Rush the Iceberg

So I was reading a book with my Casen – that means looking at two pages and the him running off – when his book sparked an idea for a project for my students.

These books are super cool because they have little pictures that are at certain parts of the narrative. Kids are then supposed to push coresponding button off to the side that creates a sound relevant to the story and picture.

What if students created something similar with one of their stories or essays?

I asked on Twitter if anyone knew of a soundboard iOS app that allows you to record sounds that you can replicate with a push of a button. @rogre sent me THIS (watch the video – five minutes of awesomeness!).

Imagine the possibilities.

Let me know what you think!

Yeah, I am addicted to looking at my phone. I know I do it way too much. Don’t judge me. Below is a list of my most frequently used iPhone apps of 2012. Apple has yet to allow an app that somehow keeps track of what apps you use most frequently, so the list below is purely off feeling, not hard data. No particular order…

 Tweetbot
Weather Bug Elite
 Hipstamatic
Instagram
 Noir
Snapseed
 Lenslight
Fickr
 Foursquare
Any.Do
 miCal
Countdown
 Simplenote
 Instapaper
 Day One
 Instacast

Tweetbot – My Twitter client of choice: lots of options and I love the UI.

Weather Bug Elite – I love the weather even though I live in Southern California where it is essentially 75 degrees year round with minimal rainfall and even fewer weather “events”. I currently have five, yes five, weather apps in use on my phone. Nope, they do not all provide the same information and/or maps. Weather Bug seems to be the most accurate in my area.

Hipstamatic – My go to photo application. It took about a week or two to get used to the different sets of lenses and films and the results of different combinations. After a while, I began to know which combination would work best for certain situations. For example, the Loftus Lens and BlacKeys Supergrain Film combination works extremely well in harsh sunlight conditions with lots of shadows. I typically use it between 11 AM and 3 PM.  The Loftus Lense and Kodot XGrizzled lense works well for anything shot that includes a blue sky (also in low-light situations). My “all-purpose”, daily combination is Jane Lense and Sugar Film: I find it evens out tones and helps to reduce noise. You might find THIS and THIS helpful.

Instagram – Yep. You know all about this app.

Noir – I LOVE this black and white photo app. Great controls and options. The UI is intuitive yet simple.

Snapseed – Now that this app is free, there is absolutely NO reason to not have this app on your phone if you post ANY pictures anywhere people can see them. I was overwhelmed at first, but after tinkering around, I finally got “it”. 90% of my images run through my standard workflow with this app: Crop to 1:1; Brightness lowered; Ambiance raised; Contrast increased a bit.

Lens Light – I have been surprised at how much I use this app. It’s a fun little app, well worth it.

Flickr – Wow. What a great app. So much power under the hood. I love how much control I have over organizing my pics into sets, groups, and tags – much, much better than hashtag management/highjacking on Instagram. You can find my Flickr photostream HERE.

Foursquare – I had known about this app ever since it came out and was not interested. However, December ‘11 I saw an IFTTT recipe that posted all your Foursquare check-ins onto your Google calendar. Nice! It has been easy to keep track of haircuts, getting gas, doctor’s appointments, and many other things this way. Plus, seeing all the place Ken Shelton checks-in at is awesome!

Any.Do – Like weather apps, I tend to have many of the “productivity – to do list” apps (I still get little done…). I used Omni-Focus for most of the year, but it was too, well, confusing. Orchestra was/is awesome because of the shared list ability. However, Any.Do’s ability to be integrated with gmail is what put it on this list.

MiCal – Great calendar app. I also use Agenda, but have stuck with MiCal for most of the year probably because of their AMAZING iPad version.

Countdown – Simple app that allows me to keep track of what day of the year it is for my 365 photo project.

Simplenote – This is my primary writing app. I have long used this app because of their web app that is not blocked at school. I keep all my snippets of random thought here. The phone app and the web app sync together so everything I write is with me whenever I want/need it.

Instapaper – I read articles while waiting in line at Costco.

