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Privacy
A WebQuest for 12th Grade English
Designed by
Tyler Estabrook
We
live in an increasingly public world. The line between what is public and
what is private continually gets blurred. In response to this, in the
following WebQuest, you will work to develop your own definition of privacy
and apply that newfound to the first two chapters of 1984.
So, what is privacy?
TSWBAT develop their own
definition of privacy in a short paragraph.
TSWBAT apply their definition of
privacy to the first two chapters of 1984
in another short paragraph.
Your
task is to develop your own personal definition of privacy. In order to do
that, use the Web to compile as much information as you can about privacy.
You will be dissecting real world examples of privacy policies in order to
develop and support your definition. From here, you will apply your
definition to what you have read so far in 1984.
1.
Before
you begin, complete a two minute quick write in which you describe in detail
how you personally define privacy. I will lead you in this part of the
process.
2.
Now that
you have formed a rough, uninformed definition, take a look at a few
dictionary definitions of privacy. Take notes on what you learn.
OED Definitions of “Privacy”: http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/151596?redirectedFrom=privacy#eid
Definition:
3.
Now, dive into the following real world
examples of privacy policies that I have compiled for you. As you read, take
careful notes. These notes will be source material that you will use to write
up your definition at the end of class.
Government Description of Patriot
Act:
TSA Pat-Downs:
Facebook Privacy Statement:
Twitter Privacy Statement:
YouTube Privacy Statement:
4.
With
your new list of information compiled from the websites, write up a thorough
definition of what you define as privacy. This should be a broad, in-depth
definition that addresses things such as privacy at home, when traveling, and
on the internet. Cite specific examples from the sites you explored.
5.
Let’s
take it one step further. Apply your definition to Winston’s world. While Big
Brother looks on, determine what parts of your privacy definition are being
violated in 1984. Cite specific
examples from the text.
6.
Both
your definition and your application to 1984
will be included in one document.
Date Created: Oct
29, 2013 08:26 am (CDT)
Well
Done! Keep your definition of privacy in mind as we explore 1984 in more detail over the next few
weeks. This will be central to your understanding of this novel. Also, think
about your definition as you go about your day. See if Big Brother is
watching you!
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Wednesday, October 30, 2013
Privacy WebQuest
Saturday, April 13, 2013
It Takes a Village... Or, At Least, a Teacher's Lounge
This topic might not be earth-shattering or life changing, but I'd like to bring the topic of collaboration to the forefront for a moment. By reading through all of these blogs and listening to the many brilliant things by classmates say in and out of class, I've realized just how much you can learn with and from your colleagues. The collective English department, the teacher's for a certain grade, or even just the teachers that all have lunch at the same time can be a huge help to one another. I simply hope to be able to lean on my colleagues for help, ideas, and to learn from as well as, hopefully, to be able to provide the same for them. In the meantime, I'm aiming to recreate that type of atmosphere here at school. This group mentality, I fervently believe, will help each of us become better teachers and, in turn, help each of our students.
Drawing is Scary
Broz's article on graphic representations of literature brought out my skeptical side. I began reading through all of Broz's high praise of graphic representations and how he still cherishes his crayon drawing of Gawain the Green Knight. That seemed great for him, but I couldn't help but think, "Hey, what about the kids who cringe at the idea of drawing for an assignment?". Those would be the students like me. I know that at the heart of all the explorations into multimodality the idea is to help kids who do not learn via oral and written word as well as through other means. Though this is not the only intent of multimodality, it still seems to push the subject of English a bit farther out of the hands of those geared towards traditional means of learning the subject. I never want to isolate any student and I fear that things like graphic representations, which would instantly turn me off of an assignment, might do that for some students.
Now, this is not to say that I dislike the idea of graphic representations or multimodality. Graphic representations, when given such a strong structure, such as Broz describes, that aims students towards higher level thinking and towards better critical thinking and writing skills, are great tools. Also, multimodality has opened my eyes to a whole new and exciting world of teaching as well as confirmed many of my own aspirations. My lurking fear though still exists. I feel that the solution, though not the easy or quick one, is to offer multiple options for students or to leave room for personalization and interpretation with assignments of this nature. Multimodal assignments such as graphic representations can be great for some students, I just never want it to be the kryptonite for other students. The bottom line is well-planned teaching is very important in order to design assignments that persuade students to think and work hard rather than dissuade them.
