The President's Education Plan

The digital stories were awesome Monday night. I think that Jill had a perfect recap in her blog. I was most impressed by the diversity and character of our cohort. And people continue to surprise me. There is so much that we have to learn about each other! That activity definitely made me feel closer to everyone as a whole. Much better than your run of the mill ice breaking activity.
On another subject- I know Chrisann had mentioned merit-based pay in a previous entry but wanted to poll our cohort as a whole on President Obama's education plan. What do you think of it? If you're not that familiar with it an overview is provided here: http://www.whitehouse.gov/agenda/education/
As many of you already know I'm a die hard democrat and, not suprisingly in support of the President's plan. I think it's time that No Child Left Behind is reformed as I am not a fan of teaching to tests. That doesn't mean that I think accountability should be thrown out the window and this is where I'm torn. How should teachers be evaluated? I don't know that I have the answer because there are so many possibilities, some which I am more fond of than others. I love the POTUS' zero to five plan because education begins way before kindergarten. Also, I think that his support for ELL's will hopefully get implemented and have a big impact in regions like ours.

Random Thoughts....

I have really enjoyed this class and getting to work in the three different technologies. I think that technology can be intimidating so it has been nice to actually work in a wiki, create a digital story and post blogs. It proved to me that I can be technology proficient. Rafe Esquith, an amazing teacher and author of 2 books that I know of on teaching said that teachers need to work through difficult problems first before they can teach them to their students. Many shy away from this because of the time and effort involved. And I think this applies here. I don’t know that I would have jumped into digital storytelling, for example, because it seems so, well, complicated. I mean, something that looks as good as this final product has to be difficult, doesn’t it? Well, no. I feel much more confident in my ability to teach these technologies because I now know that I can do them myself!
I wish that this class was longer and a three credit class. I think technology in the classroom is so important. Kids love it and it is so relevant today. And by the way, if anyone out there knows of a classroom teacher that successfully implemented digital stories in an elementary classroom I would love to hear about it. This is a technology that I definitely am thinking of using myself. Because everyone has a story, most people just need an avenue to tell it through….

Digital Storytelling

While I had reservations with the other two forms of technology that we learned about in our EDCI 546 class, I do not about digital storytelling. These issues, by the way, mainly centered around privacy which I think can be overcome. I think digital storytelling is a great educational tool. As Rachel mentioned in class, she had a group of first graders create digital stories using Photo Story 3. I think that children are a lot more technologically advanced than we sometimes give them credit for. However, besides being fun, what are the educational uses for digital storytelling? Well I like the article’s answer of teaching “twenty-first century literacy.” Digital storytelling teaches children many different types of literacy such as information literacy, visual literacy, global literacy and technology literacy. It also gives children a fairly large project and asks them to implement effective time management. One of the hardest parts of digital storytelling, at least in my experience was creating a good storyline. The craft of digital storytelling teaches kids to be good writers without using the dreaded prompt. The teacher could pick one of the three types of digital stories and assign this to the class or he/she could leave the assignment completely open. One of the reasons that I think digital storytelling is so exciting is because it gives a great deal of autonomy to the learner. Historically this has proven to be educationally effective.
I understand the challenges to digital storytelling such as copyright issues or the amount of time that it takes to create one. These are things that I’ve thought about. Sometimes I wonder how a first year teacher would navigate these things with young children. I think that the teacher has to be very hands on. It definitely helps to have created one yourself. Overall, though I think that digital storytelling could be an exciting and effective educational tool.

wikipedias

I think I may have been bitten by the “wiki” bug because I do enjoy our class page. I like the description of a wiki as a “living organism” as put by the Richardson chapter. Although I still have my reservations. When I taught high school in ’07, I told my seniors that they absolutely could not use wikipedia for research in my International Studies class. First, I felt that they needed to have practice doing research because they were a year away from college and wikipedia was not what I had in mind. I’m sure wikipedia is fairly accurate but I wanted them to at least attempt to use some primary source documents. I like what the chapter had to say when it suggested that a student’s excellent research paper could be added to wikipedia for its content. That I could get into.

I tried to log into a couple of wikis suggested by the chapter. The wiki on Alex Rodriguez impressed me, because even though the language wasn’t “proper” (the author used ferschizzle) it had personality. More importantly, you could tell that the author, a sophomore boy, was passionate about his subject and it got him writing. The planet math wiki seemed like an invaluable resource for teachers. According to Richardson it is “a virtual community which aims to help make mathematical knowledge more accessible.” I think if I were to use wikis in elementary school I would definitely do a password-protected one. There are many options and the ones I liked best were the what-I-did-this-summer wikis, sixth grade wikis, book report and poetry wikis. I could easily imagine an elementary school class doing one of these and getting really excited about it.

Ideas for Literacy Blogs

As I discussed in my last blog, blogging has its place. I still am a proponent of blogging as a way toward full self expression when a student has some other physical/emotional impediment that might detract from the power of her words. However, I believe blogging in grades K-12 needs to take place in a blackboard-like setting, as one of my colleagues mentioned. This way safeguarding is ensured. Blogs are a great way to have a communal response to an article. Newsworthy events can potentially be good fodder for blogs, such as elections.

There are many other opportunities for literacy activities with regards to blogs. For example, any 10 year old girl would love to read “Happy Birthday, Addy!” - a book from the American girl collection. After finishing, the student could type out a journal entry in “Addy’s” diary. Maybe the teacher could direct her to imagine all the things she’ll do now that the Civil war is over and she is free. Another student could piggyback on this first entry and blog more thoughts as a sort of a chain letter. Students could write silly poems and stories on their blog. Or they could focus on learning how to write a Haiku. In the case where they were following the phases of the moon for a science project, the student could document his findings on a blog and compare his findings with his peers.

For the most part I see blogs as a positive educational tool but I do believe we should proceed with caution. I would be weary about putting up pictures of students at all. That’s just me. I would be afraid of potential fallout and the unwanted exposure these kids, whom we are supposed to protect, might get. I guess my phrase with regards is “proceed with caution.”

Thoughts on Penrod Chapter 2

Everyone judges. It is one of the things that I dislike the most about myself. BUT, I believe it is human nature and a big part of it. We make comments about someone’s clothes or something they said. It is ugly but it is true. “Blogging and New Literacies” suggests that there is a way around this. That with blogging the body trap will disappear and students will be known for their mind and voice instead. “For students who find their bodies to be a trap, either because of physical disability, obesity, or adolescence, the ability to separate their voices from their bodies must be a liberating moment,” Penrod argues. I agree that blogging does this but I believe that, to some extent, we all live in a body trap-that these prejudices go beyond the adolescent or emotionally disabled or someone with a physical disability. I argue that there have been prejudices and judgment from time immortal. I see blogging as a way to have a loud and unique voice while remaining free from the judgment one has succumbed to in the past. Penrod suggests that blogging is a literary system of inclusion for many categories of students who have been historically isolated and I agree one hundred percent.

Penrod argues that because blogs are a public forum, instructors, administrators and parents do not have to be “grammar police” – the quality of the blog is guaranteed. It is a smart way to ensure self-education. I cannot remember all the times my little high school students bragged to me about how they duped another college entrance committee with an essay thrown together in one night using big vocabulary words. But a savvy reading populace would not be so easily duped. There are many more checks and balances in play. I look forward to blogging with my class and think that it is definitely the wave of the future.

test post

This is my first test post on my exciting new blog. YAY!