Make Yourself
What a long strange trip it's been…Navigating the Georgia Standards…
I went to the Georgia Standards website assuming that it was going to be tricky to navigate and full of confusing lingo that I would never understand or really be able to use. I expected books of complicated language, unachieveable expectations, and overall misery, but was pleasantly surprised by what I saw. Not only were the standards accesible and easy to read, they translated well across many areas of my field and were not as endless as I orginially expected.
I was really impressed with the resources page as well. It gave several different links to helpful websites and interesting discussions in the field of education. I could tell that it was kept up with and that the webmasters were really interested in giving teachers a place where they could find good, solid, helpful stuff to refer to or to use in their classrooms. I browsed the AP website for quite a while because that’s the type of student I would like to teach and I was interested to see what the site had to offer for teachers. Again, I was impressed with the amount of information present on the site and could really see using it as a resource when I’m teaching.
Clearly, the Standards website is more than just some old, dusty webpage that never gets revisited. I’m glad that I checked it out because now I have another resource in my corner.
Media Literacy
Being media literate can open up a whole new world to students–nothing proved that more so than this piece on medialit.org. It was insightful, offered useful suggestions, lesson plans, and teaching tips, and most importantly, reinforced the importance of a collaborative learning environment rather than simply keeping the classroom a one way street. Students are active participants in their Internet explorations, so incorporating that into their learning experiences can really help them fixate on things that interest them and can be translated into the curriculum.
There was one quote (among many) that really struck me: “Students must learn how to find what they need to know when they need to know it.” By helping and encouraging our students to become media literate, we are handing them the tools they will need to find and/or discern accurate information quickly. This new system of education is really one of the only ways that we can keep up with our students, learning-wise. They have the capacity to learn so much more and so much faster by depending on the Web that continuing to use our old system would honestly just be foolish of us. Every single day, our society gets “saturated by media,” and being able to sort through it and decipher the messages is a really important skill. By helping our students become truly media literate, we’re making them saavier and smarter for life. Adults that grew up in a not so media driven environment may disagree with all of this, but they are going to have to un-learn and re-learn how to read in order to keep up with what is driving our society and interprete the multitude of messages that are being flung at us and our students hourly.
Media literacy is going to be a huge part of our classrooms and our lives. I’m glad that I have reference to this article because it really gives some great insight into classroom approaches.
Traditional Encylopedias vs. Wikipedia…
After re-visiting an encylopedia (something that I haven’t looked at since probably sixth grade) I was quickly reminded of why exactly I go to Wikipedia first for my early research needs. Not only did the hardback encyclopedia not give me the depth or breadth of information that Wikipedia did, we noticed that the online version of the bound encyclopedia was actually using pictures and information that we had seen earlier on Wikipedia! What better endorsement for the merits of using Wikipedia for an accurate and well put together jumping point for your research? Clearly when the tried and true favorites are citing an upstart that is commonly demon-ified (not a word, I know) in academic settings, there must be some type of merit to the new resource.
Even while exploring Encyclopedia Britannica online, its user format echoed some of the same things so familiar to us in Wikipedia. There is a place to adjust entries and make corrections–to contribute to the encyclopedia as a whole. It too, wants to be a learning community and wants to encourage its readers to participate and make their mark on its entries. Obviously something Wikipedia is doing is working for them because now they’ve got the old heavy hitters (and I do mean heavy–did you ever try carrying any of those volumes home with you?) imitating their style!
After searching for information about geraniums in the hardback encyclopedia and finding only three short, extremely scientific paragraphs about nothing of real interest, going to Wikipedia and finding pictures, cultivation advice, tips on things to do with geraniums, etc, there was no doubt in my mind that Wikipedia was the better-equipped resource.
Wikis in the Classroom
Again, I find that I’m becoming more and more a fan of using advanced technology like this in the classroom. Every chapter in Richardson’s text gives me better and newer ideas of what to do and what works well within a classroom–this is one book that I definitely won’t be selling back! Giving students a forum where they can really feel empowered to stretch their writing/editing muscles just makes sense to me and again, it’s using a forum that they are already comfortable and familiar with. We as teachers in the 21st century have to find a way to integrate old school learning with new school education or else we’re going to lose our students. I think that old methods alienate rather than encourage (at least, I know that I used to hate to do in the library what I could do faster and better online) advanced learning–learning past what the curriculum tells us to teach.
On another note, I’ve always been a fan of Wikipedia. I’ve never come across a page that has given me blatantly false information and I can usually use good old common sense (or a few extra minutes of research) to determine when I need to delve a little deeper or when I should take it at its word. And yeah, students might not be as discerning as us when it comes to true/false information, but we can teach them to develop those skills. I mean, someone’s going to have to, so why not us? Even if they don’t master that particular skill, at least they will have been exposed to having to sort through multiple editors, sources, and writing forms to determine which is right.
Wikis seem to be a great way to really give the lesson back to the student and put them in control of how much they take from a lesson. I’m really just excited to be learning all these alternative ways to teach!
One of my passions…although I’d never be able to do it!
Big wave surfing is completely amazing to me…I am in awe of atheletes such as Laird Hamilton. I find them so inspiring! Don’t know what big wave surfing is? Check out a quick description at Wikipedia!!!
A little bit of fun…
In the spirit of experimentation and since some of us in this class are going to become English teachers, I wanted to post this video that I found when I was a senior in high school and have been laughing at ever since. Deep in the dark world of those who surf the Web for far too long every day lies a website called HomeStar Runner. It features a man with boxing gloves for hands and a fairly Darth Vader-esque mask answering emails from random high school students across the country. One of my favorites is titled “Englilish Paper,” in which Strongbad helps a student correct his sorely lacking English paper.
I hope this makes you all smile!
Weblogs Please!
First of all, let me just say that if we could have utilized blogs in my high school, I think that I would have gotten a completely new level of education out of anything that we studied. Just reading Richardson’s descriptions of the various ways blogs can be used in classrooms made me giddy to start using them myself! I have visions of students really engaging in material, doing online research on things that truly interest them, and finding a whole new wealth of material that was not open to them previously. The idea of students being able to chat with authors, students across the country, students just down the hall–and sharing what they had learned, collaborating material, and forming a learning community bigger than themselves is a teacher’s dream, I think.
It’s the “learning community” part that really gets me excited about using blogs in my classroom. Simply googling the term “learning community” brought about so many results that it would have been almost impossible to sort through them! But all those results are so encouraging because they signify the hundreds of different outlets that my students can join and pair their learning with others across the world. Of course, as Richardson says, some policing must be enforced, but that is par for the course.
Teaching students in the 21st century basically requires us to adopt and embrace the introduction of blogs into our classrooms. Our students spend SO much time online that it would be foolish to ignore something so powerful and not utilize it to its full ability in our classes. Why not show students that the very thing they do for hours a day can be translated into a learning experience? What do we have to lose? They know so much about how to research and work online that all they need is some gentle guidance to really develop their online social skills into some great online scholar skills. I also really agree with Richardson’s view that this type of learning is highly constructivist and think that is one of the reasons that blogging will be so successful within a class. Students long for a hands-on, non lecture environment and blogging hands that to them on a silver platter. I am 150% for using blogs heavily within my classroom and can’t wait to develop ways to encourage students to get as excited about technology and learning existing side by side as I am!
Firsts…
Well, this is the first time that I’ve ever blogged on a website other than Myspace, soooo…here it goes! It was a lot easier to set up than I anticipated and I think that it’ll be really useful to store ideas and info that I pick up throughout this program.
But now, let the countdown begin until I can fall asleep by the pool. T-minus 1 hr…