Now, this is not to say that I dislike the idea of graphic representations or multimodality. Graphic representations, when given such a strong structure, such as Broz describes, that aims students towards higher level thinking and towards better critical thinking and writing skills, are great tools. Also, multimodality has opened my eyes to a whole new and exciting world of teaching as well as confirmed many of my own aspirations. My lurking fear though still exists. I feel that the solution, though not the easy or quick one, is to offer multiple options for students or to leave room for personalization and interpretation with assignments of this nature. Multimodal assignments such as graphic representations can be great for some students, I just never want it to be the kryptonite for other students. The bottom line is well-planned teaching is very important in order to design assignments that persuade students to think and work hard rather than dissuade them.
Friday, April 5, 2013
Hand Wavers Anonymous
Prior to shooting our 20 shot video, I was skeptical. I could come up with a good 2 million places I'd rather be than on the recording end of a camera. My group members Tim and Sami were kind enough to step up and be our actors (a role that they both excelled at despite what they'd tell you) leaving me to be on the other side of the camera. Though I claim to have no tangible skills with a camera, I thoroughly enjoyed it.
The project opened by eyes to another medium I was waving my hands at. It made me really visually dissect the mental pictures the short story made in my head. In order to do this, I had to read and fully comprehend the story. This is always step one of any reading project. Moving on from that, a project should make you think about and better understand the message and tone of a piece. This project did this particularly well. We weren't going to simply capture the plot of the piece when we had be armed with the knowledge of different types of shots, angles, and camera motions. This information is what made the project. I have participated in other video projects where all we did, more or less, was set the camera up on a tripod, hit record, acted the scene out, hit end, and turned the thing in. This barely even grazes the surface potential of a short story. If I can give my students these basic ideas on cinematography, a video project can actually teach interpretation skills rather than simply allowing students to act.
Besides this benefit, I've noticed through talking to others who have completed similar projects that these projects are memorable. You don't put hours into a five minute video and just forget about. I think if I can assign a project that will instill knowledge in my students that they won't forget, I may just be convinced to stop waving my hands at projects that move away from simply paper, pencil, and a marker or two.
The project opened by eyes to another medium I was waving my hands at. It made me really visually dissect the mental pictures the short story made in my head. In order to do this, I had to read and fully comprehend the story. This is always step one of any reading project. Moving on from that, a project should make you think about and better understand the message and tone of a piece. This project did this particularly well. We weren't going to simply capture the plot of the piece when we had be armed with the knowledge of different types of shots, angles, and camera motions. This information is what made the project. I have participated in other video projects where all we did, more or less, was set the camera up on a tripod, hit record, acted the scene out, hit end, and turned the thing in. This barely even grazes the surface potential of a short story. If I can give my students these basic ideas on cinematography, a video project can actually teach interpretation skills rather than simply allowing students to act.
Besides this benefit, I've noticed through talking to others who have completed similar projects that these projects are memorable. You don't put hours into a five minute video and just forget about. I think if I can assign a project that will instill knowledge in my students that they won't forget, I may just be convinced to stop waving my hands at projects that move away from simply paper, pencil, and a marker or two.
Big Kid Picture Books
According to every movie about a teenager I've ever seen, I should have had a sizeable stack of comic books hidden under my bed at some point during my life. Apparently, I don't live in a movie, though. My first and only exposure to the medium of graphic novels and comic books came during my World Literature course last year. I must admit that when I first ordered the graphic novels, I scoffed at the fact that I would be reading books with pictures and getting college credits for it. When I got off my literary high horse and finally dove into them, though, I found out these were much more than the big kid picture books that I thought they were.
These graphic novels were challenging. It wasn't as if someone had written a short story, sprinkled some cartoony pictures on top, and spread it out to a full length novel. They had long, detailed, symbolically-rich, plots and messages. I thought that they'd be watered down novels that used pictures to help those with weak imaginations and grasps on the language, but, wow, was I wrong. I actually had a lot more trouble working out the symbolism and messages of a graphic novel than I've had with print-based novels.