Day One – I want to write more and I really like how each day you write, the day of the month on the calendar turns blue. I once read that Jerry Sinefeld would put a big X each day of the month he wrote a joke, trying to string together as many X’s as possible. Another great thing about this app, is the syncing through Dropbox with the iPad app. So, while my student teacher is teaching class, I can do some journaling on my iPad. Then at night before I go to bed, I can close the day out with a few thoughts. Yesterday, I was listening to MacPower Users Episode 117 and they mentioned how you can use Day One as a journal for your professional work: I am going to explore this option!

Instacast – I love listening to podcasts! I used Downcast most of the year, but it felt too bloated for some reason. I went back to Instacast a few weeks ago and have been very happy. My favorite part of both of these apps is that you can adjust how far you want to skip forward or go backward. I know it’s bad to skip the commercials in podcasts as they are trying to support themselves, but I still skip them!

Seriously, if you teach any grade above fifth or sixth, stop doing Ice Breakers! They are a waste of time!

The new school year is about to begin and I have already cringed, having seen a few posts mentioning ice breakers as great ways for students to get to know each other.

Why not let the ice melt from shared experiences throughout the year?

Community comes from shared experiences and reflection, not silly games or activities.

Challenges, struggles, tears, laughter, embarrassment, frustrations, boredom, excitement are the ultimate Ice Breakers…

In my suburban middle school, many of the students have grown up with each other since kindergarten. At some level, they already know each other.

I have seen and know of many teachers who do “Ice Breakers” activities the first two days of the school year, smiling along to biography bingo games and travel trivia. Unfortunately, those smiles turn upside down the third day of school, only to be seen again in June.

I think the metaphor of Ice Breakers is a bad image.

Ice is being broken. I use an ice pick to break ice. Ice picks shatter ice all over, leaving random sized chunks and slivers of ice all over the counter. You pick up some of the larger chuncks and put them in your martini shaker, leaving the slivers to melt on the counter.

The big chunks of ice often become classroom cliques. The slivers often become outsiders sitting silently, not getting noticed by anyone.

Why not let the ice melt from shared experiences throughout the year?

As students warm up to each other, ice begins to melt, rising the tide and all the ships. This image from Rush’s song “Natural Science” is an excellent image of each one of my classes each year:

When the ebbing tide retreats
Along the rocky shoreline
It leaves a trail of tidal pools
In a short-lived galaxy
Each microcosmic planet
A complete society

Why not let the first day ice eventually, naturally melt into year long nourishment for the class community?

Lately I have been feeling like my blog doesn’t have a voice…

Do I write about teaching English?

Do I write about middle school?

Am I too focused on nuance that I have lost my voice?

Am I so concerned with crafting metaphors that I have forgotten narative?

I want to write less about policies and pedagogies and write more about daily issues.

Things like:

–My lessons, the good and bad

–Writing Explorations

–Weekly Review

–HashTags

–Photography as Writing

–Stupid jokes

While at ISTE12, I talked with many wonderful people who are passionate about many things under the umbrella of technology and education.

But I realized something while driving home……………………………………………………………..I’m not a techie writer.

I actually do not care about how to bring more technology into my classroom…

Rather, I want to bring more metaphors, ideas, and questions into my class…

…and my blog.

To my readers…In the comments, could you suggest topics you think I should write about? Please?

Hipstamatic certainly seems daunting at first tap, especially if you want to make photocopies of your world.

I do not want to photocopy my world; rather, I want to tell stories. Stories have nuance, metaphor, and change along with us, just as a great picture should.

Hipstamatic helps me tell stories…stories I often did not see when I first took the picture.

I had Hipstamtic on my phone a year ago and was overwhelmed. I did not want to take the time to understand how it works because I had grown so used to the immediacey of most of the iPhone photo apps.

Then one day I noticed it on my phone and decided to take some pics with it at my old junior college…I immediately felt something special as I looked at the pictures: they looked like my world, yet now had texture, different colors, and personality. Two or three of the pictures are still my favorites while the rest are simply terrible!

