In short, if you haven’t downloaded it yet, please give it a try. There’s really nothing to lose. Except just a little space (okay, 1 GB) on your iPad. But the story is unforgettable.

This interactive story follows the life of a family trying to survive a brutal war in West Africa. The war took place in in Liberia and Sierra Leone during the 1990s. All wars are cruel, but this one was particularly brutal—fought by warlords and their death squads of child soldiers, the war saw the deliberate targeting of civilians. Murder, rape, torture, and abduction were common tactics used by all factions, and the signature atrocity of the war, amputation, left thousands without hands and legs.

Through a rich multimedia presentation that includes personal testimonies, images, maps, found artifacts, video, audio, and animations, Bent Not Broken shows how one family survived the war and came to America in 2005. More than just an ebook, this highly interactive and compelling account of human endurance and cultural adaptation will appeal to young adult and adult readers who are willing to enter into the life of a family under the extreme duress of war.

Teachers

• If you teach multigenre writing and have a iPad, this text can serve as an example of a research-based multigenre project. It contains poetry, prose testimonials, excerpts from official documents, interviews, photographs, hand-drawn maps, and more. Collectively, these genres work together to tell a highly engaging story of human survival.
• If you are interested in composing ebooks with your students, Bent Not Broken can serve as an example of a new kind of interactive story-telling. This narrative technique will become increasingly available to your students as software such as iBooks Author makes composing multimedia books easier and easier.
• If you teach African literature or other literature concerned with the plight of refugees, this Bent Not Broken can add to these works.
• If you have an iPad but not the $2.99, please email me (rozemar@gvsu.edu) for a promotional code to download the text for free.

Mightybell is a new social space created by Ning co-found Gina Bianchini. In my ongoing search to find a suitable replacement for the now-costly Ning, I have found few spaces that really appeal to me. Mightybell may just be one.

Think of Mightybell as a combination of Pinterest and Ning (or any other social network). You create a space, customize its look, and then invite participants via email. Participants can pin notes, documents, images, videos, or links using a dead-simple interface. Your space becomes a kind of archive of all of these posts, which can be searched or read chronologically. Users can also comment on all of the items. There is no nonsense about friending, either: all invited users have access to the same content. A mobile Mightybell app is promised soon.

For now, Mightybell is free, and seems to be designed specifically for educators looking to get outside of Blackboard or Moodle. Your Mightybell space can be public or private, easing the anxiety that some educators still feel about leaving the home server.

Check out Mightybell–while it’s still free!

• The cost is not so bad with a subscription to Adobe Creative Cloud. Somewhere under $300 per year, but you get all that Adobe goodness, which includes Photoshop and Media Encoder.
• Unlike iBooks Author, the tool that comes for free with Mountain Lion, InDesign lets you design every document from scratch. Not having to work with someone else’s pre-existing template, even if they are pretty, is a plus for me.
• Easy audio and video integration makes this software even more appealing. So, if the print edition of my text never gets published, at least this version will have video clips, audio files, and beautiful hand-drawn maps (hat tip: artist extraordinaire Holly Hoover) that can be zoomed and panned within the digital document. No print edition can do that, right? InDesign even lets you published three-dimensional models within your digital text.
• InDesign lets you create multiple versions of the same text with relative ease. Why would I want multiple digital versions? Simple: just as web developers struggle to make their pages look good on multiple monitors, ebook publishers need to accomodate a huge range of devices, each with its own screen size and resolution. With InDesign, I can create multiple formats, allowing the device to pick the version best for its hardware and software.

The primary device I’m publishing for is the iPad 2, since this seems to be the most popular tablet in schools. The iPad 3 has the retina display and a much larger resolution, making it a tempting choice for rich visuals, but for now, I am sticking with the 1028 x 768 pixels of the iPad 2.

I’ll be publishing the text, eventually, to the App store, not as a book per se, but as an application with a book wrapped inside of it. While I could publish a fairly interactive PDF, the app version allows me to draw on all of the interactivity of the digital medium, while marketing the text in a very popular venue.

In all of this thinking, I have been helped immensely by the work of Pariah Burke, and specifically, ePublishing with InDesign CS6: Design and produce digital publications for tablets, ereaders, smartphones, and more by Pariah S. Burke. If you are at all interesting in ePublishing, this is a terrific resource, written in very clear language. I recommend the Kindle version, of course, if you are really interesting in epublishing.

