When I was younger I shared a room (and bed) with my brother Jaime, I always had a flashlight and book nearby. I’d read until I was done and then go down to the bathroom before falling asleep. If my parents were still up, I’d get yelled at for being up. I remember being dragged to the store and sitting in the book aisle reading while Mum shopped. (They use to sell books at a store called HILLS which is like Target today).

Earlier today Claire and I went through all of her books and got a large box for Bookman’s. Bookman’s is cool because they accept lots of books for a pretty good price We took two full boxes and my buddy Audrea was working. We dropped them off up front and headed to find the “Chapter books” (they’r e novels for under 6th graders). Claire has about 30 Magic Treehouse books so I wanted to fill in the gaps from when I bought them on Ebay. We also wanted to see what else they had.

She got eight Magic Treehouse books, a few fairy books, and the first Judy Moody book. She’d seen Judy Moody and the Not So Bummer in June with her Auntie M, my sister (Meghan) and her only aunt. After she picked the ones she wanted, it was my turn to look around. Claire climbed into the cart with Judy and started reading. I had to pull it from her hand to pay and then she read it all the way to REI. In REI she was reading and walking into things.I sat her down near where I planned to shoot; I told her to scream bloody order if anyone touched her. She sat in the corner on the floor while I shopped nearby and it reminded me of when I would do the same at Hills.

Later that evening after she had dinner and watched some tv, I tossed her and her book into bed about 7pm. I told her to make sure she didn’t come out since I was planning to watch American Horror Story and that was the last thing I wanted her to walk into. Around 9:45pm I heard her bedroom door click, and she came out as I hit pause. She sleepily climbed into my lap and told me that she just finished her book. I carried her back into her room where she showed me Judy Moody book #1. She talked to me about it for a few minutes and showed me her 105 page chapter book. I put it on her shelf, sat another new book near her bed, and turned off the light. Like father, like daughter.

Originally published at nooccar.com

cc licensed flickr photo shared by Thomas Hawk

Here at the Conference on College Composition and Communication I’ve been talking to various publishing companies and the publishers are beginning to rethink their text book and learning management system models. I’ve used different text books for both high school and college over the last decade and come to realize a few things. Some of which I envision has come from my discussion with others, but the first thing we need to do is stop thinking in terms of pages and chapters. Books… (erg, I don’t think we can even call it that anymore. What do we call it? Modules? Ok, modules for now…) modules now need to be not only more organic but also more parsable. For example, I’ve never used an entire researcher/textbook/guide for any class I have taught. The current researcher I use, The Wadsworth Guide to Research by Miller-Cochran and Rodrigo, includes sections on APA or CSE but I don’t teach those styles (now I realize if the student owns the entire researcher and eventually takes a social science course, then that chapter on APA is really important to them). I am required to “use” a reader in my AP courses albeit do you think we use the entire thing? Straight through? No.

For years there’s been discussion of an la carte model for television so why not for modules, too. The argument is always money. We sell what they do need with what they do not need.

I’ve talked to two different publisher’s sales people in the last 24 hours about tagging. Why can’t we move to an electronic model where the instructor chooses which modules they will use in their classes? The whole (paper) book version will be an optional purchase for the student while the electronic modules will be available via laptop, ereader, etc… Rather than simply a taxonomical index, the student will use a tagging system (folksonomy) that includes a predictive text and suggestions to other sections or modules. (This could include suggesting modules the students probably really need, rather than where the end up.)

The next most important notion in terms of tags is self-tagging, or the ability for the student user to be able to add their own tags. I’ve seen this in Google where they let users play “games” by tagging images, which they then include for all users. By making that a game, it encourages people to add to the collective intelligence of the product. Now, if we can do this through publishers with the self-tagging system and then also include those tags back in the main server (student and faculty users can them moderate the tags for nefarious additions, much like Wikipedia does) then the publishers module databases become more robust without anymore money spent by the publishers.