That initial day, I randomly choose a combination of film and lense and started shooting. This is one of the pictures I came up with:

Photo: Stephen Davis

Sometimes you have to pick one combination and go for it…

Hipstamatic reminds me of when I was in high school, shooting black and white film for my photography class. I did not know until I was in the dark room if a picture came out good…The waiting was exciting, like Christmas Eve exciting! Hipstamatic comes close to this waiting and excitement, and to be honest, that is part of the joy of photography: waiting to see if you have captured a story, not a photocopy.

Photo: Stephen Davis

I then wanted to explore the app more, become fully immersed in its world. I remember parking in front of a tree while at the grocery store and took a picture with every single combination that comes standard with the app. It took maybe ten or fifteen minutes, but I learned a lot! Mainly I learned how to save certain combinations as favorites. You can find a great walk through HERE.

I also started buying all the lenses, films, and flashes I could. I use a minority of them, but I do like having them to try different things. In addition, I like the Hipstachallenge, although I have not done this everyday like I want to!

Hipstamatch helped me greatly to wrap my brain around the various combinations of film and lenses, I highly recommend it! Mark Bruce has an EPIC collection of all Hipstamatic combinations Star Wars fans will appreciate.  Additionally, Check out the blog Life In LoFi’s posts on Hipstamatic.

Here are my favorite combos…I try to use each combo for EVERY pic intake in Hipstamatic…I am starting to know which films capture amazing sky hues, which ones are great for brown scenes…

Photo: Stephen Davis

I have been thinking much about the difference between patterns and formulas.

Patterns are “And”.

Formulas are “Or”.

I have read countless blog posts and heard countless teachers lamenting the ills of the five paragraph essay. Yes, it’s formulaic and I do not teach it.

However, it seems to me that every English teacher I know, have heard speak, or read their blogs teach the Plot Pyramid, or plot triangle.

What’s the difference? Is one a formula and the other a pattern? Why is one eternally condemed and the other forever accepted, immortalized in graphic organizers and class bulletin boards?

Reflection - Taken by me with Hipstamatic using the Salvador Dali Lense

Are formulas inherently negative, rigid, controlling?

Are patterns inherently positive, flexible, freeing?

Are formulas behaviorist in nature?

Are patterns constructivist in nature?

Are formulas non-human?

Are patterns human?

Do we often mistake formulas for patterns? What does that say about how we percieve other teachers?

I think patterns are good. When one changes the pattern, a new pattern can emerge. Patterns do not have to be predictable.

Are the paintings of Jackson Pollack and their inherent randomness formulas or patterns? What about Salvador Dali?

I like Pollack’s paintings and can see their worth in our world. But, I do not relate to or understand them.

The paintings of Salvador Dali, in contrast, are extremely  thought provoking because I can relate to and understand their worlds.

Pollack gives one strong, binary reactions; Dali gives one strong nudges down future possibilities of reality, both percieved and real.

Pollack is a contrarian looking backward, creating formulas based on the past; Dali is a revisionist looking forward, creating patterns of nuance.

I see nothing wrong with teaching my students the various patterns under the English umbrella. Patterns are fluid and human.

This means that I will teach the patterns of fiction, non-fiction, persuasion, and poetry. I will remind myself not to confuse teaching these patterns with being formulaic.

To determine if a lesson or “something done in my class” is formula or pattern, I’ll ask myself if fluidity and humanity are somewhere present.

I love what Neil Peart once wrote in Rush song, “The point of the journey, is not to return.”

I want to finish reading One Hundred Years of Solitude. Yet, I do not want to finish it. Well, I’m actually not quite sure what I want to do. I have begun it many, many times. However, I have yet to finish.

Finishing novels is difficult because I do not want the novel’s world to stop spinning in my imagination. I want to feel like I can go and hang out with the characters anytime. I want to discover new things about the characters – I have often been in circumstance A and thought, “What would Jose Arcadio Buendia do?”. I then go back to the novel and get vicarious life experience.

