BLOG 8

The readings for this week in both ENG 570 and 577 seem to go hand in hand. Wysocki's "On Visual Rhetoric" compliments the topics that have been discussed in both classes. One quote that stuck out to me is "Our culture throws more visually shaped texts at us than we grew up learning to expect or to be comfortable analyzing." pg 185. Our culture has become plagued with visuals: visuals that say one thing but mean another, visuals that are symbolic, visuals that are ironic, visuals that are meaningless, visuals that are thought provoking, visuals that make us cry and laugh. As I suffer thhough the perils and joys of teaching English to high school students I am aware that visual rhetoric is a topic of learning that my students will inevitably encounter. And just like Wysocki suggests, "Learning to analyze and use visual rhetoric can help people in our classes compose effective texts..." pg 183 Students must be provided with tools for analyis that they can consistently refer to when working on their writing. So what are these tools? Though I am not entirely sure, I do agree with something that was recently mentioned in ENG 577. If students are to analyze and write about visual rhetoric, they must also compose their own visual rhetoric pieces. My classmate Lauren actually mentioned one assignment she did with her students in which they produced some sort of text/image poster. She spoke about the great success she had with this particular assignment and how her students seemed to have gained a lot of knowledge and insights on visual rhetoric. This along with the readings and recent discussions in class leads me to believe in the importance that as students learn about the qualities and emergence of visual rhetoric in their world, they must also be allowed to produce their own pieces. By allowing students to create, they may be better prepared to critically analyze their own work, but also the images and words that immerse their lives on a daily basis.

On a different but similar note, I have been spending a lot of time lately on a visually and brain stimulating website http://www.exploratorium.edu/ this is the website for the museum the Exploratorium which is located in San Fransisco. It is filled with interesting stories, facts, teaching tools and other cool things. For stuff that English teachers may like click here http://apps.exploratorium.edu/10cool/index.php?cmd=browse&category=13

Donor's Choose

Today has been an exciting day for me, my projects on Donor's Choose have been funded. For those who don't know, Donor's Choose is a philanthropic- type website that is dedicated to provide resources to students that attend high need schools in the inner city. Teachers can sign up, write proposals for items they need for their classrooms, for example books, dictionaries, science supplies, stationary, music instruments, etc, etc. They must explain why these are needed and how they will be used to enhance student learning. Once proposals are posted on their website donors and organizations such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation browse through proposals and donate to those they feel strongly about. Once a project has been completely funded, the teacher receives and email and responds to acknowledge that the resources requested are still needed. Once these steps are completed the resources are shipped to the teacher at his or her school!! Part of the process also requires thank you letters from the teacher and students that received the resources.

A couple of my colleagues have been using this website for some time, and most of their proposals have been funded. I was a bit skeptical at first, but I posted two proposals a little over a month ago, and as of today both of them have been officially funded.! It is amazing to see that there are people out there that believe in giving to students that are less fortunate, all in an effort to improve the quality of education. I know that my students will be extremely appreciative of receiving the books and dictionaries that I requested. This website is awesome!!
http://www.donorschoose.org/

Blog 7

There is ample evidence that people do not learn anything well unless they are both motivated to learn and believe that they will be able to use and function with what they are learning in some way that is in in their interest. -The New London Group


This is by far one of the most honest and real facts about the dynamics of learning that I have ever read. I was truly impressed with the entire Anderson article, "The Low Bridge to High Benefits: Entry-Level Multimedia, Literacies, and Motivation". So far this has been my favorite reading. All of the classroom activities he presented are highly engaging and seem to be truly motivational for students. The evidence he provided in the article demonstrates that if students are motivated they are bound to spend more time producing work that is of higher quality. The idea of creating assignments that incorporate alphabetic literacies as well as emerging literacy skills such as multimedia literacies is extremely innovative and inspiring.