With a little time on my hands over Christmas break, I am taking a big step: turning the book into an e-book and publishing it. There are a few things to consider, of course, and the first is whether or not I lose all credibility by self-publishing the work. At this point, I have to say I no longer care. That was easy enough. I don’t need the publication for my CV; tenure is behind me; and I am growing weary of rejections from print publishers.

The next big question is which e-book platform to use. A quick review of some major options:

• Apple iBooks Author is newly updated and free for Mountain Lion users. I upgraded to ML, in fact, just for this tool, which is getting pretty good reviews. It has a series of very sharp design templates that should accomodate just about every e-author. And in true Apple fashion, the tool itself is easy-to-use and relatively intuitive. Better still, you can embed video (not Flash, of course) into your e-book. My book is based on video interviews that would fit nicely into this format. Some issues: again, like most Apple software, you have to work to get inside it. It is frustrating to be limited to the templates provided by the software, and for some reason, it is impossible to create a simple blank page. As for publishing, the software exports only to Apple’s proprietary e-book format (.iba), limiting your book to the Apple store. Hardly a surprise.
• Adobe Creative Suite is a much more powerful design program made for professionals. I have the older version of this software (CS5). Its successors Adobe CS5.5 and 6 both support e-publication even more so than CS5. But even inn CS5, you can export to the open-source e-pub format, making your book marketable anywhere that accepts this format (such as the Google Play Store). The design possibilities are nearly endless. The software offers sophisticated tools that go well beyond anything in iBooks Author. If you can imagine it, you can probably design it in CS5. The problem is the price tag–somewhere around $1,300 for the newest Creative Suite Standard. For $29.99/month, you can subscriben to the Creative Cloud, a cloud-based version of the software that I have yet to try.
• Create Space by Kindle isn’t really full-fledged e-publishing software. It’s more like a set of guidelines and some cloud-based tools that help you publish your e-book to Amazon. Just become a member of Create Space–it’s free–and get started. Here, the problem is that there are no robust tools like Creative Suite or built-in templates like iBooks author. You’re pretty much on your own. The advantage is that Amazon owns the e-book industry right now, and you immediately have a huge audience.
• Google Play Store is the least proprietary of the e-book vendors: it publishes a range of formats, including the open-source e-pub format. That is good. But like Create Space, it doesn’t really assist with the design of the books, and I’m not sure it can handle an e-pub with embedded video.

To end what is becoming a long post, I am going with iBooks Author for now, hacking its templates whenever necessary. I may also use the powerful e-book manager Calibre to convert my ebook. I am excited, however, about the way the e-book format can enrich my text . . . more on this later.

So here’s what I am thinking: for years, my students have created really good podcasts on young adult works. They are stored here, and while I know that students return to this site from time to time, what would be really cool would be to make these podcasts a little more friendly to mobile devices. Enter the QR code.

If you print this image (right-click, save, print) and then use a mobile device to scan it, you will be directed to the Feed Podcast. You phone or tablet should download and play it automatically. So here’s the idea: cut this QR out, stick it in the front of your classroom copy of the book. Students scan, listen, and then read. Now that is a purposeful and engaging way to use emergent technology (hat tip: Rick Beach and Sarah Kajder). Cool.

I attended mostly technology sessions–okay, I attended only technology sessions. But I had to prioritize: most of my time was spent in meetings and doing work for our department. After going to sessions led by Will Richardson, Bud Hunt, Troy Hicks, Sarah Kadjer (a who’s who of English Ed Techies), I was left with one dominant impression about the integration of technology into the English language arts: namely, that the resistance to digital technology (we like books! down with computers!) has disappeared. Completely. I know that my choice of sessions has shaped this conclusion, but when tech gurus like Will Richardson can fill a room with cheering English teachers, you know that the tide has shifted.

That makes 2012 an interesting time to teach. Tablets and smartphones are flooding into our classrooms, sometimes purchased by school districts and sometimes via a BYOD–bring your own device–policy. The widespread use of these devices has generated its own high-pitched rhetoric, not unlike the grand claims during the early years of the wireless/laptop revolution. In fact, I think we are at the peak of inflated expections of the Gartner technology hype cycle. During this stage of technology adaptation, there is lots of hyperbolic talk about the kinds of changes that a given technology can bring about. I am by nature wary of these claims, and because many of them were presented in the sessions I attended, I want to critique at least a few here:

Being Networked is Always Better than Being Alone
This idea came through loud and clear in the argument made by Will Richardson. Richardson has blogged since the beginning, and when I first started reading his stuff in the early 2000s, I was impressed by his efforts to connect purposeful instruction in his content area (English) with the emerging technologies he championed. Since then, many things have changed in the digital world, and Richardson is undeniably correct to observe that we are more networked than ever before–Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, SMS, online gaming, and other forms of social media connect us to each other, all of the time, so that many teens are sending 200-300 texts per day.