With this experience in mind, when I read the section of Jacquelyn McTaggart's "Graphic Novels: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" entitled "I Understand the Value of Using Graphic Novels With Reluctant and Struggling Readers. Do They Offer Any Benefit for Proficient Readers Who Already Like to Read?," I agreed completely with the author. She says that "[a]dvanced and proficient readers profit [from] ... [t]his multi-sensory activity [which] stirs the imaginations of more advanced readers and challenges them to use their higher-level thinking, reading, and writing skills (McTaggart 34). The visuals aren't things that detract from the novel and simply the reading for advanced and proficient readers. They add more to them. The visuals can be engaging and imagination stirring, but they can also be an added level for interpretation. That is what I think we so often miss when we think about graphic novels. They make the reader engage on so many different levels in order to truly take them all in. This is were the value for them comes in for the classroom.
So, let's step down from our literary high horses and give these big kid picture books a chance.
These graphic novels were challenging. It wasn't as if someone had written a short story, sprinkled some cartoony pictures on top, and spread it out to a full length novel. They had long, detailed, symbolically-rich, plots and messages. I thought that they'd be watered down novels that used pictures to help those with weak imaginations and grasps on the language, but, wow, was I wrong. I actually had a lot more trouble working out the symbolism and messages of a graphic novel than I've had with print-based novels.
With this experience in mind, when I read the section of Jacquelyn McTaggart's "Graphic Novels: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" entitled "I Understand the Value of Using Graphic Novels With Reluctant and Struggling Readers. Do They Offer Any Benefit for Proficient Readers Who Already Like to Read?," I agreed completely with the author. She says that "[a]dvanced and proficient readers profit [from] ... [t]his multi-sensory activity [which] stirs the imaginations of more advanced readers and challenges them to use their higher-level thinking, reading, and writing skills (McTaggart 34). The visuals aren't things that detract from the novel and simply the reading for advanced and proficient readers. They add more to them. The visuals can be engaging and imagination stirring, but they can also be an added level for interpretation. That is what I think we so often miss when we think about graphic novels. They make the reader engage on so many different levels in order to truly take them all in. This is were the value for them comes in for the classroom.
So, let's step down from our literary high horses and give these big kid picture books a chance.
Saturday, March 16, 2013
Daily Writings
Last semester, I observed an eighth grade English teacher who implemented what he called Daily Writings into his daily curriculum. I really liked the idea of them and wanted to share the idea as well as expand upon them a bit. The idea of a daily writing was to have students write for a solid five minutes every single day before the lesson began and then students were encouraged to share their pieces if they chose to. Students were allowed to opt out of sharing if they felt their piece was too personal or otherwise chose not to want to share it. The inspiration for the writings were usually a short prompt, written or oral, or sometimes merely a single word. Students could respond to the prompt as best as they could, or, if they prompt did not move them or they had a more pressing topic in mind that they wished to write on, they could write on another topic.
The idea of Daily Writings were to get students more comfortable with writing and doing so with less restraint. This proved to work well. Student pieces grew lengthier and more detailed as the year progressed. Also, it encouraged students to make writing a public, interactive art. As the year progressed, more and more students chose to read their writings aloud to the class.
I really liked this idea, as I said before. I loved the results of it. It made writing a regular, important part of every single class and made students comfortable and confident in sharing what they had to say via writing. I, also, see more potential with the prompts for these writings. Since these writings are so freely open, I see them being a good opener for teaching different styles of writing. For example, before a lesson on persuasive writing the prompt for a Daily Writing could be something on the lines of "Write a sales pitch for an imaginary product." The prompt could also be a picture, short video clip, or music. Daily Writings have so much potential.
The idea of Daily Writings were to get students more comfortable with writing and doing so with less restraint. This proved to work well. Student pieces grew lengthier and more detailed as the year progressed. Also, it encouraged students to make writing a public, interactive art. As the year progressed, more and more students chose to read their writings aloud to the class.
I really liked this idea, as I said before. I loved the results of it. It made writing a regular, important part of every single class and made students comfortable and confident in sharing what they had to say via writing. I, also, see more potential with the prompts for these writings. Since these writings are so freely open, I see them being a good opener for teaching different styles of writing. For example, before a lesson on persuasive writing the prompt for a Daily Writing could be something on the lines of "Write a sales pitch for an imaginary product." The prompt could also be a picture, short video clip, or music. Daily Writings have so much potential.
