Author Archives: Julie Dodd

Not only no screen savers but no screens in this one-room school house

This is the view from the back of Greenbrier School. You can see this is “back to basics” in its true sense — wooden benches and slant-top desks and windows for temperature control.

How the blackboard got its name

The original blackboard was just that — boards painted black. Writing could be done with chalk and wiped off or washed off. In education’s current enthusiasm for video prjectio units and PowerPoint, we need to remember that the blackboard approach to teaching can allow for more interaction with the class and more spontaneity for the […]

Greenbrier School in the Great Smoky Mountains

The large photo is the class of 1909. Quite the age range. I trust they dressed for the photo and didn’t regularly dress like that — for hiking to school and sitting in what would be a very warm building for some months of the year. The water fountain was a bucket with a gourd […]

On log vs. log on

This is one of the trails children hiked daily to reach Greenbeier School in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. No school buses in the 1900s so some students walked 13 miles every day. No state-mandated physical ed class would be needed to promote personal fitness.

A telling camera angle

The TV interview with the exposing/exposed high school student and her mom illustrates how camera angle helps tell the story. If the whole interview had been close-up shots of just their faces, that would give a different impression than what we get through the medium shot of daughter and mom on the sofa. They’re longer […]

Short shorts wearers discuss short skirt photo

Short shorts discussion of short skirt So the television crew is coming to the home for an interview about the outrage over the revealing photo in the yearbook. Note what both the daughter and mother have selected to wear for this photo — shorts, very short shorts.

Short skirt situation in the headlines

Short skirt situation in the headlines The short skirt wouldn’t have made the headlines if not for the absence of underwear. As reported by Tampa’s Channel 10, a junior at Sickles High School in Tampa and the student’s mother are angered that the yearbook includes a photo of the girl that may be exposing her. […]

Another short dress story

About an hour before lab started several weeks ago, one of my students was sitting on a sofa in a lobby area and reading the course textbook. (A good activity for a teacher to see.) So I sat down with her and asked about her semester and how it was going in our class. She’s […]

Dress for success?

A friend and I were eating and noticed out the window on the patio when a group of four arrived, as each had a small dog. They worked on getting the dogs’ leashes teethered to the patio furniture. One of the four was in a very, very short sundress. This photo gives the general idea, […]

Blogging about on-the-job experience

Ilana Slott hoped I could help her solve a problem. She had just finished MMC 2100 last spring (2008) and had been offered an internship at News 12 in Long Island. That was near home for her so she could live with her parents for the summer. She’d be able to gain that important cross-platform […]