November 2 - 8

Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
Yep, I finally finished it, and for the most part enjoyed this novel. We discussed the juxtaposition of how this novel provided a great push for abolition in the United States, and yet portrays largely stereotyped and racialized characters such as Chloe as Mammy, Tom as the Good Christion (reminds me of Equiano a bit there), Tom's children and Topsy as the Wild African, and various cunning Sambos throughout. Some good stuff in here, and I also enjoyed the journeys that moved away from each other: Tom to the south, George and Eliza to the north.

Twitter help pages
Yes, Twitter. I finally created an account after reading so much and hearing firsthand from teachers I respect that Twitter is an excellent source of information and ideas for teachers. I bit the bullet, and I'm actually really loving it! However, Twitter is quite different from other social media I've played around with, and has taken some adjusting and some Google searches. In addition to these help pages...

Various Education Articles
My hopes for Twitter came true, and I actually discovered a new app just for organizing all of the readings and links and videos I've been finding! Twitter is a concise feed of helpful ideas and interesting theories, when you use it properly (i.e. not following meme characters).

As for the app I mentioned, it's called Pocket, and it's pretty fabulous. It saves articles, videos, whatever you want, across different platforms (laptop, tablet, smartphone) and downloads them so you can view them offline. You add things through the share button, read it later. It has tagging features as is pretty standard these days, and you can easily send an article to someone else (regardless of if they have the app or not). If you're interested, check it out here at getpocket.com, or search for it in whatever your smartphone store may be. I'll see you there!