Some publishers will tell you that they like the idea of self-tagging but only through a collection of module elements in a “personal student notebook space”. But doesn’t this defeat the purpose? The users can (and will), much like Wikipedia, manage the folksonomy themselves. My colleague calls this new module based system “project” rather than “book”. We first need to remove the idea of starting with the book and then parsing it out. We need to think away from the formalized, traditional book. We need to think of the module system of a system, but we also need to continue the discussions we’ve started with the publishing reps to help them envision this new learning paradigm.

Recently I was speaking with a colleague at Arizona State University who was eager to buy her first Kindle. I asked why she’d not considered an iTouch. She just shrugged, and I shared some researched I’d done last summer. Simply put you could buy a Kindle and read books, and that’s cool, but if you buy an iTouch you can use the same Kindle software plus do much much more.

The Kindle’s form factor is thing and larger than the iTouch, and all it does is allow you to read, download text, and and annotate. Plus it is damn expensive and for the price, foughetaboutit! Not too mention it’s easier to break because of the fragility of the factor. For me, I enjoy several different sorts of applications for my iTouch. I use educational mobile apps, games, travel apps internet utility apps, obviously my eReaders, games and some other random things.

My daughter, Claire, spending an evening out with dad at an event, playing games on my iTouch.

I’ve installed Evernote, which my friend Alan discusses at length HERE, as well as Shmoop LINK which is a mobile study guide system for history and English. Many of the games I have installed are for my daughter, but her favorite is Word Magic which allows her to learn to spell by giving her an image and a word with letters missing. She fills it in and wins virtual medals and ribbons. She can play this for hours. My travel apps were a huge deal last summer when I toured Europe, and these include Skype (which you can use easily with a miced ear piece), translators for the languages of the countries I visited, Google Maps, language dictionaries, and currency converters. Some of the coolest internet utilities I have include, obviously, Google Apps, Google Voice (before it’s ben embargoed by who knows whom), Tweetdeck, Yelp, Twitterific, Facebook, Remember the Milk, and Tumblr. My eReaders include Sony eReader Pro, which is absolute favorite because I can bookmark a page by “dog-earing” it, Stanza, which has a powerful file converter application for the computer side, and, of course, Kindle, which I actually find myself using infrequently.

I am a self-proclaimed bibliophile and was apprehensive to begin reading books electronically, but you know what? After reading a chapter, I was hooked. I could take as many books with me anywhere in the world, read in the dark (think LCD screen), and I completely forgot it wasn’t paper in front of me. No issue. I have now read about a dozen books in three months on my iTouch and haven’t look back.

Did I mention free wireless anywhere there’s a signal in the world? It’s like a mini-computer in my pocket!

After I finished talking to my colleague about that, her response was “Looks like I have a lot more research to do before settling for a Kindle.”

Talking to a student tonight brought up the “You teach English, what should I read next?” conversation. And I hate it, not because I don’t have 32 books on my “Mustreadrightnow” bookshelf but because I will fail you. Rarely do I suggest something that they fall for. So today I will share a few things. If it weren’t late and I wasn’t tired, I would almost drag my MacBook Pro into the office and list the titles on that shelf right now, but I’m tired. So here’s my list.

Coupland, Douglas. Because he’s wild. He rocks. He’s my popculture zeitgeist incarnate and he wrote my favorite book, Girlfriend in a Coma. Not everything he writes rocks my world, but most of them do.

Picoult, Jodi. She wrote my second favorite book, Nineteen Minutes. I like that she wrote to me. I emailed her a review of that book and she responded! Also, she’s my ex-student teachers aunt’s kid’s kindergarten teacher’s daughter! Yes, seriously. And yes, I followed that. I’ve read about a dozen of her books (in a row!), and she got my sister to read books!

Morrow, James. An old favorite from college. I use to drink with him. Well, once, I did. I like his take on religion, but I will say I’ve not read him in probably a decade. His Godhead Trilogy is the best three books about religion ever written since John was on Patmos.

Pahalniuk, Chuck. Adore him, but can’t get through his sicker works (like Wanted). Loved Diary, Survivor, Choke (making a movie!), etc… but I am two books behind. Sorry, Chuckie.

Gaiman, Neil. I have no idea why more people don’t adore the master.

