Shared with Flock - The Social Web Browser
http://flock.com

It ’s the last Slice for the Summer and it comes in the midst of the Democratic Convention

It was exciting last night. I had my online Hebrew class at 8, and without the sound on , I could see that nothing was happening yet. As we finished, the buzz centered around Ted Kennedy and his video created by Ken Burns. I watched and like the convention crowd. was thrilled to see Kennedy appear in the flesh as the lights came up. The Liberal Lion of the Senate! What a place he has carved for himself in our history. He grew into his shoes as he lost one giant brother after the next. I was mesmerized and then Michelle Obama, followed him with her own powerful story.

I’m back on the couch for the second night and I am watching, not for myself. Obama has my vote, but I am watching as a member of this community. I am thrilled by the theater and I hope it’s working for others.

I take my role as a voter seriously. I remember when my mom shared her vote with me. I got to pull the lever for her and she assured me that one day I would have my own vote. I have never missed a vote even though my candidates didn’t always win. But I’m back again, getting excited about the next time I can wake up early on a Tuesday morning in November and walk down to our polling place and pull my lever.

How lucky we are to live in America!

Bonnie

I’m just beginning the Sunday task of reading through my Boil Down Your Day in a Sentence. It’s always daunting at first to create a platform to share the gold that’s been growing in my blog comments. As the Olympics come to a close, I am taking the plunge while there’s still water in the pool.

Some of our boilers have just begun a new school year so let’s start there:

We have Lynn (our hostess for next week), who is not new to teaching but middle school is her challenge this year.

A gaggle of seventh graders made me laugh all week.

Sounds like she is captured! I’m not surprised.

Illya is also returning to her teaching life and in need of acclimating to her school rhythm from leisure. I’m sure Illya, you are up to the challenge.

The hubbub of school life begins again as I try to find my rhythm between the comings and goings.

Sara touches on school life outside her classroom and that’s always tricky.

I vacillate between the euphoria of an all-new school administration who *gets it* about education, and isolation from my grade-level team, who don’t *get me*.

Rick shares a dilemma I remember well as a high school drama director.

The hardest part about coaching elementary school soccer is telling nineteen kids that they did not make the team.

And then we have the group who are using their last few days to enjoy and prepare for their classroom return.

Grace has had a busy summer in the world of technology, working with teachers at the New York City Writing Project in July and then as a learner herself. She is a passionate learner. BRAVO, Grace.

I absorbed a lot of helpful strategies related to scaffolding at the QTEL Institute which can be summed up in the words of Aida Walqui, “Amplify don’t simplify.”

If you haven’t clicked over to Stacey’s blog, now might be a perfect opportunity. She has created a mixed media piece using Smilebox.

Stacey shares a Shabbat dinner with us.

And even though dogtrax is still on blog vacation, he is resurfacing. Welcome back Kevin, we’ve missed you!

The proofreading process for a book about technology in the classroom (of which I am co-editor) is becoming agonizingly nitty-gritty with details but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

I’m not sure where Elona is, but it sounds like her life is rich as she learns from her granddaughter Lauryn about early matters of the heart.

My week has been a delightful one because my granddaughter Lauryn, who just turned nine yesterday, has been teaching me about the world from her nine year old perspective. Did you know that the world would be a better place if all the boys lived in one half and all the girls lived in the other half. Boys are so annoying when you’ve just turned nine, don’t you know!

And even though Anne is not on summer break, it sounds like she’s had an amazing educational experience beyond the four walls of a classroom. Check our her blog for more details.

Spending time as a host to an Indonesian Islamic teacher was a rewarding one, and witnessing the look of sheer excitement on his face after riding around our wet paddocks on our four wheel motor bike, watching my husband shear a sheep and working with the young students at school made the effort all worthwhile.

And Ken seems to be focused on the reality of chocolate. What do you make of his weekly share?

DEANZ’s chocolate reality, digital fantasy, ideas of note to enact - but native or immigrant, heed the statistics, it’s death to the digital fact.

Kate seems to be taking a leap of faith, moving out of the classroom and back to her passion for theater. I can’t wait to hear more about her new challenges.

A new week, a return to the old days and a revival of an almost-lost love.

Oops, I need something.

I spent a fantastic two days working with my Hudson Valley Writing Project and remembering why I remain an HVWP born-again.

Here’s where we began our Visioning Retreat, working on a site mission/vision statement.

Thanks for making my hosting role so much fun. See you again and next week we are off to Lynn’s site. Check your email for further news and reminders.

Bonnie

Late Breaking News:

Tracey is holding on tightly to her last week of vacation and used her early Monday morning time to compose a sentence for us and here it is:

A few more days until school calls, in the sun, listening to music, words and phrases jumping out at me when they can, behind the keening of the cicada on the tree, confirming why I do what I do and how I feel at this time of year: excited, anxious, rising.

Hang on,.Jo has one more to add.  Her 39th birthday celebrated at her school’s open house.  Good thing for my I was an August baby and summer vacation lasts for us, until Labor Day in September.  I don’t know if I could give up my day.

I spent my 39th birthday meeting about 60 of my 107 new 9th- and 10th-graders, most of whom came with their parents to Open House.

TELL NO ONE! is a French thriller that holds you captive for 2 hours and 5 minutes and you savor every moment.

Even though the new Batman installment, The Dark Knight, is filling theaters with no end in sight, I’m telling everyone I know to be on the look out for TELL NO ONE.

