Memoir Mondays: Down at the Bog

This is part of a project at Two Writing Teachers

We used to have epic sports games in my neighborhood. We were lucky, I suppose, in that we had a critical mass of kids. It was not difficult at all to gather up a good eight to ten kids ready to hit the baseball, or grab a football, or toss a Frisbee at a moment’s notice, and the day would then be consumed with activity. A good game of Kick the Can could last two hours on a given evening after dinner.

The apartment complex was somewhat hidden off the main road and for a few years when I was little, we even had an in-ground swimming pool. I suppose the upkeep and maintenance was too much for the owners and the pool went to seed quickly, over a short period of time. Then it became just an odd place for us to hang out as a teenagers. We’d crouch down beneath the cracked walls just a few feet from the odd-smelling green slime of the water that collected at the bottom of the pool. I think we were all surprised that no one ever drowned in there or got some exotic disease from the murky liquid that would require us to go into medical quarantine.

When the weather turned cold, we would often head out to the bog, which was a swampy area a short hike away from our apartments, through some fallow farm fields and into a wooded area. Much of it was a true bog — with thick, rich black peat moss soil that would steal a sneaker or your entire foot, if you weren’t quick or smart enough when stepping through it. The mosquitoes were vicious in the summer, as it was always wet, and the bog was full of hollowed out tree stumps that were home to a wide variety of owls. Sometimes, we would see the owls sitting in the holes, looking out at us with bewildered eyes.

In the winter, the bog was particularly beautiful. The ice and snow would create little paths through the black-soiled area, and we would jump from vegetation clump to vegetation clump in a wild game of tag. If you fell, you were in trouble from the sticky organic muck.

When it got cold enough, the water would freeze solid and there was one spot that formed a little pond, surrounded by circle of little stumps of grass. This place would become our ice hockey rink for the season. The games were played with full of abandon designed with one thing in mind: score a goal. Checking was allowed, and fights often broke out, although never anything too serious, and everything was later resolved and friendships restored as we built huge bonfires on a little island just beyond the rink from the deadwood that lay all around the bog. (As an aside: this was a neighborhood of mostly boys but some girls did stray into the games)

It sounds worse than it was.

This is the time and place where I learned how to get along with others, whether I liked them or not. It was also a time when I realized that adults don’t necessarily make the rules of the world. There is a pecking order that develops when you gather a group of kids together with no adults around and it doesn’t always come out fair or end nicely, but there are still lessons to be learned: You need to be crafty. You need to be caring. You need to be resilient. You need to find yourself.

Years later, I learned that bulldozers came into the bogs and cleaned them out to make way for some new houses. I could not believe it and drove by there once on a visit back, just to see it for myself. Sure enough, there were houses right there where our hockey rink had once been. I learned from a friend that the homes that had been built in our old bog were full of problems, including sinking foundations and flooded basements.

Hmmmm. I wonder why?

And I wonder, too, what became of those owls.

Peace (in childhood memories),
Kevin

Just One More Book Review

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I have another podcast review over at Just One More Book, which is a great site for learning about picture books and loving the genre. And they are welcoming to anyone submitting their own reviews of picture books. So, go ahead: give it a try — you can send them a written review, an MP3 review or even call their special phone number and leave your review on their answering machine.

This time (which I guess is now my fifth review there), I reviewed Aunt Chip and the Great Triple Creek Dam Affair by Patricia Polacco — a book that deals with the idea of books and literacy in a very interesting way. I love the ending, in particular, as the children lead the way to literacy.

Go to Just One More Book to hear my review.

Peace (in podcasts),
Kevin

Six Word Reflections of Our Days

In the span of the first day that I posted a call for Six Word Days in a Sentence, my blog was hit with 20 submissions. That says something about the power of the six words and the power of the Day in a Sentence format, doesn’t it? And the words kept coming the next day … and the next. By Saturday, I had more than 30 sentences in my blog bin.

