Class Today

Dear Teachers, our own discussions/work were cut short last week to spend time with our guests. So a few reminders about tonight.

We’ll listen to Kate and Amanda’s podcasts and talk with them about the process of creating podcasts as well as their pedagogical applications. Andy will share the latest on his book club wiki which won’t truly get off the ground until next month. He may also surprise us with his podcast-in-progress or? Sofia will also give us an update on not just Hawaii but also her wiki project conceived with a teacher friend at a Catholic school in the B’hamton area.

Jon is planning to show his video-in-progress. And Steve will update us on using iLife ’08 to produce a video about ePals and our discussion with Tim and Vestal teachers last week.

Jerry will share his webquest with us–and talk about the process of creating it.

We will talk about the readings we have not yet addressed including Alvermann 4, and backing up, the Henry Jenkins’ chapters and previous reading in Alvermann.

We’ll also think about the impact of Will’s book on our growing awareness of our new roles as teachers in a flat world. Isn’t this a wonderful suggestion from him–a recent blog post about student bloggers:

“Sage Students: Darren coined the term “scribe” to describe the student whose responsibility it was to summarize and extend the days events from class on the blog. But now KB Foglia has come up with a different, and I think even more interesting moniker for students working her AP Bio blog: ‘sherpa.’ ‘Each day a student in class will be assigned to be the class sherpa — our guide who will show us the clear path up the mountain of knowledge.’ Nice.”

Do read his provocative post on School as Node before class today.

We’ll begin class w/work on our personal (or classroom) websites. How is yours coming along? Have you set up a flickr acct. to make importing pictures easier?

Is your del-icio-us acct. active on your blog and is bloglines working for you??

Amanda, will you please share your experiences with Diigo this afternoon? I dont think all of us are active participants yet. Please plan to give us an update.

We’ll also talk tonight about our trip to Syracuse to hear Yong Zhao on the 4th. I look forward to seeing you later.

More comments on classmates’ blogs! YES! KES

Read Full Post »

One laptop per child coming to the U.S.

http://www.eschoolnews.com/today/esntoday092507.htm

Huge buy one get one sale blowout!

Read Full Post »

Blog Prompt for Week of September 24

Dear Teachers, I apologize for this late posting! My deadline is Sunday, I know. Yours is Tuesday. So I’ll keep the focus pointed and the task limited.

Do focus on the Gee chapter in Alvermann. Gee’s analysis of what he calls “the great disruption,” the New Capitalism, and Millennial youth is of great interest to us as teachers. As you may know, in the past year, this campus has spent some time and money focusing on teaching Millennial students. I participated in one such workshop last June with Garder Campbell and Charles Dziuban, and yesterday Amanda and Steve shared in another initiative fueled by the campus’ commitment to teaching Millennials.

Gee introduces the notion of “shape-shifting portfolio” people in this chapter. Young, Dillon and Moje extend this discussion in Ch. 8. His discussion concludes with a provocative analysis of the limits of public schooling’s ability to provide adequate opportunity for millennial youth to develop “creativity, deep thinking” and “whole people [ness]” : “In the end, (this reference is to the consequences of what he calls the “current neoliberal hegemony” on learners’ life chances) we get the Tale of Two Millennial Cities. . . a tale not of race, nor of class in traditional terms, but of ‘kinds of people’–those with and without Portfolios, those with small and big Portfolios, Shape-Shifters and non Shape-Shifters.”

Most of you are near the end (or halfway there!) of your English Education graduate program at SUNY.

How would you reassess the ways in which you are constructing the how and the what of your future (and current) students’ shape-shifting portfolios?

In other words, what are your goals for supporting your students’ portfolio (in the Gee sense) building? What is it coming to mean to you that students develop “shape-shifting portfolios?” How do they look to you? How do they look different from what students (and teachers) might see as the aim of the conventional language arts classroom?

What is changing or has changed about the ways in which you see English Language Arts classes as supporting adolescents seeing themselves in “entrepreneurial terms. . . . that is as free agents in charge of their own selves as if those selves were projects or businesses” (Gee).

How is your own “career” representative of Gee’s emphasis on shape-shifting portfolio people?

And where have we heard some of these same arguments before in other readings this semester? KES

Read Full Post »

Kajder Reading Reflections

Aloha from Maui.  As I type this, you all are caught up in the 2:00 p.m. hour on Friday, and I am just starting my morning.  I just finished reading the Kajder article outside before I was attacked by a really big lizard.  So here are my thoughts!    -Sofia

Kajder & Getting Real about Classroom Technology 

Sara Kajder’s article assigned for 9/20 is very powerful, because technology is criticized and challenged.  She does so much with this piece and says more than just, “We need more cutting-edge technology for our students, because their job market is globalizing and being outsourced.”  Kajder asks ELA teachers to step out of their comfort zones and move beyond word processing and saving to the network.  I find that this is a brilliant take on getting real about useful, relevant technology in our classrooms.  Kajder tells us, “We haven’t looked to our kids to see what the possibilities are,” and I definitely agree.  Our students are silently begging for more than Microsoft Word and Outlook Express emails.

 

Kajder’s discussion on blogging really targets our objectives as ELA teachers, because she clearly describes what our blogs should look like and contain.  It all boils down to the kind of writing that we, as teachers, encourage.  We need our kids to know that blogging is their chance to talk seriously to their peers and to the whole world.

