Yeah! Staff Sargent Corey Nawrocki is Home!

For the past year my teacher prayer group has been praying for the friend of one of our teacher's daughters. Don't blame me for being a little bit happy that Marine Corps Staff Sergeant Corey Nawrocki has returned home from Afghanistan. This was his sixth tour overseas in the battle spray. And rightly Fox Philly did a story on his homecoming.



Next stop for Staff Sergeant Corey Nawrocki, the White House! His next tour of duty is the Presidential Detail in Washington, DC. Yeah, his mom is so proud!

Livescribe Smartpen

Just catching up on my blog readings. Wow… was I surprised to read about this new pen on Bernie Dodge’s blog, the One Trick Pony. But then I realized that this was the same pen that was talked about at D5 and was supposed to be out by now. I do want one because if and when this new smartpen from livescribe comes out, it will be great. I am the old fashion type who likes to take notes by hand rather than type through a lecture. (As a former radio journalist, I also like to have my tape recorder going to catch those important quotes!) Last week in my graduate class I tried yet again to type my notes into Google notes during the lecture. I felt like I was disturbing the professor more than I was helping myself but using a pen and paper… I can do that... having that pen be a tape recorder... even better! Still, I was using Google notes in an attempt to cut down on the amount of paper I use. If this smartpen also could use both paper and some type of paperless tablet it may be more appealing to those of us trying to end the paper clutter and save a tree! To extend my pondering on “are bloggers reporters”, if this smartpen lives up to half its hype, bloggers and reporters alike will have no reason to misquote anyone!

A helpful tool or a way to cheat?

There has been some discussion on LM_Net recently about this website: http://www.ozline.com/electraguide/thesis.html. It calls itself a Thesis Builder and Online Outliner and promises it will help students draft a clear thesis statement for your persuasive essay. It then give students a set of directions to use the site.

I currently have 4th and 5th grade students who need to write persuasive essays. So, I took a look at Thesis Builder Online Outliner to see if it would be a useful organization tool to help them with their essays. First, I am not sure it is a good thing for elementary students that cannot type. But, when I worked at the high school I did have students who could have benefited from using this website to organize their essays. Keep in mind that I am not 100% convinced that it is a useful tool yet. I have used it two or three times using various arguments and it seems to give me nonsense back. I tried to put in an argument regarding episode 82 of Cranky Geeks. The geeks argued about bloggers being considered journalists and therefore entitled to protection under shield laws. The guest was Josh Wolf, a blogger who according to the blurb on the website “received the Longest Content-Related Jail Term of any Journalist in U.S. History--For Not Turning Over a Video” to police. I would love to use this podcast to spur a first amendment discussion in a high school government class. But I digress; when I put in the information into Thesis Builder, I got some nonsense back. They took the information I put into the blanks, and jumbled it around. There were double periods in some sentences and in one spot there was a comma at the beginning of a sentence. If students are looking for correct punctuation, and a way to cheat this site will not give it to them. But, if students are stuck for a thesis statement and want to organize and re-organize their thoughts, I think this is a great site. It is no different than giving students graphic organizers to help them plan out their papers. I think it is neat that it is online, it may appeal to those reluctant to use paper graphic organizers. It could be another tool for teachers to introduce to students. I don’t agree with those who think it is cheating because the students have to plug their own ideas into the blanks on the website. At most it helps them organize their thoughts. Oh, now that I am thinking of it, I wonder if the website wants students to put to leave out punctuation in the blank boxes and then it will put the punctuation in itself. I will have to try that next.
Anyway, if you have not listened to the John Dvorak Cranky Geek episode above, listen and then let me know if you think bloggers should be considered journalists… and if Sebastian is correct that journalism schools are a waste of time. It was a very lively discussion and I found myself talking back to my computer!