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Saturday, December 20, 2014

Not to miss the point: Lincoln news coverage of Gettysburg

martinFACTS: Washington, 1963
As the nation this week recalls the historic 18 August 1963 march on Washington and Dr. Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech, The Washington Post reminds us that sometimes the press misses the point.
His speech was delivered on the landing 18 steps below Lincoln's statue.  There is now an inscription on the step where Dr. King stood, commemorating that historic event. (*)
FACTS: GETTYSBURG, 1863 
November 19, 1863 At the dedication of the National Cemetery in Gettysburg President Lincoln delivers a two-minute speech with his high-pitch voice. Immediately following the speech he calls it a "flat failure." The speech is known today as the Gettysburg Address.





VIDEO: Daniel Day-Lewis transformed into campaigning Abraham Lincoln... 





Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2206640/Daniel-Day-Lewis-portrayal-president-Abraham-Lincoln-proves-unpopular-critics.html#ixzz3MQmUFKeh
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The first news coverage of Gettysburg appeared in the Nov. 21 edition, the delay being caused by the difficulty getting home from Gettysburg on the trains, more of which in a moment.



The Gettysburg Address, Performed By President Obama


The newspaper's own news account of the proceedings focuses largely on the lousy train service to and from Gettysburg that left thousands stranded in Hanover unable - after traveling hundreds, sometimes thousands of miles - to attend the event. The same occurred on the trip back out of Gettysburg.
As the Patriot & Union reporter noted, 
"The amount of blasphemy manufactured at that little hotel was considerable."
But to the point - the newspaper's own reporter described the President's speech in Gettysburg like this:
"The President then arose and delivered the dedicatory address, which was brief and calculated to arouse deep feeling."


The Elusive Gettysbur_Newh.jpg
(a 1905 rendering) literally verbatim: those 'silly remarks'
TASK 1. 
READ your  copy of the Gettysburg Address to students and then let them follow along as they watch the Presidential Lincoln Library




     TASK 2. 
Now, SHARE the scores you gave the reenactment of the Gettysburg Address.Pass out “Retraction for our 1863 editorial calling Gettysburg Address ‘silly remarks’” resource to students and explain to students that not everyone always agreed that the Gettysburg Address was  one of the greatest speeches in the history of the United States.


TASK 3. 
100 years ahead. Read the original 1963 article, “A Voice from the Dead,” by the Patriot and Union Newspaper.

TASK 4. 
 What do you think of the criticisms from the article.
  • Were they right?

  • If wrong, how come they made that mistake?

  • How can we predict what speeches or events 

  • are going to become historical?

PS: Read the Museum’s reenactment of the Gettysburg Address (click on task 1)



Lincoln Memorial Approval and Construction
The Lincoln Memorial was dedicated on Memorial Day—May 30, 1922.

Years in the making, the planning and building of the Memorial would end with soldiers and civilians from all sides of the Civil War together for the dedication ceremony—joined in peace as Lincoln had wished and fought for decades before.





(*) On August 28, 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr., made his "I Have a Dream" speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial (the speech was delivered on the landing 18 steps below Lincoln's statue); there is now an inscription on the step where Dr. King stood, commemorating that historic event. Dr. King was speaking at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.


The March on Washington in 1963 brought 250,000 people to the National Mall


Thursday, December 18, 2014

nativity 2.0 (a digital upgrade)

In case you have missed them, 
there are many delightful reinterpretations of the Christmas story, to start with the 
 using the 

Besides the 3 presents from the magi (wise men), named... until the 8th century


Hor, Karsudan, and Basanater. 
    or was it 

Kagpha, Badadakharida and Badadilma?

Perhaps you are attached to further changes and recall the western adaptacion and the three complexion colours!!!



Below, two narratives according to our 21st century
(if it is traditional, there is a need to reinvent itself, otherwise there is no future ahead)
using the web’s most popular social platforms.
Enjoy!


