The Trials and Tribulations of Blogger Blog

First, I just want to talk about the Jenkins piece, because there were some sections that really got my synapses firing. First off, I LOVE that the article sighted play as a key access point in a student's education. I feel like I have been screaming this from the rooftop of Peik Hall, throwing pots and pans at anyone within range to listen to me, so it was really nice to see it, in print, in a non behavior related article (about technology no less!). That was really nice.

Secondly, I really dig the section on appropriation (which is a more weighted way of saying adaptation). How cool would it be to have a class discussion on whether or not Girl Talk is a musician, a collage artist, or a phony? I am a big geek when it comes to discussion the politics of adaptation, and (if anyone ever approves this) I would love to teach a class that focuses on original texts and adaptations. I think understanding what makes a good adaptation vs. a blatant copy will help give students understand vague concepts such as "intellectual property." Additionally, I think having insight into the creative process- how things are actually made, and the energy and effort it takes to make them- will give students pause before illegally downloading someone else's work. Plus, as an English teacher, I think origin stories are incredibly important. The what might be done's for the appropriation section are really cool, also.

The idea of collective intelligence is interesting, and I absolutely see the benefit, but I am concerned about students only being surrounded by other like minded students. At the middle school and high school levels, I believe students coming up against constructive descent marks a critical life skill for students to learn to deal with. Not everyone is always going to agree with the, and vice versa. Instead, providing students with the tools for healthy argumentation and analytic skills for disecting the arguments of others could only benefit our students, and probably make them better reader/writers.

For the Kajder (am I nuts, or did we read this with Kristen), yes, I totally agree to basically everything she is saying, but, oh man, when technology fails, you have just killed fifty minutes of your students time and learning. Blogger has apparently partnered with Google, as I have told many of you in my sob story, and now requires that the students have an e-mail AND a phone number so they can text you a confirmation code to mark that you are a human and not a spam machine. Obviously, for socio-economic reasons, and school phone policy reasons, I could not make this happen. So now we are using Edublogs, which is buggy and slow, and does not work 50% of the time. I found myself begging my Co-op to just let us journal the assignments instead. My question is- if it eats up this much class time, is it really worth it?

Finally, here is the amazing trail role play on Frankenstein that Jake found last semester. I am seriously thinking of using this as my sum. assessment. But, how do you decide who to assign what roles?

Conferences and consultation

I really appreciated the two articles in this weeks reading. They answered a lot of questions I have been pondering over the last few weeks about how to talk to students about their writing. Atwell's article on classroom conferences basically just laid out exactly how to verbally address questions or concerns you have about a student's writing. I love that she gives several different approaches to each issue, so the teacher doesn't sound like a robot spewing out a script every time someone has an unclear conclusion. It is also nice to have a range of approaches to talk to different students, because they're different! I am already finding that half the task of motivating my students is to build the language bridge between the two of us, kill the awkward troll underneath, and pay the comfort toll. Taking a knee, as so many classes as well as Atwell have brought up, is so effective. I just cannot emphasize it enough, even with bolded, italicized text. I find that taking a knee with students helps keep the conversation volume low because you are getting close to the student, and it is an intimate space, so the volume does not go above a loud whisper. What Atwell says about f(conference volume)=orclassroom volume is absolutely true. I printed this article off and plan on taping the discussion prompt chart on the inside of my desk drawer when I have my own classroom (my desk now doesn't have a drawer).

I also really appreciated the Van De Weghe article. I have to admit, I am very skeptical of peer editing groups. It seems like a quick time killing exercise, and this is probably due to the fact that I have never experienced a successful classroom peer edit where I walked away thinking, "Yeah, that really helped." Instead I usually walked away thinking, "Clearly he did not read the book and plans on committing most of what I wrote to memory for the quiz. This was a waste of my time." I understand now that my class was having trouble due to the same assumptions the teachers at the beginning of the article were having trouble. We never spoke about how to proof read for content. So, unless I got a grammar whiz as a reading partner, I usually checked out for those classes. Another piece I would add for those who are interested is giving students a chance, before turning in a draft, to read through their draft and pencil correct any mistakes they catch. These mistakes would not be marked, and it taught us how frustrating and kind of embarrassing it is to not proofread before handing something in to be graded.

Here is my link to UW Madison's student writing conference handbook: