Monday, July 14, 2008
my "technology classroom"
Well...I discovered that I am certainly not an artist. On top of that, I found it really difficult to imagine a technologically advanced English classroom. I think it will take a lot of thinking "outside the box" to really incorporate technology into my class. Since high school English is based mostly on literature, I think it will be difficult to stray outside the realm of the novel. My picture included a projector and pull-down screen (nice for showing power points, movie clips, etc), and I also showed each kid with a laptop as well as one for myself. I think it would be nice if kids had time in class to work on papers, etc and then they could submit them online to me to be a bit "greener" and not waste all the paper associated with drafts. I also think they would be great for research to incorporate into their essays and assignments.
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4 comments:
I'll be interested in what you discover as you explore the possibilities, Alli.
For me, one intriguing set of possibilities for an English teacher lies in performance. It would be cool to have kids doing podcasts where, say, great characters from literature would have discussions, or you could hear the personal reflections of a character in a novel you're reading. I also like trying to connect with other kinds of learners...maybe there would be some fun ways to have kids create visual responses to a book or a poem. Something relatively simple like these wikis done by Kristen Kakos' students in Colorado (http://tinyurl.com/62l4mr) offers kids an expressive dimension that may help you reach some students you wouldn't otherwise be able to hook...
I like the idea of submitting assignments online though technological glitches kill me sometimes. I bet the students would be better prepared for online submissions than me though.
I heard that there are programs online where you can take a student's paper and run it through a program to see if there was anything that was taken from another source.
One thing that we are going to address in class is digital literacy in the 21st Century. Is it a new literacy? How can we help students become digitally literate? Do we need to adjust the traditional structure of schooling to do so? If so, what might that look like?
Podcasts, Cell Phone Novels (this is very popular in Japan, to write and read best selling and classic novels on a cell phone!), Collaborative writing (wikis, Google documents)...etc.
Let me just say that there is soooo much you can do with technology in the English classroom. Jeff and Liz alluded to cell phone podcasting, which I'm using this year as a rough draft for a personal essay. Sometimes talking out your story is easier to write it down, you know?
I'm a self-publisher, so I've been really getting into the idea of publishing a digital magazine (the 11th graders at my high school published a book called "A South Bronx Tale" this past year, too), and using all sorts of techniques to get students' writing and performance of their writing into a format that represents their unique qualities, as writers, and as people. I believe that part of learning how to write well is discovering your voice and the 5 paragraph essay isn't an easy access point for some folks.
Videotaping, audio-recording, using software programs to make movies, publishing software, blogging, having blog-buddies between your classes and a class across the country (or across the world) who are reading the same book, all of these can be alternative ways for students to demonstrate what they understand about a book you're working through together.
Also, think outside the box with regard to your reading texts... it doesn't have to be all novels, by any stretch. I'm teaching a lot of graphic novels (comic books), and using CDs, movies, mp3s, visual art all as "texts" that can be more accessible to students than a traditional novel -- or used as a companion piece to help students see how the themes of a novel may directly relate to their lives.
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