Interactive Presentations

One of the texts my World Literature students read is Ties That Bind, Ties That Break by Lensey Namioka. One issue that the main character deals with is the pressure to have her feet bound. Students are interested in this topic. This is a brief interactive presentation on the topic of foot binding.

Video Reflection

The star of this short video is one of my favorite companions, Rocky.

The nice thing about digital video and iMovie is that you can edit, so it's important to plan but know that it will be fixed up later. This is similar to writing a paper using a computer; the writer feels more free to experiment and take risks because it is easier to clean up later. And sometimes good materials and insights come from "playing around." The steps to creating a video are similar to creating a written text, so teaching process is important. Just like in writing, producing a video requires brainstorming, outlining, composing a rough draft, revising, and polishing. I imagine that many students would find creating a video fun, so it might be a good way to teach the process that can then be applied to creating a written text.

Roleplay Reflection

In the online roleplay, I was a student.  Although my post/position was not a contributing factor in the ultimate decision of the board, I felt like I was an active member of the dialogue when other people responded to my post.  It shouldn't have been difficult to imagine myself back in the mind of a 17-year-old since I spend a large part of my day surrounded by people that age, but it was still difficult to remain in character.  On the other hand, there was freedom in creating and being a character because I could express some more extreme views than my own that I thought would be more interesting in the discussion.

A part of the discussion ended up being about gender, and I found it interesting that the two male board members sided with the more evidence-based argument while the female board member sided with the more emotion-based argument.

Pondering Podcasts

This morning I listened to the EdTechWeekly #99 podcast while my dog and I went for a walk.  The good things (in my opinion) about this weekly show are that it is run by teachers and it is a resource for links and ideas on using technology in the classroom.  Upon visiting their website today, I also realized that some of their shows have a video component to watch as well.  You can't beat their price (free) for tips and ideas on integrating technology into your curriculum.  The less good things about this podcast, however, are that it is run by teachers who are not paid to do this and the amount of links and information that they hand out in each show can be overwhelming.  

Other podcasts that I regularly listen to are This American Life and Midmorning with Kerri Miller.  What I like about This American Life is that it's all about stories -- real stories.  Ira Glass and the rest of the crew that put this show together know how to tell an insightful tale that makes the listener see life just a little bit differently afterward.  And Kerri Miller's show is all about conversation.  Each day she interviews guests on her show, and it seems that she can make the topic interesting -- no matter what it is -- by the questions that she poses and the rich discussion that she elicits.  I know that these two shows are different than EdTechWeekly because their hosts are paid to make these shows appealing to listeners, whereas the hosts of EdTechWeekly seem to be making their show simply for the sake of helping out other teachers.  And this makes me wonder if the EdTechWeekly show would be more compelling if the teachers were given motivation, through pay or some other incentive, to make it appealing to the widest possible audience of teachers.  Would that affect the quality of the show?  Would that affect their listenership?  Does it even matter?  

If I want my podcast to be interesting, then I'll have to put some time into preparation.  I recently listened to a conversation between Kerri Miller and Jim Lehrer on the topic of good interviewing skills, and Lehrer said that a good interviewer is prepared by knowing some things about the topic ahead of time and a good interviewer is flexible and good at listening so that he/she is prepared to handle different directions the interviewee might lead even if it means abandoning pre-written questions.

So I guess I'll still have to think about this.  I would like to interview my grandma because she is a wealth of memories and wisdom, or my dad for the same reason.  Who would my audience be (other than you, Yunli...)?  How would I make it interesting for that audience?  If my audience is my family, what kind of conversation would be appealing to them?

Lake Harriet Digital Poem (Sortof)

I'm proud of the fact that Minnesota is a land of so many lakes. And there are so many kinds of lakes, from quiet and wild in the Boundary Waters to bustling and well-managed in the city. I grew up next to a lake of the latter type, and it was comforting to me that every time I went there other people were there enjoying it at the same time. Some had kids and some had dogs and some had significant others or just plain friends. There's something magical about a lake that makes it an ideal place for a walk any time of the year. In these photos, I tried to capture some end-of-summer/beginning-of-fall moments at Lake Harriet in Minneapolis. Then I added some words too. Oh yeah, and I used PowerPoint because I was inspired by Molly's digital poem.

