Website Review: What does High School Musical, Welcome Back Kotter & Leave It To Beaver Have in Common? You’d Be Very Surprised-The Website Teachertube.com

When I attended a private catholic school I was kicked out of the class because they said I was a profane little boy. Eventually my brother and I both got kicked out of the school because our grades were so poor. So my folks had to send us back to public school. It was there in the 4^th grade that I met the nicest teacher known as Mrs. Baffa. She sat down with me and shared that I had the potential of being a real smart kid. Thanks to her I saw for the first time the letter A on my report card as opposed to the F & D’s that I was accustomed to seeing.

I have never forgotten my 4^th grade teacher because she believed in me. She was kind, understanding and encouraging. She didn’t have to teach me by rapping out a tune about an academic subject. She was just herself. I began to believe in myself because she believed in me. I bet right now you can recall at least one teacher that cared about you.  

I admit I grew up in the world of Leave It To Beaver; I mean the syndicated reruns as I am not that old. In Beavers classroom you dare not cuss out your teacher and if you did you got swats from the principal’s office. By the way  no longer can kids get any physical punishment handed out by a principal of a school; which I thank God for.  Today Leave It To Beaver is still one of the most successful shows in television syndication. Why? Because the Beaver had a teacher in the show by the name of Mrs. Landers. We all want a teacher like Mrs. Landers. We all want our kids in a classroom where the teacher doesn’t have to carry a gun to protect themselves and where the children really feel loved and appreciated by their teacher. Perhaps my Mrs. Baffa was Mrs. Landers in disguise.

Let’s move past Leave It To Beaver into the teaching room of Welcome Back Kotter; the TV show of the 1975 period. I just introduced the rerun of the show to my teenage daughter and her 12 year old brother. They really love the character of Mr. Kotter the teacher at Buchanan High School and Mr. Woodman the Vice-Principal; and of course the kids who are known as Sweat-Hogs. Why do my kids love this show? Because just like Mrs. Baffa; Gabe Kaplan as Mr. Kotter really loved and cared about the kids. He used humor to deflect the frustration the kids felt and he never assumed that he was always right. He intertwined humor into his teaching and you laughed with him.  He never became one of them; but he knew how each one felt. Except in one episode Mr. Kotter and Vice-Principal Woodman thought the Sweat-Hogs were going to start their own gang and fight another rival high school gang; hence Kotter and Woodman got dressed up as gang members to discourage the Sweat-Hogs from doing any violence. In essence they became one of them; they became Sweat-Hogs. The rival gang member said that Buchanan High School had to be a real tough school to have a teacher in its gang and even the vice-principal; whom they also said was the oldest punk they ever saw.  Again, these television teachers displayed a great love for the kids of Buchanan High.

Now here we are in 2009. We don’t have Mrs. Landers nor Mr. Kotter. Now our kids have Mrs. Darbus who forever is trying to care for and teach Zac Efron and the rest of his friends in the trio of movies known as High School Musical. Funny, the teachers portrayed over the past 5 decades in television have always been the Mrs. Baffa’s of the world. The teachers behind the desk haven’t changed, but the sad fact is the classroom students have changed.   Now instead our kids can swear better, lie better, steal better and kill better; any teacher or student that they want to; and you wonder why some parents opt out for homeschooling. Great and caring teachers are still with us and that leads me to review a awesome website known as Teachertube.com.  

At Teacher Tube.com their goal is to provide an online community for sharing instructional videos. They seek to fill a need for an educationally focused, safe venue for teachers, schools, and home learners. It is a site to provide anytime, anywhere professional development with teachers teaching teachers. As well, it is a site where teachers can post videos designed for students to view in order to learn a concept or skill.

Teacher Tube was the idea of Jason Smith, a 14-year veteran educator. Jason has been a teacher, coach, campus administrator and district administrator in public schools. He asked the question, “Why can’t teachers, students, and schools utilize the power of the read/write web for learning?” To overcome barriers, he decided to just create a site and get started trying to help. He turned to his brother, Adam, who is a younger, digital native, with technical skills. Adam used his skills to develop the site and found a web host. Soon, Jason’s wife, Jodie, joined the team to start populating the site with videos and help improve the communication. She too has 14 years of experience in education as a classroom teacher, campus technology integrator, and district curriculum coordinator. Most importantly, Teacher Tube community members are a major part of the evolution of the site. Members are encouraged to not only upload educationally relevant videos, but also to make constructive comments and use the rating system to show appreciation for videos of value to one as an educator or learner. The service is free for everyone.