I am extremely drawn to the Playlist Assignment and can not wait to try it with one of my classes. I have begun playing with the lesson plan in my head and am thinking of ways to modify it for my own students. This assignment would work well with creative writing as well as with academic writing. For example for a creative writing piece the task would be to: If you could create your own city what would this look like? Write a story in which you describe your ideal society/ community. Describe the people, places, practices, and environment with as much detail as possible. Make sure that you describe how each song is relevant and significant to your story. Include lyrics and links to the songs. For a more "academic essay", I have been thinking of the following assignment: What are your academic/ career goals? Write an essay in which you describe the journey you will need to take in order to achieve your goals. You may focus on one specific goal or more than one. Describe what steps you will need to take in order to achieve these goals. Also, anticipate obstacles and what your response to these will be. Include lyrics and links to the songs.

Though this is a rough draft of the lesson plan I eventually hope to create and do with my own students, I feel that I may have something that will engage my students and encourage participation. A large part of my students are musically inclined, they love to listen to their ipods, participate and attend and support, the "Battle of the Bands" contests at school and know what is current or "hip" when it comes to singers and songs. I anticipate that we will need some time brainstorming and drafting and eventually some time in the computer lab. I feel so very excited to try this activity and can not wait to see the work that my students produce! : )

Blog 6

One recurring theme in both the Manning and Gouge articles for this week was the idea of keeping things simple. Both women stressed the importance of refraining from utilizing every bell and whistle that online classes offer. According to them when designing an online course professors are better off maintaining everything accessible and easy to follow. Online classes will undoubtedly provide students with an opportunity to learn and apply new technological aspects that are learned in the class, still a successful online course will not be the one that is extremely demanding and complicated, a successful online course will be one in which most students learn and retain new knowledge. This will occur if students are not overwhelmed by the material presented. Throughout her article Gouge refers to this as "low tech/ high usability". It is therefore clearly important that a professor creates a course with tasks and assignments that most of the students will be able to tackle and complete with some degree of success.

In her article Gouge also explained the importance of offering a technology survey to the class at the beginning of the semester in order to modify, change and arrange certain aspect of the course all in an effort to serve and reach a majority of the class. She states that, "Choosing a set of technological tools that will maximize learning involves first finding out who the target audience for the course is then investigating what their experience with available technological tools are." This will process will inevitably lead to more participation and productivity from the entire class. If professors design courses keeping their specific student populations and their needs in mind more of the learning objectives and goals will be met.

After reading these articles I am convinced that the idea that "less is more" works well in all types of classrooms. In my own classroom this is something that I constantly practice with my own students, instructions are kept brief and assignments are direct and concise. Perhaps the only are in which I can work to improve is in collecting input from the students at the beginning of the semester. However unlike Gouge and Manning it is much more difficult for me to survey my students about their current performance levels. The district for which I work for has instituted mandatory "instructional guides" and with these come "periodic assessments" that must be administered and submitted by specific dates. This approach was created on the belief that all students are at the same performance levels and have the same instructional needs, this leads to the false idea that "one size fits all" as far as learning is concerned. What Gouge and Manning describe in their article can easily be achieved at the college level, unfortunately this is not possible for me because I don't have the flexibility to meddle with the "syllabus".

It would be wonderful to figure out different ways in which teachers like me who work at the high school level can create a curriculum for our own classrooms that is designed with the specific students needs in mind. Personally I think that it is appalling to teach a class of students with the belief that all are performing at the same level. College professors have a great advantage of designing a curriculum such as the one described by Gouge that was informed with the students and their level of performance in mind. What are some ways in which I can implement what Gouge and Manning described when I feel trapped by the district mandated curriculum?

Blog 5

Like one of my classmates stated the Tulley and Blair article seemed somewhat "outdated" in what it had to say about gender and technology. The belief that males are more into computers than females is based on false notions and assumptions that lie heavily on the gender double standard that has placed females into the category of people who are completely oblivious and uninterested about the world of technology. Over the years these ideas and beliefs have been shattered by the increasing number of females that have demonstrated achievement and knowledge in areas such as medicine, education, media and of course technology.

The Blackmon article was more in touch with current reality dealing with pedagogies that include all students, regardless of gender and ethnicity. Simply because the World Wide Web is available to all, does not mean that different ethnicities are equally represented in cyberspace. Blackmon makes a great case creating assignments that allow students to analyze the different communities that they can relate to. I believe that this allows students to explore cyber communities that extend beyond ethnicity. By doing this students are presented with the opportunity to feel connected to a community that perhaps they had never before explored. Through this activity students discovered and explored their connections to different communities and what this implies in the realm of their own education and development as human beings. Though I do not feel that I would try this activity with my current 9th grade classes, I do feel that 11th or 12th graders would be better suited and would reap greater benefits by exploring and writing about their connections to different communities.

