Texting in Schools

During the 2009 calendar year, there were more than 1.5 trillion text messages reported on carriers’ networks.  Wireless subscribers are also sending more pictures and other multimedia messages with their mobile devices—more than 24.2 billion MMS messages were reported for the last half of 2009. That’s more than double the number from the previous year, when only 9.3 billion were reported for the last half of 2008.  

But we ban mobiles from our schools and prohibit text messaging.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Educating future cogs in the wheel, one spoke at a time...

The New Lost Generation of pseudo-Minimalists

Go read the whole Internet-Age Writing Class Syllabus...
"Instant messaging. Twittering. Facebook updates. These 21st-century literary genres are defining a new "Lost Generation" of minimalists who would much rather watch Lost on their iPhones than toil over long-winded articles and short stories. Students will acquire the tools needed to make their tweets glimmer with a complete lack of forethought, their Facebook updates ring with self-importance, and their blog entries shimmer with literary pithiness. All without the restraints of writing in complete sentences. w00t! w00t! Throughout the course, a further paring down of the Hemingway/Stein school of minimalism will be emphasized, limiting the superfluous use of nouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, conjunctions, gerunds, and other literary pitfalls..."

Students must have completed at least two of the following.

ENG: 232WR—Advanced Tweeting: The Elements of Droll
LIT: 223—Early-21st-Century Literature: 140 Characters or Less
ENG: 102—Staring Blankly at Handheld Devices While Others Are Talking
ENG: 30—Advanced Blog and Book Skimming
ENG: 231WR—Facebook Wall Alliteration and Assonance
LIT: 202—The Literary Merits of Lolcats
LIT: 209—Internet-Age Surrealistic Narcissism and Self-Absorption

Sent from my iPhone

I Wish All My Asheville Friends Were Using Gowalla

Asheville_gowalla

I finally got around to installing Gowalla on my iPhone (since Asheville isn't cool enough to be a trendy FourSquare city yet).  

Gowalla could be an amazing little application and feels a great deal like Twitter did when I first started using the service in 2006 and saw the potential but couldn't get anyone besides SF geeks to use the service. 

So, if you're in Asheville (or not) join up so we can make great use of Gowalla locally.

And once you do join up, friend me up.