In Closing

Although I know that the class is officially over, and that no one is likely to read this, I wanted to note that I've found this blog very interesting and useful. I might continue to use this blog, though I'm not sure what for yet. In the meantime, I've started another blog with this same account, which I plan to utilize to talk mainly about literature. This can perhaps be a place for me to gather my thoughts before instruction; or, it can be a place where my students can subscribe to read class notes, upcoming notifications, etc.

Here's my other blog: trytristram

Google Earth

I tried to make a tour using Google Earth, but it kept crashing. What I intended was to make a tour where the first two items were the Tabard Inn and Canterbury Cathedral, providing the starting and endpoint of the pilgrimage in the Canterbury Tales. The next place was going to be the supposed location Pearl Poet, then the Globe theater, and finally Westminster Abbey. As you can see, it would be a sort of geographical tour of major locations for English poetry. I would use this to acclimate students to these physical locations, so to help develop schema for the places we would be talking about in class.

Elumintate

I've decided that I will use elluminate in my classroom, and here's what for:

I know that about 110% of students are put off by vocabulary and have a hard time memorizing it for some reason. About 20% of this don't have too much trouble, actually, so the real result is about 90%. But bear with me:

Instead of simply having my students memorize vocabulary on their own, or else hammering it into their brains with multiple drills, I would use Elluminate to implement a pre-vocab activity.

I would either find or create images which represent each of the vocabulary words. For nouns this is obviously easier. For verbs and adjectives, the images would either show the action of the verb or the description of the adjective. Students would then interact with the images to think out the meanings of each one. Their ultimate task would be to come up with a few possible definitions for each image. We could then move into the vocabulary to collectively determine if the definitions they've chosen appropriately fit the word.

Thoughts on Glogster

Glogster seems like a neat way to implement a project with which students must interact. What I like most about it is the collage-like aspect of it which makes it possible for students to present information or images in a non-linear way; this allows for differentiation. What i don't like about is the limited space within which a student is confined to work.

As I mentioned, I like the collage-like aspect that glogster has to offer. Because of this, I would probably use this to implement a project in which students have to present information they've researched, or artwork they've created, in a collage-like format.

Kaitlyn Linker's Zoho document HW

Note to the reader: I am basing y judgments here on my knowledge of using microsoft word, avast, and google docs. These are the only processors I've used.​

Things that I like about Zoho Writer that makes it unique:

• I like the "share" tab, because other processors  don't have this option, and it is useful for mailing or posting something quickly.
• I like that there are only a handful of text formats. Most downloadable processors have a lot, and it is tedious to scrolldown to "Times New Roman"; Times New Roman is all I want. 
• I like that it doesn't automatically autocorrect my spelling, as I like to do this manually.

Things that I think Zoho Writer lacks in comparison to other word processors:

• I do not like the fact that this processor will not automatically capitalize the first work of a new sentence, as I am used to this because of other, processors and find that I have to go back and capitalize a work manually when it has not been capitalized.
• This processor seems to lack paragraph formatting, which makes using it for formal writing impossible.
• I don't like how you have to enter an "edit" mode in order to alter your document. But this is the same for Google docs, so I guess it's permissible.

I could integrate this program into my classroom by:

I could probably use this in a similar way that Google docs could be used; that is, I could have my students use this to send me informal (or perhaps formal) writing assignments or responses. I could also simply suggest this to students who can't afford or don't have access to word processors.

Melissa's Teaching Assignment

Dalek, friends:
Dalek

How much?

Create interactive meetings at Poll Everywhere

Cyberman vs. Dalek

Replace your audience response systems with Poll Everywhere

2nd Life: Perhaps Not.

Dear Parents,

I don't think I would use second life for pedagogical purposes. A major reason is for digital safety. That there's no telling what kind of people are on second life from the outside world, and I'd want to prevent my students from both cyberbullying and cyberpredation. This might sound like a silly reason to not use it in the classroom, but both of these are very serious issues, and I wouldn't want to be responsible for putting my students in either situation.

Another more practical reason as to why I wouldn't use second life in the classroom is that it is a sandbox game, an open-world game. While exploration is a great thing, especially for learning something, it must be acknowledged that open-world games consume A LOT of time from a player. Just look at anything from Warcraft to Runescape to Oblivion and you will see what sort of time these games consume. Pair this up with students' attention spans (which I hate to admit, but it's true: they often have difficulty paying attention), and you've got an activity on your hands which will literally take weeks to complete.