Active Reading
I recently read Geof''s post on close reading skills and video production, and this spurred me to expand on my own ideas surrounding close and active reading.
I think students have such difficulty with reading closely with a text because they believe that reading involves solely reading the words on the page. They pick up the reading, read it front to back, put it down, and expect to be able to answer any question thrown at them. This is such a flawed view of reading. Reading needs to be an active experience not a passive one. I know that a lot of the methods for active reading involve marking up a text and this makes school districts cringe over the "defacing" of their pricey textbooks, but there are ways around this. A method I plan on using in my classroom is employing the use of many, many post-it notes. At first, I want to make it an assignment to make so many notes on the post-its or write down so many important lines that you would highlight if it was a text you owned, etc. as my students read a text. My hope is that this will eventually become a happen and less strict measures will be needed to be taken to ensure that students interact with the text as they read it. I see this being really helpful to high school students. It teaches a skill that will definitely help them to better digest a text, more intelligently discuss it, and perform better on test, including the standardized texts Geof mentions that require close reading skills.
As always, I'd appreciate any other ideas for active reading activites or criticism on the one I proposed.
I think students have such difficulty with reading closely with a text because they believe that reading involves solely reading the words on the page. They pick up the reading, read it front to back, put it down, and expect to be able to answer any question thrown at them. This is such a flawed view of reading. Reading needs to be an active experience not a passive one. I know that a lot of the methods for active reading involve marking up a text and this makes school districts cringe over the "defacing" of their pricey textbooks, but there are ways around this. A method I plan on using in my classroom is employing the use of many, many post-it notes. At first, I want to make it an assignment to make so many notes on the post-its or write down so many important lines that you would highlight if it was a text you owned, etc. as my students read a text. My hope is that this will eventually become a happen and less strict measures will be needed to be taken to ensure that students interact with the text as they read it. I see this being really helpful to high school students. It teaches a skill that will definitely help them to better digest a text, more intelligently discuss it, and perform better on test, including the standardized texts Geof mentions that require close reading skills.
As always, I'd appreciate any other ideas for active reading activites or criticism on the one I proposed.
Friday, March 8, 2013
Video: Foundations and Acceptable Genres
This week's readings took a multifaceted look at the complicated medium of video. David L. Bruce's article in Miller and McVee's text was really interesting in the fact that it gave me some very basic knowledge of how video actually works. Bruce calls this the "grammar of video". As with the grammar of a language, you have to understand it in order to be successful in intaking or producting a video in the best way possible. This brief introduction s very helpful to me. As a wrote last week, I'd like to incorporate a movie/video project in my classroom if I get the chance in the future, but without understanding simple things like the names for different shots, I now realize just how unprepared I'd be for doing this. I really look forwarding to learning more about the langauge of film in class this week. That will help me do a much better job on my proposed video project.
After this quick debriefing by Bruce's article, I moved on to get an interesting contradictory message in Lund's article. Though Lund pushed for how valuable video production could be in the classroom, he says that "students typically suggest projects that imitate their favorite television shows: MTV music videos, violent car chases, or Beavis and Butt-Head humor. While respecting students' desire for ownership of the project, the teacher must tactfully guide them into more acceptable genres" (Lund 79, italics not original). This statement made me cringe. I'd love to see students turn The Great Gatsby into an MTV music video or The Catcher in the Rye into a Beavis and Butt-Head style comedy. I think the solution is not to stifle the creativity you are originally trying to work out of students, but instead to help them channel it. Suggestions are a great idea, but the idea of acceptable genres reminds me too much of all the things that turned me off of multimodal assignments when I was in high school. Guidelines, specific requirements, and a check-with-me first policy should allow students to be creative without producing a video that doesn't achieve what you aimed for them to achieve.
After this quick debriefing by Bruce's article, I moved on to get an interesting contradictory message in Lund's article. Though Lund pushed for how valuable video production could be in the classroom, he says that "students typically suggest projects that imitate their favorite television shows: MTV music videos, violent car chases, or Beavis and Butt-Head humor. While respecting students' desire for ownership of the project, the teacher must tactfully guide them into more acceptable genres" (Lund 79, italics not original). This statement made me cringe. I'd love to see students turn The Great Gatsby into an MTV music video or The Catcher in the Rye into a Beavis and Butt-Head style comedy. I think the solution is not to stifle the creativity you are originally trying to work out of students, but instead to help them channel it. Suggestions are a great idea, but the idea of acceptable genres reminds me too much of all the things that turned me off of multimodal assignments when I was in high school. Guidelines, specific requirements, and a check-with-me first policy should allow students to be creative without producing a video that doesn't achieve what you aimed for them to achieve.
