Sept. 29, 2009

I watched a blog I found on YouTube titled "Andrew's Blog (The Enchanted Playground One)." Andrew is a part of the cast of Mary Poppins. He, along with the rest of the cast went to the City Museum in St. Louis. The City Museum is, as one trip advisor user says, "like no other museum you've seen before, this imaginative learning center features a multi-level enchanted forest, giant aquarium, participatory circus and a museum of oddities." Andrew describes it as a ten story recycled jungle gym.

I think that the main audience of this vlog would be those that went along with him to the museum. It looks like something they would be able to look back and reflect on. In a larger sense, I think that it would be good to look at for anyone (like me) who thinks that there should be more hands-on places for adults to go and play like a kid again. It does a good job chronicling what a trip to this museum would be like - and if you were thinking about visiting I think it would hook you.

For the most part, the vlog takes you, the audience, through all the things you can do, go through, participate in during your visit to this museum. But, there are also moments where Andrew stops and tells you where they are in the museum (the roof, the caves, etc.). This just gives you a sense of place, especially if you have never been there yourself.

I definitely think that this was a good, fun, entertaining vlog. Here, watch for yourself:


I had quite a time creating the vlog. I have never before recorded myself, and try to stay out of things when my husband is taking a video of my son. It is odd to watch myself and hear myself - I totally agree with Ashley. I also felt like it took me some time to feel comfortable with what I was going to say. I had to practice a couple times before it seemed to flow. I wonder, though, if practicing takes out some of the authenticity of a vlog.

I have created it, but am having some difficulty with uploading it. It has been "processing" on Youtube for quite awhile. I will put it up as soon as it is done.

Okay, here is what you have been waiting for:


Here is my concept map I made at Bubbl.us:

Frustrations

So, I was reading in Teaching Writing Using Blogs, Wikis, and other Digital Tools about students using blogs. It said that one teacher found that if it was a requirement that students would do the bare minimum. Then, the book went on to say that if the blog was not a requirement, it seemed as though the students participated more readily and had more of a community. This seems all well and good, but what will work for the students who just don't do anything? They don't participate in class discussions, they don't complete their homework, they don't go to the library to get materials, they don't use their classroom time appropriately, they don't have computers at home. They just don't.

How am I supposed to engage them enough to want to go and do work that isn't required - work they wont get a grade on. My students, apart from being "bad" students, have a lot of things going on in their lives from work, to harsh family life to meetings for their sobriety every night of the week (for some of them). I am not trying to make excuses for them, but sometimes it seems that these kids are the exception to the glorious work that is being done in the digital world.

I would love feedback or ideas or to sit down and discuss this more in depth with people. I am just getting frustrated because it does not seem like this class will have any benefit for my current students.

Final Project Idea

I am planning on writing a unit that incorporates technology into the reading of a play. I hope to make the unit available for use with multiple plays - meaning have the basic structure of the unit set, but be able to have it general enough to work with many plays. I think that this would be really good for the population of students that I currently work with. They do their best work when day to day structure is kept the same. I feel that if I use the same basic structure whenever I teach a drama unit, they will get used to the structure of the unit and be able to better understand the process.

For this final project, I will probably base my unit on the teaching of Macbeth. I hope to include the use of :Vlogs, Wikis, a webquest, and possibly a blog. I am (obviously) still learning the best way to incorporate these technologies, so I am not sure how I will use them yet or if I will change which technologies I will use. I am not yet sure how I will use digital note-taking. I liked the idea of using Inspiration, but am not yet sure where I will fit it in.

I have to admit that I probably have not used a database to search since I completed my undergrad/initial licensure programs back in 2004. I am pretty sure the database I used to use when searching was MNCAT. Unfortunately, that means I now rely a lot on Professor and Dr. Google to answer many of the questions that I come up with.

After last class, I now understand how bloglines could be a valuable tool in research. I liked that you could subscribe to a particular journal/magazine/etc. or you could ask that a particular topic's information find your way into your bloglines account. As far as determining the validity and credibility of the information, I guess I would first need to determine the validity and credibility of the site the material is coming from. I would have to say that I could do this by using the handout I give to my students when they are completing their research project. This rubric has you (the reader) rate multiple criteria on a scale from 1-5 to determine if it is a valid site. I will probably subscribe to many online newspapers and try to find some educator blogs/websites that I want to get updates from.

Class Notes for Dixie

Any questions or comments?

• We talked about the idea of transparency - anything you put on the internet willremain there forever.

Setting up your feeds:

• A feed puts out posts to your audience (via email)
• Many ways to put up your feed One way - type it in. It is typically your blog url/Feeds/post/default This is your feed URL.
• I have a handout for you.
  