But is this really a good thing? Yes when we can draw on our networks to learn more efficiently or pool our talents. But what about reading? What of the critiques of our connectedness–Sherry Turkle’s sociological and psychological arguments, for example, or the emerging field of attention studies? What about the criticism launched by software theorists such as Jaron Lanier, who argues that our devices and their programs box in and narrow our ways of being human? Why can’t we stop for a moment to assess the real effects of these tools before we embrace them?

Production is Always Better than Consumption
Another mantra from the tech sessions I attended. Two of the sessions, for example, featured backchanneling, the practice of holding an electronic discussion during a more traditional delivery of content. So, while a the main speakers were talking, a multiuser chatroom via Today’s Meet (web), Celly (SMS) or a similar backchannel platform was opened for audience members to raise questions or summarize salient points. The result is a kind of constant chatter that goes on while the presenter is, well, trying to present. Backchanneling seems like a really cool way to get instant feedback from students, especially when you can show their thoughts onscreen. But I’m also wary of the way this kills the personal connection between the speaker and the audience. Eye contact is kind of important, after all, and you can’t make eye contact when you’re staying at your smartphone.

I liked some of the comments that were backchanneling during my talk critiquing Credit Recovery Software. But I’m also just a little proud that the transcript showed a slowdown in the chatter during my ten minutes on the stage. Egomaniacal? Maybe. But I told a good story and people were listening, not thumbing in SMS messages. And again, at least some research on the most-lauded skill attributed to the Millenial Generation–multitasking–suggests that we are most successful when we take on a single task at a time.

How is More Important than Why
Last point of what is becoming a long post. When I started advocated technology in the late 1990s, I took pains to connect new digital tools to the purposes and methods of effective English instruction. In writing about blogging, for example, I’d emphasize the way it offers students a real audience and a real purpose for writing, two things that composition theory had long claimed were critical to meaningful writing instruction. I tried to link the deep immersion of playing a video game to the experience of reading literature, using the reader response theory of Louise Rosenblatt, the semiotics of James Gee, and the research findings of Judith Langer. If I couldn’t really connect an emerging technology to what teachers were already doing, or what they wanted to do, I stayed away from it.

Because I could never quite figure out how to do this with Twitter (except to suggest it is an excellent way to watch real-time events unfold), I never really got into it. When mainstream, tradition media started quoting really superficial responses from anonymous tweeters, I even said that I hated Twitter .

I don’t hate Twitter. I just dislike it because it never gets theorized or put to the test. It’s just “cool” to tweet your classroom announcements or set up a class hashtag to allow students to tweet during their reading or homework assignments.
My guess is that students might help each other on homework by using Twitter, but the idea of students pausing during reading to Tweet their responses doesn’t make pedagogical sense to me. But many teachers are learning how to Tweet and not why they might consider doing this, and what might be compromised by their decisions to do so.

Okay, okay. Plane pulling in. This rant makes me sound like an old, old man. As Grandpa Simpson once said, “I wore an onion on my belt, as was the fashion at the time.” And it makes me feel conservative, something I never like. But maybe taking a kind of stance here isn’t so conservative, given the widespread acceptance of digital technology tools (It’s good to Tweet! Go Tweet!). Maybe that’s radical.

I couldn’t upload and stream the video–Youtube (founded 2005) still had the 100MB limit, long since lifted. Other streaming services were similarly limited, either by time (10 minutes) or by size. So, I resorted to the DVD. Making enough copies took hours.

Finally, a couple of years later, I started streaming via Viddler, which had a 500 MB size limit. Occasionally, I did have to split large files into two, but this worked pretty well. I was still using my PC, though by now I had upgraded to Adobe Premier Pro to edit and burn the videos. I also added a hard-drive camcorder that recorded in high def.

The size of the files was still an issue, and so I used Viddler and the now defunct Google Video to host large files. Protecting the privacy of the teachers was always a priority, so I had to use all kinds of tweaks to make sure that only my students could see the videos.

Finally, in 2012, things are where they should be. I use the same hard-drive camcorder (waiting for a wireless one) to record the video. Then, I use iMovie (on my newish Macbook Pro) to import the footage, which takes roughly 30 minutes. I export the movie to MP4, which usually takes under 1 hour, a huge improvement over the hours and hours of DVD production.