21st Century Educational Technology and Learning Blog Review
By digging a little deeper than my orignal toe-dipping into the world of blogs and wikis, with the help of ideas from Wilber's chapters from last week, I've found a really helpful blog called 21st Century Educational Technology and Learning. This blog, as you can tell from the title, explores an ernomous amount of information on technology as it applies to the classroom. What is truly exceptional about this site is that it very well organized, unlike many sites I ran into, and covers so much information.
First off, the organization is superb. Each post is rather clearly labeled, and many are a part of a multiple post, more general topic. This allows you to get at the information you want more easily. Also, within each post, the author is very good at breaking his rather lengthy posts up with headings and bullets points for easy reading and information locating.
Secondly, when I used the word "plethora" to describe how much information this blog contains, I think I may actually have used this overused word correctly this time. This blog is fit to burst with information, links, and ideas. Take the latest post as of the last time I looked at the blog for example. It actually lists 125 different specific uses for word clouds like Wordle. The author has another multi-part series of blogs that covers creative ideas for the digital classroom that's very lengthy and full to the brim with ideas and links to other sites and even one to a web seminar the author was hosting.
In all, if you can get over the author's frequent overuse and misuse of ellipses, you can find a lot of great, well-organized information on digital educational tools and ideas for using them in your classroom on the 21st Century Technology and Learning blog.
First off, the organization is superb. Each post is rather clearly labeled, and many are a part of a multiple post, more general topic. This allows you to get at the information you want more easily. Also, within each post, the author is very good at breaking his rather lengthy posts up with headings and bullets points for easy reading and information locating.
Secondly, when I used the word "plethora" to describe how much information this blog contains, I think I may actually have used this overused word correctly this time. This blog is fit to burst with information, links, and ideas. Take the latest post as of the last time I looked at the blog for example. It actually lists 125 different specific uses for word clouds like Wordle. The author has another multi-part series of blogs that covers creative ideas for the digital classroom that's very lengthy and full to the brim with ideas and links to other sites and even one to a web seminar the author was hosting.
In all, if you can get over the author's frequent overuse and misuse of ellipses, you can find a lot of great, well-organized information on digital educational tools and ideas for using them in your classroom on the 21st Century Technology and Learning blog.
Saturday, March 2, 2013
Wilber
One of the most outstanding things I read this week came from the very first page of Wilber's chapter 3. He makes the point that I think is at the core of the issue of technology in classroom. He says in the very first paragraph of the chapter that "[f]irst and foremost, andy teacher must habe a reason for using technology in his or her teaching. It's not enough that the school just bought Smartboards or that your principal has heard about wikis" (Wilber 4). This is a lot of what I spoke of in a previous post on the subject. Technology can't be used in the classroom just to for the sake of technology. There has to be a purpose. It has to be the best tool for the job, and that is why you choose to use it.
If you happen to choose a blog as that tool, Wilber makes some great points about that, too. For example, he mentions how personal blogs are very effective in that they help students express individuality and have a sense of ownership in their work. I find this to be very true. Too often I feel that students lose that sense of ownership and value for their individual work in the classroom whenever they simply do the work and hand it over to the teacher. When kids can have that sense of owership, I feel that it will undoubtedly translate into producing more confident, capable writers. Also, whenever their work is "out there" for anyone to see, students see that they put out their best work because they know how many people have access to it. This also would appear to bring up the overall quality of work produced.
If you happen to choose a blog as that tool, Wilber makes some great points about that, too. For example, he mentions how personal blogs are very effective in that they help students express individuality and have a sense of ownership in their work. I find this to be very true. Too often I feel that students lose that sense of ownership and value for their individual work in the classroom whenever they simply do the work and hand it over to the teacher. When kids can have that sense of owership, I feel that it will undoubtedly translate into producing more confident, capable writers. Also, whenever their work is "out there" for anyone to see, students see that they put out their best work because they know how many people have access to it. This also would appear to bring up the overall quality of work produced.