 

Kajder writes, “They learn to take responsibility for their words, to defend and modify them based on reactions from the real people sitting around them.”  Personally, I am much more convinced of the essential role blogging will play in my classroom as these posting opportunities also provide real audiences for the students.  I have been a little turned off by the other focuses of internet uploading, which are color, pictures, and all other visual aspects.  While these parts are all very creative and good, I was worried that they may take the focus off of writing content in my classroom.  I am no longer worried about this as much.  The focus is really speaking to your audience…..we can make pictures and other graphics enhance this rather than dominate the blog.

 

Now I understand much better that blogging is a student’s first experience as a real author, and what better way to teach writing?!  I am hopeful that great motivation to write articulately, descriptively and reflectively will result from my ELA class blog.  I think I am beginning to see the light!

 

P.S.  I’m thinking of doing a creative writing blog once I get my own classroom after graduation.  I’d like to post the beginnings of my idea below so that any of you might offer suggestions????  Please do!

 

On this blog, I would start a good paragraph of a story and have groups of students finish that story in sequence.  Each group would be assigned an element to work with, such as setting or character development.  Their contribution to the story would need to utilize their element creatively in addition to flowing well with what came before their post.  After each group posts to the story, I would then assign them to the “editing” room of the blog where they would criticize each other’s use of elements and flow, and then rearrange the story as needed.  

Objectives of Assignment:  1.) Using Kajder’s suggestion of appropriate, timely technology in my classroom, 2.) Collaboration of ideas with others, 3.) Practice in creative writing, story construction, and story editing, 4.) Creating new, brilliant authors in my classroom.

 

-Sofia

Read Full Post »

Do You Diigo?

Hi All,

Just wanted to encourage you all to join Diigo, that cool social annotation site, so we can play around with it together, share bookmarks, and such. To do so, go to here, create an account, and start bookmarking! I’ve also sent each of you an invitation to the group I created for our class on Diigo, which will enable us to share stuff as a class–neat stuff!

Hope you all have a great weekend!

Read Full Post »

Media Literacy Workshop Info

Here’s a more thorough description of the opportunity to work w/Chris on Monday at 1:30 in the mac lab:

Chris will use a mixture of discussion, interactive presentation, and reflection to explore the role of media literacy in the high school English classroom. Chris will model Project Look Sharp’s approach to document-based media decoding to explore…

Teen media use, the qualities of new media, and implications for the classroom

Literacy for the 21st century: what has changed and what hasn’t

Integrating media literacy and critical thinking into the ELA classroom

Models for media analysis and production – linking to the curriculum

Getting real and realistic about what we can and can’t do and why

Chris Sperry has taught media studies, social studies and English at the Alternative Community School in Ithaca New York since 1979. He is also the Director of Curriculum and Staff Development for Project Look Sharp, Ithaca College’s media literacy organization. Chris is recipient of the 2005 National PTA and Cable Leaders in Learning award for Media Literacy. He is author of a series of media literacy integration kits available online at http://www.projectlooksharp.org.

KES

Read Full Post »

Field Trip! Field Trip!

Let’s go up to Syracuse (U) on the 4th–get out of OM–and visit with Professor Zhao who’s lecturing in the School of Ed during our class time. What a coincidence. Trust me–he’s terrific.

Suggestion–blog about your developing projects–the weekly prompts, and your own new “content” gleaned from your reading/experiences working with new tools. KES

Read Full Post »

A Sign of the Times!

At their convention this November, NCTE is honoring Florida teacher Abigail Kennedy for her work with her multimedia class.

Don’t miss this story. And do check out the kids’ podcasts. Wow!! KES

Read Full Post »

Technology Can Close Some Gaps

Very relevant discussion in the Sacramento Bee of a middle school that turned it around for low achieving students. Do read and comment. KES

Read Full Post »

Saving Your iWeb Sites

Well, I said that I would publish a post on how to save your iWeb sites, so here it is.  Keep in mind that I’m doing this from a PC, so bear with me…

1. The first thing you would want to do is click “File” and then “Save.”  Just like you were saving a Word document, etc., etc.
2. Next, you will click “File” and then “Publish to a Folder.”
3. Here you will want to choose where you are saving you site.  (Ultimately, this is the folder and index that you will need when you are uploading it onto the web.  I encourage you to do this every time.)  Save and Replace.  You could either save it to a USB or your Cortland server.  More information on this to follow.
4. This is the hardest/most important part.  At this point, you will be searching for a small “domain” file.  This is the file that will allow you to continue working on your site.  Here’s how you find it: You will now click on the “Macintosh HD” icon in the top right of the computer screen.  Then, you will see your C# and a little house (be aware that your C# will also be next to a blueish/greyish orb above the one with the house–you want the one with the house).  Click on your C# by the house, and then you will click on the following folders.  First, click on the “Library” folder, then the “Application Support” folder, and last the “iWeb” folder.  It is in this folder that you will find the “domain” file.
5. You will want to save this file to your Cortland server space (by dragging it into the blueish/greyish orb with your C# next to it.  Now every time you log in, to whichever computer on campus, you will have access to that file) or to a USB.  I, personally, prefer to use a USB drive, but I think the server space will work just fine.  A USB drive is something good to have in general, though, so you might want to think about getting one.

Hopefully these directions will be suitable.  Let me know if you have any questions at all.

Cheers, Ray

Read Full Post »