“I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.”

With these bold words Walt Whitman opened the poem “Song of Myself” and a new era in American poetry.

Whitman broke with the conventions of the time by writing in free verse, by writing in first person (his Transcendental “I” includes everyone), and by including all aspects of life as appropriate for poetry. Predictably, some readers embraced his work; others were appalled. Ralph Waldo Emerson called Leaves of Grass “the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed.” John Greenleaf Whitter, on the other hand, famously threw his copy into the fire.

Whitman dealt with censorship issues throughout all 8 editions, changing publishers and dealing with reviewers who called his material obscene. Today his “barbaric yawp” is recognized as the voice of one of America’s greatest poets.

He was born May 31, 1819. Happy birthday to The Good Gray Poet!

• Hear Whitman read his poem “America”
• The Smithsonian Institute’s exhibit: One Life: Walt Whitman, a kosmos
• The Walt Whitman Archive

What do the poet William Wordsworth, Archbishop Jaime Cardinal Sin, and tennis champion Margaret Court have in common?

Their names are strikingly appropriate, considering their professions.

While terms such as Nominative Determinism, namephreaks, PFLN (Perfect Fit Last Names), and aptonym also describe this felicity of names, aptronym, a term coined by columnist Franklin P. Adams, appears to have the most usage.

Other aptronyms include these:

• golfer Tiger Woods
• astronaut Sally Ride
• White House spokesman Larry Speakes
• humorist and math professor Tom Lehrer (”Lehrer” is the German word for “teacher.”)
• Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings

When President
Bush named Tony Snow the new White House Press Secretary, was an aptronym created? That’s a discussion for another blog.

What aptronyms have you encountered?

Voice Thread is another example of a Web 2.0 tool with tremendous potential for education.

Create a slide presentation, but don’t stop there. Add sound, text, additional pictures, icons, popups if you want them, all Web-based. If you want to keep it private, you can. If you want to share it, you can. Registration is required, but there is no fee.

• A teacher can gather and present background information as a prereading activity.
• Emerging writers can publish their stories. They have the pride of seeing something of theirs online, and their anonymity is carefully protected.
• Collaborative teams of all age groups can present multigenre projects related to their reading. Book reports and literature circles would never be quite the same!
• Classes in different locations can “meet” here and share information about their hometowns. (Big city/small town? East Coast/West Coast? Baton Rouge/Paris, France? Chicago/Sydney, Australia?)
• A teacher can record a demonstration. Absent students can access it later.

When you visit the site, be sure to check out the “elephant” and “classroom” links. This will be a great site to play with over the summer and have an idea or two ready when school starts again.

Thanks and a tip o’ the hat to Kevin Jarrett at ncs-tech.org!

A poem in memory of those who gave their lives in the service of their country.

A Sight in Camp in the Daybreak Gray and Dim
by Walt Whitman

A sight in camp in the daybreak gray and dim,
As from my tent I emerge so early sleepless,
As slow I walk in the cool fresh air the path near by the hospital tent,
Three forms I see on stretchers lying, brought out there, untended lying,
Over each the blanket spread, ample brownish woolen blanket,
Gray and heavy blanket, folding, covering all.

Curious I halt and silent stand,
Then with light fingers I from the face of the nearest, the first, just lift the blanket;
Who are you, elderly man so gaunt and grim, with well-gray’d hair, and flesh all sunken about the eyes?
Who are you, my dear comrade?

Then to the second I step–and who are you, my child and darling?
Who are you, sweet boy with cheeks yet blooming?

Then to the third–a face nor child nor old, very calm, as of beautiful yellow-white ivory;
Young man, I think I know you–I think this face is the face of the Christ himself,
Dead and divine and brother of all, and here again he lies.

If you believe that unspeakable evil will befall you if anyone says, “Boy, the kids are sure mellow today” …
… you might be a teacher.

When out in public, if you feel the urge to snap your fingers at a child …
… you might be a teacher.

If you have no time for a life from August through June …
… you might be a teacher.

If putting all “A’s” on a report card would make your life SO much easier …
… you might be a teacher.

If you believe “shallow gene pool” should have its own box on the report card …
… you might be a teacher.

My mother learned to type on a typewriter. What kind? Didn’t matter — there was only one kind.

I learned to type on a MANUAL typewriter. Due to a schedule change, I came to the class a day late and had to sit at the back. All the electric typewriters were taken. (To this day I pound my keyboard as though it were that heavy black Royal with stiff keys.)

I learned to type on the same kind of machine that my mother had used, but it had a different name. “Manual typewriter” is an example of a retronym, a phrase that changes the name of an existing technology to distinguish it from the new. Frank Mankiewicz, an aide to Senator Robert Kennedy, is generally credited with coining the term.

