I created a website using iWeb on campus, but for some reason I couldn’t get it on the server. So, I created a back-up site in case I couldn’t get mine to work next class again. After I made this back-up site, I realized I like it better than the original one and this is the one I want to use as my class website. I used google page creator, which worked quite well for me. Here’s the link for my site:
Here is the information packet for Sofia and my video project!
I was really surprised by the article on SecondLife. We’ve been talking and reading about it so much, so I’m not sure I was surprised by the practical methods in which relatively local colleges are using it. Everything seems a little more real when it’s places that you have actually really know of or have actually attended than random schools across the country. I have to admit that when I read about Parkies using it at Ithaca College, I was most intrigued. It’s strange that something like SecondLife is in use there now (only four years after I graduated from there). I can’t imagine using a program like that while I was an undergrad, and it just goes to show how quickly things are moving and changing around us, whether we’re paying attention or not. I think it’s safe to say that I’m paying attention now! It seems as though practical classroom applications of virtual worlds are becoming more and more widespread!
That was a pretty interesting video. There were some good points made and the comedy format made it seem easier to accept without too much over-thinking. I was especially struck by the story of the dancer, who would probably be medicated today. That’s kind of a scary thought. Is this the what is happening in school? That woman’s life would definitely been different if she wasn’t enrolled in a dance school. What can we do for kids today to help them become as successful as this woman?
I also thought about how people consider the most important subjects in school the ones that will help students get careers and be successful. It seems as though the skills and content that has always been considered what is needed may not be so crucial anymore. Creativity, that is not so present in school’s curriculum all the time, may be exactly what kids need to actually be interesting, educated, successful people. Just as both Pink and Friedman support in their book, creativity is key to thriving in the world we are in right now. We need to find ways to keep it in the ELA classroom!
I found this article on USA Todayand found it pretty interesting. Montclair State University is making it mandatory for all students to purchase a cell phone through the college, paying $210 for it each semester. Each phone has a GPS tracking device and a timer than can be set on it. That way, when students are walking around after dark, they can set the alarm for a certain time period. They turn it off when their home or wherever there destination is. If the alarm isn’t turned off, campus safety gets the location of the student. I can remember doing some late night walking in college, and I wouldn’t have minded having a nice little safety feature with me.
Many other people on campus would also like to use the phones for classroom purposes too. If all students have the same exact phone with the same capabilities, one of which is unlimited text messaging, there are probably quite a few educational values. Students can also access campus email on the phone, which could be quite useful for an entire campus. I wonder how many other colleges will jump on this idea and require specific cell phones of their own.
My school has a food drive for CHOW every year. It’s this big competition between teams, and the kids get very into it. One of the teachers at school sent us a link he heard about on the radio that the food drive made him think about. If you go to this site, you will be quizzed on vocab. For every correct answer you get, the sponsors on the site donate 20 grains of rice to UN food aid programs.
I went the site out today, tested myself on some vocab (I’m not going to lie, some of the words were challenging!), and checked out the information. If you check out the site make sure to look at the “Totals” page. It’s amazing to see how much the totals of rice have jumped each day. It looks as though the word has spread around and more people are taking a few minutes to help donate food to others.
The advertisers seem to be getting a pretty good deal too. Each time I clicked on one of the words, I’m checking at the bottom to see who is donating the little bit of rice. Seems like good advertising to me!
As with much of the other reading we have done this semester, these two articles support the need to change our ELA curriculum and both give specific reasons as to how this can be done. As Doering, Beach, and O’Brien state ELA teachers cannot ignore the changes in the way kids communicate with one another, such as with MySpace and IM. This is the world they live in, and this is how we can reach them educationally. Miller supports this statement as she discusses the changes in literacy to include non-print text and the social forms of literacy. Not only is this how they will respond, it is also what they need to learn about because it is what they are already immersed in.