What’s the greatest about all of this technology evolution, though, is that YouTube has lifted its 100MB, 10-minute restrictions AND allowed for completely unlisted videos that can still be shared very easily. I upload the video to Youtube, which converts the file to Flash in under an hour.

So, that is progress, and a pretty good example of the way things change with digital technology.

But that’s not what really hooked me on the show. What keeps me watching–and usually awake at least an hour afterward–is the structure of each episode. I think the show must be written by gamers who intuitively know how to balance challenges and rewards to keep us interested. In his analysis of video games, James Gee describes how balance between affordances and effectivities is critical to a game’s success. An affordance is essentially a feature of the game world that allows action to be taken–let’s say, a locked wooden door that appears impenetrable. An effectivity is the skill which allows the door to be opened–something that a character can acquire to enact or use the affordance. So, the character learns how to pick locks (effectivity) and can now open the door (affordance), which opens to another area, complete with its own embedded affordances, which in turn require new effectivities.

In the best episodes of WD, you can feel the push and pull of affordances and effectivities. To begin with, the episodes frequently feature a kind of level–in the season 3 premiere, it was a prison, a setting similar to many dungeon-based video games. The affordance here is the prison: it contains a ton of helpful supplies to the gang–medicine, weapons, beds, and a clean, dry place to rest. The effectivity here seems to be figuring out how to get in: there are zombies in the prison yard who are looking hungry. The solution taken by Rick (spoiler alert) is game-like: directing certain characters to distract the zombies and running through the yard. Figuring out how to kill the riot-gear zombies is another affordance/effectivity within the mission. RUnning out of ammo? As in a first-person shooter, not a good thing.

Once Rick and the gang are inside, there are additional affordances: the rest of the prison remains to be explored. Then again, there are lots of zombie prisoners and zombie guards all around, so the challenge is to figure out how to go undetected through the cell blocks (creepy) without getting lost or killed. If you watch the episode, you’ll see that this is not so easy: one of the gang is bitten, and Rick quickly is presented with another affordance/effectivity–how to prevent the bitten man from turning to a zombie.

And of course, when this is accomplished, the episode ends with another affordance: a surprise group of still-alive human prisoners suddenly appear, and we are left to wonder how the human gang will solve this particular puzzle.

ALl of it makes for terrific television–and ideally, for a terrific video game. If WD has learned from video games–and I think it clearly has–then game designers might also learn from WD. I wish that your average video game would present players with the kind of complex moral decisions that Rick has to make, with real consequences for you and fellow players. Ultimately, Rick does compromise his principles to survive, killing his former partner and best friend Shane to preserve the group. I have yet to encounter a video game that makes players think though these kinds of decisions. The Facebook Walking Dead game isn’t even close. Just you and a bunch of zombies to shoot.

Then again, that is kind of fun.

But back to the story. I saw the program being used in an alternative high school in West Michigan, where 9-12 grade students were using its credit recovery modules to accumulate enough credits to graduate. Like most alternative schools kids, these students had not fared well in traditional school settings: one thing or another had led them there, and this was their last chance. Most had multiple issues–troubling records, substance abuse issues, and dysfunctional homes.

Enter e2020. The platform basically asks students to click through particular modules, answering questions as they go along. It is a very pretty program, and the modules I saw were flashy: three-dimensional animations, audio files, and instructional videos. The interface was clean and readable.

What the students in this particular school were doing, however, was sitting and clicking. A room full of students on their last leg, and there they were, plugged into the program. Answering multiple choice questions. Occasionally waving down a teacher for some assistance. My T.A. could barely squeeze any instructional time out of the program. He had to create a special elective class just to get some lead teaching time in.

When it comes to e2020 and other similar elearning platforms in alternative settings, there are a few very important things to consider, especially when it comes to teaching English:

• Credit recovery courses–the kind that lets students gain back credit hours they have forfeited–make up about 50 percent of sales in elearning companies such as E2020, according to a recent Washington Post editorial.
• Most alternative schools today use online credit recovery courses as part of their programs. It is very difficult to know what percentage of alternative schools (or even define alternative schools) subscribe to such programs, but I would venture the number is also around 50 percent.
• It follows that alternative schools, already home to a disproportionate number of poor and minority students (see this report by the Urban Institute), will increasingly rely on credit recovery software for their curriculum. Impoverished districts are also more likely to use online content courses because they can save money doing so.
• E2020 and like credit recovery programs have little interest in developing democratic citizens or encouraging critical thinking. Profit, not personal growth, is the motive. That E2020 is owned, at least partially, by the private equity firm and infamous leverage buyout corporation KKR makes this clear.
• Online courses, no matter how well crafted, cannot teaching empathy, tragedy, compassion, tolerance, awe, or other human qualities that are the subject matter of literature and language courses–and of the humanities curriculum writ large.

