Summer Blog

I have definitely learned a lot in terms of technical matters. Coming into the week, I knew nothing about the creation of blogs and wikis and very little about how to navigate podcasts. And I think I wondered what those little orange things were all over websites. So now I have a much better handle on all of this.

But the real question is how I might use some of this in my classroom. I think I’ll begin with the most basic of exercises. I’ll put together a blog for my senior English class. (You can access it here.) Will this necessarily transform my teaching? Nope. But I think it will at least provide my students another way to access me, one another, and the class materials. A challenge will obviously be striking the balance between appealing content and academic content. (Someone might want to say the two should be one in the same . . . . I’m doing what I can.) My hope is that the blog works as a resource, as a way to extend the classroom and the learning.  I like that the blog could help my organization.  Can’t find the rubric?  Try the blog.  Didn’t get a chance to say something in class?  Blog it.  Didn’t know you couldn’t bring a bomb to class?  You should have read the school handbook via the blog.  Yeesh.

At least creating the blog is kind of fun and kind of manageable. Ideally, that’ll be the case by the time November stumbles in.

My first project is to keep working on this stuff. I could see myself putting together a blog with my wife or a couple friends with matching interests.

As for school, something I am generally trying NOT to think about, I am interested in creating a blog for my senior classes. With seniors I am forever trying to get them to look at this and read that; sometimes it’s academic (some New Yorker article, something from the Times Sunday magazine), and sometimes it isn’t (articles about mountaineering, a youtube video about slacklining). They sometimes look at these things, and, shockingly enough, sometimes they don’t (they don’t want to read a 15 page New Yorker article about arbitrage? hmmm). In any case, I really can imagine a blog that becomes a community for these students. Needless to say, I’ll be the mayor of this community, but the site will offer students an opportunity to check things out, offer up what interests them, and, most importantly, take part in discussions of all sorts. It could be a bit unwieldy, but seniors can handle it.

David Parry makes a pretty compelling argument for RSS in his post on Blogs for Learning.  He offers an interesting distinction when discussing the two necessary reading skills when tackling blogs and the internet.  At times internetters need to be able to move rapidly through things, assessing as they go.  Other times we need to be able to slow down and read with full commitment.  This distinction makes a lot of sense.

As for RSS in my own practice, I’m still thinking this all through.  Maybe I’m dinosaur-like and a slave to the old days.  But I’m thinking of English in the same way lovers of food might think of the slow food movement.  I want students to slow down and read with care and commitment.  I see the significance of quick analysis, and I’m sure it has its place in my classroom at times, but I do favor books and even, yes, pen and paper.

But in the end I’ll discover RSS’s charm.   Once I’ve found the sites that focus on high school English, I’m sure I’ll be happy.  I do know that I have bookmarks on computers all over Deering High School– the computer lab, the math office, the English office, my  classroom, my last classroom, on and on.  If I had only had del.icio.us . . . .

I just need one high school English teacher to hand over his or her del.icio.us bookmarks and RSS feeds.

The first blog I explored belongs to the author of the class’s textbook, Will Richardson (you can hit his blog here). I do like the blog’s look; it strikes me as less chaotic, less frenetic than some of the others. Too often blogs are too busy, but maybe I’m just easily distracted.

The particular posting I read was a discussion of education, mainly the debate over content versus process. Richardson is clearly in the process camp, suspecting that an emphasis on content deadens learners. But in his post he’s responding to a comment from another blogger, Liz Lawley. She seems to feel that aspects of traditional education provide a base students can build on. The consummate blogger, Richardson seems to consider her point. But ultimately I imagine he’s dismissive. I would stand with Lawley, I think. I’m not so sure that traditional education is so worthy of scorn. At least it offers up something students can buck against.

Another blog, Moving at the Speed of Creativity, seems as though it could be helpful in the long run. While the Richardson blog may concern itself more with the theories of education, Speed seems to offer a bit more in terms of technology and how-to. He’s an evangelist too, but there may be more practical stuff here.This is good for the likes of me. I’m uncertain about how far we should go with all of this technology, but I do think it has its place. The linked page is a look at digital storytelling; Speed’s blogger, Wes Fryer, describes his experience with Jumpcut, a tool for digital storytelling. Like every other English teacher, I often think about having students collaborate on This American Life-style pieces, but I’ve always been daunted by the technology issues. But maybe it’s do-able now.

I’m still wrapping my mind around del.icio.us, tags, and their uses. The more I use del.icio.us and tags for my own purposes the more I’ll understand them and see their usefulness.

It seems to me that del.icio.us and tags would come in handy as I put together class blogs and build my del.icio.us collection. I could definitely see students contributing their own tags and sites (which is the point of the whole exercise, right?). For example, when we look at modernism in AP Lit, students can start looking around and add sites that strike them as accessible and helpful.

Bloggin’.

Design and Develop Digital-Age Learning Experiences and Assessments

The second goal seems to be the one most relevant for me. I have not used digital technology very much over the years, and though I’m a bit uncertain about the role of technology in a literature and writing course, I do know that technology can be very helpful if it’s used thoughtfully.

So there are a couple ways I could imagine integrating technology. First of all, the use of the google package seems huge. It may very well solve some very common and avoidable issues–mainly students’ inability to be able to print a piece of work they may have done at home. The more common the technology, the fewer the problems (or so I hope).

But I think the kind of interactivity the digital technology can foster would be my real goal. Peer editing, for example, can be a deadly exercise (students struggling to read the writing of others, the difficulty of keeping students quiet, the dearth of substantive comments). But peer editing through something like google would allow students to work with a familiar tool and work from home. Even more, google would allow me to oversee and evaluate student comments.

I am also curious about creating more opportunities for students to move in their own directions. I’m a fairly directive teacher and would defend that approach ardently, but I do know there are other ways. And so I would be happy if I could create at least one fairly substantial opportunity for my students to do their thing. I could imagine myself most likely planning something for the seniors I’ll teach in 08-09. First semester I have senior honors, while second semester I’ll have AP English. They may well serve as excellent guinea pigs. I’ll just have to resign myself to the fact that my first attempts to open things up may be a bit chaotic.

Enjoy all of the goals here.

I have begun to copy James Joyce’s Ulysses by hand. See photos here.

Over the summer I took seventeen classes.  Read about all of them here.