Now, I myself am (or at least have been for years, if not at the present moment) an avid player of various kinds of video games. I know that some games would be more useful and realistic to use as pedagogical tools than second life (for example, Myst). The issue that comes into play, however, is student control. The point of using second life would be for students to explore a virtual world, choosing where their education takes them. This works similarly to the task system in Oblivion, or any sandbox rpg (or morpg); you have various tasks which you (or your character/ avatar) could work towards, and it is up to you to either accomplish or ignore them. This poses a problem, as for a classroom, all tasks must be accomplished.

Another problem arises with the task system as well: suppose your students have a main task (or a few) which they have to accomplish. Suppose they put off the main task in favor of a plethora of minor tasks (side-quests). As a gamer, I would always follow the route of side-quests, which is why it would always take my forever to complete a game (I'm looking at you, FFIX). It is probably more fruitful to follow a side-quest than to ignore it, because side-quests often give you rewards which make the main quest more easily accomplished. So if students have a main task to follow and are easily distracted from it in favor of accomplishing minor tasks, they may be right to do so, as it would ultimately give them a more meaningful experience in terms of learning. The problem with this is that there wouldn't be enough time in the classroom.

Sincerely,
Daniel de Sa',
ELA Teacher

There are three major things which have been useful for me, and which I will use, from this class. The first is the smartboard. While I am still getting the hang of this, the smartboard is a useful tool because unlike the traditional chalk- or white-board, the smartboard offers many opportunities for interactivity. the other tools which I've found useful are windows movie maker and audacity. Both of these tools can be used in a variety of multimedia projects, which is mostly how I would implement them in my classroom. I might also use them to present particular things to the class, such as video segments related to a unit.

I cannot think of anything in particular that I would like to learn about which we haven't yet covered.

The Slender Man

Please watch the following video, along with the 27 videos following it (labeled "Entry #1" - "Entry #26). These videos culminate in a horror experience which is super creepy:

WARNING: THE FOLLOWING SERIES OF FILM CLIPS IS EXTREMELY CREEPY. WATCH THESE CLIPS AT YOUR OWN DISCRETION.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wmhfn3mgWUI

You can use the following wiki to navigate through some of the footage and to help understand the over-arching narrative of the "slender man," a modern mythic creature:

http://marblehornets.wikidot.com/start

The reason I'm offering these things for you all to look at is because i think that both materials can be used in fruitful ways in the classroom. The entire film, which isn't that long, is fictional, and is done by students (film students). They've obviously used this modern mythical creature of the "slender man" to create an original narrative on film. This is something which students could easily do as a larger unit project with something they've learned about in class.

The second thing is a wiki, which we've looked at in our class as a possible tool to use for the classroom. It organizes a lot of information concerning the film project, but also a lot of information surrounding the film. It does what a wiki should do: informs the public with information on a particular topic. this would be a great second part to the aforementioned class film project.

I hope this was useful to you all!

Marble Hornets - Marble Hornets

http://marblehornets.wikidot.com/start

Beware the Floating Head

Reading Milton's Literary Epic Paradise Lost

code: 1066. I would use this lesson to teach students the elements of a literary epic. I would probably teach this to an 11th or 12th grade class because it is more advanced and more difficult to understand right away. I would use sections from the Odyssey to trigger students' prior knowledge (what they learned about the Odyssey in 9th grade). The materials included with this lesson are also very interesting, and I might try to figure out a way to use the smart board with them so that the students could interact with the material.

this is what a prezi looks like. i think.

Why Prezi is Awesome on Prezi

all for one as well as one for all

I think that there should be two separate grades- a group grade and an individual grade. I think that this is the most fair way to do this, as it will allow an evaluation of the whole work put into the project as well as allot each their due in terms of quality of work put in.

I find that it is sometimes difficult to complete my portion of the work on time not because there is too much work, but because it is a matter of determining which assignments (for this class and others) should have priority. Obviously, they each must be done by the time it s due, and so it becomes a matter of learning to work with multiple courses on your plate.

Visual Ranking

I used the visual ranking tool to set up a project where students would rank, from greatest to least, particular characters from Shakespeare's "Hamlet" in terms of character development. I think this is a good way to promote higher- order thinking because students have to really pause to recall what they've read in order to do this task. They really have to stop and think when  they have to consider examples for the character who undergoes the most amount of development and the one who undergoes the least amount of development. This is just one example, however. The visual ranking tool could also be used to rank grammar terms, for example, in terms of which ones the students themselves have the most difficulty with. Similarly, I can see the Seeing Reason tool being used for plot development in certain works of literature. For example, as (some character's love for another character) increases, (that character's motivation) increases. But that's just one example.

