Weekly Review: December 4th to December 10th

This has been the first week that I’ve managed to keep to a form my dedication, made some weeks back, and worked on my Weekly Review several nights rather than just one. I am still overwhelmed by the streams of information that I am trying to swim in. I am learning to manage, though, and I think the quality of the Weekly Reviews is only going to increase in 2010.

These Things Caught My Eye

• Food and Thought
• Of Great Interest
• Whose Great Books?
• Sticks and Stones
• “Innovative” Education
• What is that beautiful building

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Weekly Review: November 27th to December 3rd

I had not realized just how many things come through my newsfeeds in the course of a few weeks. On returning to my newsfeeds after ignoring them to work on my application essays for the Boston Teacher Residency, I had over 1,000 items to review.

Even after clearing out almost all items prior to November 27th — a few of the headlines caught my eye and seemed worth reading — I still had in excess of 400 items to review. So, here are some of my favorites from that review.

These Things Caught My Eye

• Progress is so Retro
• Observation
• Chit-Chat
• Well, you could always teach
• Cheating School? The Pressure to Perform

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Weekly Review: November 6th to November 12th

I have implemented the first stage of my strategy, using a feed reader to manage my feeds. Consolidating all of the different streams of information down so that I just have to deal with the one website each day has been a blessing. I am still tinkering with this aspect of the strategy: I am thinking of moving to an offline feed reader because I’m not sure how long Reader saves all the posts I highlight with a star.

I failed this week to implement the second stage of my strategy, writing a little bit of the Weekly Review each day instead of all at once. There is always tomorrow to begin the Weekly Review: November 13th to November 19th!

Want to Learn Poetry from Matthew Koslowski?

I am developing a one session course to introduce adults to reading poetry for pleasure. The tentative title is, “Bawdy&Body: An Introduction to Poetry for Adults.” If you live in eastern Massachusetts, or around here, and would be interested in attending such a course, contact me.

These Things Caught My Eye

• Who is Allowed to Speak?
• Beaker Would Have Trouble in Danvers High School
• Karen Armstrong on the Core of Religion
• Zero Tolerance
• Biased by Design
• Sleep Your Way to Happiness

Read more..

Weekly Review: October 30th to November 5th

The Weekly Reviews are a lot of fun to write. I enjoy scouring the web for interesting articles and blog posts. But, all the same, the project had begun to become a unmanageable. There are so many websites and blogs to check out everyday. I had been afraid that I was going to miss something.

What I repeatedly missed was my own deadline. You may have noticed that the past two weeks I had postponed my Weekly Review until Saturday.

I have been working hard but I haven’t been working very smart. Then I remembered a quote from one of my favorite writers:

Novels are written in the same way that farms are made productive, or houses are kept clean, or baseball penant races are won: with steady work each day.
–Andre Dubus

Substitute “Weekly Reviews” for “Novels” and you get the same concept. Rather than gathering up work throughout the week and then trying to throw something together slapdash on Thursday night, starting this week I will be working on the Weekly Review throughout the week.

Thursday afternoon I spent some time setting up a feed reader through Google. Though I’m not quite sure how I feel about it yet — unlike Gmail, the posts disappear after you’ve read them unless you ask them to stay — but I am glad to consolidate many of my different websites into one place.

In addition to that, I’ve also setup Literature&Literacy on Feedburner.com. You can now subscribe to Literature&Literacy through an RSS Reader or through email.

These Things Caught My Eye

• Fixing Education
• Fighting What You Believe
• Failings
• The Humbling of Philip Roth

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Weekly Review: October 23rd to October 29th

What is the common phrasing of the Biblical proverb? “Seven years of feast, seven years of famine”?

Keeping in line with our rapidly shrinking sense of time and of being overwhelmed, when I look back on writing the Weekly Reviews, I feel like there are seven days of feast and seven days of famine.

This week has been a feast week. I emailed myself twenty-seven (27) stories for consideration for this week’s post. In fact, part of the reason why I did not post on Friday is because I had so much material to sort through.

These Things Caught My Eye

• Books Are Just Dead Trees
• The Lost Art of Reading
• Learning Takes Time
• Reminded of Mortality by Eating an Apple
• Single Parenting and Cognitive Development
• Mirror Writing

Read more..

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