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
Whole New Minds: English in the Flat World 