Annabel Bebop

This is just a video I made of myself reading Edgar Allan Poe's "Annabel Lee" with some clips from "Cowboy Bebop: The Movie." I thought it could be useful to post this because it sort of shows what you can do with audacity & with a video editing program like windows movie maker. Enjoy.

Smart Notebook & Math Tools

When I copresented the Smart materials during our previous class, I hadn't thought of how it would go exactly. I had a lingering expectation that everything would go well, with a little space left for failure, but I don't think it was a failure. Rather, it seemed that everyone got the idea of making a lesson using then Smart notebook, with questions only on relatively minor things, such as including text, particular equations, and enlarging objects.

One place which I KNOW I could have improved was in preparation. I hadn't known that the notebook on the computers in our classroom didn't already have the math tools application, but I could have gone beforehand to find that out. I also could have planned it better so that the time used to download the application wasn't filled with attempts to FILL time.

It was a challenging task, presenting the Smart applications, but In think overall it went well, and that my co-teaching partner Meghin and I learned a lot about the Smart technologies.

Rigor Redifined Article

The article was very interesting because it shows that a lot of students are not in fact used to thinking critically on their own, nor are they as practiced as they often think when working in groups (despite their push for multitasking using social networking tools!). This is shown chiefly in the first few parts of the article, where the people who own the businesses discuss what they look for in employees.

Both the government and english lessons show why students are not being challenged to think critically: the questions they are asked are not stimulating, and simply demand an answer which they can easily look up in their notes. The teacher in these cases is simply talking to him/herself in a mirror, a mirror which reflects the answers straight back.

The lesson that went well did so because it charged the students with a challenging yet stimulating task, laid down the rules to follow, and laid down the teacher’s expectations. This is the kind of instruction which will help students learn to work productively with others while still being able to think critically on their own.

Podcasting in the Classroom

I can see myself using particular podcasts for lessons. In  a unit on Poe, for example, I might find a podcast of someone reading a Poe poem, or a podcast of two or more people discussing a poem by Poe. Or I could do both: a reading and a discussion of the same poem. This would help to initiate our own discussion of the poem as a class.

Another case would be of recording myself in a podcast and presenting it to the class. I would do something similar to reading a poem probably, as it would be silly, I think, to record myself lecturing. Or I could record a discussion on the poem between another person and myself to present to the class, which would yield the same or similar results to the previous idea of presenting a podcast of a discussion.

I could also create an assignment where students are split into groups to create their own podcasts. I would either stick with the discussion idea for this (they record their own discussion of the poem) or I would have them create a podcast which presents an analysis of the poem, or background information, so that individual responsibilities might be divided between all the members.

Multitasking vs. Arrogance

After watching a few of the videos on this page, the page on attention & multitasking, I had to really sit down and chew over some of the more important points I came away with. When all was finally digested, I realized that the 21st century, based on what these videos put forth, begins with excuses. Let me explain.

The first video I watched was the one on multitasking. In this video, we see several M.I.T. students try to explain their need to "multitask." I quote the work because it is what the students have labeled it. In reality, however, what they are doing is not multitasking; what they are doing is ignoring their more important priorities for brief periods of time while they glut themselves on less important things. The first few seconds of the video shows a student checking her facebook page while instant messaging various other individuals during a lecture. Be aware that these are M.I.T. students.

Basically, there are four excuses given for why students need to "multitask." These can be divided into two plausible excuses and two terrible ones. The first terrible excuse is given by a student who basically claims that if a lecture isn't stimulating enough, he can only "multitask" or fall asleep. My answer to him is to get out of school now, because he doesn't belong there, especially in M.I.T. Higher education isn't a form of entertainment, it is a place to receive higher knowledge and be trained in skills appropriate for whatever job you plan on pursuing. This particular student did look tired, however, so maybe he doesn't get enough sleep to begin with. Perhaps he stays up too late going to parties, which are obviously a higher priority than those boring lectures that put him to sleep.

The second terrible excuse is given by a student who says that professors should just accept that students "multitask," because they are very good at it. I don't have to say much about this excuse, as the arrogance of it pretty much speaks for itself. She's good at updating her facebook status during an important lecture, so her professor should just accept it and move on without worrying if she understands how Milton is characterizing Eve? I guess his job's just not that important.

