Usually considered a huge distraction and often banned from rearing their shiny heads in school, iPods (as well as Zunes and other mp3 players) are gaining some traction and earning a reputation as being beneficial for some students. Is the education community's ban on these devices coming to a thoughtful end?
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports that a few districts in Wisconsin, particularly in and around the Greater Milwaukee area, are weighing the benefits of letting students have access to iPods during school hours. Students at the schools where iPods and other electronic devices are banned have argued that listening to music and podcasts helps them concentrate in study hall and drowns out noise in the lunchroom and other places. A 17-year old in Waukesha even started a Facebook group, which now has more than 400 members, as a sort of petition to encourage administrators to loosen the regulations surrounding the use of these devices on school grounds.
Teachers opposed to lifting the ban are citing a mixed bag of arguments ranging from the obvious ones of distraction to the value of listening to some popular music period. With cell phones and two-ways, which are still universally banned by state regulation, students can text each other unnoticed during class, but as long as the kids listen to iPods at appropriate times, what harm can they do?
It seems that many schools are moving toward letting teachers decide whether or not iPods can be used in study halls and other times during the day. The problem is that it creates discord among faculty members and the inconsistencies become bargaining chips for students when one teacher permits and another prohibits. Still, some teachers worry that allowing students to self-isolate can be emotionally harmful and question whether or not the students' claims are accurate. As one teacher mused, how could listening to Eminem be helpful for anyone?
The article, published on December 27, says that the schools involved in the debate are not currently using mobile devices like mp3 players as part of the curriculum; teachers are not widely posting classroom content on blogs so that it can be listened to and/or viewed later for reinforcement and to help students study for tests and complete assignments. Would that change the debate? I think so. In my mind, if teachers recognized the legitimacy of iPods as learning devices, students might actually use them in that way. I know for certain that I have been on duty in my fair share of study halls that could have used an iPod or two to keep chatter down and students focused.
What do YOU think?
Social networks for book lovers!
This is really great news for bibliophiles like me AND for teachers who struggle to find ways to help reading secure a place in our students' digital-soaked lives.
Earlier this week, Vince Darcangelo of the Boulder Daily Camera reported on new social networking sites that revolve around what you're reading, what's on your bookshelf, the books you're obsessed with, the books you detest, the one you're writing...all things literary!
The idea is that the sites take the act of reading, which is usually a solo endeavor based on personal taste, and transform it into something to be shared and discussed online. For those who don't have the time/money/interest/whatever to be part of an in-person book discussion group, these sites let readers react to literature with an online community of friends that they connect with based on literary interests. There are thematic discussion communities within the networks or participants can choose to operate on their own and maintain their virtual library, write reviews, and meet new people.
I can see a lot of ways that the digital nature of these literacy-themed sites can link the modern interests of our students with the timeless act of reading and responding to literature. Members are constantly interacting with books, whether it's cataloging their own, reviewing their latest read, or commenting on the collections of others. These sites encourage participants to think about what they have read and form relationships with others based on books. The focus of sites like this is a little different from Facebook Book Groups and I think it would be a great exercise to conduct portions of Lit classes online using these resources. Kids can see what others their age are reading, form discussion groups to help interpret more challenging assignments, and maybe--just maybe--get turned on to more books and diversify their reading interests.
Check them out for yourself:
GoodReads
Shelfari (now operated by amazon.com)
LibraryThing
If you have any ideas for how to incorporate a bibliophile networking site in your literacy efforts, please post them below by clicking "Your Turn."
Read the full Daily Camera article here.
Earlier this week, Vince Darcangelo of the Boulder Daily Camera reported on new social networking sites that revolve around what you're reading, what's on your bookshelf, the books you're obsessed with, the books you detest, the one you're writing...all things literary!
The idea is that the sites take the act of reading, which is usually a solo endeavor based on personal taste, and transform it into something to be shared and discussed online. For those who don't have the time/money/interest/whatever to be part of an in-person book discussion group, these sites let readers react to literature with an online community of friends that they connect with based on literary interests. There are thematic discussion communities within the networks or participants can choose to operate on their own and maintain their virtual library, write reviews, and meet new people.