And once again, those who need the most guidance, the most instruction, and the most human care are those who receive the least. Ironically enough, much of the rhetoric surrounding elearning systems has to do with equality. Sari Factor, the CEO of E2020, made this point in a recent interview: “Technology is game-changing because it levels the playing field and has the potential to break down barriers of inequity, providing access to the best teachers and the best learning experiences.” The day I walk into an East Grand Rapids or Forest Hills school using elearning software exclusively is the day I believe this claim.

When I purchase any new music on CD (not often), I rip it into iTunes, being careful to change the import setting from the irritating, proprietary iTunes M4a to the general MP3 format. Otherwise, I download from iTunes.

I have also installed the relatively new app Google Play (quick installation) on both my computer and my phone. Google Play automatically surveys your MP3 collection (you may have to use iTunes to convert everything to MP3) and uploads everything to the cloud. So, if I rip a new CD using iTunes, Google Play grabs it and uploads it to my music, storing it online for whenever I want to access it.

That makes all of my music collection available on the cloud. It might take Google Play a day or two to upload all of your songs, depending on how much you have. It works in the background and seems unobtrusive. It also syncs your music from all of your computers.

But what about music I don’t own? I like Grooveshark for streaming any artist/song/album I don’t currently have in my collection. Grooveshark charges for use of their mobile app, meaning you can still listen online for free, but if you wanted to stream music to your mobile device, it would cost you.

Enter TinyShark, the mobile app for Android phones. Tinyshark lets you access your Grooveshark playlists nd search engine. Set up your playlists on the web, and then listen to them on your smart phone.

As a backup for Grooveshark, you might consider Spotify, which has a deeper and more organized archive of music than Grooveshark. Spotify Premium gives you access to the database via your mobile device, but it too,, is not free.

My last recommendation is Pandora, for those times when you want to be introduced to new music. Pandora is ad-supported, so you’ll have to deal with interruptions, but you can install the app for free on your phone.

So that’s it for now. I suppose I neglected iCloud, but my suspicions are that Apple makes you pay dearly for it.

The site, though, was getting a little stale, so I spent some time reworking it today. If you know CSS, you can actually dress up a Wikispace pretty nicely–provided you edit your theme and not the wiki style sheet. Visually, the site looks much better now: I used Firebug Lite to track down a couple of elusive CSS tags. This is an easy-to-use tool that lets you click on an element on a page and see the CSS code that creates it. I cleaned up the logo, gave the whole site larger margins and more white space. I spruced up the logo and slid the page title far to the right.

I also divided the reviews into categories, got rid of most of the broken links. I’m going to add some additional resources to make the whole site a little more informative.

The best part of all is that while I used to pay for Wikispaces, the site is now free. Yep–Wikispaces has been giving away ad-free accounts to K-16 educators. So, if you want to estasblish a web presence for you and your students, Wikispaces remains a very good option.

Turkle’s main argument is that we are desiring more human encounters with our robots and our social networks, but paradoxically, as we make room for emotional relationships with artificial intelligence and superficial network friends, we are actually increasing our own isolation. This is similar to the main thrust of a recent Atlantic article by Stephen Marche. Marche’s piece is more speculative than Turkle’s book: as usual, Turkle is thorough in her research (ethnography and clinical experiments.

Turkle focuses on robotic toys–remember the Furbie?–to which we, increasingly, give human identities to. Turkle believes that children are particularly ready to develop social bonds with all kinds of robot companions. Her work examines kids and their ABIOS (robot dog), furbies, and a few others. At the same time, she suggests something similar is occurring with our ever-connectedness. Being plugged all the time means that we are losing time to real, face-to-face relationships. We are kidding ourselves, claims Turkle, if we think our 283 Facebook friends are really our friends at all: do they come to the funerals of our family members? Do they mourn with us?

I like that Turkle has changed her stance a little since the heady days of the early Web. And beyond the crustiness of some of the research (is Second Life even around anymore?), she makes a convincing argument. I do think we are losing meaningful relationships in the real world. I think we sacrifice true intimacy for faux-friendships online. And we can no longer help ourselves: if there is a chance to connect, we take it.

