North Korean Comics

There's a fascinating review of North Korean comics at this site. Here's the opening to give you an idea of the whole post. I recommend it.

"Our mandate here at Sleep is for the Weak can be generously summarized as “hilariously review the comics and cartoons of the exotic East.” This primarily means that we look at anime and manga coming out of Japan, and maybe the odd Korean manhwa or cartoon that was produced in China.

But there’s one country whose comics (or as they’re called there, gruim-chaek) have pretty much gone unnoticed by everyone. There’s a reason for that. Generally, that’s because the country that they’re from - North Korea - is the most isolated and hidden country in the world."

Senate Bill Supports 21st-Century Skills

Senate bill supports 21st-century skills

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Such a bill seems to have merit. What do you think of the work of the Partnership for 21st Century Skills and the ideas of this bill? I'd also like to hear from someone in the states that are cited in the article. What do you think of your state's standards regarding these skills?

Language Abuse?

On the Common Craft blog, there's a great post discussing the need for plain English and how the language gets used for obfuscation rather than clarity. I find the comments as interesting as the orginal article. Where will our use of the language lead us? How will the language use in various discourse communities will shape our thinking and be shaped by our participation?

Back(wards) to Tracking?

URL: Back-(to)-tracking on Student Expectations

While I'm willing to consider the arguments people make for tracking, I still just can't accept that practice as an effective means of ensuring achievement for all students. Thus, this post from Mississippi teacher leader Renee Moore really resonates for me. One of our challenges across American education, it seems to me, is to establish a culture of high expectations for all. How do we do that? Where is it being done?

Reading the World with Graphic Novels

This is my presentation from the 2009 CLAS Conference. My argument is that we need to be aware of our perception of the world if we are to help students better see it. Literature can help. Specifically, graphic novels can be used to good effect. I also propose "seeing" in a new way by thinking of the term "focalization" as a replacement for the more general "point of view" that we're used to using in literature discussions with secondary school students. Some writers suggest that focalization is a more accurate concept to describe the craft of writing a graphic novel. We ended the session by looking at excerpts from two novels and trying out the questions, "Who sees? Who speaks?" to understand what the authors and illustrators were doing.

Reading the World with Graphic Novels

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