• Rick would like us to create a link to our blog on the class website. Go to http://digitalwriting.pbworks.com/Student-blogs
• Google bloglines and create an account

Bloglines:

• create account
• click on add
• type in blog URL you want to have a feed for
• click on subscribe
• now the blog will show up on the left hand navigation bar.

Feedburner

• Go to your blog. Go to settings. Go to Site Feed. Click on feedburner. Follow instructions from there. Click on the Atom one. If you have already created a feed elsewhere, you DO NOT NEED TO DO THIS STEP!

Since we are partners:
We need to subscribe to each others posts. I am going to do this on Bloglines.
We also need to go to each others blogs and become followers.
We also have another partner...her name is Ann.

We got another handout - "Chapter 6: Fresh and Forward Thinking: Using Blogs for Educational Purposes"

How can we use digital media (specifically blogs) in your classes?

• use wiki to have collaboration between students - especially good those that may not speak up in class.
• blogs good for teachers to have a personal learning network - give each other ideas and challenge each other in the classroom.
• doing exercises in code switching - between text speak and formal language
• create facebook profiles for characters in novels and have them update and interact with each other.
• have the students post things they learned in a pre-reading activity and post links to where they found the information.
• synchronous chats for book clubs. Then you get a transcript. Students can later reflect on their transcripts. Rick will go over a good sit for this later on.

PowerPoint Notes: (They may be on the web)
Inquiry based Instruction
http://inquiry.uiuc.edu - good website for inquiry based instruction

Critical Response Protocol (CRP)
Set of questions you get students to ask about a certain phenomonon. They get used to asking these questions - a thinking routine. One of the questions of often "what do you notice?" or "what do you see in this image?" "What does this remind you of?" "Do you see any connections?" "What meaning are you finding?" "How does it make you feel?" "What questions do you have?"
We looked at an example of CRP - gravestone example(Carolyn Clark).
There are a lot of interesting images you can use on Flickr -when using flickr use creative commons

Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS)
similar to CRP

Tagmemics
How do you define the neighborhood?
How has your neighborhood changed over time?
How is my neighborhood different from others?

Interviewing

• we got a handout

Kinds of questions

• develop questions based on prior research
• ask "grand tour" questions bout the "big picture" experience
• ask open ended questions vs yes no questions
• follow up questions
• "pointing" interviews to focus on specifics - have student bring in something with special meaning. Another students ask questions about that object. Then that student summarizes to the class what they learned about that object.

Ethnography methods - fly on the wall perspective.

Field Notes: Fieldworking

• Focus - selective perception
• Verbal snapshots - 5-10 details
• descriptive vs. general language

Seeing and Making Connections is important. this is where you get the knowledge (connectivism) - Stephen Downes

How do we learn? discussion

Break

go to the Ning. Click on the twitter link and join. Follow the class twitter.
AmyLou_12
normal password
gust0257@umn.edu

Social Bookmarking (have 2 handouts for you)
when you find something you like you tag it and then share it with people.
Rick suggests to sign up for one or both of these and play with it.

• Del.icio.us
  
• Diigo
  

Watched a video about Diigo

mypopstudio.com - good website. especially for teen girls.
youth voices - a site that other schools are part of and a place where our students can interact with other students from all over the world.

Uses of Blogs

I have never before used a blog in my everyday life. I think this is due to two main reasons. The first reason why I don't blog is time. I don't have time to put pen to paper, let alone sign on and blog about what is going on with me. Second, I worry that what I say would not be important for anyone else to read. To me, it is easier to write in a notebook that only I read because no one will read and critique what I wrote. I guess I have to realize that writing a blog is not only for others, but for me too.

Blogs have not been utilized in my classroom either. This is due to both my lack of knowledge of how to best use blogs and the lack of technology use at my school. I guess I would like to learn how to better use the technology and how it will help students a)learn to write b)learn to write better c)learn to love to write d)learn to want to write more.

In the classroom I have used Nicenet and google sites. I used the google site to disseminate the daily lessons to online students. Nicenet is a conferencing website and was used as a place where students would reply to both journal prompts and each others' replies. Right now I am using Ning in my reading and recovery classroom. It is being used as a place where they can learn what is going on in the classroom (day-to-day) and also respond to forum questions. After they respond to the forum questions, they respond to each other's posts - much like what we are doing. I hope to figure out what is the best digital media technology to use for my population and in my classroom.

As far as enhancing or hindering communication... I think that having them log could get the students to write more, but I wonder what caliber writing will come out of it. And as far as using blogs in the classroom, what control should I (as the teacher) have in giving them topics or reining them in if they are not staying on the topic.

I guess that is all for now.