I can see a lot of ways that the digital nature of these literacy-themed sites can link the modern interests of our students with the timeless act of reading and responding to literature. Members are constantly interacting with books, whether it's cataloging their own, reviewing their latest read, or commenting on the collections of others. These sites encourage participants to think about what they have read and form relationships with others based on books. The focus of sites like this is a little different from Facebook Book Groups and I think it would be a great exercise to conduct portions of Lit classes online using these resources. Kids can see what others their age are reading, form discussion groups to help interpret more challenging assignments, and maybe--just maybe--get turned on to more books and diversify their reading interests.
Check them out for yourself:
GoodReads
Shelfari (now operated by amazon.com)
LibraryThing
If you have any ideas for how to incorporate a bibliophile networking site in your literacy efforts, please post them below by clicking "Your Turn."
Read the full Daily Camera article here.
It's the end of the year
Time for a Top ___ List!
The Centre for Learning and Performance Technologies, a U.K.-based group, recently released a Top 100 List of the best tech resources for learning. The list was created from the feedback of more than 200 education and adult learning professionals. Here are the Top 10:
1. Delicious
2. Mozilla Firefox
3. Google Reader
4. Skype
5. Wordpress
6. Google Search
7. Google Docs
8. PowerPoint
9. Moodle
10. Blogger
Not surprisingly, web giant Google is the driving force behind almost half of this list! I have experience with a few of these tools (I'm using Skype, Blogger, and Firefox right now) and have begun to explore a few others as part of this blog. The one that seems to be getting the most buzz--and that I know least about--is Delicious, which is a "social bookmarking" tool. At first glance, the site is a place for users to share their lists of sites of interest with everyone. The links are divided into categories and the site makes a great springboard for web searches and rainy day browsing. Anyone can sign up for an account and start sharing.
A lot of educator blogs that I have read say that Delicious is the second coming. I am not sure that I have the research to agree or disagree just yet, but the list of Web 2.0 bookmarks is enough to make me want to know more.
Here is the rest of the list. If you have a web resource that has done wonders for you or your classroom, let me know!
The Centre for Learning and Performance Technologies, a U.K.-based group, recently released a Top 100 List of the best tech resources for learning. The list was created from the feedback of more than 200 education and adult learning professionals. Here are the Top 10:
1. Delicious
2. Mozilla Firefox
3. Google Reader
4. Skype
5. Wordpress
6. Google Search
7. Google Docs
8. PowerPoint
9. Moodle
10. Blogger
Not surprisingly, web giant Google is the driving force behind almost half of this list! I have experience with a few of these tools (I'm using Skype, Blogger, and Firefox right now) and have begun to explore a few others as part of this blog. The one that seems to be getting the most buzz--and that I know least about--is Delicious, which is a "social bookmarking" tool. At first glance, the site is a place for users to share their lists of sites of interest with everyone. The links are divided into categories and the site makes a great springboard for web searches and rainy day browsing. Anyone can sign up for an account and start sharing.
A lot of educator blogs that I have read say that Delicious is the second coming. I am not sure that I have the research to agree or disagree just yet, but the list of Web 2.0 bookmarks is enough to make me want to know more.
Here is the rest of the list. If you have a web resource that has done wonders for you or your classroom, let me know!
How to talk to your students
I feel as though there is a pretty sizable gap in the "languages" spoken by most teachers--or any adult, for that matter--and kids today. Thankfully for us coming into the profession now as opposed to 20 or 30 years ago, we are a little bit closer to complete comprehension of what our students are saying (which, I have found, is especially handy if it's not appropriate talk for school), just by nature of being users of a lot of the same vocabulary.
Popular culture is a pretty big part of my teaching philosophy because it helps provide the necessary context that kids need to learn the material. Languages are alive and just like a science teacher would use experiments to prove scientific principals or supply a real world situation for practice, a language teacher must provide ways to exercise language "muscles" with authentic and relevant communication. One of my favorite examples of this is the scene in Good Morning Vietnam when Robin Williams's character, Adrian Cronaur, takes over teaching English to a group of Vietnamese adults. He sees what they are learning and scoffs, remarking that you don't walk up to somebody on the street and say, "Good day, I would like to buy some butter and some cheese." He then teaches the class how to say, "Hey man, what happening?" Providing students with authentic communication tools that they actually stand a chance of using in real life has its place in the foreign language curriculum, there's no doubt about it.
