Great Article – Teachers as Aggregators?

I just read this post from Judy O’Connell – the creator of a blog about Web 2.0 advances called Heyjude. Having recently extolled the virtues of my personal aggregator, I found her comments about educators acting as “knowledge curators” for our students to be dead on.  She even gives a “shout out” to Will Richardson!

“We need to read, gather, create, and deliver news and information far more creatively, as well as to teach the students to recognize what changes are happening in media reporting.

To help you think about it, drop on over to Will Richardson’s nice example of what a teacher (or student) can do, in his nice example of news delivery for Darfur via Pageflakes.”

My Kind of Class

First, I should probably admit that I’m a self-professed “geek.”  At age 7 my aversion to reading was cured by discovering my older brother’s comic book stash.  My favorite title at the time was Savage Sword of Conan- a large, magazine-style book offered in black and white, and rather adult-oriented in language and subject matter.  The book sparked not only a new desire to read, but a need to read, as the sometimes racy images pulled at me, compelling me to fully understand them through the text scattered about the pages.  Sure, the suggestive artwork, the brisk plots, and smattereing of “four-letter” words were titillating, but in reading what I perceived to be an “older person’s” book (often needing to go so far as to enlist the aid of a dictionary to do so), I felt I was growing up – distinguishing myself.  I knew the book was inappropriate and that my mother wouldn’t approve, but that didn’t stop me from finding time for my “secret” reading.  My brother, however, did stop me when he learned of it; I had to say goodbye to my favorite Barbarian for the time being.  He didn’t leave me completely bereft of my new pastime, though.  He convinced my mother that this developing hobby was good, and helped me select a more appropriate title for my age: The New Mutants - a book that chronicled adolescents through puberty and burgeoning super powers.  I was introduced to a host of ideas through the book.  The characters were faced with a series of dilemmas: the strains and joys of friendship, first loves and broken hearts, even discrimination, death and sacrifice.  I began forming some pretty strong opinions about diversity and community because of that reading, and was barely aware of it. 

Once I was reading at a more competent pace, and with a more developed vocabulary, my brother decided to play on my propensity for fantasy to get me hooked on novels, namely CS Lewis’ Narnia series.  I’m a voracious reader to this day, and it all started with comics.  Unsurprisingly, then, the concept of using comics to engage students and teach critical reading and writing skills comes easily to me.  I’m encouraged by this approach to teaching and getting students excited about reading.  After visiting some of the sites offered by Dr. Crovitz, I got really excited by how many fully developed, and wide-ranging lesson plans are out there for me to (hopefully) use in the future.

O, How I Love My Aggregator

I started using my iGoogle page in earnest about two weeks ago, incorporating Google Reader into my main page. Since then, I’ve wondered many times how I functioned without it. This morning alone I was able to share my morning coffee with some “juicy” information, all tailored to my tastes, without having to go looking for any of it.

Check out this post from one of my new favorite sites (2 cents worth) featuring another great video from Michael Wesch.

I also *really* loved his post on literacy habits - something that came up during my last Field Experience exercise with high school juniors. Specifically, they wanted me to help them use Wikipedia for a book report and “not get in trouble.” Fortunately, thanks to our class, I felt reasonably equipped to respond, but convincing their teacher was another story. The battle continues…

Am I a Native?

So I attended the Marc Prensky seminar on gaming in education yesterday (well, I attended most of it – my eyes decided to reject my contact lenses midway through the morning and I had to return home to fetch my glasses and revert to my “true” bespectacled look ), and I left asking myself a few questions:

1. Am I what he refers to as a Digital Native or a Digital Immigrant?
2. Did I learn anything new from Mr. Prensky’s session?

Perhaps the easiest to answer is question #2, “did I learn anything?” The answer, I’m afraid, is “not much.” To be fair, Mr. Prensky explained that he designed his presentation for an audience of Digital Immigrants, so perhaps the fact that I often felt bored and disengaged during the session will help me answer question #1. The other reason I didn’t gain much from the session, I suspect, is that much of the ground he covered is information we’ve not only heard in our class, but that we’ve already taken well beyond the cursory level he used to make his points.

I have to admit here that I don’t believe I’m fully part of the Digital Native group he described, either, no matter how much more closely I identify with technology than those with whom I shared my table (not a few of them voiced not only skepticism, but outright venom at much of what was being shared). One of his markers for a Digital Native is “Multitasking.” Do I like to “multi-task?” Yes. In fact, I often feel like I’m suffocating if I’m working on solely one subject or project at a time. I think better when I’m working on multiple assignments, have my music playing, and have at least two to three IM chats going simultaneously. That said, I’ve watched my 10 year-old nephew in action, and he makes me look like an amateur, so I know that by the time I’m in the classroom, I will be truly outclassed. I hope, however, the fact that I’m on the cusp between the “immigrant” and “native” generations will help me find the right language with which to engage my students.