What if the nativity happened in today’s world, a world of Facebooks, iPhones, Twitters and ..... Justin Bieber?
That’s the question I ask myself everyday and thankfully this week Portuguese company ‘Excentric’ answered it with this ingenius interpretation: “The Digital Story of Nativity”It’s Christmas 2.0 and it’s so awesome we had to have it on our calendar…

My favorite ad agency campaign, (social medianaires) however,
 has to be the following video 
showing the Nativity story, as told by digital media.

Basically, we see the Bible’s tale of the birth of Jesus done via online and mobile technology, with a heavy emphasis on social media.
A) Someone starts off by Googling The Story of the Nativity.
B) Mary gets an SMS message on her iPhone from the Angel Gabriel about her being pregnant,
C) which promptly leads to her needing to talk with Joseph.Carpenter07 about their dating situation.
D_E_F_G) The story continues as they utilize:
  • 4square,
  • Twitter,
  • Facebook,
  • Google Maps,
  • Wikipedia,
  • Amazon and
  • YouTube to tell the story.  
I loved the Three Wisemen ‘Following’ @BethlehemStar
on Twitter and
Joseph checking in to the Stable on 4Square for the birth.
Also, who knew that Joseph played FarmVille?

Retell what you see on the video:
It all started when Holy_Mary received an SMS from God, 
and Joseph.Carpenter07@gmail.com was bound to quickly prepare a trip to Bethlehem.





This second one is by Christian media dons Igniter Media whose site doesn’t have atmospheric music, but does have lots of great Christian multimedia you could use to show yr children:

Thursday, December 11, 2014

the way we never were neither there nor anywhere only in CHICAGO.


Black history

  • The Great Migration, a long-term movement of African Americans from the South to the urban North, transformed Chicago and other northern cities between 1916 and 1970. 
  • Chicago attracted slightly more than 500,000 of the approximately 7 million African Americans who left the South during these decades. Before this migration, African Americans constituted 2 percent of Chicago's population; by 1970, they were 33 percent.
White tenants seeking to prevent blacks from moving into the Sojourner Truth housing project in Detroit erected this sign, 1942

  1. E.g.: "When Harvey Clark [African-American] tried to move into Cicero, Illinois, in 1951, a mob of 4,000 whites spent four days tearing his apartment apart while police stood by and joked with them."
  2. Life magazine reported in 1957 that "10,000 Negroes work at the Ford plant in nearby Dearborn, [but] not one Negro can live in Dearborn itself (Coontz 31; Life 11 March 57: 163).


Chicago 1989. Love story 
Love story: Michelle and Barack Obama's romance is to get a retelling on the big screen.
Michelle and Barack Obama's romance is about to get a retelling on the big screen.


Read more:
  • Not every couple gets the luxury of getting the location of the first kiss marked with a commemorative plaque – but then this is no ordinary pairing.
  • In fact, not only do Barack and Michelle Obama have a city plaque marking their first smooch outside a Baskin-Robbins in Chicago's Hyde Park, they're getting a movie, too. 
  • An independent feature, Southside With You, is due to begin filming in July.
  • The story will follow the pair's first date in 1989, which takes in the highlights of Chicago's south side and also a screening of Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing. 
  • The pair met when Obama took a summer job with a Chicago law firm, where the-then Michelle Robinson was working as a lawyer.


Monday, December 8, 2014

Changes -Let's liven up bilingual lifestyles for our lively teachers -keep it up (and alive)


Today's entry somehow pretends to draw a portrait of a teacher considered  “not so well-performing” in our Valencian English classroom.
Take it with a pinch of salt and draw your conclussions.
We'll go thru some of the most common in-class features, or failures, in terms of teaching practice, and which are particularly applicable in our context.




Let's liven up bilingual lifestyles with our lively teachers
   -keep it up (and alive  - source: Nov 2010)

How much truth can you find in it? Is the transcript as good as it gets?


  1.     How realistic is this description of class life? 
  2.     What chunks of the transcript 
  3.     Where do you find it unbelievable?
  4.     As the stereotype goes, How many times does the teacher say: please, hush! keep silent! don't be noisy?  Are they silent all the way?
  5.     Acceptable CLT? (Communicative Language teaching)
  6.     TTT? (T's Talking Time) / TDT? T's Doing Time)
  7.     How much English was NOT understood?
  8.     How better/worse can it get?