In my opinion Teacher Tube is so desperately needed in the United States. Yes, you will see videos of all types of teachers trying to use different methods of conveying their educational styles. Some will teach their subjects in a Rap format and others will use different styles of methods. You can post comments on what you think of each video; and from the comments I read many students truly love what they see on this site. There is one common denominator among all of the videos; they all look, feel and sound like the heart beat of Mrs. Baffa, Mr. Kotter, Mr. Woodman, and Mrs. Darbus. They are trying to care where many parents have not. They are trying to teach because it’s in their hearts to do so. To all of the teachers who cared enough to bring their love and skill to this great website we applaud you. There are many television shows and films about teachers such as “To Sir With Love” to movies like “Stand & Deliver”. This website shows the love of these teachers to make these videos, therefore we want all of the teachers to know that we will stand with you because you are indeed trying to deliver; and Teachertube.com does exactly that; it delivers in a very big way. I know if Mrs. Baffa were alive today she would love Teachertube; in fact she would have been on it. See you next time at my refrigerator; where we can talk about the teachers we all love.

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Imagine listening to the voices of family members on the internet. You can hear their voices with Yodio.

In the USA I have discovered a great website called Yodio. Here you can down load your pictures and then with a phone simply narrate and make any commentary you want on the pictures you took.

First came the tape recorder that was reel to reel, then came the cassette,  then came video cameras but if you really stop and think about it where today can you record just your voice. Try going to any store just to buy a recorder or any device to record your voice. Good luck trying to find such a device. 

My friend in America once told me that he had a large box in his apartment filled with cassettes. On those devices were the recordings of interviews he held with his grandmother before she died. I thought to myself; what a great idea. He made those recordings about 20 years ago. Every so often he pulls the box out to hear his grandmother’s voice.

When was the last time you had a chance to hear the voices of those you lost?  It was once said that the great magician and illusionist Harry Houdini loved his mother. In fact he loved her to death. For weeks after her death, he made almost daily visits to the cemetery, sometimes lying on her grave to speak to her. “My mother was everything to me,” he said in a speech to the Magician’s Club. “It seemed the end of the world when she was taken from me…All desire for fame and fortune had gone from me. I was alone with my bitter agony…” Eventually, Houdini was able to return to work, but he continued to mourn his mother for the rest of his life.

I think Harry Houdini would have paid anything to hear his mother’s voice once again. Funny thing about Americans is that they are so much wanting to find fame and fortune in their own lives that they very people they should be spending time with have long been forgotten. Here in the US you see your cousins, distant cousins and other unknown or less frequently visited relatives either at weddings and if not then at funerals. 

Americans spend about 11 billion in US dollars on funerals, but they have no voices to show for it. Most people are lucky just to have old photos of their departed loved ones.  I once visited a cemetery after Christmas Day. I was shocked to see hundreds of grave sites with fully decorated Christmas trees, presents and all.  Do yourself a big favor, give yourself a present this Christmas and start to record the voice of the ones you love. Where are the simple days of just recording your voice? Sure, you could record your wonderful voice on your cell phone or have someone pull out your video camera and tape you. But, if the truth be told I as a father videotape my kids but no one tapes old dad. So when I pass away my kids will have a stack of DVD’s that show everyone; including our dog, but not me in the picture. That’s because I am the guy behind the camera.  

Yodio is great for downloading your wedding pictures or travel logs and sharing your comments.   The power of their website isn’t about discussing old photos, but it is really giving young and old the power to leave their voices on the web. If you could still hear the voices of your parents or loved ones that are now gone wouldn’t that be awesome. My dad is now gone but I wish I could hear his voice. Now with the advent of the internet and the help of this website you can now do what your parents couldn’t do, leave a voice behind for those you love. Next time you happen to be visiting your parents or grandparents, hand them the phone because now it is one step closer to that old tape recorder, but this time the tape won’t break because it will stay on the internet as long as Yodio can stay on the net.  It is free to record, produce and publish. Until next time see you at the refrigerator, because I keep my phone in the kitchen where I can record and eat at the same time.  Check this website out at www.yodio.com.

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Did you make that yourself? Now get paid for what you make and I am not talking about Ebay.

A few years ago some missionaries in Africa came up with an idea to help women whose husbands had died from the HIV virus. They would have these ladies hand make Christmas cards and then ship them to the United States where they would be sold in retail stores and at churches. Money would then be sent back to these ladies who would then be able to feed and clothe their children. What a wonderful idea!  Rather than just handing money to the poor they have now been taught a life skill that will help them sustain themselves in the harsh world of their homeland.