All that said, the morning certainly wasn’t a total waste of time. Mr. Prensky said something yesterday that really stuck a chord with me; he shared a comment from a 14 year-old panel participant: “Don’t try to keep up with the technology. You can’t, and you’ll only look stupid.” That was a huge relief! I think his point, like Richardson and even Postman to a degree, is that not only is Technology itself not the answer, it’s barely even an answer. It’s the way we use the technology – to engage students (he said this about 100 times), to bridge the gap between “legacy” education and what students need to learn now, to find a common language – that is vital. The last point he made before I had to leave was that the most important thing we can do as educators is to ask our students, directly and with no shame, how they want to be taught. What is working? What bores them? It means we have to be vulnerable to a degree and admit that we don’t know everything. I really can’t remember any of my teachers in High School taking this approach with me, not even those whom I loved dearly. I wonder how I would have felt if they had? When I think back on those times, my teachers did have a veneer of the omniscient, and guess what? I liked it! It was comforting. If they couldn’t answer a question directly, they pointed me to the answer, and even though I ventured from them to work on my own, I knew they were behind me, guiding me.

Our students won’t need us for that…they already know (or think they know, anyway) where to look for answers. It’s up to us to incorporate their ideas into what we’re trying to teach, not only to reach them, but just to stay relevant! It’s all a bit daunting, but at the same time, I feel a charge at the challenge of it all. There is one aspect to all of this I’m afraid to even consider right now, though. Will we be able to incorporate these ideas – ideas I agree with, by the way – into our lessons and still ensure that the “all- important” standardized test is satisfied? What I heard at my table from in-service professionals about this new teaching model and No Child Left Behind was pretty bleak. I suppose only time will tell. I sure hope I don’t end up feeling forced to teach testing.

Higher Education: A Click Away

According to this article from MSN, UC Berkeley is posting full lectures on YouTube. I know that doesn’t really count as the interactive, technology infused instruction we’ve been exploring, but I think it’s noteworthy nonetheless. I, for one, will be perusing what’s available from this respected university. Did I mention that it’s FREE?

Crossing the Line

Have I mentioned recently how much I *love* Slashdot.org? As my last post disclosed, I’m pretty smitten with my linguistics studies right now, so this article (linked from Slashdot) on using mathematical equations to predict language adaptation really got me excited! Too bad it wasn’t presented in a video format, because I’d love to use it for my lesson plan assignment How can one *not* love a statement like this one: “Irregular verbs are fossils that reveal how linguistic rules, and perhaps social rules, are born and die.”

Definitely worth reading!

It’s All Connected…

An ongoing question in my Introduction to Language and Linguistics class (taught by Dr. Johnson) is this: does language create and influence social values and ideas, or does it simply reflect them? It is, in my opinion, a great question primarily because it is not an easy one to answer. Thus, it has hovered in my mind, bouncing about, and rearing its head at odd times. For instance, in an education class this week, we reviewed some of the GPS (Georgia Performance Standards) criteria for our respective areas of emphasis and found listed therein the word “withitness;” as in, “students must demonstrate a certain amount of withitness.” Having just completed a chapter on coinage and compound words, I had to chuckle, and again I was reminded of Dr. Johnson’s question – which I affectionately refer to as the “chicken or the egg” question.

It came to mind once more while reading our Postman assignment. On page 176 Postman discusses the powerful influence of our language over our beliefs. He states, “…beliefs do not necessarily reflect the structure of reality. They simply reflect an habitual way of talking about reality.” As an avid lover of literature and poetry, I have to admit that I’m quite taken with his assertion that metaphor is “not an ornament. It is an organ of perception.” (174) I am, frankly, enamored with the almost clinical nature of his description; that in essence what we as English Language Educators will extend to our students is not interesting optional information, but rather vital knowledge and skills with which to define the world. How often have we been relegated to the “artistic fringe” in education? Teach the basics of reading and writing, yes, but poetry, metaphor…well, that’s nice, but certainly not essential. To that thinking Postman cries, “foul” and so do I!

Before I address the thrust of his last chapter, technology, let me first admit that I grew up with computers and as such, I am rather fond of the technology at use in my life. I remember being taught how to use a computer when I was 7 years old (that means programming for you true youngsters ) . Yes, I can accept and agree with Postman that access to vast information, quickly, is certainly a central purpose to technology, but it has meant much more than that. Postman asks, “What can schools do for Little Eva besides making still more information available?”(43) This question comes after he spends several pages discussing the “Technology god,” its zealots, and their assertions that the sheer amount of information available to students due to technology, now and in the future, must somehow inherently change or render useless our current notion and methods of schooling. What his question did for me was to trigger another question, i.e. “Is technology just access to more information?” For me, the answer is a categorical, “No!” And doubly so when applied to my search for how and why I want to teach.

