence of struggle.”

Evidence of struggle. Not evidence of stupidity. Not evidence of failure. It was such a useful characterization for me. I’ve always heard the blank page characterized as a place possibility and opportunity. But the idea of the blank page as a place of struggle seems to helpfully reinforce the idea that the work of writing starts even before the pencil hits the page or the fingers hit the keys.

For the writing to happen, there do eventually have to be words on the page if the writer is to win the struggle, and so I was also grateful for Penny Kittle’s reminder of Tom Romano’s entreaty to, “Write in faith and fearlessness.”

Handout with presenter contact info and links

Session: I.22 – 1:15 pm to 2:30 pm 11/19/2011 Format: Panel
Room: Chicago Hilton/Waldorf Room, Third Floor Topic: Writing

Title: HONORING THE WRITING JOURNEY: STRATEGIES FOR FOCUSING ON PROCESS, REVISION, AND PRACTICE
It’s easy to affirm that students should receive feedback during the writing process in addition to a final grade. But how do busy teachers make this a reality? We’ll explore ways to offer feedback and engaging opportunities for student revision and reflection throughout the writing process while still keeping your sanity.

Presenter: Jennifer Ansbach, Manchester Township High School, Manchester, New Jersey , ‘We’re Going to Do What?!: Novel-Writing in the Secondary Classroom‘

Russ Goerend, Waukee Middle School, Iowa , ‘Write Strong: Strengthening Composition through Practice‘

MaryBeth Short, Cary Academy, North Carolina , ‘Are We Going to Be Graded on This?: Assessing the Process‘

Meredith Stewart, Cary Academy, North Carolina , ‘A Home on the Web: Creating E-Portfolios’
See below for slides and click link for article about portfolios