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.