As old and new technologies overlap, language often favors the new but respects the old. Here are some examples:

• Quill pen, a retronym formed to distinguish that tool from fountain pens, ball point pens, and gel pens
• Hardback book, as opposed to paperbacks
• World War I was “The Great War” until after WWII.
• Whole milk, different from skimmed milk
• Acoustic guitar, coined when electric guitars were developed
• Black-and-white TV. Color became the norm so quickly that today the noun television implies color.
• Biological mother or birth mother, as opposed to an adoptive, foster, or stepmother
• Snail mail, not e-mail
• Rotary phone, as opposed to touch-tone or cell phones

Students of language, history, and technology can doubtless supply more. What retronyms have you seen lately?

This morning Jordan went to the media center at my school to print a file. His new computer, ready for college in the fall, was running MS Vista and Office 2007. His paper had saved as a .docx file, and he needed to print it out. But none of our machines could print it.

We’ve seen compatibility issues before: students with WPS files can’t print because our computers don’t have MS Works. A teacher saves a file as a PDF at home, notices a typo, and has to change it by hand before making copies because we have Acrobat Reader but not the Distiller. A student saves a TIFF file at home and wants to use it in her Web page, but it needs to be a JPG or GIF. Students have a hard time understanding why the different file formats don’t work together sometimes.

Zamzar.com is a Web-based file conversion tool. It can convert documents, images, music, and videos to a variety of formats. The user interface is very simple: point to the file that needs to be converted, click on the format desired, enter an e-mail address, and click “Convert.” Zamzar sends a link to the e-mail address, and the document can be downloaded. Zamzar can handle up to 5 files at a time, up to 100 MB at a time. And here’s the best part — it’s free.

As the Web grows in sophistication, we’ll need tools like this more and more. It’s good to know someone is thinking ahead and keeping it free. Jordan says thanks!

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was born May 22, 1859, in Edinburgh, Scotland.

His medical practice was not demanding, and he filled his extra time by writing. He published the first Sherlock Holmes story, A Study in Scarlet, in 1887.

Readers were delighted with the arrogant, brilliant detective who notices small details and uses deductive logic to arrive at conclusions. Conan Doyle acknowledged two influences in the creation of the character: a medical professor, Dr. Joseph Bell; and Edgar Allan Poe’s protagonist in “Murders in the Rue Morgue,” C. Auguste Dupin.

Conan Doyle also created Dr. John Watson, Holmes’ friend who always either misses the clue or misinterprets it. “221B Baker Street” in London became famous as the location of Holmes’s apartment. Other minor characters, such as Inspector Lestrade and the Baker Street Irregulars, appear in multiple stories. A Sherlock Holmes action figure–if they’d had them back then–would have carried both a pipe and a magnifying glass. (Violin sold separately.) Holmes never wore a deerstalker hat, the hat he is famous for, in any of the stories.

In 1893 Conan Doyle wrote “The Final Problem.” He intended it to be the last Sherlock Holmes story, and it concludes as Holmes and his archenemy, Professor Moriarty, tumble over the edge into Reichenbach Falls. Readers objected mightily, however, and Conan Doyle figured out a way to bring him back in “The Adventure of the Empty House.” The Hound of the Baskervilles is widely considered the best of Holmes tales. It was first published in monthly installments in The Strand magazine from August 1901 to April 1902, then published as a book in 1902.

Conan Doyle wrote 4 novels and 56 stories starring his popular detective, including “The Red-Headed League,” “The Second Stain,” “The Copper Beeches,” and “The Adventure of the Speckled Band.” He wrote other fiction and nonfiction works, too, but history will record his contribution to literature as the stories of Sherlock Holmes.

You’ve probably visited YouTube, that online flea market of videos and clips, rich in diversity, full of treasures, with room for every kind of taste.

What would YouTube-like sharing look like if educators tried it?

It would look like TeacherTube. At this site educators share materials they’ve prepared for their classes. Math teachers rap concepts; English teachers model literature circles; physics teachers use musical instruments to demonstrate resonance and wavelength. If it relates to education, it’s available here, or will be soon.

Watching other teachers share their talents and expertise is inspiring and humbling. They’ve not only presented great ideas, they’ve also taken time to create a video, add production values, and share with the world. The videos are done with style, with creativity, and, sometimes, with a wry sense of humor.

This article from Edutopia also explores TeacherTube. Check it out! Have you used a TeacherTube video? Have you created one?

If you believe the staff room should be equipped with a Valium salt lick …
… you might be a teacher.

If you find humor in other people’s stupidity …
… you might be a teacher.

If you want to slap the next person who says, “Must be nice to work 8 to 3 and have summers free” …
… you might be a teacher.

If you believe chocolate is a food group …
… you might be a teacher.

If you can tell it’s a full moon without ever looking outside …
… you might be a teacher.