Authentic communication also needs to take place between teachers and students and it is our responsibility as teachers to bridge the gap I described above. If you've ever traveled to a foreign country and tried shopping, you'll know the sense of relief that you feel when you discover that the proprietor of the store you're in speaks English. I think it stands to reason that it's the same for kids and teachers. We are the proprietors and they are the customers; we need to speak their language if we want to do business.
Now, this certainly doesn't mean that we should absorb adolescent parlance so much so that we lose an aspect of our authority, but it's helpful to know--and sometimes use--the phraseology that our students do. It creates a connection and an understanding, and shows that we're interested in their lives. I worked at a school in the D.C. suburbs in 1999-2000 and the kids, most of whom were urban Latinos and African-Americans, got a huge kick out of me when I used their words, so at the very least, we can supply tension-breaking chuckles by going out on a limb with our vocabulary.
An education writer that I enjoy reading has some thoughts on this as well. She was the inspiration behind this entry (which really is about 21st century literacy after all). Read her musings here and subscribe to the RSS of Visual Thesaurus while you're there, it's a great site.
Popular culture is a pretty big part of my teaching philosophy because it helps provide the necessary context that kids need to learn the material. Languages are alive and just like a science teacher would use experiments to prove scientific principals or supply a real world situation for practice, a language teacher must provide ways to exercise language "muscles" with authentic and relevant communication. One of my favorite examples of this is the scene in Good Morning Vietnam when Robin Williams's character, Adrian Cronaur, takes over teaching English to a group of Vietnamese adults. He sees what they are learning and scoffs, remarking that you don't walk up to somebody on the street and say, "Good day, I would like to buy some butter and some cheese." He then teaches the class how to say, "Hey man, what happening?" Providing students with authentic communication tools that they actually stand a chance of using in real life has its place in the foreign language curriculum, there's no doubt about it.
Authentic communication also needs to take place between teachers and students and it is our responsibility as teachers to bridge the gap I described above. If you've ever traveled to a foreign country and tried shopping, you'll know the sense of relief that you feel when you discover that the proprietor of the store you're in speaks English. I think it stands to reason that it's the same for kids and teachers. We are the proprietors and they are the customers; we need to speak their language if we want to do business.
Now, this certainly doesn't mean that we should absorb adolescent parlance so much so that we lose an aspect of our authority, but it's helpful to know--and sometimes use--the phraseology that our students do. It creates a connection and an understanding, and shows that we're interested in their lives. I worked at a school in the D.C. suburbs in 1999-2000 and the kids, most of whom were urban Latinos and African-Americans, got a huge kick out of me when I used their words, so at the very least, we can supply tension-breaking chuckles by going out on a limb with our vocabulary.
An education writer that I enjoy reading has some thoughts on this as well. She was the inspiration behind this entry (which really is about 21st century literacy after all). Read her musings here and subscribe to the RSS of Visual Thesaurus while you're there, it's a great site.
Safe blogging tips for teachers
As teachers, we are expected to model best practices for our students. These include healthy lifestyle choices, a strong work/study ethic, positive and respectful interpersonal relationships, proper/safe use of equipment, and all sorts of other things that we might not have been accountable for in our non-teaching lives. Modeling is a concept that I became acquainted with after I began the graduate education program at Saint Michael's College; now, my behaviors are subject to a sort of scrutiny that I have never experienced...not even in my nearly 10-year long career in public relations!
The pressure to be a good model is sometimes grounds for frustration. As I posited to one of my Master's classes this past week, "Teachers are people too, how do we keep our frustrations and anger in check in the classroom when they are natural human emotions in difficult situations?" (it had been a challenging week for me from a classroom management perspective). The answer is that it takes some personal training of the emotional-psychological type, but the resulting best practices have really made me feel like a more centered person.
