Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley August 19, 2006 Wanting to Share Visalia: Our Wiki Entry Nobody seems to know how to say “Visalia” or “Tulare” when I travel. I explain where I am from by mentioning Fresno and Bakersfield, but it turns out most people have no real understanding of where those cities are, either. “How close are you to Los Angeles or San Francisco?” people asked me at the “Computers and Writing” conference in Lubbock. The intention of the gathering was to share ways to better include technology in meaningful classroom assignments, so I turned on my laptop and headed for some familiar Web sites. “It’s surrounded by farmland,” I tried to explain. “And on a clear day, you can see the Sierras.” I turned to Google Earth to show satellite images of farmland. That still didn’t do the trick. The Texans wanted more information if I was going to claim some place in California was anything like Lubbock. “Just show me the entry on Wiki,” a Texas Tech professor suggested. ...
technology • teaching • writing