Where do you write these days?

There are so many choices of where to put down our thoughts. We have so many audiences, as well. As an aspiring academic, I’ve been saving a lot of my words for formal, technical writing like research reports and some personal narratives that have made it into print!

However, there are so many places we can write. Does anyone ever write with pen and paper anymore? Will it become a thing of the past, much like typewriters, both manual and electric? Many of our writings are digitized for digital audiences and friends (and strangers) we communicate with electronically.

Does anyone use Wikis anymore to record their own thoughts and ideas?

I dated a guy in Austin who had his own extremely complex personal wiki. Like many Austinites, his laptop went everywhere he did. I met him at the Bouldin Creek Coffeeshop and he told me about this ongoing massive knowledge wiki he had been working on for years, created in code. So, I started talking and he typed and typed and entered a lot of what I said on his wiki. I found that so strange–first that he found what I was saying as valuable to document it and then I was wondering how anything I said possible linked to other ideas within his intricately organized wiki. Maybe it didn’t but it was like his laptop was an extension of his mind. Then, after the date he sent me like a billion links related to the various topics of our conversation, like a follow-up. SOOOO Austin.

It’s actually not a bad idea to create a wiki of every brilliant thought you have or that others say so you don’t forget about it. I suppose we do this all the time in our scholarly endeavors with software that creates links, networks, and nodes of thought and thinking…..It was just funny that it happened on a coffee date.

Podcast

Fascinating Historical Roots

I love the references to literacy in this. It’s fun to read old English, too. Click on the thumbnails to read the text.

Pics

Cambridge Again!

We are here! The temperature is in the 30’s. I’ll take pics tomorrow of the impending snow(storm). At least 10-12 inches of snow is predicted for tomorrow during the day and evening. I guess they will plow the streets.
I really like it here. We arrived in darkness so it will be nice to see the daylight and Harvard again, albeit, with layers of snow all around! I didn’t bring a suitcase. I just layered on all my clothes like the Michelin man! In my carryon bag were my galoshes and a couple of journals I want to get published in. I scrutinized them carefully on the plane. My mom, in first class, brought back the warm cookie to me in coach! 🙂
We ate dinner at the deli in Harvard Square (quick). We wolfed the food down in about five minutes! Then we had mind-numbingly good hot chocolate from Burdick’s Chocolate. Savory.
Tomorrow will be exciting!

http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2010/01/06/16read_ep.h29.html?tkn=UN[Fx3bLjkKLdQye5ls2RalA9K576xX0pBAu

The end of this article poses an interesting idea that a downside to reading aloud to adolescents is the possibility of it being used to compensate for lack of basic independent reading skills. I know when I spent time reading the work of Jeanne Chall she continually said students need to engage in wide independent reading with challenging text. I didn’t see a lot about reading aloud to older students across her work. So, I would say that the caveat is that the text the teacher reads aloud should be sufficiently challenging and rigorous if one is reading aloud to adolescents.

Dream Journal #1

I take a break from writing on things academic to write about that 1/3 of my life that I spend in sleep. My dream world is rich with symbolism and enigma.
I often dream of buildings. These are the most frequently occurring themes:

Dorm-like buildings. I live alone. They are usually smaller studios or lofts. I spend time in the stairwell going up and down. The elevator brings anxiety but I use it, too, often alone. I try to get to the top floor most of the time but spend more time trying to navigate the stairwells, trying to get to the top floor.

Skyscraper loft condos. The open room overlooks the ocean and it has a big glass window from floor to ceiling. It’s near the ocean, but it’s also in California, a place I intentionally left behind. It’s not really anywhere familiar but I know it’s usually northern California, or north of Santa Barbara anyways. There is no furniture, there are hardwood floors, and I’m fascinated by how the water is so close. Sometimes the house has a stairwell right in the middle of the house.

Very large, old, yet-to-be-explored houses with extravagant furniture, twists and turns in the hallways, and lots of staircases. Sometimes these houses are a place I am “house-sitting for” (e.g., a couple or a crabby old woman) and they return and all of a sudden it isn’t my house anymore. These houses are ultra spacious and seemingly endless and open to exploration. I spend time in the dream just seeing what all there is to explore. The rooms are often Victorian or possessing vintage furniture and decor. They are often shadowy, but are marked mostly by their spaciousness. Sometimes these houses have many multiple stories and I take the stairs–often narrow and winding–up to the attic–a small room that is sparsely furnished and extremely well lit with sunshine streaming in, in contrast to the more mysterious and shaded downstairs with closed and draped windows. I have this recurring dream most of all, of all the dreams with the “building” motif.