As teachers we need not only be aware of the technology tools that our students are using in their everyday life, but also use them as a part of out curriculum. Both articles describe the multimodality nature of the world kids live in. We have to use this to teach our students. Doering, Beach, and O’Brien state, “The shift to active use of multimodal, interactive Web 2.0 tools suggest the need to redefine notions of reading, composing, and performing processes to infuse digital literacies that students use daily into English language arts curriculum,” (42). We need to tap into what the kids are doing and figure out what they are interested in and create a educational and challenging manner in which to use it in class. Miller mentions the idea of “teachers first” meaning that new teachers (I would think it should actually mean any teachers) need to learn how to use the technology their students are using and that they want to use in their classroom by creating and designing themselves. I agree with this. Teachers need to be learning and using all different kinds of “texts” that are popping up everywhere. The best way to decide how to use these tools is by experimenting. Teachers need to be “playing” to learn and need to try out the different forms of communication around them, like digital videos.
As with so many other reading (I’m specifically thinking Hobbs now), these articles describe the way in which many new tools need to be understood and incorporated in the ELA classroom. Each article stresses the importance of students mixing texts such as “images, video, music, and print text,” (43). Both students and teachers need to know how to create using by mixing these texts and analyze and critique texts that are already mixed in this manner.
I have been spending a lot of time on projects this week. I have my WebQuest (that I’ll be presenting tomorrow) put together, but I keep going back and changing different pieces of it. I really like that it’s easy to change and that I keep finding pieces that I want to replace others with. This appeals to me because I can easily alter different tasks or the content as I see how my kids do completing it. I know that it will be easy to change if my kids aren’t responding to certain pieces or if I want to add more to it. I was also telling one of the other teachers that I frequently swap materials with about what I’ve been working on, and she is interested in checking it out to see if it’s something she can use with her kids too. I was pretty excited about that! The link to my WebQuest is http://www.freewebs.com/katefrazer/.
Sofia and I finished our video this week and she’s coming to class tomorrow so we can present it to my class. They have just finished writing their research papers, which is where they are going to get the topic and some of the information for their own videos. I told them we would be having a guest and a new and exciting assignment tomorrow. They were pretty excited-they love having guests in the classroom! I am eager to hear their feedback on our video because they tend to be quite honest and share what they really think. I think we’re doing pretty well on this project.
I always find it interesting to look at the products that other people think would be ideal to have. Usually (as in the case with the Wired products) they’re nothing that I would ever put at on a list of things I wanted. But it’s not like I wouldn’t take the stuff if someone gave it to me… However, I thought it was pretty funny that the list consisted of high-tech gadgets and other fancy expensive items, and a slinky. I think that just shows us that while there are all these great new things coming out, we still love and can use those old things. The slinky was number one on the list too! This is just telling me that while we need to keep updating and changing to meet the times in all of the different things we do, we can’t just give up and forget everything that came before!
Geekipedia is pretty entertaining. The content was pretty interesting. I especially liked the smackdown entries where they compared two people, companies, things, etc. in different rounds. I found myself browsing through to find more of those. I’m not sure why-there was just something catchy about them. After looking through the different entries, there were definitely more that I didn’t know than I did. This didn’t surprise me too much, but I did recognize or actually know what more of the terms because we have used them/talked about them in class this semester. Knowing some of these terms, or at least recognizing others made me more interested in reading about the terms I didn’t know. It seems the more exposed and informed I am about technology, the more I want to keep learning about it.
I’m not so sure what this means for out teaching lives. I don’t actually know how I would use this with students; I can’t seem to come up with a plan for that. I do think that it could help me understand some of the new tech things my kids are familiar with that I am not. A few of the entries I noticed were things I’d heard my kids talk about, but I had never figured out what they were. This could be helpful for things like that. It takes a lot of knowledge to keep what with kids and the technology they are using.
One thing I particularly liked about the geekipedia were the visuals that many entries had. I liked the pictures and the videos that were right there with an explanation. I guess I’m just like many kids: I want to look at pictures instead of just reading.
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