Check it Out

So much of the reading/learning I do these days is online. I decided, then, that every once in a while, maybe once a week, maybe once every six weeks, I am going to put up a post highlighting a few pieces I especially enjoyed, or learned from, or think other people might learn from.

First, an event all my fantasy-loving friends might enjoy:

FANTASTICAL WORLDS:

In Conversation with Rachel Hartman,

Stefan Bachmann, and Christopher Paolini

10/28/12 2PM - 3PM 2012

http://www.shindig.com/event/fantastical
 

Rachel Hartman, author of the critically acclaimed, instant New York Times bestseller SERAPHINA; Stefan Bachmann, author of THE PECULIAR (Harper Collins), and Christopher Paolini, author of the international bestselling series the Inheritance cycle and, most recently, the INHERITANCE  Deluxe Edition. These three authors will discuss their inspiration and their characters, and also take viewer questions.

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Next, a couple of posts from Michael Rosen that ll  my poetry-loving/teaching friends will enjoy.
First there is a great piece, "What Poetry Does."

"A good deal of poetry is a kind of 'portable philosophy'. That's to say it expresses quite difficult or challenging ideas in ways that can be carried around in your head." 

"Perhaps (poetry is) a way of concentrating thought in the midst of action."

"Poets make the things we know unfamiliar (often but not always through metaphor, simile, personification etc). Poets also find unfamiliar things and tell us about them in ways that we come to know them, feel them or understand them. You could argue that if education just did this, it would have done a good job. "

And another great poetry-related post by Michael Rosen, "Twenty Things to do in Your Classroom."

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This year, everyone has been talking about the book WONDER, for good reason, I think. It's an amazing book, with a really powerful message. Last week I stumbled across the website, "Including Samuel" that has a similar focus. "Including Samuel" is the website of photojournalist Dan Habib. Habib has a son named Samuel, who is in a wheelchair because of cerebral palsy. As I understand it, Habib made a film about Samuel, which has morphed into a much larger project. This website has clips, and other ideas for ways people could make their schools and communities kinder and more supportive places.

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And then probably my favorite time-wasting websitess- puppies!

This summer, I started following a website. www.explore.org. They had a 24 hour webcam set up in at the Warrior Canine Connection, an organization that breeds golden retrievers (my favorite) and labrador retrievers for soldiers coming with PTSD. Those puppies have moved on to training homes, but you can still watch the highlight reel and read the comments, (look for the ones from Warrior Canine Connection because those are from Molly, the director of WCC and contain lots of great information about service dogs).

Another camera on the EXPLORE website shows a farm that breeds great danes for mobility dogs. There are lots of other great cams on this site- this summer, for instance, I watched brown bears catching salmon in Alaska. Fascinating!

Happy Saturday!