Proof: I’m writing this while on vacation with my in-laws. We are sitting in the living room of a rented beach condominium. There are six adults; three are currently connected to the web, working, gaming, or, well, blogging.

This development also signifies the end of my experiment with Google Drive. It worked flawlessly, but I’d rather have everything in one place.

One quick observation: even in the inevitable digitization of all texts, graphic novels make a pretty compelling case for non-electronic, old-fashioned, paper-and-ink books. Sure, most manga is available at sites such as mangareader.net, and there are all kinds of web comics out there (see WebComics Nation), but I have found relatively few graphic novels available for mainstream consumption on Kindle or iTunes. There are a few comics applications for the iPad, but the majority of comics still exist first and foremost as print texts. Buying them means going to brick-and-mortar stores, where the context is important. And then there is the whole matter of collecting comics, which is a big part of comics stores’ merchandise.

For me, though, the most bookish thing about graphic novels is the digitally inimitable artwork: comics are printed on special paper (that’s the extent of my knowledge here) that varies from publisher to publisher, and the colors cannot be reproduced consistently in digital formats. Perhaps most importantly, the spatialization of time that is so central to comics just isn’t the same when you are reading on a digital reader: you can’t see as much space/time simultaneously.

Strangely enough–I am a technology advocate, in general–I am comforted by the inherent value of ink-and-paper comics. You youngsters, with your new-fangled computers!

If you are a GVSU reader and pre-service teacher, the implications are chilling: sometime in the near future, a giant publishing corporation could determine whether you are certified or not. Read on.

May 6, 2012
Move to Outsource Teacher Licensing Process Draws Protest
By MICHAEL WINERIP
The idea that a handful of college instructors and student teachers in the school of education at the University of Massachusetts could slow the corporatization of public education in America is both quaint and ridiculous.

Sixty-seven of the 68 students studying to be teachers at the middle and high school levels at the Amherst campus are protesting a new national licensure procedure being developed by Stanford University with the education company Pearson.

The UMass students say that their professors and the classroom teachers who observe them for six months in real school settings can do a better job judging their skills than a corporation that has never seen them.

They have refused to send Pearson two 10-minute videos of themselves teaching, as well as a 40-page take-home test, requirements of an assessment that will soon be necessary for licensure in several states.

“This is something complex and we don’t like seeing it taken out of human hands,” said Barbara Madeloni, who runs the university’s high school teacher training program. “We are putting a stick in the gears.”

Lily Waites, 25, who is getting a master’s degree to teach biology, found that the process of reducing 270 minutes of recorded classroom teaching to 20 minutes of video was demeaning and frustrating, made worse because she had never edited video before. “I don’t think it showed in any way who I am as a teacher,” she said. “It felt so stilted.”

Pearson advertises that it is paying scorers $75 per assessment, with work “available seven days a week” for current or retired licensed teachers or administrators. This makes Amy Lanham wonder how thorough the grading will be. “I don’t think you can have a genuine reflective process from a calibrated scorer,” said Ms. Lanham, 28, who plans to teach English.

At this point the Teacher Performance Assessment that Pearson and Stanford are developing is still in the pilot stage, being tested by 200 universities in more than two dozen states. While it is meant to supplement traditional assessment methods like classroom observation, in reality it would be the final word for states that adopt it. Student teachers who do not pass would not be licensed.

Stanford officials say that, to the best of their knowledge, the UMass program is the only case of resistance.

The student teachers at UMass complain that they were being told to take part in the pilot program by university officials without their consent and that there were inadequate confidentiality protections for the schoolchildren appearing in the videos being sent to Pearson.

“As a parent, I wouldn’t give my permission to videotape my child and send it off into the twilight,” said Kristin Sanzone, 33, who is getting a master’s degree.

In previous years, parents had given permission to have their children videotaped for use by UMass instructors. But Ms. Madeloni said student teachers and principals had told her that they felt differently about sending videos off to a big company.

“If there are concerns about UMass, there’s someone nearby they can go to,” she said. “How do you complain to a corporation?”

Four local school districts that train student teachers declined to participate when they learned how the video would be used.

This year, when Ms. Madeloni questioned UMass administrators, they played down the need for consent from the student teachers and school districts. One dean wrote in February that Pearson was doing a “field test,” and “not a field research study,” and so no special consent was required.

In March, university officials reversed themselves, acknowledging that special consent forms were needed.

An associate dean offered books of Post-its as prizes for the first six student teachers who turned in consent forms.

The Post-its did not turn the tide.