 Unfortunately, in the United States we treat our poor and homeless children much differently. We give them stamps to buy food, we create food pantries so that they can pick up groceries, and we have homeless shelters where they can sleep at night. But to help them move forward beyond the begging mode, we practically do nothing to stop the downward spiral. In fact did it ever occur to you that homeless people are intelligent!

 Behind every homeless face in this world, there lies a story of someone’s life. Speaking of life, homelessness and death go hand in hand. The average age of death for a homeless person in America can be as low as 41 years. Homeless people often have difficulty in accessing medical care.

Homeless people are socially excluded. We usually don’t speak to a homeless person in America unless it is to jeer at them. Sometimes they can go weeks, months or even years without speaking to a single soul. Most of them would share their food with a stray dog just to have companionship rather than be totally alone in this world. Since few homeless shelters in the U.S. allow pets, is it no wonder that they would rather stay on the streets than in a warm bed. According to the National Alliance to End Homelessness (see the Web site at http://www.endhomelessness.org), there are 600,000 homeless families and 1.35 million homeless children in the U.S. And the diminishing availability of affordable housing accounts as a primary factor casting folks on the curb – literally.

In the 1930’s if you lived on the streets of America they called you a bum. Today we call them the down trodden, the homeless, the unfortunate and the names go on and on. If we simply turn our heads they won’t go away. Maybe a few missionaries in Africa are on to something. In fact maybe the website known as www.madeitmyself.com is really on to something.

Madeitmyself.com allows people to sell what they make. Their current categories include bags, purses, clothing, decorations, jewelry, and woodworks and on and on their list keeps growing. In fact buyers can support their favorite charity by donating thorough their secure website.

Their website is wonderful to work with because it opens the doors to thousands of people who can display the beauty of what their hands can make. Then they in turn can make a living for themselves. It functions somewhat like E-bay because a seller can set a price or negotiate with a buyer; it’s a little like Ebay on training wheels. But what this website does not know is that they may be a source of help to the homeless.

Now just imagine if we could help the homeless worldwide; or just the ones that live in our communities by teaching them how to make things with their hands. All the items made by the homeless could then be sold on the internet via this website.

You don’t have to be homeless to access this website, but it indeed can be used to help the millions of Americans display the works of their hands. When we first bought the Christmas cards that were made in Africa I must admit I felt pretty good knowing that the money went back to the ladies who so desperately needed our funds to feed their kids.

As you are reading this column you and I both know that at one point in our life we have seen the face of a homeless child or an adult. It is like a plague that has swept every country on this ball we call earth. Normally I end my column by saying; see you at the refrigerator. This time I just don’t feel like eating; not when the homeless can’t.  Oh, I will go to the kitchen but this time to admire the small refrigerator magnet made by a woman in Africa.

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Next Time You Do A Garage Sale You May Not Want To Sell Your Old Style Of Clothes-Don’t Think Garage, Think The Internet.

My wife and I were watching an American movie called Father of the Bride. The main actor Steve Martin is trying to adjust to the fact that his little girl is now all grown up and ready to get married. It’s an old movie by today standards but what is fun to watch is his insistence that he can get into the tux he wore when he first got married.  A few years of overeating hasn’t helped much. As the years have gone by Mr. Martin’s waistline expanded and so did mine.  However I just don’t have the heart to throw away the old clothes I once wore when I dated my blushing bride.

If we were really honest with each other I think all of us would like to lose that mid drift someday and once again fit into the clothes of our youth. My wife remembers me dating her wearing my black cowboy boots, tight black jeans and white Polo shirt. Problem is the only thing that fits is my boots and that’s because you never hear people say; oh your feet have put on a few pounds, nor do you ever hear people say to one another; I think his feet look like they have gained a few inches around his toes”.

To feel young again, I put on that old cologne that I use to wear on our dates together. Funny thing about odors; cologne can bring up memories like old out of style clothes you once wore. Now to compensate for the fact that I can’t get into the clothes of my youth I have my wife dye my hair so I wouldn’t look like Snow White or Father Time on a hot summer day.  