Amendment to the Video Game Project
You may have read a previous post of mine where I discussed an idea to make a project in which students apply knowledge of an in-class text and create, to a reasonable extent, the idea for a video game. I knew at the start that this idea would probably get a rather black or white reaction from students. Student who enjoy video games, I'd hope, would jump on the opportunity to bring one of their interests and literacies into the classroom. Those who don't really care for them or have little to no experience with them would probably have no desire to engage in this project. Though the sole purpose of a project should never be engagement, I never want a project to be the reason for a lack of engagement.
All of this said, I knew that I needed to make this project adaptable to be expressed in different mediums. Probably the easiest and most widely appealing medium I can think of for this purpose is film. Movies are a much more popular medium, and they have a lot of the same elements that I hope to utilize with the video game option. For example, I wanted to have students create characters textually and visually, if the project is used for creative writing, or reproduce characters from the text. This would work just as well for a movie. Also, I had intended on having students produce a cut-scene that would play in their video game, either via video or storyboarding. This, obviously would work just as well as film medium.
If anyone has any criticism or ideas for different mediums to be added to this project, please feel free to share them. I really appreciated all the comments on the "A Video Game Assessment?" post, so I'd love so more for this one as well.
All of this said, I knew that I needed to make this project adaptable to be expressed in different mediums. Probably the easiest and most widely appealing medium I can think of for this purpose is film. Movies are a much more popular medium, and they have a lot of the same elements that I hope to utilize with the video game option. For example, I wanted to have students create characters textually and visually, if the project is used for creative writing, or reproduce characters from the text. This would work just as well for a movie. Also, I had intended on having students produce a cut-scene that would play in their video game, either via video or storyboarding. This, obviously would work just as well as film medium.
If anyone has any criticism or ideas for different mediums to be added to this project, please feel free to share them. I really appreciated all the comments on the "A Video Game Assessment?" post, so I'd love so more for this one as well.
Saturday, February 23, 2013
Silent Films in the Classroom
This week in my Mass Media and Society class, we went over a brief history of the early film industry. Not only was this just plain interesting, but I thought this was a great opportunity to think about just how this could apply to the classroom. In one of the readings we read in previous weeks, can't recall just which one it was, the author mentioned how he/she used silent films in her classroom as a new subject for interpretation. I admit, when I had first read this idea in the text, I couldn't see this being a very effective medium for interpretation, let alone being all that interesting. Yet, when we watched clips from a lot of classic silent films, I realized just how much interpretation is absolutely crucial to even understand what is going on in the film. They require you to be a much more active viewer than modern "talkies" do. With this in mind, I see how silent films could be a viable source of material in the ELA classroom. This, I believe, is just a thought that makes teachers cast their nets a little wider when searching for material. We think to include blogs, podcasts, videos, movies, and more, but we can also look back in time and use silent films as well.
Make It Mean Something
Although the focus for this week's readings and the focus of this week's class is to be podcasting, I got more out of them than a simple how-to. Podcasting wasn't even the thing that stuck out most to me. Even though both Kajder's Chapter 5 and Rozema's "The Book Report 2.0: Podcasting on Young Adult Novels" gave great examples of the ways in which podcasts can be used effectively in the classroom, I found these readings to talk more the idea of making writing mean something.
The quote from eigth-grader, Hank, hit me the most in Kajder's text. He said, in response to his teacher's idea to adapt literature circle discussions to make them into podcasts, "[i]f you want a podcast to mean something, you've got to say something in it that is worth listening to. I'm game for this, but I don't want to hear kids' discussions. Don't school-ify this. We can do better" (Kajder 79, italics added). This, first off, proved that students understand genre and audience much better than we give them credit for. Hank clearly understood what a podcast was, what it should be used for, and what content it should contain. This alone is an opportunity for a lesson.
More than that, though, this statement made me realize just what using podcasts and other multimodal means really do. They make the writing "mean something," and that is what kids really want. Writing solely for school in a world that practically lives off of public writing via the Internet is just not enough. If someone other than the teacher isn't reading it, kids feel like it is worth less. If we can make the writings seem more valuable to students simply by allowing them to post it on a public forum of some sort, I see little reason not to allow them to do this.