I won’t go on here, but I will tell you a couple more who I like and why. I like Stephen King’s nonfiction (his fiction is just ok for me). I like Donald Hall’s poetry. I adore The Great Gatsby and To Kill a Mockingbird. I have a strange desire to read more William Golding right now. I love Into the Wild, but I couldn’t read Into Thin Air.

And don’t even get me started on non-fiction books.

Grammar Girl is Mignon Fogarty who has taken her award winning podcast and created a book! Her no nonsense look at grammar is refreshing (although I still believe we should all own a copy of Strunk and White’s Elements of Style, which I thought was about how to wear cardigan’s when my grandfather bought me a copy in 1986). Here’s an excerpt she shared with us on Twitter recently.

If you’d like to meet her, come on out to Changing Hands Bookstore in Tempe, AZ on Monday July 14th.

Excerpt from Changing Hands’ website:
Are you stumped by split infinitives? Terrified of using “who” when a “whom” is called for? Do you avoid the words “lay” and “lie” altogether? Grammar Girl is here to help! Mignon Fogarty, a.k.a. Grammar Girl, is determined to wipe out bad grammar—but she’s also determined to make the process as painless as possible. One year ago, she created a weekly podcast to tackle some of the most common mistakes people make while communicating. The podcasts have now been downloaded more than seven million times, and Mignon has dispensed grammar tips on Oprah and appeared on the pages of the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and USA Today. Written with the wit, warmth, and accessability that the podcasts are known for, Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing covers the grammar rules and word-choice guidelines that can confound even the best writers. From “between vs. among” and “although vs. while” to comma splices and misplaced modifiers, Mignon offers memory tricks and clear explanations that will help readers recall and apply those troublesome grammar rules. Chock-full of tips on style, business writing, and effective e-mailing, Grammar Girl’s print debut deserves a spot on every communicator’s desk.

2008-03-19_1513, originally uploaded by nooccar.

I was checking out Laura Ballard’s blog today, and I saw a link to a paperless world. This concept always reminds me of Asimov’s idea that books will eventually be dead, and I am the first to tell you that I love the smell of old books but the idea of a paperless world is really intriguing. When I started working in Arizona at Casa Grande Union High School, most handouts, flyers, memos, etc… were all through email. We had very little paper we had to pick up from our mailboxes, and this was nice. See, I am a pack rat, and I actually have three full file cabinets (one at home dating back to high school research papers), and two full tupperware containers in the garage. So this nonpaper at work, was cool.

Then I went to McClintock High School where nothing came through on email. Everything was paperpaperpaper! Ugh! I hated it. That principal hates paperwork, so I have no idea why we got so many papers. But it was cool because that district assigned every teacher a laptop when we got the job, so I never ever used our home computers for anything. That was fun.

So now I am at Basha High School now, where they don’t give me a cool little laptop, but I am fine with that since the wife bought me a MacBook Pro last summer. I do get some paperwork, but I also get a lot of email (on a system called GroupWise, which is REALLY proprietary). There are good things and bad there, but I also now have a ScanSnap Scanner, so more and more of that paperwork is becoming searchable PDFs, and I love tossing away old articles I’ve annotated and cannot bear to lose. Woohoo!

The New York Times recently had an article on the future of a paperless world, and the graph above suggests that wealthy countries use less and less paper as digital technologies gain traction, while countries like China have a faster growing appetite for. This graph is a few years old, and I wonder how it’s changed.

I don’t know about you, but I prefer typed homeworks, things turned in online, and I hate to write anything with a pen & paper. Nada. Give me a text file on my computer, which is always with me.

My mother sent me a link to the Kindle video, and I had heard about it on my drive into to work on BuzzOut Loud. This is a small hand held digital reader, which downloads books, blogs, and other text for your reading pleasure anywhere anytime, as long as you are online. Anytime someone brings me a new paperbook with colored cover, I shove my nose into the middle and sniff. I love the smell of old books, new books, just books in general. The rippling page, shoving book marks between pages, reading the back covers, shoving them in my pockets or carrying one in the car. I love it all, and I am not about to give it up for some odd looking flat, squarish little gadget from Amazon.