The Beauty of Blogging

I think one really important point that Hicks wrote about in chapter 3 was that of the students feedback from both the teacher and peers.  He talked about how teachers have given up on one-on-one conferences which is completely understandable but still sad.  This is where wikispaces or blogs come into play to make the feedback faster but still personal.  I also think the peer review that he talks about is very important and that is also a large part of using blogs and other word processors.  I am starting to really like our blogs; they are a great resource and I love seeing what everyone is writing and thinking about.  For our future students, these resources, I think, would be great, giving them both confidence and great feedback for their writing.

Wordle

While I love Wordles and think they are really cool when analyzing large pieces of work and getting an idea for themes, this lesson confused me.  I think it is a good supplementary material but I don't see how it could really help when trying to revise a paper.  This project seemed to focus on the Wordle instead of the writing and the actual revision process.  I see how it can be used to analyze the unity of a piece but I don't know...I guess I'm just not seeing the larger picture of using a Wordle in context with papers.  I really liked Rachel's idea of using it in vocabulary lessons and having the students try to come up with the word from the definition  turned into a Wordle so let me know if you came up with any other ideas!

My History Class..zzzzzzzzzzzzzz

There is always that one class that you dread going to because you don't like the professor, the material is horrible, and you never do the homework.  This happens to be my current history class and hopefully last one.  My super awesome professor decided to be a doll and not require us to buy a textbook.  Great.  Unfortunately we had to buy 6 other books to randomly read throughout the semester and write papers on.  I would not mind this if we also didn't have at least 4 readings a week on D2L from an actual textbook or random excerpts and no they aren't single chapters, they come in at least groups of three and way too long to print off let alone absorb.  We have to answer questions on these in paper formats, aside from our book papers, rarely discuss anything in class, and have random reading quizzes...as if I don't have enough to do.  Cool World History.  Thanks for letting me rant but avoid eye contact with me on Tuesdays/Thursdays :)

I found this super awesome article comparing the covers of past Times magazines. It shows several magazines from different countries that all deal with extremely serious political issues and movements then it shows the pathetic and self-centered  American one.  The real issue is whether or not it reflects on the readers or the journalists which is a question Gershon raises and I thought was very thought provoking so I would love to hear your guys' ideas.  

No Child Left Behind

The other day i was reading this very interesting article about No Child Left Behind and where it went wrong.  In a perfect world I feel like we would be able to implement these new ideas.  The author, Adam Richardson, wishes to implement the four c's instead of the three r's that our education is currently immersed in.  These four c's are creativity, complexity, curiosity, and collaboration.  He does make good points about teaching our students, especially in our ever-changing economy and job market.  I know that No Child Left Behind is anything but perfect and it fails to have anyone's full support but these presented ideas, as wonderful as they sound, are unenforceable; at least from my point of view.  I think they are great ideas that teachers should definitely implement into their classroom but as far as replacing reading, writing, and arithmetic it seems to be a stretch.   He knows that it is not realistic to replace them but thinks that No Child Left Behind is destroying our society and creating an even greater divide between income and ethnicity.
Let me know if you agree or disagree or like me, are on the fence :)

Stumbling

One of the few technological tools I use when I'm bored is Stumble Upon.  This website allows you to pick your interests then when you sign in onto your account they search the internet to find things that align with your choices.  When you get through one suggestion they have for you, you just hit the stumble button and the next one pops up.  So you don't lose any of the sites you like there is an option to like them to reference them later.  Other things I don't use are linking it to facebook, commenting on it, or sharing it with fellow Stumblers.  I love wasting time on this and even if I get bored with the interests I picked I can always just switch them up.  Try it out sometime!

The Dreaded Night Class

I'm in American Lit on Tuesday nights in attempt to catch up from my previous biology life and it is slowly becoming of one of my least dreaded night classes to date.  This past week we discussed Native American Literature and the main reason for none of us really connecting to or understanding it is that it is meant to be performed.  This brought to mind the Shakespeare plays I had to read over the summer for my English classes in high school.  We would eventually go on trips as classes to see plays which made them much more enjoyable but made me think of how important it is to expose your students to all methods of literature.  My professor, in further exploring this topic of better experienced than read, pulled up an example of slam poetry which I had never experienced but was completely enthralled by.  If you want to check it out I put up the link and am fully convinced that Eric Darby is amazing!

The Beginning...

I was initially really intimidated by blogging especially with my lack of any experience when it comes to technology but I am starting to enjoy it and appreciate the easiness of it.  When we were talking in class today it also brought the idea to a 180 for me especially in terms of using it in the future.  For our potential students I see this as a great resource, especially in writing classes.  I know that some concerns were raised about the students and their accessibility to the internet outside of school but I find that computer lab time would not be that difficult and overall beneficial to the students.