Also, I believe that making writings public means so much to students because of the features built into modern social media. They allow you to "like," comment, and re-post content posted there. It gives students the opportunity to receive that peer approval that they seek. I've found myself being rather excited to read my comments on this blog, enough though I never thought I'd feel that way about it. More than that, though, these features, which kids like Hank in Kajder's text push for, allow writing to be an open conversation. It makes text alive.
The quote from eigth-grader, Hank, hit me the most in Kajder's text. He said, in response to his teacher's idea to adapt literature circle discussions to make them into podcasts, "[i]f you want a podcast to mean something, you've got to say something in it that is worth listening to. I'm game for this, but I don't want to hear kids' discussions. Don't school-ify this. We can do better" (Kajder 79, italics added). This, first off, proved that students understand genre and audience much better than we give them credit for. Hank clearly understood what a podcast was, what it should be used for, and what content it should contain. This alone is an opportunity for a lesson.
More than that, though, this statement made me realize just what using podcasts and other multimodal means really do. They make the writing "mean something," and that is what kids really want. Writing solely for school in a world that practically lives off of public writing via the Internet is just not enough. If someone other than the teacher isn't reading it, kids feel like it is worth less. If we can make the writings seem more valuable to students simply by allowing them to post it on a public forum of some sort, I see little reason not to allow them to do this.
Also, I believe that making writings public means so much to students because of the features built into modern social media. They allow you to "like," comment, and re-post content posted there. It gives students the opportunity to receive that peer approval that they seek. I've found myself being rather excited to read my comments on this blog, enough though I never thought I'd feel that way about it. More than that, though, these features, which kids like Hank in Kajder's text push for, allow writing to be an open conversation. It makes text alive.
Saturday, February 16, 2013
Flying Blind
A thought that was brought up this week in my American Literature II class was the fact that literature is often presented to students without the proper background knowledge necessary to make the literature make sense and cause students to understand its importance. For example, in that class we were reading Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Someone in class mentioned how they had read this novel previously in high school and didn't care much for it, but when reading it this second time around, appreciated it much more. This was due to the extensive introductions to the time period as well as to Mark Twain we read prior to reading the novel. We also had spoken in the previous class about the climate of literature in America up to this point in time. This placed the novel in specific time, made us understand the author's life as well as his style of writing, and, ultimately, make Huck Finn more important than simply a story of a boy on a raft.
This is the kind of thing that needs to be done at the high school level. Too often books are just passed out to students, and then they read them that night without any context. This could be the reason why so many kids, even those who are already interested in reading and literature, are so turned off by classic literature. They just don't understand what is going on the book and why its important to be reading. If we take the small amount of time to give that sort of background knowledge to kids before the dive into the book with blinders on, the literature can actually make sense and resonate with them. Classic literature won't have to be so scary if we don't lead kids in blind.
This is the kind of thing that needs to be done at the high school level. Too often books are just passed out to students, and then they read them that night without any context. This could be the reason why so many kids, even those who are already interested in reading and literature, are so turned off by classic literature. They just don't understand what is going on the book and why its important to be reading. If we take the small amount of time to give that sort of background knowledge to kids before the dive into the book with blinders on, the literature can actually make sense and resonate with them. Classic literature won't have to be so scary if we don't lead kids in blind.
Spoonful of Sugar
After completing this week's readings, the main theme that kept popping up was, very generally, how to use multimodal lessons and activities. While last week's reading taught us what multimodality is and the benefits of its use, this week made us face the question of exactly how we use this knowledge. As Miller and McVee explain in their text, multimodality cannot simply be the "spoonful of sugar" to help the sometimes unpleasant traditional modes of instruction. This is something that really resonated with me. We cannot simply take our "normal" curriculum and season it with some multimodal activities to spice things up, nor can we make multimodality the main course. The idea is to use multimodality when it will be the most beneficial to students, and choose traditional methods when those are the best fit. Multimodality should serve simply to broaden our bank of ways to teach. From there, we can choose from any number of our now expanded bank of ideas to teach in the best possible manner for each individual situation.
Thursday, February 7, 2013
A Video Game Assessment?