Maybe I should say I want to go further into …Solitude’s magical world, become fully immersed in its surreality.

I am on page 100 of 417. It has taken me about seven years/restarts to get to this point. I can’t really tell you what is happening other than something is going on with ice and gypsies are creepy. I’m not even sure if that is accurate!

But, that is what makes this novel so good! It’s that tantalizing feeling when you have to sneeze, knowing the joy of release, yet you are left with your head tilted back, hand half way up to cover your mouth. That feeling – we all know it – is how I describe what I have read so far of this novel.

Many, if not all, of the sentences are worthy of an undlerline, side note, or a daily post on Tumblr.

Yeah, I know, I can read it and then re-read passages or the entire thing whenever I want.

But the joy of discovery is lost.

I never want to lose the joy of discovery.

In college I wrote a paper on the British Romantics and how they were often depressed once they got the object of their obsession.

Wordsworth was upset when he realized he crossed Alps a few days earlier…

Mary Shelley illustrates this when Dr. Frankenstien’s creation goes crazy (he even dances, “Puttin’ on the Ritz…“)

And Byron, was the dude ever satisfied with anything he ever chased after?

A few months after completing 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami I can honestly say I do not remember much about the book. I enjoyed reading it and all. But felt let down, and still do, after completing it. But, WHILE reading it, I was enthralled! I felt as if I was walking under two moons.

Anticipation is better than the real thing.

Well, this summer I will be reading about forty more pages of “…Solitude” and likely stop.

What novel does a similar thing to you?

I have always been interested in photography. One of my favorite classes in high school was Photography. To be honest, though, the only thing I actively remember from that class is the famous “Rule of Thirds” rule. I always new there was much, much more to photography, but I always felt overwhelmed!

You can find my photos on 500px and on Flickr and I am “rushtheiceberg” on Instagram.

Presently, I really do not have any desire to learn about f-stops and shutter speed and much of the other technical aspects of photography. I’m sure I will get there in the future.

I am much more interested in composition and post processing of photos.

I also have a 2 1/2 year old and a 6 1/2 month old, so I do not have much time, well, to do anything.

Enter the iPhone and all the obligatory photography apps…

Below is my iPhoneography camera bag and my work flow…

6X6 - I discovered this app through Nicole Dalesio and her awesome collection of iPhone photography apps. At first I was not sold on this app because I was so used to shooting pictures with the iPhone camera app, then crop from there. After a few tries, I got it: perfect for shooting 1:1 square ratio that is all things Instagram. This app really allows me to compose my shots without worry of if it fits in the Instagram box. I am now using this as my everyday camera. Highly recommend this app!

PHOTOTOASTER - My photos go here first. Basic touch/tune ups…add clarity. I really like the cropping options: square and rectangle with 4:3, 4:6, 5:7, 8:10, and Golden Ratio. Many other apps have the same feature set, along with many filters and effects. However, I really like the intuitive UI with this app.

PHOTOFORGE/PHOTOGENE2 - I then generally throw my photos in one of these two next. My favorite part of Photogene2 is the curve adjustment. I have NO idea what the technical aspects of adjusting the curves are, but I do like to see the real time change as I slide my finger around on the screen. There is a whitebalance tool that I am sure I need to figure out how to use…

PICFX- Love this app for various filters and effects. Most of these can likely be found in other apps, but again, the UI of this app is simple and intuitive. All of my photos go through this app; however, not all photos end up being processed with this app – I like to see what my options are. I didn’t realize this for the longest time, but you can adjust the intensity of the filter/effect with a verticle slide bar on the right side of the photo!

PHOTOWIZARD – I am starting to play around with this app. It seems overwhelming to me, yet the promise of power and versitility is present.

Lenslight – Just got this last night and I love it! At first I thought I could not really use the app much, but playing around with it proved me wrong. The controls for different lighting effects are intuitive and creative. Highly recommend this…you may not use it much, but when you do, it will take your photo to the next level…The moon is the next photo is from Lenslight….