Jerri Willett, the chairwoman of the department of teacher education and curriculum studies, said because it was a pilot program, it had taken time to develop procedures. She said officials were meeting to develop a statewide policy for confidentiality and consent.

Asked why so many students had refused to take part, Ms. Willett said they may have felt “forced” by faculty members. (None of those who posed for a photograph or were interviewed by this reporter said they had felt pressured.)

While Massachusetts has not made a decision about whether to require the Teacher Performance Assessment, six states — New York, Illinois, Minnesota, Ohio, Tennessee and Washington — have committed to adopting it in the next few years.

Ms. Willett said the education reform movement had been highly critical of teacher education programs, complaining that not enough weak candidates were being eliminated. An independent measure should reassure the public, she said.

She is one of hundreds of educators who have been consulted by Stanford to develop the new assessment. The 40-page test requires student teachers to submit several lesson plans and explain how they measure learning and adapt lessons to their special-needs students. “Until now we’ve assessed what students know about teaching,” she said. “This assesses teaching.”

Raymond Pecheone, a Stanford professor, said he had worked closely with Pearson to ensure extensive confidentiality protections. He said the student videos can’t be downloaded or duplicated by scorers, nor used for marketing and promotion or training teachers.

Pearson plans to hold onto the videos for up to two years in case there are legal challenges, he said.

Mr. Pecheone said Pearson, which describes itself as the biggest education company in North America, was one of six to bid to work with Stanford. Pearson was chosen in part because it was the only company willing to provide enough seed money for a nationwide pilot program. “We needed an operating partner,” he said.

In states that choose Pearson-Stanford to manage the licensing, student teachers are expected to pay the company up to $300 apiece.

Washington State will require teaching candidates to pass the assessment next year. Wayne Au, a University of Washington professor, said based on the pilot, this approach was a considerably more sophisticated measure than traditional standardized tests. But because it is a mass-produced assessment, he said, students have already learned to manipulate it. “Their answers are shaped by what the test requires,” he said. “They’re not expressing who they are as teachers. It will do bad things.”

In New York, Pearson will be able to test a teacher’s worth from start to finish. The company currently administers the test students must pass to be admitted to a teaching program and is developing the testing system that will be used to calculate each teacher’s annual performance score.

How much impact any of this will have on teacher quality is debatable. California has had a performance assessment program in place for 10 years. According to Mr. Pecheone, 10 to 15 percent fail to get their license on the first try. When students retake the test, he said, only 1 to 2 percent fail to get a license.

At UMass, 1 to 2 percent of student teachers are weeded out of the program each year, according to Ms. Willett.

As for the idea that having an independent licensing test like California’s will improve the public’s opinion of teachers — no way. Politicians and businesspeople bash teachers in sunny California as much as they do in cloudy states. There is a whole education industry that is flourishing because it is built on the denigration of public schoolteachers.

Now Google is, finally, getting into the cloud drive business, following Apple iCloud (which I have but never use) and other services such as Sugar Sync. I just downloaded the software and started using it. So far, Google Drive works much like Dropbox, though the interface is not as pretty. I’m not sure Google ever does anything beautifully, with the possible exception of their sleek browser, Chrome.

The cool part about Google Drive is the amount of free space it offers: a whopping 5 GB. That is a whole lot of text files. Or about 1500 music files. Or about 5 full length movies. And getting more space is cheaper than with Dropbox, almost by half, as this comparison chart from Digital Inspiration shows (hat tip: Kevin). I don’t think I’ll switch. I might just use Google Drive to store some biggish files that are currently hogging space in my Dropbox account. I guess if I were a little more savvy, I would have multiple accounts from different services, backing up everything piece by piece. That would be complicated, though, and that kind of defeats the purpose of behind-the-scenes file syncing.

Here is the moral of the story: students should never lose data again. Tell your students to set up Google Drive accounts at home. Make it a part of your course requirements. They’ll never blame flash drives again.

Braid, on the other hand, is close. It includes traditional narrative devices: linear textual pieces that reveal a broken relationship between Tim, the protagonist of the story, and the Princess, whom he must rescue. As fiction, these bits and pieces are a little overwritten, but they are much, much better than the typically unbearable “plot” sequences interjected between levels on most video games. You know–the parts you skip. At the same time, Braid offers some really cool puzzles that Tim must figure out if he is to get his girl back. Each world presents Tim with a series of puzzles–he solves them by reclaiming puzzle pieces from diabolic traps, and then reassembling the puzzle pieces into a larger image. The interesting part is that Tim can reverse time to help him solve the puzzles. The game flows backwards; Tim gets another chance at the puzzle. Blow is clearly playing around with the idea of narrative linearity, but doing so in a way that makes more sense than hypertext. After all, what do we do when a relationship ends? Relive it again and again, stuck in perpetual rewind.