That is no different than women who continue to use creams, supplements and plastic surgery to look younger even if they feel they aren’t working. It has been proven that as soon as women begin to succeed in looking younger, their anxiety lessens. But what if you could throw away the creams, supplements, and get rid of your plastic surgeon, and instead wear the clothes you once wore in your younger days. Wow, what a novel idea; looking younger by wearing the clothes of the past from the 1940’s on up. Now you can find those clothes; which leads me to a website that is just awesome. It is called Rustyzipper.com 

Launched in November 1995, RustyZipper.Com was the web’s first vintage clothing store. In the past 14 years, they have outgrown the spare closet & now have a 5,500 sq foot warehouse full of amazing stuff. They have thousands (over 23,000 at last count) of one-of-a-kind vintage clothing items from the 1940’s through 1980’s, all available to view & order online. They also have a sister site known as Kingpoodle.com which has more than 5,000 vintage items from the ’40s through the ’80s,  which features discount vintage clothing — nothing over $10 — from the same eras. Both are the brainchildren of clothing collectors who decided to channel their passion into virtual stores.

Maybe the fountain of youth lies in your bedroom closet and while you are waiting to lose those extra inches you can stroll down memory lane into a time tunnel of years that Rustyzipper can take you to. Enjoy the visit to their websites and you just might be singing Zippity do da, Zippity Day. You know all of this talk about weight and clothes has made me hungry. See you at the refrigerator and remind me to get some mothballs at the store, I wouldn’t want moths to eat all of my clothes from my youthful past.

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Television & Obesity-There is a great connection but it leads to a slow death

 Just recently my wife and kids started to watch the Food Network Channel in the United States.  On this network you can watch any self proclaimed chef indulge him or herself on any food you desire to see. The problem is you start to get hungry after you start to watch shows on that network. They talk about food as though it was an art. In fact in most of the shows they broadcast you come away thinking preparing food is really fun. However, there is an old saying in America; do you eat to live or do you live to eat. It doesn’t take but 10 minutes after watching any show on this network to figure out which slogan of the two Americans cling to. What clings to most Americans is fat. I know this to be true because I was obese for years. Obesity is so rampant in the United States that we have supersized not only our candy bars but entire meals.

How obese is America? The latest numbers are 58 million Americans are overweight; 40 million are obese; 3 million morbidly obese. By the way morbid obesity is a step closer to the grim reaper. Only 26 percent of U.S. adults engage in vigorous leisure-time physical activity three or more times per week.  About 59 percent of adults do no vigorous physical activity at all in their leisure time.

In the United States one of the most successful television programs dealing with cooking first started with Graham Kerr, better known as the Galloping Gourmet.  Mr. Kerr didn’t have the elaborate kitchens or any rock band performing on his show or any food challenge network.  He didn’t have any competition to outdo another chef nor did he step into Hell’s Kitchen to make other peoples life miserable. What made him interesting to watch was that he loved food and he loved the people in his audience.  More importantly his desire was to teach you how to cook; and how to cook for the people you loved, not how to love food, and therein lies the difference from his show and the cooking shows we see today.

In America if you want to see the ramifications of our food obsessions then our wonderful television networks came up with a show called “The Biggest Loser”.  Now you can sit in front of your TV like a couch potato and see the most obese people you will ever see in your life struggling to lose weight and win a huge sum of money.  Obesity has now become a form of entertainment in the United States disguised in the form of a TV show that is designed to help these people wean off of the Food Channel and whatever ever else they watch. We have forgotten that there is one thing obesity does do to people; it kills them. I guess people can bury themselves with a fork. My kids love the show because they say it encourages them to stay trim and to keep the weight off so you won’t look like “those people”. Then with a flick of the TV remote control they like all other Americans are back to watching  the Food Network Channel where they beg me to make the recipes they see on their favorite TV programs from that channel.  Funny thing is you won’t see reruns of “The Biggest Loser” on the Food Network Channel”. I wonder why!

What is now worse is parents have now passed the food baton to their children. Now are kids are becoming obese and some morbid obese. The percentage of overweight children, ages 6-11 has nearly doubled since the early 1980’s. To tackle this problem ABC Television ran a show a few years ago known as Shaq’s Big Challenge. It stared the great basketball player known as Shaquille O’Neal. What I loved about this program was it followed the life of many morbid obese children whom Shaq seriously wanted to help. It showed what no program has ever shown in the US and that is the hard reality that losing weight is tough and kids need our help. The show lasted only one season. Even its website no longer is operating and it was a great website to help families with their weight problems which leads me to review a website known as GroupReceipies.com. Here comes another American website to glorify food.