World Lit Wiki

The final project in my 12th grade world literature class is an original composition (and reflection on the composition) that incorporates cultural and literary elements we have studied throughout the semester. In preparation, students will choose a culture and type of literature to study with a small group for ten weeks. The course wiki will serve as a virtual notebook for each small group to record the ideas shared in their discussions. It will also serve as a scaffolding device in that each group can get ideas from what other groups are posting. Right now it's pretty bare bones. This week the students will brainstorm ideas for the focus of small groups. Once the topics are chosen, each small group will create pages that will link to the course FrontPage so that each group and their notes will be connected.

As far as challenges, this one is so boring it's almost a cliche: Many students don't have access to computers and the internet outside of scheduled time in the computer labs at school. It would be great if students could use the wiki outside of class as a place where they could record thoughts and ideas about their final project at any time. That would mean face-to-face communication in class could be complemented by ideas posted on the wiki at any time. But realistically, due to the lack of access, "wiki time" will have to occur during potential face-to-face time in class. At least the wiki will still serve as a convenient and paperless way to store notes and ideas and as a method of scaffolding. And students will be able to add another digital writing tool to their bag of tricks (to borrow another cliche...).

Images the make me go "aaaawwww"

Two winters ago, while my cousin was scuba diving and lying on the beach in a warm climate, I spent some time with his dog Bailey. It was very early March, and we got hit with a classic late season dumping of snow. Bailey loved it. She played while I shoveled. And then we both went inside to lie on the couch. (Oh yeah, and there are two summer photos of Bailey at the end of the slideshow. I don't know how to make a slideshow in Flickr with only certain photos. ...So you can tell that Bailey has fun in the summer too.)



For me, these photos elicit some of the things that I experienced that weekend with Bailey: the exhilaration of being surrounded by white, pillow-y snow; the aching biceps, forearms, and back from shoveling; the silent loneliness of staying in my cousin's house without my cousin; the comfort of sitting in the warm wood-paneled den with a warm, brown companion.

Photos have the power to make you feel things, especially if they evoke memories. The challenge then becomes communicating those feelings through writing. That's why they're good as writing prompts.

Here are the same photos with audio added:

Keeping up with the pace of thinking and reading

This weekend I've been writing up some ideas to teach World Literature to 12th grade students. My goal is to cover a variety of cultures and types of literature as a large-group and then have small groups of students choose a specific world culture to focus on for the semester. Members in the small group will take turns bringing in examples of literature from their chosen culture to share with the rest of the small group. After the small groups have read and discussed examples of literature from their chosen culture over many weeks, they will then compose their own original creative piece to express what they have learned about the culture and in imitation of the styles they have studied. I'm hoping that blogs will serve to log, extend, and share these discussions throughout the semester.

If we have a class blog, this could serve as a space for students to discuss the readings we do as a large group or as a space for small groups to share with the rest of the class the work they have done. Small group blogs could be a place for each group to discuss and track their research on the type of cultural literature they have chosen. And individual blogs could serve as a place for personal reflection. This is a rough draft of a plan and I don't think we will use all three types of blogs, but I hope that whatever type we use will generate discussion beyond the classroom and move us toward Phase II or Phase III digital writing.

I think that blogging is important to incorporate into the classroom because the Internet and all of its resources are changing the way that we think and learn. This morning, I read an article from the New York Times that referenced an article from The Atlantic about the effect of the Internet on our brains and on how we do business. Is it good or bad? Or is it just different?

This is a topic that I find interesting as a possibility for the final project, something about putting into context the changes that the Internet is causing in the way that we read and think.

