Richardson's Chapter 9 Reaction from Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts

The main concepts that jumped out to me after completing the chapter reading, was that the read/write web is collaborative in the 21st century. People do not just "own" content anymore, rather, technology is being used to discuss, edit, share, revise ideas collectively speaking through the internet. People can interact with on-line presentations together; the dimdim presentation was an example of allowing our class to do this, as well as the google docs presentation.
Blogs and wikis are allowing content to be viewed to a broader audience beyond just the "intended" user. This is making work real and authentic for its creators. When we know other readers can preview or consume our information, we take more risks; therefore, we want our work to be polished. Finally the main principal I walked away with from this chapter is that we are "empowering" so many people who use the read/write web, and discover they have a voice...that is heard!

Marzano's Belief in Cooperative Learning

Three years ago, while working on my Master's degree, I did my first classroom action research on cooperative learning. As an English teacher, motivating and engaging different readers is crucial, especially with novel units. I have found literature circles to be an effective model to engage students, as the discussions are "student-centered". Although I have selected the groups, and arranged high, middle, and low-level students, I know literature circles enhances learning for all abilities. By having students apply different reading roles such as questioner, summarizer, connector, visualizer, clarifier, predictor, etc, all of these various tasks make the reader think differently. When all members in a group have different roles, they have various angles to bring to the table. Last month in December, I had my Juniors spend two weeks reading Mitch Albom's novel, Tuesdays with Morrie. The cooperative learning activity allowed students to hear other points of view, to think about the text using different active reading roles, develop and create student-led conversations, and learn more importantly about each other and the life lessons Morrie teaches to Mitch and his audience. When I had students reflect on the process, the majority enjoyed this cooperative learning model, and would like to do more novels using this framework.

I would recommend Harvey Daniels book on Literature Circles.

David Warlick: Telling the new story: leverage points for inspiring change

David Warlick's short video-web presentation focused on the growing awareness of how our students think and operate in this digital age. An interesting component to his presentation, that was new information to me was where David foresees our future job market. Not only will our future students have choice in engineering markets, but the creative arts jobs will continue to rise as well. David talks about how our society is visual/auditory culture, we are more interested in the new story of how a piece of technology works than how it operates/runs.
This is true for our classrooms. Our instruction needs to still address those basic skills all students should equip themselves with, but the way we present the material and the method we want students to "think" through ideas...creates a new story in our classrooms.
As a teacher, I will work to introduce an on-line blog as a way for my students to publish writings as well as infuse more visual forms to student learning. The idea of project-based learning, and thematic-based learning makes sense. As a teacher working with high school teens, I will continue to rewrite the story in my classroom and keep it compelling.

Frank Kelly & Ian Jukes: New High Schools

I found this lecture from last summer's NECC conference to be both intriguing as well as complex. The beginning of this long lecture provided an exposure as to how high schools look and operate in the 21st century. Basically the model has not changed at all since the beginning of the 20th century. Students still sit in desks, move by bell to bell, our taught mainly through a lecture style, and move from discipline to discipline. What is interesting is that Ian Jukes states, more high schools of the 21st century are infusing technology or 1:1 laptops into the buildings, but technology is not transforming school culture,it is only used as a supplement. Jukes further indicates that students are bored, are not challenged, and the continuing drop out rate indicates our current public school system is not working. The presentation then proposes 6 models.
However, I struggle with re-designing complete frameworks of America's high schools. When America students attend college, most university systems are set up in the same structure. Professors lectures, students take notes, memorize, regurgitate information through exams, write papers, analyze, and complete lab studies. In essence, colleges are just as boring, why don't they have to structurally change their framework? They too have added technology however, its blackboard or eliminating more the paper trail..but it doesn't make college students think creatively, problem solve, etc. Why is it high schools responsibilities to forge ahead, while universities lag behind?
Anyways, I too, think we should change our model, a one-size fits all doesn't work for every American high school, however I don't know how students truly would be assessed on basic skills such as: reading, writing, basic math computations, etc. However there are ideas I like. I too believe education should be more interdisciplinary, education should be project-based or designed, where students can actually "play" with the information in technological forms. I too don't like a bell-to-bell schedule. I also agree with the fact most high schools probably should be an on-going service and not a time-event with school out for the summer..at least not in the 21st cent. I like the idea of looping kids to have the same teachers and for teachers of different disciplines co-teaching and working together to design models for our students to research, collaborate, think through, etc...
In truth, we need to technology, but I agree we probably are not transforming our school culture.

Free Tools for Universal Design for Learning in Literac

While listening to the K12 on line conference this week, I decided to watch the pod-cast by Jennifer Kraft. Her power-point presentation provided great insights for using other tools to help struggling students who may have differences in reading, taking notes, organizing ideas, and following written instructions. Ms. Kraft spent time talking about the use of e-books or allowing struggling readers to listen to books on CD. Not only will this help students build his/her comprehension, it also allows students to listen/follow a recorded reading to enhance decoding and fluency skills. I can see potential of using these simple tools for both elementary and secondary students. All it takes is a little bit time and some planning for class room teachers. However, these resources would help our students who are not strong visual learners. Ms. Kraft also explored the use of MP3 players in classrooms, and how this allows students to go back and listen to lectures as well as lessons. Finally she brought up two different ways to support learning, text-to-speech and speech-to-text. Her presentation included web-sites to visit. After her presentation, I searched for e-books on line. I found an interesting site for elementary students called raz-kids.com, included were free demos. I have not had success at finding e-books for secondary students.

Ian Jukes: Digital Natives

Do kids really think differently than they did 50 years ago? Ian Jukes convinces his audience that children's brains are not the same today and has science to back up his claims. With our evolving technology, students in the 21st century are labeled as "digital natives" as gadgets such as video games, i-pods, cellphones and computers are a part of their everyday experience and ability to interact socially with others. I agree with some of Jukes points that teachers do need to play and become familiar with new teaching strategies--in an ability to connect with our students. After all, communicating ideas through blogs can strengthen reading and writing skills, creating audio podcasts can enrich classroom learning.
But should all learning or play as Jukes states come from digital gadgets...I don't think so. He says that play is work. That's a true statement. However, my 5 year old daughter has played in her daycare setting without any manipulation with technology and she can think critically, problem solve, is extremely artistic, desires to do work independently, and loves learning through..play. Her experience did not happen through video game playing or spending hours on a computer screen to learn letters. We can "sculpt" minds and technology can do that. I just think BALANCE is crucial and educators can not jump off the deep end and still not implement tried and true methods of student engagement. I still believe class discussion and analysis of literature through Socratic circles is an effective strategy..and Socrates is old..yet a tried and true method. Before teachers go crazy over all the digital "toys" and "game-playing", don't forget to use manipulatives that you know work..and still makes kids have fun and yes...play!