I think I’m more philosophically aligned with Will Richardson in that to me, technology equals greater communication. I want to teach language…that’s communication! So yes, I want the quick and (mostly) reliable information technology offers, but I want to be able to DO something with it. I want to not only expose students to the medium and the information they can garner from it (which, we all know, they’re finding just fine on their own with what I fear is not nearly enough guidance), and then help them filter it, decipher what if anything it means to them, and finally how to pass it on, or communicate it, to another audience. I want them to feel they’ve left a mark on their community. That’s what drew me to literature and poetry. I could feel the author, or the poet, reaching across every boundary imaginable and touch me in some way – from elation to revulsion. Someone I would or could never have met spoke to me. The technology we have now allows us to give that to our students, and help them understand the sheer enormity of it, the responsibility of it. Hmm… I wonder if I’m that far off from Postman after all?

WordPress is Not Spying…

Just in case any of you have heard the rumors about our class-suggested Blog site “spying” on its users, here is the updated article.

Classroom 2.0

I watched this video tonight. What struck me the most was how strong the pull for “Conrad” to have “everyone in the world” see his project. Equally impacting was Dr. Tyson’s resulting question, “what do you have to say that is so important that everyone on earth needs to hear it?” That’s pretty heavy stuff for a middle school aged child! And just when I started to wonder if they (the students) could really handle all that, he talked about the relatively new idea of childhood, and I have to admit…he got me on that one It made me realize that I was unintentionally limiting, or selling short, the capacity of the students to think critically about issues beyond the Paris Hilton crowd.

I never doubted that students at this age (a bit younger than those I plan to teach) could use the technology available. What I did doubt, however, was their ability to use the tools responsibly. The movies on organ donation and genetically modified foods would be enough to challenge us – adults and future educators – and yet these kids tackled them both with maturity. I especially loved when one child says about genetically modified foods, “my parents didn’t even know about it until I told them.” That has to be music to his science teacher’s ears, and I credit her with polished and thoughtful product they created.

Ok, so how on earth do I learn to do what their teacher did? Well, for starters, I can try to be at least as proficient with iMovie, etc. as the 11 year old girl who Dr. Tyson interviewed on stage. She didn’t seem to phased by the hands-on nature of learning this technology in addition to addressing a pretty hefty topic (organ donation and transplants) – of course, she didn’t seem phased by her huge audience, either! Maybe I should pick someone a bit more timid for my comparison? All kidding aside, I think it’s time to step WAY beyond my comfort level, and start tinkering. I’m just thankful that I found this class, and a great group of fellow students, to help me do so. I hope in two years when I’m teaching my own class, that this experience will help me better relate to my students and that which I might ask them to brave.

Podcasting for Dummies…ok, at least for *this* Dummy!

I’m glad I didn’t believe this gent’s answer to “What is Podcasting?” Probably the most salient point he makes is that only those of us “over the age of 12″ need to have Podcasting explained to us. Though, I have to admit, I would love to find a way to work his explanation of ninja poetry into a class somehow (he actually tosses in a few technical terms worthy of a proper lesson.)

Instead, I got hooked on a couple Podcasts like this one from the BBC and one on vocabulary, both of which I found through iTunes. I spent what was probably an unhealthy amount of time browsing Switchpod and Podcast411 getting familiar with the sites and perusing the wares, so to speak. By the end of my adventures in sampling Podcasts, I have to admit I was pretty emotionally drained.

There is simply a TON of content out there, and though it didn’t take me long to find some good stuff, there is an awful lot of really, really bad stuff out there, too! By “bad” I don’t mean just inappropriate for our purposes as instructors, or potentially harmful to students, but essentially I mean poor quality of work. Again, I’m not necessarily judging the content being shared, or the legitimacy of what is essentially our generation’s form of a vanity press, but often what I ran into was audio or visual material so poorly executed that I couldn’t persist long enough to engage the actual content. With that in mind, I’m trying to make a comprehensive list of all the things I wish to avoid when I finally make my fledgling attempt at a “movie” this semester. I have not worked with the tools involved before, however, and now I’m afraid I’ll fall into some of the same pitfalls that made my teeth ache tonight.

So, I will ask this with all due humility. When it is my turn to submit my oh-so-small contribution to the world of Podcasts, I implore you, be gentle with me