As I searched for educational blogs I found that they can be used in a variety of forms. The first thing that I noticed is that there are teachers out there blogging away about everything from their classes, to their personal lives, to things that are going on with education in the political realm. Mostly, for my searches I encountered either that form of blog, or student blogs related to the content of a course. I found a couple websites that interest me. In one, students are using blogs as a form of pen-pal communication with a student somewhere else in the country or world. This is really a neat idea to me. Also, one website (that actually is for a WSU class, but I'd use it in my classroom) has students discussing activities that occurred in class and giving each other performance critiques online. Lastly, an idea that I got from our wiki discussions would be to have students do group play writing. As a class we could agree on characters that would start off the play, and then students could go to the wiki and change the dialogue or add more dialogue and action, and then on a different section of the wiki do a little post on why they made those changes and where they think the story should go for the next person. I didn't find anything really like that in my search, but I can't imagine that I'd be the first to think of this possibility.
I am not a big journal-y person, but blogging would be a great way to cut down on the paper load as a teacher. You could check the student's blog from anywhere and not have to lug home journals. I also feel that students can have the opportunity to take the things they are learning in class and discuss them outside of that environment. Sometimes you don't make a connection or realize something until the class period is over, and then that insight is lost to the class, but students can go home and put that thought down on their blog.
The cons to blogging that I see are that they sometimes get off of educational objectives easily. One teacher talked a lot about their personal life, and while there was nothing earth-shatteringly awful, there is the potential for teachers as well as students to share inappropriate material. The Internet gives people a false sense of anonymity and that can lead to blogs that are not educational in nature. The second con is safety. When you are having kids put things on the web, the paramount concern should be that they are safe and being safe on the web.
The pros, though, as stated before are that the students can connect with each other and take learning outside of the classroom. They also can share information and engage with the material by journaling at their own pace.
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Monday, May 21, 2007
Engaging Students with Concept Mappping
Concept mapping is not a new concept (ha ha pun intended) for me. I remember in high school all the teachers got together and decided that if they made us all do graphic organizers for 2 weeks before the WASL we would all pass with flying colors. I think that that little atempt was well intended, but had some faults. I remember being in Spanish class and asking why we were making little maps of all the conjugates of a particular verb because I already knew all the conjugates and was in one of those "I'm 15 and I don't want to" moods. The response I got was because we had to, and eveyone was doing it. Which, as I now reflect, is probably the absolute worst argument any adult has ever given a freshman in high school. I am now just a little sorry I never took the opportunity to say that Mr.____ said it was ok because everyone was doing it the next time I got in trouble for something.
Anyhoo, I digress. Really concept maps are effective, but teachers can't just say "make a map" and think they've done magical ninja teaching and now all of their students "get" what is going on in the classroom. Teachers need to have specific goals and objectives and use concept maps as tools by which to accomplish those objectives.
Concept maps engage students by forcing them to look at relationships. For example, in my concept map that I made, I took one character from A Streetcar Named Desire and did her character traits. This would help students highlight how a particular character relates to others within the world of the play or the literature that is being explored. I'd also use this as a tool to outline a paper topic. So many students sit down to write a paper and they have amazing thoughts but no way to organize them. That's why I liked the Inspiration software we used because it would translate bubbles or maps into outlines which caters to both types of students.
I've always felt that there should be multiple modes of assessment so that students who learn in different ways can have an opportunity to excel and concept mapping is a perfect way to do this. Not only can it be used as assessment, but I would use this in my teaching to demonstrate concepts and check for understanding during formative assessment.
Other ideas for concept mapping:
1. Have students map out steps in the production process of a show.
2. Use as an exam, or as part of an essay exam so that students can "show their work".
3. Have students show how concepts or schools of thought grew from one another in literature (or drama)
4. Use as part of dramatic critiques so students can see what parts of a production they need to work on.
Anyhoo, I digress. Really concept maps are effective, but teachers can't just say "make a map" and think they've done magical ninja teaching and now all of their students "get" what is going on in the classroom. Teachers need to have specific goals and objectives and use concept maps as tools by which to accomplish those objectives.
Concept maps engage students by forcing them to look at relationships. For example, in my concept map that I made, I took one character from A Streetcar Named Desire and did her character traits. This would help students highlight how a particular character relates to others within the world of the play or the literature that is being explored. I'd also use this as a tool to outline a paper topic. So many students sit down to write a paper and they have amazing thoughts but no way to organize them. That's why I liked the Inspiration software we used because it would translate bubbles or maps into outlines which caters to both types of students.
I've always felt that there should be multiple modes of assessment so that students who learn in different ways can have an opportunity to excel and concept mapping is a perfect way to do this. Not only can it be used as assessment, but I would use this in my teaching to demonstrate concepts and check for understanding during formative assessment.
