YouTube – Pomplamoose VideoSong – Pas Encore.
Governor Palin’s Choice
Our nominee for president is a true profile in courage, and people like that are hard to come by.
He’s a man who wore the uniform of this country for 22 years, and refused to break faith with those troops in Iraq who have now brought victory within sight.
And as the mother of one of those troops, that is exactly the kind of man I want as commander in chief. I’m just one of many moms who’ll say an extra prayer each night for our sons and daughters going into harm’s way.
Our son Track is 19.
And one week from tomorrow – September 11th – he’ll deploy to Iraq with the Army infantry in the service of his country.
My nephew Kasey also enlisted, and serves on a carrier in the Persian Gulf.
My family is proud of both of them and of all the fine men and women serving the country in uniform. Track is the eldest of our five children.
In our family, it’s two boys and three girls in between – my strong and kind-hearted daughters Bristol, Willow, and Piper.
And in April, my husband Todd and I welcomed our littlest one into the world, a perfectly beautiful baby boy named Trig. From the inside, no family ever seems typical.
That’s how it is with us.
Our family has the same ups and downs as any other … the same challenges and the same joys.
Sometimes even the greatest joys bring challenge.
Governor Palin’s Acceptance Speech, the International Herald Tribune, September 4, 2008
It”s a good idea to keep the kids out of the press, as Senator Obama has insisted. I think, though, that we deserve answers to some specific parenting questions from Governor Palin, especially given that she has framed her credibility, at least in part, in terms of her role as a mother. There are several issues that seem worth exploring.
I’d like to know, for example, how she feels about embryonic screening, given her apparent willingness to have a child despite evidence of genetic damage. I find this choice especially troubling, given that she already had four kids. Does her opposition to abortion, in effect, make this sort of testing irrelevant?
I’d also like to know if she applied the ‘abstinence only’ model to her discussions of sexuality with her children. If she did, I would like to know if she now questions her decision and if she plans to stick to that plan with her other children. I find her behavior troubling here too, because it suggests a kind of ideological rigidity.
There are other questions about Governor Palin’s ethical judgment in more official matters, too. The choice of Governor Palin has also suggested questions about Senator McCain’s judgment; ambition seems to have been his guiding principal. We won’t have a chance to find out unless Governor Palin stops hiding from interviews.
Online Learning with Second Life
Through its ability to enhance social presence, Second Life provides a virtual, learner-centered environment through which instructors and students can mediate the tensions that typically arise in many current approaches to online education. Such technologies allow for a “relationship among learning, playing, and helping” (Barab, Arici, and Jackson 2005, 15) by providing opportunities for human interaction that, in turn, can sustain authentic, meaningful learning experiences. In doing so, they promote curricular innovations that can help students and instructors better understand each other’s needs, abilities, and interests (McCombs and Whisler 1997).
This understanding is necessary in our world where change, globalization, and diversity converge upon our learning environments and where respect and trust are required to foster motivation and learning (McCombs and Whisler 1997). These developments bring social foundations to the forefront. As we adapt to changing conditions, we will need to examine social values, educational contexts, access issues, and basic human needs, from relationship building to creating and donating one’s work to the world. When new educational technologies are vetted theoretically and philosophically through curriculum theory and social-foundations perspectives, then such technological innovations can become truly transformative.
Innovate: Mediating the Tensions of Online Learning with Second Life,. Innovate
Nancy Evans, Thalia M. Mulvihill, and Nancy J. Brooks
A decade ago convergence was the big word: all of these separate technologies, for email, scheduling, music, and video, would merge into a single device. The cell-phone may well be the ultimate expression of this idea. Educational technology is no different. A dozen years ago we had websites, email, maybe a MOO or a MUD. Over time, they converged more or less successfully into course management software.
I think in the next few years the term convergence may come to apply more and more specifically to online education, as old school ‘course management’ systems, which I use now, begin to move closer to what Evans and Brooks call new style “multiuser virtual environments (MUVEs)” such as Second Life. This means that the pioneers of MUVEs today are, in effect, mapping out the technologies and teaching methods everyone in distance education will be using in future.
It’s easy to forget that the current systems are rooted in rapidly disappearing technological limits. Or, rather, that they are rooted in technological limits that are unequally distributed along class lines. It’s easy to imagine an education system in which the wealthiest districts have MUVE classrooms, and the poorest are stuck with static classroom management software.
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Get my book at Southern Illinois University Press, Amazon, or Powell's Books.
The C.C.C.C webpage, A Taste for Language: Literacy, Class, and English Studies includes a short podcast interview with me along with links to these reviews:
... by Victor Villanueva in CCC 62.4 (June 2011)
... by Chanon Adsanatham in Teaching English in the Two-Year College 38.3 (March 2011)
... by Scott McLemee in Inside Higher Education (17 Feb 2010)Note: you need to be a member of NCTE, and a subscriber to the relevant journal, to read the reviews by Villanueva and Adsanatham; the review by McLemee is available to the general public.