The artistry is amazing–the backdrops have the feel of breathing paintings. Created by David Hellman, these tapestry of light and color explode the medium. Game developers usually give us grey dungeons, but not here. The explicit goal of most new video games is realism: the more realistic, the better. Hellman and Blow challenge this idea that the entire gaming industry seems to have bought into. There is also a classical score accompanying the gameplay–no more mind-numbing, repetitive soundtrack. It makes me excited to think what Witness might be like. For now, the good news is that Braid is only $3.99 at the Apple store.

Braid is a really cool combination of story telling and game playing–well worth your time. It might also be worth talking about in a literature class.

I use Hackasaurus in my Teaching of Writing class, where I use it as a way of teaching argument–both visual and verbal argument. Students choose a web site to hack with Hackasaurus, changing a key visual element or text to make a argument. I encouraged students to think about social justice, so that they might “hack” web sites that promote a particular ideology–patriarchy or capitalism, for example.

That said, I am getting a little bolder, particularly as I read more. Lawrence Lessig’s free book Remix is a great place to start for thinking about copyright in new ways. Lessig, a long-time advocate of free cultural exchange, essentially argues that digital technology has changed us into a read/write culture, where read-only copyright laws no longer apply. And resources such as The Center for Social Media have also assembled terrific resources on copyright, such as this video on remix culture and this accessible code of best practices for online video.

There is certainly a movement toward a broader, more inclusive idea of fair use. I am encouraged by this–perhaps even emboldened to discuss the challenges of copyright in given contexts. In this light, I have recently developed a materials the GVSU English department, drawing on some copyrighted material. You can see the new campaign on the bulletin board on the first floor of Lake Huron Hall. If you do stop by, let me know what you think.

More recently, I thought about trying to design a version of the game for smart phones. But until developing applications gets a little more user-friendly, this option is off the table.

So, instead, I went backwards, designing a 6-10 player board game with the indie game publisher The Game Crafter. This is an amazing service, whether you are into games (like me) or not. It allows you to design custom card games or board game, with no real restraints except your imagination and your budget. You’ll need some time: I’m embarassed to admit how many late nights I spent designing Thoughtcrime. And you’ll definitely need a high-end image editor like Photoshop to create a professional-looking game. But I’m kind of geeked to get the game in the mail, and to see if I can round up enough people for an inaugural playing (though versions of the game have already been played).

If you teach 1984 and want to try the game, you can follow the link below. I was hoping the final product would be a little cheaper (even with its steepish price tag, my profit is about $1.00 per unit sold). But I think it might be a blast for British literature students, AP literature students, or literature geeks. If you are at all interested, check out the game here. You can download the instructions and get a better understanding of how the game works. Or, you might try designing your own literary game. In browsing the site, I saw a playable Hamlet that looks like lots of fun.

No more teaching The Tempest, which apparently address race and ethnicity just a little too directly. And certainly no Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire’s foundational text on social justice and education.

My suggestion would be to fill all of those empty spaces on the shelves with copies of Fahrenheit 451.

The iPad 2, for all of its fanciness, is not really set up for this purpose. To date, there is no Microsoft Word app for the iPad (makes sense), but Apple does offer an anemic app version of Pages, its underwhelming word processing software. I guess the idea is that no one is really going to spend time typing on the iPad. So why would we need tables or section breaks?

So here’s my workaround. First, I downloaded the Dropbox App for the iPad. If you are not using Dropbox to backup and sync your data, you should be. The Dropbox app allows you to grab your document from your synced folder.

Then, I reluctantly purchased the Pages app. Total waste of $10.00, except that it does open Word documents. So, when you download from Dropbox, Pages will open up your document.

Here’s where it gets a little tricky. As usual, Apple is not keen on anyone using non-Apple products in conjunction with their iPads. That means that the iPad does not recognized printers that are not part of their Airprint line. My Samsung wireless printer is not, off course. Enter the Airprint Hactivator from Neputing.

This cool piece of software tricks your iPad into thinking that your printer is indeed an Airprint printer, allowing you to print your documents, via Pages, to the printer you already have. The instructions for installing and using are here. Be sure to use version 2, since version one no longer works. And enjoy printing from your iPad (and sticking it to the man, Apple, with due deference).