Raleigh Denim

Way to go, Vic!

Raleigh Denim: Handcrafted in North Carolina from David Huppert on Vimeo.

New Education Documentary

I'm looking forward to the new documentary from the director of "An Inconvenient Truth," highlighting the ineffectiveness of our education system. I expect there will be some scary and sad stories in this film, but these are stories America needs to hear badly.

"Waiting for 'Superman'" (not sure where that name comes from) promises to focus on the positive impact of good teachers. It suggests that we should put a greater emphasis on these teachers and show them our appreciation for the job they do.

Another big focus of the documentary, and a big point in the trailer, is the charter school concept. The movie follows a group of students who attempt to get into charter schools as a way to avoid traditional public schools with high dropout rates. However, the effect that this process has on the students who fail to escape the failing schools will likely have the biggest impact.

Unfortunately, I missed a chance to see "Waiting for 'Superman'" at the AFI Silver Docs festival last night, but I will definitely not miss another chance to see the documentary that apparently made DC schools chancellor Michelle Rhee cry.

The website for the movement associated with the film featured this short that highlights some of the scary statistics and reasons for hope:

Canadian indie-rock phenoms Arcade Fire have returned with two new singles from their forthcoming album. While some of the best songs from 2007's Neon Bible were actually left-over from the Funeral era, it seems the Arcade Fire have recaptured the early magic in a way that was lacking on the last album. The band is getting these songs out everywhere, from BBC Radio 1 to NPR's All Songs Considered. Anticipation is certainly building to the release of The Suburbs in August.

Month of May - Arcade Fire

Suburbs - Arcade Fire

Blogging?

I've wondered for a while now if blogging was something that would interest me. Generally, I came to the conclusion that there was not that much about my life that I wanted to share with the world. For similar reasons, status updates on Facebook and Tweets are never really caught my attention.

However, I am very interested in some of the very useful applications of "Web 2.0" technologies and the potential of cloud computing and social networking. I have sought out these technologies in order to aggregate stories I would be interested in reading, bookmark things that I would like to return to later, and keep in touch with friends.

It seems that blogging might be a way to combine all of these functions into one place, and for that reason I am going to give it a try. Many of my posts will thus be designed to link to things I want to share or come back to - hence the name "Posterity." I will also talk about some of the other sites that I am using for cloud computing or information aggregation.

Should this prove to be fulfilling and helpful to me, I am interested in expanding my usage. Being a teacher, I am particularly curious about potential classroom uses, such as class discussions and to reach out to the school community.

At the very least, it should be an interesting experiment!