Dreams of monasteries or spiritual places in the countryside. There is one place I keep returning to to “visit” in a dream that is in a very pastoral setting sometime in the recent past (e.g., turn-of-the-century). It requires driving down a narrow, winding road that is almost like the Highway 101 that hugs the coast of the real-life journey from Santa Barbara to Ventura, except it’s inland, and in a lush and green, grassy area. Sometimes the monastery is in a somewhat populated setting, but more often it’s in a remote place. I eagerly seek the journey there in the dream. I never arrive, but I enjoy the familiar trip getting there because I know where I’m going and that it will be peaceful once I arrive. Sometimes there is an open market there on the way, where I see people I know, people who appreciate me for who I am and welcome me.

Very large academic libraries, but I am mostly on the outside of the library building itself. There is a large perimeter to the building and I am looking for the books. I am usually alone and just enjoying the beauty of the place, of the sleek lines of the building and the knowledge that it contains wisdom within and that it will always be there.

Sometimes I wish I lived in one of these places in my waking world. I often do miss my condo in Austin which I perceive to be a spacious, comforting sanctuary and something I still own but is no longer a part of my daily life. I like where I live now, but it doesn’t feel like my “home” in the sense that my condo did.

At age 14, I wrote to the San Diego Zoo and asked to brush Ken Allen-the Orangutan’s hair

We lived in San Diego from 1984-1992. From age 10 (1984) to age 17 (1991), we spent nearly every weekend at the zoo. My mom even bought most of her wardrobe at the zoo gift shops. My sister’s nickname growing up was ‘Ken Allen’. Oh, we had some good trips to the zoo. I even wanted to be a zookeeper at one point. Growing up in Alaska, I spent most of my childhood wanting to be a primatologist or an anthropologist–like Jane Goodall– who studied monkey behavior and lived amidst the primates. She watched and analyzed their behavior so closely while being fascinated by them. At the SD zoo, at age 10, I brought a notepad and always took notes on all the animals–their behaviors, their kingdom, species, and phylum (in Latin).

Mentoring

I’m still thinking about the power of mentoring in higher ed. It’s so crucial.

While I was at Harvard, I was able to focus one one thing, one person, and her ideas, as well as my own inquiries into helping students who struggle with reading at the upper grades into early adolesence.

One of the thoughts I had while in the Chall collection was how I was ‘mentored’ by the intense reading of texts, mostly from the 1960’s-1990’s by Chall and prominent Harvard scholars. I was inspired in the following ways, and I feel I brought that inspiration back with me:

1) From both the interdisciplinary span and focus of her collection on helping students who struggled in reading, I knew this was a person who was intensely focused on finding solutions to helping students who find reading challenging. She looked back to Thorndike, Gray, and Harris. She had collections of alternative teaching alphabets (i.t.a., UniFon, for instance, and accompanying ‘readers’ for both). There were rows and rows of books of readers. The most interesting were the ones she created which included classic stories from the late 1800’s and early 1900’s (e.g., folktales and fairy tales). Some were my personal favorites. She had a focus on her field and said that the books she wrote were her children. Her interest in the history of the field was fascinating.

2. Chall’s advice was sought out for Congressional testimony and she remained an activist throughout her career. I hope to be more of an activist. I am still working on ways to do so. Maybe one way can be though writing.

3. As you walk into the special collections room in the basement of Gutman Library, you see a framed photo of Chall, and there is this quote by her: “Thus I came early to my two loves in education: teaching and inquiry. Although research and practice are often seen as different pursuits, I found that for me they had great similarities and were intimately related to each other.”–History of Reading News. Vol.XVII No.1 (1993:Fall) I love this connection of theory to practice.

Chall’s marginal notations in the works of others, whose theoretical orientation’s differed from hers were fascinating. She wrote “Where’s the evidence?”. This gets as the heart of the ongoing debates in our field. What counts as evidence  of literacy learning as well as what we are working towards as goals of literacy learning are contentious. So is the very definition of ‘literacy’.

So, I learned through my visit the ‘power of focus’, a firmer fascination with research, and an appreciation for New England fall foliage! 🙂

I love, too, that mentoring can be found in books and in the peace of library basements. I am grateful to have been a recipient of the Chall grant.