Right now I just want to take the time to kick around an idea for an activity/assessment that has been at the back of my mind since we began talking about multimodality in class. After talking with my roommate, who on multiple occasions has explained to me how the story lines of video games hold his attention much more than any of the literature he has read, and with my brother, who loves video games, I have thought to capitalize on the interest in video games and the inherent elements of fiction writing in those video.
The concept of this assessment is to mash together creative writing concepts and the high interest in video games present in today's youth. I would require students to create a brief story line that would be acted out in their game, create and perhaps visually represent characters, and design game play aspects. Students would need to identify basic elements of narrative such as conflict, rising and falling action, and climax within their story line for their game.
A lot more details must be worked out before this can be a functional project, but I wanted to get my idea down. I would greatly appreciate any criticism, especially from any video game aficionados.
The concept of this assessment is to mash together creative writing concepts and the high interest in video games present in today's youth. I would require students to create a brief story line that would be acted out in their game, create and perhaps visually represent characters, and design game play aspects. Students would need to identify basic elements of narrative such as conflict, rising and falling action, and climax within their story line for their game.
A lot more details must be worked out before this can be a functional project, but I wanted to get my idea down. I would greatly appreciate any criticism, especially from any video game aficionados.
Teach with Tech: Tech Teaches, Too
Kist's "Short" chapter a really good job of taking the idea of teaching in a technological, socially networked classroom in two different directions. The first direction is what I think most of us think of when we mention teaching and technology in the same breath -- multimodality. Specifically, Kist offers many ideas for lessons and activities that deal much with transmediation. I have found a few in this chapter that now have a nice big star beside them in my text. The first activity I really liked was "Julius Caesar, the Musical." At first glance, I thought this would be one of those activities where students acted scenes out with the added element of musical numbers. This scared shy, non-theatrical me. When I read the activity, though, I really liked it. The idea is to use music to express the plot or the mood of particular scenes of any drama you might be teaching at the time. I like this activity for two reasons. One is that requires students to review the play, interpret it, and analyze it for details such as mood and tone before they ever get to actually put it to music. Then students get to apply the same skills to music of their choice. This is what leads to the second reason I like this activity. Students get the opportunity to use music of their choice in this activity. They aren't limited to "good" music as they are often limited to "good" literature in the classroom. students can then own their work. It is theirs because it is made up of things they enjoy. This means students are motivated, and the battle for motivation is the underlying fight teachers fight everyday.
I mentioned earlier that I liked Kist's chapter for two reasons. Reason number two is that he not only speaks of using technology or nontraditional methods to teach, but also of how to channel the skills today's socially networked kids have into a more academically specific vein. For example, kids today are very used to the idea that they create material, post it to the Internet, and their peers respond and contribute to that material. So saying, collaboration is no new concept to them, but in the classroom this usually just mean group activities that mean dividing the assignment into sections that one student works on. Kist suggested the "Writing Collaboratively" activity that requires students to compose a poem together. One product made up of the words and ideas of four different students. That's the kind of collaboration I want in my classroom. Moreover, though, this activity utilizes today's students' already strong collaborative skills and brings them into the academic setting. This makes these skills seem validated as valuable in students' eyes. They are literate, productive citizens and activities like this help prove that not only to teachers, but to themselves as well.
I mentioned earlier that I liked Kist's chapter for two reasons. Reason number two is that he not only speaks of using technology or nontraditional methods to teach, but also of how to channel the skills today's socially networked kids have into a more academically specific vein. For example, kids today are very used to the idea that they create material, post it to the Internet, and their peers respond and contribute to that material. So saying, collaboration is no new concept to them, but in the classroom this usually just mean group activities that mean dividing the assignment into sections that one student works on. Kist suggested the "Writing Collaboratively" activity that requires students to compose a poem together. One product made up of the words and ideas of four different students. That's the kind of collaboration I want in my classroom. Moreover, though, this activity utilizes today's students' already strong collaborative skills and brings them into the academic setting. This makes these skills seem validated as valuable in students' eyes. They are literate, productive citizens and activities like this help prove that not only to teachers, but to themselves as well.
Monday, February 4, 2013
Hello
Hello. My name is Tyler Estabrook. I am studying to become an English teacher in the secondary setting. Through the use of this blog, I hope to record and reflect upon my studies as they apply to my educational pursuits. Enjoy.
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