I had already read Hatchet before listening to this podcast, but I was pleasantly surprised regardless. The various voices involved in the “-cast” blended well with the background music. They were able to transition through various tone shifts and excerpts of the story and combined sound effects for added realism. For such a short novel, there was a good amount of depth in this podcast. It seems to be a well scripted and finished podcast in my opinion. Although they did not include information about where to find Hatchet, there was a nice suspenseful ending.

One thing that I am concerned about is the lack of group work in what will be our podcasts. Most of the ones I have heard from our school, are performed by one person only. While it is not innately better or worse, I believe it does make those podcasts monotonous.

Here’s Podcast’s Link

Texting, or SMS, is an adaption of the main language to deal with the cumbersome “keyboards” found on most cell-phones. There are now phones that support the full standard QWERTY key set, but the tradition has held its place. The plethora of acronyms and contractions allow most communication to be shortened a great deal, something to consider when there is a charge for every 160 or so characters.

The massive increase of communication from texting, can bring more familiarity with written communication. Unfortunately it does little to raise the students ability or the quality of their work.

Personally, I like the use of acronyms, and the applicability of the short expressions. However, they do not fit within the current education system. “Formal” institutes of education are responsible for teaching the “formal” writing. Therefore, the crude, yet efficient forms of texting, and the (ideally) well thought out prose and rhetoric do not mix. Like oil and water, I believe they are naturally separate, and that mixing them in any way only makes more of a mess.

If a student fails in their essay’s because they are incapable of formal writing, then they fail. The class is there for a reason – to teach the person how to communicate with the written text ‘in a certain way‘. There is a standard that must be met, and it is the responsibility of the students to grow beyond their current capacities.

I do not believe in the pigeonholing of a child’s creativity, nor should the schools support that type of teaching. However, there are currently no classes that I am aware of that have “Textisms Languages” in their curriculum. There is absolutely no reason why texting should be accepted in the writing of classrooms.

If we look at the picture holistically, we find that texting is a sub-set of writing that the youth of this age use and support. All forms of communication are meant to connect to a predetermined context. As best I can see now, texting will not fit any context other than the IM/cell-phone world.

My memoir was really short, so a few words actually count for a lot.
For example “like” was written in my story 6 times, and is the largest pictured word in the cloud.
“Left” is also fairly large, but the word was mostly used in the “Left, right, left, right” dialogue part.

In general though, I feel very satisfied with my wordle.

This blog is (supposedly) intended for ‘edumacationable’ purposes. 

So far I’ve been satisfied with the hosting service and the built-in writing software that comes with this blog. The integration of English classes with the new(er) mediums of internet publishing is a good experience to teach high school students, I believe. As many of the high school students already have (or will soon have) an online presence, I think this will appeal to most of them.

The only criticism I have so far, is that comment’s should have a ‘respond’ feature, so we don’t have to play comment tag anymore. 

Okay, enough with the boring stuff. I am Wyman _______ (darn censorship) and I have been casually using computers for about 8 years. My experience with blogs of the internet amounts to reading them for about two and a half years.

I think of the blogosphere as an editorial, with the internet as the newspaper. I read a decent amount of blogs, but in essence they are simply opinions.

Blogs do not mean too much individually, I consider them a component of the evolving internet. Individual people are now holding an ever larger presence in the world wide web. While I believe this new found freedom of ‘virtual’ presence allows great things, it also allows those same people the freedom to be incompetent.

The purpose of these blogs that my fellow students and I are using is to share and learn from each others writing. Blogs in general however, are written within the folds of the internet because of its expansiveness, and its ability to reach almost any modern world.

I may or may not continue this blog after its original purpose is fulfilled. The purpose of blogging afterwords would be to reach people of the internet, with my writing. Before that happens though, I believe that I may have to grow a bit, to give something worth sharing.

1. There is no need to shout.

2. Where in the heck did the UFO go?

3.Sighing is all I managed to do.

4. Prospects for wealth grow evermore slim.

5. Peace is the message.

6. Simplicity and tranquility are difficult to uphold.

7. And as for the weekend, tonight I’m looking forward to parties, tomorrow my plans include sleaping in, and Sunday, I want to play hard!

Frosty Start

“Okay, here we go,” I wobbled, trying to stand. I tentatively took a step forward. My foot gave away beneath me and once again I was flailing my arms wildly in an attempt to restore balance. It was slick.

“It’ll be no problem, it’s just like roller-blading,” my jolly uncle would say to get us started. But it wasn’t like roller-blading at all: roller-blades have wheels, you stand on them, and most importantly – you can stop. Sighing, I let the wispy fog steam my glasses, and tried again.

“Push left, right, left, right,left,” I mumbled, my focus on gaining speed. It was like riding a bike – once you got started, there was no more wobbling. Soon I was gliding over the ice, and with every push I soared.

It was actually nice here, the frosty air teased at my nose, and every breath brought more of that ghostly steam into the air. Outside it was boiling in the summer heat, but here? It felt like Christmas again.

Finally attaining a workable rhythm, I looked up, and an ever so important realization knocked me out of my reverie: I didn’t know how to stop. The wall was coming up fast, too fast for me to slow and stop. I banked heavily towards the left and tried curving my path to an oval. That failed.

My legs twisted under me, and suddenly I had the sense of complete and utter doom. Idly, I thought about how summer clothes aren’t very protective against the ice. As my face inched closer to the frozen granite beneath me, I shot my hands forward to cushion the fall. Hot molten feeling lanced up my arms. Still sprawled over the ice, my body graciously slid until it met the wall with an audible thump.

“Owwie,” I groaned, the stars slowly retreating from my view. Note-to-self, learn how to ‘not‘ fall. Luckily I was actually fine, even though to an eight year old, it felt like my bones were in splinters. I slowed my breathing and everything became normal once more.

“Let’s try that, again.”