The first plausible excuse is given by a student who explains that out of an hour-long lecture, one can't hope to glean entirely new or interesting information, and so one should be able to use the moments when nothing's happening to get other things done that need to be done. This excuse is an interesting one, because it is presented as a responsible way to stay on top of things. There are two major problems with this excuse, however. The first is that there is almost definitely going to be new information in every lecture for a given course. A course lasts 15 weeks, for about 3 hours a week (3 credit course, obviously), and so the professor will probably want to push forward with the plan for the course as smoothly as possible. So if the problem is not that the information isn't new, but that the information isn't interesting, then I direct this student to my answer to the first terrible excuse. The second problem with this excuse is that the things it purports need to be done do not in fact need to be done at all. One person does not need to use the internet, text, or i.m. another during a lecture, unless the lecture requires it.

The second plausible excuse is the only one of the four that is actually somewhat excusable. It is given by a student who says that students will need to be able to multitask efficiently in the future in order to carry out their careers. This is where the notion of multitasking sheds my sarcastic quotation marks, because it is an excuse that actually borders on reason; it is a reasonable excuse. It is reasonable because it considers what will have to be done in the future, and not simply the future of these students’ careers, but the future in general. In the future, everyone will most definitely have to know how to multitask and manage their efforts successfully, and this is due to a large extent because of the rise of 21st century technology. It is still an excuse, however, because it is given to excuse these students’ actions of going onto facebook and texting during class. I’m sorry, but I can’t get over this.

Basically, what I’ve come away with is that students in the 21st century are going to be more skilled in stubbornly coming up with excuses to justify their inappropriate actions than in thinking critically, and that this is the battle that we must fight as teachers. The extent to which we must fight this battle will be gruesome; and if  this video on multitasking in M.I.T. didn’t get this message across, then surely the one on students playing video games in Korea did.

I play loads of videogames. I have a PSP, a DS, an Xbox 360, and many older generation consoles, not to mention the emulated games I have on my computer. Given this, I can understand how addicting video games can get at times. The extent to which the kid in the video plays his computer games is not uncommon, really. I’ve seen the same thing happen to people who play mmorpgs such as Warcraft. My brother, in his senior year of highschool, was obsessed with an online game called Runescape. I myself couldn’t get into this game, but he spent probably just as much time playing Runsecape – if not more – than the kid in the video spent playing his computer games. The difference between the kid in the video, however, and my brother, is that my brother eventually realized how the amount of time he spent playing was affecting the rest of his life. The kid in the video, surprisingly, didn’t give an excuse for his behavior; he simply admitted that he couldn’t help it. This is perhaps the worst thing that stands in our way as teachers, because it is basically the same thing as trying to help a heroine-addict (some games can be very addicting). I suppose what teachers and their school systems should strive to do is give students more of a purpose to their schoolwork, a reason for striving to achieve particular goals.

We have to remember that it isn’t the students who we are fighting; it is the various companies who we are fighting against for attention. If students have become addicts to particular venues of media, then the metaphor extends to portray the various companies that produce this media as the dealers. These companies don’t care how students do in school, or in life for that matter; they just want these students to be alive for their next fix. Unfortunately, this is how businesses work, and business is what runs the present age. The man in the video who talks about technology and laziness puts it best when he mentions that, in the current age, we have a bigger menu of diversions, and that we must find a common ground between the digital media and book-based learning. As teachers, we have to become just as fluent, if not more so, in 21st century technologies (the internet, computer programs, phone applications, video games, film, etc., etc., etc.) so that we can use our knowledge and skills in these technologies as weapons to combat student apathy and anxiety towards what they must learn in school. It’s unfortunate, but we must motivate them first. With some hope, if we’re successful, our students will be able to competently motivate themselves.

Remember the ps/1?

One of my fondest memories from childhood was when my family got our first gateway computer. We had one computer before this, an IBM ps/1, on which I mostly played a game called "Alleycat"; but for us getting a gateway was a big deal, because there's such a big difference between it and the ps/1. My interests didn't change much at the time; my new game was "Star Wars: Rebel Assult"; but the whole experience of the computer was different. There were so many programs on the gateway that the ps/1 couldn't run. The gateway, for example,  had microsoft word; the word processor that the ps/1 used was a blue screen with grey lettering.

Today the gateway is not only obsolete, but it is so behind in terms of technology that it triggers feelings of nostalgia just remembering it. Just remembering the strange sound of the modem dialing up...weird. This just shows, however, how much technology can change. From the ps/1 to the gateway, and from the gateway to any given computer currently used by anyone, there are major advancements in technology. What makes this interesting is that the ps/1 is a computer from 1990, which makes these advancements span only 20 years. That's insane.

Obviously, in order to do anything in today's world, one must be proficient in more that just computers to be proficient with technology. I'm not sure what much of this newer technology is which is used in classrooms, but this is exactly what I hope to learn.

For Starters

Sir Gawain is an awesome knyght.