Thank you to everyone who lent us your words this week. I have been very protective of them, but now, they can be released into the world. I won’t say much this week in terms of introductions, as the six words (give or take), capture what the writers were trying to say. My own words would just jumble up the experience.

What I did decide to do, however, is to group them according to some common themes that seemed to emerge (sorry if you don’t quite agree with my categories) and then it made sense to me to create a Bubble.Us concept map, color-coded along those themes.

Here you go:

The Teachers’ Life: School

  • Graduate school projects consume my time — Amy
  • Packing up is hard to do — Stacey
  • Graduation, celebration, culmination, year-end roll. — Lynn C.
  • Language immersion camp in full swing! — Amy K.
  • Students staff vacation packing for NECC. — Cheryl
  • Waiting irritably 4 school to be done. — Lisa
  • School ends, summer arrives, SI looms. — Bonnie
  • Our hard work recognized; Thanks NYSCATE! – Sue
  • My learning binge finds new fuel. — Connie
  • Holidays, time to reflect and regroup. — Jenny
  • Lunch with colleague lifts my spirits. — Susan C.


The Teacher’s Life: Kids

  • School’s out – twenty-two books still missing. — Janice
  • Kids creating music blows me away. — Anne B.
  • It was sad to say goodbye. — Paul
  • Discovered that Wii bribery helps math — Kathryn

The Home Life

  • Thunderstorms wreak havoc on family activities. — Kevin
  • Pool installers here–kids in frenzy. — Renee (for her kids)
  • Early starting, hard working, dogwalking. Sleep. – David
  • Moving this week, wish us luck! — Michaele
  • My vacation is taken over by life. — Liza
  • Trying to fill in my taxes. – Illya
  • muggy, humid; thunderstorms approaching rapidly – cool! — Sara
  • Smocking for grandson. Raccoons finally finished! — Cynthia

The Reflective Life

  • Tomorrow, I’ll have much better luck. — George (via Flickr)
  • Distractions win out over obligations (again). — Renee (for herself)
  • At 6,000 feet elevation, priorities shift. — Jo
  • Been there, done that – now vacation – Elona

The Odds and Ends of Words

  • Led North Webster parade as Santa — Rick
  • Painted tree nurtures young girl dreams — Jane
  • Forest fires cause smoky days. — Delaine
  • Relentlessly, the smoke fills our lungs — Lynn J.
  • Gleam, glean, lean, learn, earn, yarn. — Ken
  • The medical establishment is a turn-off. — Nancy

And here is the Bubble.Us Concept Map (and a direct link because the embed box is kind of small):

Peace (in words),
Kevin

A PhotoFriday Tag Galaxy

I have no idea what practical use this application might have, but TagGalaxy allows you to use tags from Flickr to create an entire world of photos. I used the photos from our collective PhotoFridays project (launched by Bonnie to great success) and, although there are not quite enough photos there yet to cover the entire TagCloud world, it was still pretty neat.

I used screenshots to capture the PhotoFridays TagCloud because I can’t find the way you might embed the actual world into a blog. But you can do it yourself. Just go to TagGalaxy, write in the tag “photofridays” into the prompt and give the world a spin. I think it will be cool to come back and do it again later this summer, when the pool of pictures gets larger.

Peace (in pictures),
Kevin

Photo Fridays with Coltrane

This is part of a Photo Fridays project over at Flickr that is overseen by Bonnie. You are invited to come on in and add your photos to the collection.

This is Coltrane, my cat (named after the legendary jazz saxophonist John Coltrane). I was taking a photo of something else entirely when he poked his nose right into the lens of the camera. I kind of like it.

It sort of looks like he has a milk beard, doesn’t it? But that is just the flash of the camera dancing off his face.
Peace (in purrs),
Kevin

The 31 Day Comment Challenge

external image comment_challenge_logo_2.png

The 31 Day Comment Challenge was a project designed to reinforce and introduce some good commenting habits. Through a series of activities presented and explained by the challenge hosts ( Sue Waters, Silvia Tolisano, Michele Martin and Kim Cofino), participants not only engaged with other bloggers on a series of conversations, but we cast a critical eye on our blogs.