Other ideas for concept mapping:
1. Have students map out steps in the production process of a show.
2. Use as an exam, or as part of an essay exam so that students can "show their work".
3. Have students show how concepts or schools of thought grew from one another in literature (or drama)
4. Use as part of dramatic critiques so students can see what parts of a production they need to work on.
Thursday, May 10, 2007
Learning Styles Assignment
As a reader of trashy fashion magazines, I love taking quizzes and questionnaires. Usually, the ones in Cosmo or Marie Claire tend to be on the “What your man says about your work ethic” or “How your fashion style give messages to others” or some other frivolous topic. I take those quizzes for fun and take the results for what they are, but even though they’re fun, they’re not very useful. On the other hand, the multiple intelligences inventory that I recently took was helpful—although rather unsurprising.
I took a multiple intelligence quiz from Surfaquarium.com that I accessed through a link on the www.enhancelearning.ca website that was provided to us on the assignment sheet. I previously had taken the personality profile that gives you a letter code (I’m EFNP) and I thought it was dead on. I knew of Gardner’s multiple intelligences from T&L 302/303 and I had a good idea of what I might be, but I wanted to take the “test” and see what it had to say. The results were not really all that surprising, I scored 10/10 on the interpersonal portion, which makes complete sense because when I was little punishments were when I had to be in my room by myself. I have a need to be around people, and I love performing and public speaking as well. Really, when others tell me that they need “me” time, I just laugh and say that’s what sleeping is for. The only thing that surprised me was that my next highest set was the interpersonal category. I have no idea why. I guess maybe if I love getting to know others so much, I must have to have a good grasp of who I am myself. I love the idea of integrating the MI inventory into my classroom. It would be a great way to start out the school year because students could get to know each other and as a teacher I could get an idea of what areas of intelligence are represented well, or not at all in my classroom. I think that would help me modify my instructional practices to meet the needs of my students. I’m also a big fan of letting students “choose their own adventure” (remember those books? They were great!) and giving them some options in how they are going to demonstrate their learning. For example, if we are learning about Romeo & Juliet they can either categorize character relationships, or write a summary, or build a model of the Globe theatre, etc. I think that not only does that help students be successful (and as an English teacher doesn’t give me 150 eight-page papers to read) but it also adds a richness to the classroom by letting student’s interests be applied to the subject matter that they have to learn.
After we all took the MI test in class we went to a very useful website called surfaquarium.com which outlines all of the intelligences and gives some advice to helping students who are not high in your area of intelligence, and also students who have high intelligences in areas that you yourself are weak in. I think that's fabulous because I know so many students who struggle when the teacher's learning style is different from their own. For example, I have an extremely high interpersonal and verbal score on my MI and I know that I absolutely love lecture courses. Of course the instructor has to have a little personality, but I could just sit and talk for hours at a time, so I learn really well by just being told things. Most people I know don't, and I will have to conciously try not to be too lecture based when I have my own classroom.
I took a multiple intelligence quiz from Surfaquarium.com that I accessed through a link on the www.enhancelearning.ca website that was provided to us on the assignment sheet. I previously had taken the personality profile that gives you a letter code (I’m EFNP) and I thought it was dead on. I knew of Gardner’s multiple intelligences from T&L 302/303 and I had a good idea of what I might be, but I wanted to take the “test” and see what it had to say. The results were not really all that surprising, I scored 10/10 on the interpersonal portion, which makes complete sense because when I was little punishments were when I had to be in my room by myself. I have a need to be around people, and I love performing and public speaking as well. Really, when others tell me that they need “me” time, I just laugh and say that’s what sleeping is for. The only thing that surprised me was that my next highest set was the interpersonal category. I have no idea why. I guess maybe if I love getting to know others so much, I must have to have a good grasp of who I am myself. I love the idea of integrating the MI inventory into my classroom. It would be a great way to start out the school year because students could get to know each other and as a teacher I could get an idea of what areas of intelligence are represented well, or not at all in my classroom. I think that would help me modify my instructional practices to meet the needs of my students. I’m also a big fan of letting students “choose their own adventure” (remember those books? They were great!) and giving them some options in how they are going to demonstrate their learning. For example, if we are learning about Romeo & Juliet they can either categorize character relationships, or write a summary, or build a model of the Globe theatre, etc. I think that not only does that help students be successful (and as an English teacher doesn’t give me 150 eight-page papers to read) but it also adds a richness to the classroom by letting student’s interests be applied to the subject matter that they have to learn.
After we all took the MI test in class we went to a very useful website called surfaquarium.com which outlines all of the intelligences and gives some advice to helping students who are not high in your area of intelligence, and also students who have high intelligences in areas that you yourself are weak in. I think that's fabulous because I know so many students who struggle when the teacher's learning style is different from their own. For example, I have an extremely high interpersonal and verbal score on my MI and I know that I absolutely love lecture courses. Of course the instructor has to have a little personality, but I could just sit and talk for hours at a time, so I learn really well by just being told things. Most people I know don't, and I will have to conciously try not to be too lecture based when I have my own classroom.
Tuesday, May 8, 2007
I Blog! Woot, woot!
Well, I suppose I am entering the 21st century finally since I am now on facebook, myspace, and now blogger.com. I usually HATE journaling on paper, so we'll see how this goes as a journal online...
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