—Updtate: I used Photowizard (and Snapseed and Lenslight for this photo)

SNAPSEED – I want to use and like this app more than I do…UPDATE – I have spent a few days with this app and really like it a lot! I know I am not using it to its fullest potential. The thing I like most is it is pretty easy to experiment with different “things” in this app without causing too many problems.

POSTAL PIX/POSTAGRAM - You have too order prints of your pics for the refridgerator and family!

SHUTTERCAL - I use this app to upload the photos for my 365 project to this site – the site has a cool calandar view…

COUNTDOWN – Not a photo app, but I use this to keep track of the chronological day of the year…

HIPSTAMATIC – I have this app for over a year, however I rarely used it. The layout was simple, yet all the combinations of film, flash, and lenses overwhelmed me. In addition, at first I did not like that you have to shoot the photo in this app – so I stopped using it. About two weeks ago, I started using the app again. I am not sure why, either! I am super happy that I did! I feel like the quality of my compositions and over photos have stepped up a notch. This app really makes me think through the shot before snapping the photo! When the combiniation of film, flash, and lenses is bad, it is HORRIBLE! However, when the combination is good, I get so much joy!

INSTAGRAM – Well, you know…I do want to say that, for about a month, I thought you could only take the photo within the app. Boy was I wrong! I finally figured out that I can take pictures with the iPhone’s normal camera or our DSLR, save the photos to the phone’s camera roll, and then select the photo from there to add flters and stuff to…

Favorite iPhoneographers on Instagram – I strongly suggest tegold, billselak, doremigirl, fodograph, furius_spurius, intrepidteacher, jimconnolly, kshelton, needleworks, maryannreilly, magrelacanela, rjob50, rvesper, robertogreco, seani_, tfullerton …

I’m sure I have missed some apps and photographers…please include your favorites in the comments!

Steve Jobs is known for saying “real artists ship.”

For too long, the inherent message of this quote has been an anchor, rather than wind in my sails.

You see, I began spending a great amount of time blogging and tweeting about all things education: I took up residence on Education Beach.

I interacted with many wonderful educators, parents, and education consultants of various motives. I have been jealous of some and annoyed by others.

Some were watchtowers, peering down on all educators below them.

Some were lighthouses, offering guidance to safe harbor and shining light into ignored corners.

Some were ski boats, quickly moving onto new technology and theories, ultimately skimming the surface.

Some were sailboats, letting the winds of change direct them, rarely tacking against the wind.

Some were rowboats, forging their own path while being aware the tide influences them.

Some were sun-bathers, browning themselves in the hopes of looking better, remaining the same teacher on the inside.

I have been AND known them all. Eventually I found myself reeling between the Scylla of Conservative District Realities and the Charybdiss of Progressive Education Idealists.

This grew ever frustrating.

Then my son was born and new realities emerged on the horizon.

Distraction, survival, and joy were the new ports of call.

Then one day, while the eyes of Hurricanes Jocelyn and Casen passed overhead, I realized something:

My hobby is education.

My art is teaching.

I am an artist that ships daily in my classroom with my students.

You may have already read this post…A few months ago I updated WordPress and did not have a back up of my blog; sadness. Through the magic of Google Reader, I was able to rescue this and other favorite posts! Yay!

I want my class to be like Morton’s The Steakhouse: concepts and ideas carefully planned out (unfortunately, planned out by the state: standards…) and presented in a simple, elegant manner that focuses attention on what really matters: dialogue and collaborative learning. Few menu items cooked to perfection that provides the foundation for great conversation and real, meaningful living.

There is only a semblance of lacking variety. Constraint creates creativity.

I do not want my class to be like Hometown Buffet: concepts and ideas carelessly thrown together and presented under heat lamps and glass sneeze guards that focuses attention on ease and gluttony. Way too many items under/over cooked that provides the foundation for constant getting up from the table for seconds and bland, boring existence.

There is only a semblance of variety. Salt and butter are constants.

Sometimes we can contribute more through omission.

Is your class or blog like Hometown Buffet or Morton’s Steakhouse?