Modeling also has to occur when you're not in front of your students and with the pervasiveness of digital technologies in our culture (and the extent to which our students use them), this means being diligent with our online personalities. Many teachers have fallen prey to comments, posts, and content on their blogs, Facebooks, and MySpaces, but that doesn't mean that teachers have to avoid participating in these types of media.
Education writer Maya Payne Smart offers some tips for teachers so that they may continue blogging and social networking without being entangled in a lawsuit or embroiled in a scandal. Thankfully, they are simple and boil down to common sense.
1. Praise specifically, criticize generally: Generous and specific praise of your school and community should be key players in your blog. If you must mention your work in your personal blog, speak highly of it and offer criticisms of colleagues' actions/philosophies and other hot-button issues sparingly and as generalities. Also be mindful that extreme personal opinions and sarcasm can cause unwanted trouble, so think twice before clicking "Post."
2. Give your byline: Anonymous posts can be traced and not taking ownership of your comments and posts looks a little shady. Many teachers are posting their names, job titles, and places of work with their comments to be accountable and transparent.
3. Keep confidentiality paramount: We are a professional learning community, even online, so it stands to reason that we should use this resource and the public nature of new media to garner opinions about the issues we encounter every day. However, this does not mean using names or details about students and/or colleagues in any posts or comments. There are plenty of ways to get feedback about personality conflicts and student issues without naming names.
As for personal blogs and profile pages, I would encourage you to continue posting, but you might consider using your blog software's "invite" function to limit those with access to your personal blog (the same goes for MySpace and Facebook, which have similar "private" settings). I began blogging with a personal blog, but have since made it invite-only as I channel my energy into this one, which will serve as the basis for my class blog. When I direct my students here to comment on classwork and postings, they will see only professional or curriculum-related content. With this as a model, they should then be able to create their own personal blogs for use in class based on what I have set-up.
Read the rest of Maya Payne Smart's article and more about the potential legal ramifications for blogging teachers here.
The pressure to be a good model is sometimes grounds for frustration. As I posited to one of my Master's classes this past week, "Teachers are people too, how do we keep our frustrations and anger in check in the classroom when they are natural human emotions in difficult situations?" (it had been a challenging week for me from a classroom management perspective). The answer is that it takes some personal training of the emotional-psychological type, but the resulting best practices have really made me feel like a more centered person.
Modeling also has to occur when you're not in front of your students and with the pervasiveness of digital technologies in our culture (and the extent to which our students use them), this means being diligent with our online personalities. Many teachers have fallen prey to comments, posts, and content on their blogs, Facebooks, and MySpaces, but that doesn't mean that teachers have to avoid participating in these types of media.
Education writer Maya Payne Smart offers some tips for teachers so that they may continue blogging and social networking without being entangled in a lawsuit or embroiled in a scandal. Thankfully, they are simple and boil down to common sense.
1. Praise specifically, criticize generally: Generous and specific praise of your school and community should be key players in your blog. If you must mention your work in your personal blog, speak highly of it and offer criticisms of colleagues' actions/philosophies and other hot-button issues sparingly and as generalities. Also be mindful that extreme personal opinions and sarcasm can cause unwanted trouble, so think twice before clicking "Post."
2. Give your byline: Anonymous posts can be traced and not taking ownership of your comments and posts looks a little shady. Many teachers are posting their names, job titles, and places of work with their comments to be accountable and transparent.
3. Keep confidentiality paramount: We are a professional learning community, even online, so it stands to reason that we should use this resource and the public nature of new media to garner opinions about the issues we encounter every day. However, this does not mean using names or details about students and/or colleagues in any posts or comments. There are plenty of ways to get feedback about personality conflicts and student issues without naming names.
As for personal blogs and profile pages, I would encourage you to continue posting, but you might consider using your blog software's "invite" function to limit those with access to your personal blog (the same goes for MySpace and Facebook, which have similar "private" settings). I began blogging with a personal blog, but have since made it invite-only as I channel my energy into this one, which will serve as the basis for my class blog. When I direct my students here to comment on classwork and postings, they will see only professional or curriculum-related content. With this as a model, they should then be able to create their own personal blogs for use in class based on what I have set-up.
Read the rest of Maya Payne Smart's article and more about the potential legal ramifications for blogging teachers here.
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