I thought the challenge was a wonderful experience and a great way for me to move out beyond my own networks.

Last week, I learned that I was one of the “winners” of the prizes being offered by the challenge organizers, who were being supported by Edublogs (my preferred blogging platform) and CoComment, which is a tool that I began using in the Comment Challenge, as per the organizers’ recommendation, and have come to rely upon as a way to keep track of my blogging conversations.

Here is the news announcement from Michelle’s blog, The Bamboo Project Blog:

I’m very pleased to announce the winners of the 31 Day Comment Challenge! They are:

  • For the most high quality comments that thoughtfully reflect on the topicCarla Arena
  • For the comments that provoke and promote the most learning Kevin of Dogtrax.

Each prize winner will receive:

  • From coComment: US$100 to the winner in each of the four categories
  • From Edublogs: $50 in Edublogs credits to the winner in each of the four categories

Thanks to everyone who participated, and to everyone who voted, and most of all: thanks to the organizers for making us think and reflect and connection. I see a nice dinner with my wife in the cards sometime down the road.

Peace (in comments),
Kevin

Web 2.0 Wednesday: A Sense of Place

Michele, over at The Bamboo Project, had an interesting idea for this week’s Web 2.0 Wednesday and that is to capture a sense of place of where you live.

So, I did, in a poem and podcast in honor of my city:

This City Moves
(listen to the podcast)

You can find yourself in this place —
where Sylvia Plath
buried herself beneath layers of lines of poetry
while wandering along the paths and ponds of Smith College;
where Jonathan Edwards first preached religious revivalism
in a voice that still echoes through time
in the brick church at the city’s center;
where the Teenage Ninja Mutant Turtles sprung to life
with a slice of pizza in hand and attitude in mind
that brought a green tint to everything;
and still, it teems with life:
from the punked out kids hanging on the street corners —
to the musicians singing harmony with a collection cup at their feet —
to the artists with easels set up to capture life like a camera —
to the uplifting vitality of the Young at Heart Chorus looking life in the eye:
this place flows beneath you
and into you.

The older ones remember the downtown as deserted —
a boarded up ghost town of shops where no one shopped
and storefronts adorned with broken windows —
but I only know my city as the place where the arts have come to grow,
and me, too,
as I moved from a lost soul wandering
to this man with my feet on the ground,
and kids in the yard,
and the vision of this place as one that nurtures us into our truest selves.

The sound of the Mill River dances in our ears
as it meanders down from the north,
bringing with it the ice melt of Vermont and New Hampshire,
and making it possible for the daring boys of summer to make the girls gasp
as the boys plunge
with leaping prowess into the pools below the waterfalls.
We’re content to drop sticks and watch our boats float,
catching the current as the river cuts around our city,
through Look Park, along the Rail Trail,
and feeding into the Oxbow — a huge swath of water created by glaciers–
before flowing down into the Connecticut River,
and then, out to the Atlantic Ocean.
Somewhere, we know, our sticks continue,
buoyed on by boyhood dreams of adventure
and cast about like messages in a bottle.

Between Boston and New York City, this small city of ours thrives
although not without its problems
and not without its own burdens
of drugs,
and politics,
and even violence from time to time.
This place is no snow globe that remains stable and anchored
as the Gods shake things loose —
our city moves
and we move right along with it.

Peace (in poems),
Kevin

Day in a Sentence in Six Words

Wanted: Six Words. Your story. Here.

It’s that time again — we’re looking for your Days in a Sentence and since so many of us in North America are entering summer vacation/break (but not everyone, of course), I thought we could return to the Six Word Story format in an effort to keep things brief and to the point.

So, please consider boiling down your week or a day of your week into six words. You can use the comment feature on this post and then I will collect and redistribute the Six Word Sentences over the weekend as part of our growing network of writers.

Here is my Day in Six Words:

Thunderstorms wreak havoc on family activities.

I look forward to your words this week.