On this site you can have a social like connection with people who share their recipes and stories about their lives. In fact the website states Group Recipes wants to be the world’s neatest food site, from meeting other food lovers to nifty recipe predictions and taste compatibility.

This website is awesome from its functionality to the way it is designed to the great social connection it plays off of food; but there lies the problem again. It uses the term “Food Lovers”. In fact people on the site are described as “Foodies”.

Funny thing though, the more I looked at the site I really didn’t see too many pictures of Foodies. In fact most Foodies used other images or odd designs rather than photos of themselves.  I wonder why!  Well time to go. Writing about food has now made me hungry. Until next time see you at the refrigerator.

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It’s All Greek To Me-A Family Story You Won’t Forget

In the United States words mean everything. Especially when it comes time to getting help with computer problems. I have a well known brand name computer. When I make a phone call on their customer service line I am immediately swept away overseas to a customer service representative in India who has a hard time understanding what I am trying to tell them in English. Of course the computer manufacturer has a solution for me. If you want to talk to an American in the United States feel free to pay an additional sum of money and they will transport my next phone call to someone in California to help me. Sounds like we have created what I call verbal prejudice. Of course the computer firm never says that the benefit of talking to someone in the US is due to an English language benefit; instead they say it is a benefit to you because they are American trained technicians. Yeah, who are they trying to kid. 

 But what happens to those so called foreigners who can’t speak a word of English when they land in the United States. Well I had a grandmother who landed in the USA literally off of a boat from Greece when she came to America in 1923. She came into the US speaking Greek and she died speaking Greek. There is an old saying in the United States that if someone says something that is incomprehensible, then we say the term “It’s all Greek to me”.   I wonder why we never say “It’s all Italian to me or “It’s all Spanish or Russian or Chinese to me”.  Go figure!    Well, I could never understand a word my Grandmother said while she was yelling at me in Greek. However, I did understand her body language and yet that language is understood in all countries of the world.

My first encounter with her temper and her body language was when she wanted to bake me a batch of cookies. What she did not know was that I hid my kitty cat named Frisky in the oven so she wouldn’t see that I had a cat in the house.  Right before she started to put the oven on I opened the oven door, grabbed Frisky and off we both ran.  Oh, she still made me cookies, but I can still hear her yelling in Greek at me when Frisky and I ran for our lives. I’m sure those Greek words today could not be printed in this article.

I had the opportunity to practice my own version of verbal prejudice by pretending that I didn’t understand her. For example when she handed me a broom to sweep the living room I just pretended that I didn’t understand her so I would just shrug my shoulders and hand her back the broom.  But she wasn’t stupid, she knew that an object in her hand meant something for me to do.  You should have seen my grandmother chase me with the broom. It is incredible what people will do with inanimate objects to move you along when you pretend that you don’t understand their words.  I think my grandmother should have entered the Olympic Games for the broom hockey sport. She would have won the gold medal in a heartbeat.  

Looking back no one ever cared to teach her English.  As I write to my pen pal friends overseas often they will apologize to me about their English in their writings. What is sad is that the Americans should be the ones apologizing about the use of our poor grammar. If you type in the words “Poor Grammar” on the Google search engine you will get 235 thousand hits. Gee, I wonder why!!

 Well, I have great news for those who want to learn the English language. I’m sorry my dear grandmother wasn’t alive during the days of the internet. She could have gotten the help she needed from an awesome website known as www.Wordahead.com.

Wordahead.com is a promising new service offering more than 500 videos and 66 thousand words designed to help students learn better vocabulary. The website is totally free to use. The website appears to have been developed to help kids get a higher score on their SAT exams. An SAT is a test that a student must take if they want to go to college. Failure to get a high grade on the SAT can result in a student not being able to go to the college of their choice.

Each video that the website has reflects a narrator pronouncing each word. Then the voice reads the definition and uses the word in a sentence.  An animated drawing accompanies each sentence to illustrate the meaning of each word and sentence. You can watch the Word Ahead videos individually or in a continuous stream.  You can view all of the Word Ahead videos directly from their website and you can also embed the Word Ahead widget into your blog or website.

Before Americans critize the next person’s accent or vocabulary on the phone, I suggest that they test their own vocabulary of words on this website. People will become humbled very quickly as to how much you they don’t know about the English language. In fact they might say “It’s All Greek” to them. All this Greek stuff is making me hungry for some Baklava. Until next time see you at the refrigerator and oh by the way don’t mind the broom next to the freezer.  I welcome your comments-Please write me at  uniquewebsitereviews@yahoo.com