I did drag Tuvia to Batman’s opening on Friday. Great reviews, but it was hard to watch. It was dark, the violence was suffering and the chase scenes were loud and long.

There was great acting from the late Heath Ledger, from the Dark Knight, Christian Bale, who brought depth to his character once again. Pretty boy Aaron Eckhart was terrific as the human hero. Fold in the minor character dynamic duo of Michael Kane and Morgan Freeman and love squeeze, Maggie Gyllenhaal. Credit must be paid to the director/screenwriter: Christopher Nolan, but I didn’t enjoy the experience.

I was pretty sure about Tell No One, just from the trailer. It’s in French for starters, the language that sounds like love The hero(Francois Cluzet )is someone who could pass for a young Dustin Hoffman.

Kudos to director-screenwriter Guillaume Canet, who adapted Harlan Coben’s English-language best seller with Philippe Lefebvre.

Let me share its set up:

A young doctor is visiting his childhood summer place with his lovely, loving wife. They visit the lake they remember as children. They undress, swim and nap, wrapped together on a platform. It’s turning dark. She returns to shore. He lingers. She screams. He is knocked unconscious and falls into the lake. Eight years later a widower and lost without his wife, he receives an email from her: I am alive but Tell No One, they are watching.

Now I ask you, can you stay away? I couldn’t. In fact, I can’t wait to see it again. Tuvia is grateful that there was life after The Dark Knight.

There was a time when I knew exactly how many digital pieces I had created, but not N any more, especially after our ABC movie collaboration last year. Thank God Kevin and I were able to expand the community for the project but we still took on a large number of letters each… A is for…, B…, C… Last year at this time we were wrapping it up. Remember, Kevin?

For this piece, I was commissioned by the NWP ELL network to document their TESOL pre-conference workshop focused on ELL writers in the digital age.

Judy Rance-Roney, a member of the ELL network of the NWP and a buddy at SUNY and our writing project, invited me to participate in this conference day when the group was in its earliest planning stages.

At first I was asked to collaborate on a digital storytelling workshop and document the day as well. As I sat with the group for an initial planning session last November at the NWP conference in NYC, I realized that I could not do both and everyone seemed to agree that wearing both hats would be just impossible to do justice to either work. So I moved to observer role happily.

This pre-conference day kicked off the TESOL conference and what was I thinking? Tuvia and I returned from Israel the day before and of course, I was just beginning to suffer from Jet Lag. As I rode up 6th Avenue in a taxi cab I was kicking myself for not planning differently. Oh well, next time, I have to remember, more down time to adjust.

But the group was a great one to work with,very sympathetic as I dragged myself up to the hotel room where the last minute details were being shared. The conference would be held in typical conference rooms just two floors away from us and even though the lighting was terrible the number of participants,30, made the setup perfect for documenting . I spontaneously abandoned my still camera for the video recorder and the inner lighting worked better than the odd external flash on my advanced point and shot, which has been put on the shelf when I moved to my Nikon D60 SLR with an external flash.

I knew I was taking a risk and walking around with the camera, not always resting on my tri-pod caused some shake but these days, with You Tube, it’s not as much of a problem. So I left the conference not filming everything but with almost a full hour of video and some photos. Given the comfort with presenters and a good group of 30 participants, and an clear plan to document their movement throughout the day with this hands-on experience with technology and its power for ELL’s, I had a challenge that could be achieved and thinking about what I have almost finished,

So here’s my request. Just below this post is my video draft. If you have a few minutes, 7 minutes, 15 seconds to be exact, I’d love some feedback. My goal was to move with the participants from start to finish and to see what they left with, so comment away.

I’m going to include some of the comments I already received via email.

Here’s the You Tube link if you can’t access it here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0HROCVB05k

Bonnie

Mongol, was a nominee for Best Foreign Language film this year. It was a loser  but for 2 hours last night, I was totally engaged by Gengis Khan and his rise to power.  A history major in college, I worked hard to avoid the warrior rulers.  Gengis was one, but  Sergei Bodrov, the director/screenwriter is dedicated to setting the record straight about GK’s true contributions.  Sure he killed without a tear, but he did offer his people a vision and some sense of law and order.

The first of a planned trilogy, this installment focused on GK’s early years. At 9, on a trip with his father to pick his future, wife (imagine) GK takes his charge seriously and selects his future wife from a weak tribe, not the one on his father’s list, but his father applauds his decision.

By the end of the trip his father is dead and he is on the run.  Not what you would expect for GK.  He is hunted, he is tortured, he survives and flourishes, eventually

The boy and adult actors are terrific.  GK”s future wife is wonderfully created and their bond is romantic and powerful.  AND the look of the film is gorgeous, even the battle scenes.  I did cover my eyes when the blood began to flow, but each frame of the movie seemed to be crafted cinematically, like a series of gorgeous paintings.   I think the look of the movie is enough to hold your attention for the 2 hours and then fold in a great story and wonderfully drawn characters, and you have a movie to enjoy and reflect on.

Of course Sergei the writer must have enjoyed creating his version of GK, and all the better for his romantic side, but if 50% of this story is historically accurate, I’m satisfied.  I left the theater wondering about how GK came to his unique vision, surely he needed more than a few trips to visit the sacred wolf.  We are with him for long sequences, when he could be sharing his plans with us.

Oh well, I’m still urging you to see this one.

Of course it feels authentic with the Kazakhstanian/Mongolian dialogue and shot on location in Russia and Kazakhstan.

It’s still with me.