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	Welcome To My Home... March 24, 2003 Presenting the Future of Education I really don't mean to keep ragging on my political science teacher, but he's just such an easy target. I walked into class today and was surprised to see the computer projector set up. This was absoultely unprecedented, since none of our normal classroom activities (ie: drilling us on the vocabulary) seemed as though it would be complimented very well by the addition of technology. My initial reaction, of course, was along the lines of "Goodness help us. He's discovered PowerPoint." For a long time, I've believed that Power Point was the bane of modern education. I'm sure this doesn't sound too shocking, since it compliments the idea (that I know many of you hold) that Microsoft is the bane of everything. It's not that it can't be used effectively - I've had some teachers do wonderful things with PowerPoint. It's just that it very rarely ever is. Too many teachers see PowerPoint as a replacement for other (shall we call them "real") teaching methods rather than a supplement. Suddenly, teachers who had formerly been required to actually teach their students could now simply just type the lesson outline into their home computers and read it verbatum from the screen in class. Or even better, get the students to use PowerPoint to "design a lesson" and then the teacher doesn't need to do anything. You all know how PowerPoint works. The teacher goes through the book and separates each main idea into as many individual bullet points as humanly possible - each of which will initially be hidden and then displayed on the screen in turn. This encourages the students to pay attention, because instead of just reading the paragraph from the book, they can have the paragraph from the book read to them one line at a time. The reason it's such a popular "teaching tool" (as it has often unsettlingly been called) is because it's so easy to use that even the most incompetent of teachers can figure it out. We won't point any fingers. Knowing how the software's evil influence can bring down even some half-decent teachers, the thought of such a dark energy making its way into the hands of none other than my political science teacher frightened me beyond words. My fears were confirmed just moments later. He managed to get the whole thing set up and plunged right into his slide show. "Congress." He read to us the lone word displayed across the top of the screen. At this point, it was apparently time to reveal one of the hidden bullet points through the act of pushing the mouse button once. He reached down to the mouse and appeared to do just that. We then watched as all of the bullets appeared on the screen in succession, and then the next slide popped up, where the same thing happened. It was like watching the presentation on fast-forward. Finally, just before the seventh slide appeared, he managed to stop this. The slide show, however, was obviously now in the wrong position, so he needed somehow to return to the first slide. He did this, of course, by pressing the "previous" button approximately 42 times, until he had arrived, once again, at the beginning of his presentation. The word "Congress" was displayed across the top of the otherwise blank screen. You can probably guess what happened next. By the end of class, I think we had made it through about half of the planned lecture. It was a tedious process, fast-forwarding through and then backtracking to the right place. But, hey. It's better than vocab. Comments March 24, 2003 Through Adversity Sorry if you'd grown really attached to the patriotic theme, but life must go on. The Oscars. It was the lowest rated Oscars in history. I thought Steve Martin was pretty good from what I saw, although I missed most of the beginning. Dave Barry helped with the writing. Spirited Away got best animated picture. I saw that last Thursday - there was really no contest. It's a great movie; very Alice in Wonderland-like. Chicago took best film; I didn't see that, but I'm sure it's good if you like that kind of stuff. Michael Moore won for Bowling for Columbine. That was also very much expected - as was his response. Of course, the media all seem surprised by Michael Moore's 'acceptance speech.' As if anyone expected anything less from him. The Pianist seemed to be a favorite within the Academy. I should probably see that sometime. Best score went to Elliot Goldenthal for Frida. Whatever. I've only heard clips from it, but I've never been a huge fan of Goldenthal's work. Anyway, none of the scores that I thought were the best this year were even nominated. Head over to the official site for a complete list of winners or nominees. Blogging from Iraq. I thought this was worth passing on. The internet is a truly amazing thing. March 25, 2003 More I present to you my first, and largely unaided, attempt at caricature drawing. I'm done with that for now, so if it's not immediately apparent whose likeness I was attempting to convey, don't expect me to tell you. Michael Moore. A lot of people have been talking about Michael Moore since the Oscars. Anyway, this article has made its way around pretty quickly, and it's the first well-presented negative review I've seen regarding Bowling for Columbine. March 25, 2003 Congratulations A perfect likeness! -Julie March 26, 2003 For anyone who gets SciFi channel: It appears that four episodes of the new Tremors TV series will air this Friday (March 28) at 9:00pm to 1:00am on SciFi channel. If someone with SciFi channel could tape that for me, that'd be really cool. March 26, 2003 Don't try too hard... My second batch of caricatures really don't look like anybody, in my opinion. But it's not like I have anything else to post. If one of them does happen to look like somebody, then great. Make me happy and assume that's the person I was going for. =) I will tell you that everyone I'm drawing now has won an Oscar at some point in his life. There was a forum post the other day challenging people to do caricatures of Oscar winners, and that's what really started this whole thing. That last one was supposed to be Michael Moore, whether or not he is the one who shares a 'perfect likeness' with it. I thought I did a pretty good job of directing your subconscious to that possibility. Also, this time around, I had some help, although I've yet to find a good comprehensive guide to caricature drawing online. I also tried to go with more of a 'clean marker' look this time. March 26, 2003 Trial and error I'm doing something wrong. I'm somewhat happy with just one of those. The others are pretty much complete misses. My last page, for those who are curious, featured Mel Gibson in the upper left, Tom Hanks (supposedly) right next to him, and John Williams down at the bottom with the glasses. March 27, 2003 I've made it easier for you Hit refresh and you'll now see a nice big button leading conveniently to my sketchbook at the top of this page. The third page of caricatures includes Robin Williams in the upper left, Nicholas Cage next to him, and my futile attempts at Sean Connery and Jack Nicholson on the bottom. Now, onto page four!		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