Peace (in brevity),
Kevin

PS — If you are interested in guest hosting Day in a Sentence, please let me know. I love having other folks take it on from time to time.

The XO Laptop: NYC Classroom Study

I haven’t written much about my XO Computer these days because I haven’t used it much and I am kicking myself for not getting my local XO Group up and running (I have an email list of about six folks from my area and all of them would like to meet, but I haven’t scheduled the meet-up due to busyness).

I still follow the news from the One Laptop Per Child organization, which, to be frank, appears from the outside to be on a rollercoaster ride as the leaders grapple with the mission of the organization. Such topics as adding Windows XP to the operating system (along with Sugar) and the development of the next generation of XO computers is thankfully coupled with stories of how the XO is being used in countries around the world.

And not just around the world.

In New York City, a group from Columbia University sought to use XOs with sixth graders this year through a project called Teaching Matters. They have just released a qualitative report on the project, which they deem a success in terms of integration into the classroom. What I find interesting is the results of a survey they conducted with the two dozen students who used the XO in the project.

According to the report (which you can view here), students liked the XO because:

  • They liked it for writing because typing was faster and more legible than handwriting, and they felt that this allowed them to write more;
  • They liked it for going on the Internet;
  • They liked it because they could take work from school to home easily, especially to do homework:
  • They liked its physical characteristics, including that it was made for kids (“extremely cute”), that the keyboard was quiet, and that it was not as heavy as a regular laptop;
  • They liked the hardware and software that allowed them to share, including the camera (which, as they pointed out, came with the XO so you did not have to buy it) and the chat software;
  • They liked that it was theirs, which meant that they could always find their work;
  • And finally, they liked the novelty of it.

If you go the report, you can also read some of the supporting comments from the students.

And of course, there were things the students did not like about the XO:

  • They disliked that it seemed slow, even compared to their school laptops;
  • They disliked the frequent freezes, which sometimes meant they lost their work;
  • They disliked the consequent need to reboot frequently;
  • They disliked the “jumpy” cursor;
  • They disliked it when the journal disappeared;
  • And they really disliked the firewalls that prevented access to sites like YouTube and MySpace–a school issue, not specific to the XO, but annoying to the students nonetheless.

It seems to me that much of their complaints is a hardware issue and one that should be resolved by OLPC if the project is to succeed. My kids and I also run into these same issues with our XO but we just roll with the punches. In a classroom full of XOs, that might be more difficult, particularly if you are in the midst of a lesson or project.

The report also lays out three insights into the use of XOs in the classroom:

  • Students used the XOs more than they used the laptops (owned by the school), which means they spent more time doing research, wrote more, revised more, and published more.
  • Students took much more responsibility for the XOs than they did for the laptops, which means that they that they did not begin work only to find there were missing parts or that the battery was dead.
  • Students were less likely to lose their work, not only because they always used the same machine but also because the XO has an automatic save feature that takes the user back to where he/she left off.

Also mentioned is that students used their XOs in other classrooms beyond the English Language Arts classroom where the XO project was situated; students enjoyed the “share” function of the XO; and they were intrigued to be part of a pilot project. The report also contains some solid recommendations for improving the XO as an educational tool, with advice from students, parents and the teachers.

Read the report

Peace (with XOs),
Kevin

Slice of Life, Weekly Challenge, Chapter 13

(This is part of a weekly feature called Slice of Life Project)

Yesterday, I had a few hours of empty time. A luxury. My school ended last week and my kids were still in their school for one last half-day of the year. I did some errands (of course), then some reading and then I pulled out this little musical instrument that I have had sitting around for a few weeks.

It’s called a Kaossilator and it is a handheld synthesizer that uses a touchpad. It’s mighty strange and I need more time to get a good feel for it. It reminds me a bit of the Theramin (know what that is? If not, think of the eerie sounds of horror movies of old or check out this Wikipedia link).

So I shot this little video for this week’s Slice of Life, featuring my thumbs getting a work out on the Kaossilator.

Peace (in musical movements),
Kevin