The section on "Feeling Erased in Cyberspace", made me think about my own students and their own feelings about accessibility to resources such as technology and beyond. For the most part my students are all aware of the lack of resources in our school and community. Students know that our school does not have enough teachers, books, classrooms, supplies, computer labs and even desks. My students all know that they live in the "ghetto", South Central, they are also aware about what this implies when their academic achievement is compared through Standardized Testings to students from other more affluent communities.

What puzzles me about all of this however is the fact that despite their awareness about the lack of resources in our school and community, a large number of students posses some sort of portable electronic device. The questions that Blackmon asked her own students about technology made me wonder about what type of responses I would received if I asked my own students these questions. I want to ask my own students, "Is technology equally accessible to all people?" and "What happens to those that don't have access to technology?" Would my students believe that technology is equally accessible because they or some of their friends own ipods and cell phones? Would they feel like they don't have access to technology? I believe that I will learn a lot from my students by asking them to write about these two insightful questions.

A Winter Jacket That Charges Your Gadgets

I read this article and was just amazed at how far technology has come. I will not longer look at a jacket the same way!


http://gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/02/a-winter-jacket-that-charges-your-gadgets/?em

Texting While Driving

The NY times has posted an interactive game that allows readers to see the effects of texting while driving. It's sorta cool, I tried it myself and what I saw was definitely eye opening!



http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/07/19/technology/20090719-driving-game.html?ref=technology

Blog 4

Random Thoughts

So after exploring Prezi for many, many hours I have discovered that it is not as bad as I thought it would be. It is not easy, but it is manageable once one get accustomed to moving things around in the "canvas" that this software provides. My ambivalence comes from the fact that as far as projects are concerned I am used to putting things together with paper, glue stick, and scissors. I like molding and creating with actual paper or objects in my hand. Though Prezi is completely different to what I am used to, I can see now how I will make it work for my Tech Autobiography. Before actually setting out to create this, I plan to create other smaller presentations with Prezi in order to practice and learn as much as I can from it. Spending time getting to know Prezi is enough to remind me that the best way to learn something new is by immersing yourself in the new material.

One word that stuck out this week both in the reading and in the class chat session was "pseudonym". The class seemed torn between the significance and usage of pseudonyms in the classroom, personally I believe that this can work if students are given guidance and instructions about creating appropriate pseudonyms. I understand what many classmates said about pseudonyms and voice and identity for students, but I also believe that this would not be limited if everyone in the class was to know upfront the real identity of every student behind his or her pseudonym. Even when working at the high school level, students should have some sort of rules about what types of pseudonyms are acceptable and appropriate in the classroom setting. I don't believe that this is limiting their "voice" or depriving them of any type of creativity necessarily. For example letting students know that profanity or vulgar language will not be accepted as part of their pseudonyms, will remind students that there are some boundaries and rules in place in order to maintain focus on the assignment at hand.

While reading and commenting on a classmates blog, an idea sparked in my head. In her blog she wrote about students creating an ABC Power Point about a book they have read. The idea is that for every letter students write a word that pertains to the book, for example, A for About the Author, C for Character, etc, etc. I have done something similar with my students without the Power Point aspect. After doing some thinking I was brainstorming about a way in which students could write "book reviews", and post them online for the class to read. My students do Silent Reading everyday, these are books that they select on their own, they are also responsible for maintaining a reading log. My dilemma with Silent Reading is that I do not feel that they are particularly fond of the traditional "Book Report", that they are accustomed to writing for each book they complete. I think that if they are told to write about how good or bad the book was they will feel more ownership of the assignment since they will be allowed to give their personal opinion about the book. Then when it is time for selecting another book, students can read what their peers recommend. I would like to know if there is a way in which these "Book Reviews" could be posted on some sort of classroom website that all of them can go to and read on their own. I am sure there is a way, however because I am not technologically savvy, I am clueless as to where I would even begin to put this together. Any and all ideas will be greatly appreciated?