Evolution of the Notecard

I admit that I grew up before the boom of internet research -- or maybe I just attended a high school that was stuck in the Stone Age. The spring semester of my 12th grade year was devoted to writing the "thesis paper," a requirement to graduate. The standard for credible research material back then was anything that could be found in a college library. So, with trepidation as a lowly high school senior, I made my way to the University of Minnesota. My mom came along for backup. The intimidating English teacher had told us that the best way to organize data for our paper was to bring along some notecards and record important findings in a highly prescribed way. (Actually, now that I think about it, it was similar to the "tagging" system discussed in our readings, where each notecard was labeled with key words and phrases.) These notecards then became the evidence that supported our thesis statement in the paper. I remember sitting in front of the family Macintosh computer, lost in notecards with poorly written or half-recorded quotations and citations.

And in college I don't remember using databases either for research projects. (Is that possible? Did I just block it out, or did I just take too many literature courses that only required citation from the texts read in class?)

So I guess I'm not much of a resource for credible online research material. (Thank you to members of the class who have written about many options that have worked for you.)

I am still grappling with the credibility topic. This morning I listened to Digital Campus Episode 31 while walking my dog. Unfortunately, it was a high-car-traffic time of day and the audio for their guest was poor, but one topic that caught my attention was how new media and new methods of doing research on the internet will be integrated into the current structure of academics, where producing and publishing manuscripts still seems to be valued above all else.

After the walk and while I grabbed a bite to eat, I also caught just the beginning of Kerri Miller's interview with Brian Schieffer on Minnesota Public Radio. Shieffer offered the perspective (not surprising since he works for CBS) that traditional sources of news (newspapers, television newscasts) are expected to verify a story before they broadcast it as an actuality, and they get in trouble if they do not. Bloggers, on the other hand, are free to write about events and topics even if they are only speculation. I think the implied message is that traditional sources of news are more credible. The other side of that, though, is that getting news from traditional sources of news requires less critical thinking and investigation.

One thing that strikes me in reading other people's posts is that many of us subscribe to the same sources of news. Does this mean that they are credible and valuable sources of news? Or does it mean that all of us share the same biases that are reflected in our choices of where we get information?

Face-to-face and computer-to-computer

Since I'm posting later in the week, I have the advantage of being able to read what others have already written. (One small thing I hope to learn in this class is that "trackback" feature that Hendron mentions in RSS for Educators.) Maybe these comments would be better suited as replies to the original posts, but for now I'll leave them as part of my own posting.

So Molly mentioned blogs as possibly the new form of the Sunday Night Dinner. And while I really like the rich discussion and enhanced communication that this analogy conjures, I can't help agreeing with Crystal's point that blog discussion is missing that face-to-face component (not to mention a thick, juicy slab of pot roast). And I think that face-to-face communication should still be valued as the most important form of human communication -- or at least the original, from which all other forms of communication evolved as proxies. In this respect, I agree with Ellyn that socially accepted rules of politeness should apply to blogs just as they do in face-to-face communication. I hope that blogs remain only as a tool that is a proxy for face-to-face communication for the purpose of enabling more ideas and information to be shared -- and not as a substitute for face-to-face communication.

Tonight I was talking to my husband about the social rules around blogs. His comment was that if the benefit of blogging is to get your ideas out to a wide audience, then wouldn't it be equivalent in purpose to standing on a street corner (or in the middle of a college campus) and shouting out to passers-by? Of course blogs are more efficient than that because the reader can peruse the information and add comments at his or her leisure, as opposed to stopping right at that moment to engage in the discussion. But I do think it's interesting that one form of getting ideas out to a wide audience is socially acceptable and one is not.

I also wonder if an increase in digital communication will change the way that we interact with each other when we are face-to-face.

In my student teaching experience last spring, I used blogs with my 11th and 12th grade world literature students. One thing that I noticed is that students were not hesitant to comment on the blog posts of other students whom I observed to be outside their usual group of friends that they sat with and preferred to work with in class. So I'm interested in how digital writing affects the face-to-face communication in the classroom -- I'm hoping it may improve it.