So, this week's lesson was all about information searching and credibility. Many of the sources focused on Google tools and search strategies. I found it amazing that many of the strategies and tools listed were not common knowledge! I thought everyone knew how to include specific information, use Google Image searches, and use Google maps to do more than look at people doing stupid things and creep on friend's houses.
In truth, I am a slave to the Google machine. If i want to know something, I Google it. When's the game this weekend? Google. What's the square root of 72,356? Google. My bisabuela just told some guy who was being rude to "Carajo! Besa mi culo, pendejo!" What does that mean? I can't even spell it. I just Google spanish terms and get the spelling close. Warning: that's not a nice phrase. That really did happen, too. I didn't know what she said, so I Googled it and learned that my innocent little grandmother is potty-mouth. I don't tend to google whole questions, like many of my students do and I am pretty efficient at finding my answers, but I don't venture away from Google. As some of the articles said, people don't trust something they are not familiar with. I never use Bing, I rarely use Ask.com, I do use Wikipedia for quick reference items. If I had more than my computer in the classroom, I may do the Google A Day Challenge to help my students become better researchers. Although, I suppose I could challenge them to do the GADC using their phones. Since they love competition, I could do it on my phone and they on theirs. That could work.
Lastly, I liked the satisfy and suffice phrase that Debbie Abilock used in her article, "True--or not." For her, Satisfice was an answer that worked and would work just fine. But, to me satisfice was an answer that satisfied and sacrificed. It worked and satisfied my need for an answer, but I was sacrificing the truth for something that would do well-enough. I think many of us and our students do this. We live in the age of right now, so we want our answers now and we don't really care whether the information is accurate or not.
Sunday, January 26, 2014
Sunday, January 19, 2014
Assignment #2: Reflections on sources
In reflecting on the 4 sources given, there are a few commonalities. But first, I'd like to bring up my thoughts and feelings after taking a look. Honestly, the articles made me feel a bit exhausted. Brian Alexander's article referred to his schedule of "info-wrangling..."
This part is a bit of a rant, so, feel free to skip ahead...
He mentioned that he attempts to do most of his wrangling before noon. Most days, by noon, I'm as worn out as I can be. I've taught 4 full classes and driven an hour just to get to work. I suppose I could have time for podcasts on my drive, but I would not have time to keep up with the RSS feeds. With all the hats I wear, I teach, I have meetings for at least an hour after school. 5 o'clock PM is my first real break of the day. If I don't have to help coach basketball until 6 or later, I can drive home. By the time I get home, it is time to cook and prepare for the next work day. Then, graduate work gets taken care of. By that time, I'm looking at 10 o'clock. Working an RSS feed as large as Mr. Alexander's would be near impossible for me. My size RSS feed could be handled in the 5 minutes here and 10 minutes there that I find during the day. But, honestly, I don't have time to keep up with the social media that I actually want to keep up with. I like the idea of a PLN, but it seems like it will be hard to maintain.
Sorry for ranting, back to the topic at hand....
The sources given all refer to using "new" ways of teaching to keep things interesting and effective. One article, "Creating Classrooms We Need..." mentioned 8 ways to make your classroom more effective and up-to-date with a coming pedagogical renaissance, as it were. We are shifting to an inquiry based learning environment in many schools across America, which is great... except that the children are not yet prepared for it. Things will be tough until inquiry based learning is started in the lower schools and then continued into the upper. I attempt many of the strategies mentioned in the article and most fail, but some are working--slowly but surely.
Karen Lirenman's "The Journey..." was an interesting read about digital literacy vs. digital fluency. I really liked her analogy to speaking another language and being able to think in another language--which is a hard enough thing to do alone. Like her, many of us are attempting to use more technology in the classroom, but like she wrote: it's not so much about the tool as it is about the use of what you have. My school does not have the tools and most of the kids do not have access to the tools, but with some ingenuity, I can make it work. I've been experimenting with a website called Celly. Cel.ly allows me to text students and them to text me without anyone needing to give away their personal information. I can group students based on classes and they can chat with each other. It has a lot of potential. But, many of the parents and some of the admins are against my using it. There are "too many complications that could arise." So, I'm trying to work through the barriers using what I have.
The Infowhelm video was pretty interesting; lots of facts I did not know. But, the questions in the end are questions I work to answer and get the students involved in all the time. Again though, the students aren't interested in that. They are so accustomed to rote learning, that they can't question and find for themselves. They think they want to be told and given the answers, which may be true. Life is so immediate and right-now that the students don't want to have to work to get the answers. They want to be given what they want without the work involved.
It's tough out there. Hopefully, this class can help me get my head around all of it and make some sense of those 500+ Exabytes of information!
This part is a bit of a rant, so, feel free to skip ahead...
He mentioned that he attempts to do most of his wrangling before noon. Most days, by noon, I'm as worn out as I can be. I've taught 4 full classes and driven an hour just to get to work. I suppose I could have time for podcasts on my drive, but I would not have time to keep up with the RSS feeds. With all the hats I wear, I teach, I have meetings for at least an hour after school. 5 o'clock PM is my first real break of the day. If I don't have to help coach basketball until 6 or later, I can drive home. By the time I get home, it is time to cook and prepare for the next work day. Then, graduate work gets taken care of. By that time, I'm looking at 10 o'clock. Working an RSS feed as large as Mr. Alexander's would be near impossible for me. My size RSS feed could be handled in the 5 minutes here and 10 minutes there that I find during the day. But, honestly, I don't have time to keep up with the social media that I actually want to keep up with. I like the idea of a PLN, but it seems like it will be hard to maintain.
Sorry for ranting, back to the topic at hand....
The sources given all refer to using "new" ways of teaching to keep things interesting and effective. One article, "Creating Classrooms We Need..." mentioned 8 ways to make your classroom more effective and up-to-date with a coming pedagogical renaissance, as it were. We are shifting to an inquiry based learning environment in many schools across America, which is great... except that the children are not yet prepared for it. Things will be tough until inquiry based learning is started in the lower schools and then continued into the upper. I attempt many of the strategies mentioned in the article and most fail, but some are working--slowly but surely.
Karen Lirenman's "The Journey..." was an interesting read about digital literacy vs. digital fluency. I really liked her analogy to speaking another language and being able to think in another language--which is a hard enough thing to do alone. Like her, many of us are attempting to use more technology in the classroom, but like she wrote: it's not so much about the tool as it is about the use of what you have. My school does not have the tools and most of the kids do not have access to the tools, but with some ingenuity, I can make it work. I've been experimenting with a website called Celly. Cel.ly allows me to text students and them to text me without anyone needing to give away their personal information. I can group students based on classes and they can chat with each other. It has a lot of potential. But, many of the parents and some of the admins are against my using it. There are "too many complications that could arise." So, I'm trying to work through the barriers using what I have.
The Infowhelm video was pretty interesting; lots of facts I did not know. But, the questions in the end are questions I work to answer and get the students involved in all the time. Again though, the students aren't interested in that. They are so accustomed to rote learning, that they can't question and find for themselves. They think they want to be told and given the answers, which may be true. Life is so immediate and right-now that the students don't want to have to work to get the answers. They want to be given what they want without the work involved.
It's tough out there. Hopefully, this class can help me get my head around all of it and make some sense of those 500+ Exabytes of information!
Assignment #1: Re-introduce and Learning Goals
Hey readers, here's what'll be in this post:
1) A quick reminder of who I am.
2) My learning goals for this class.
First off, I'm Richard S. Arenal-Mullen II. I am in my second year of teaching English and math. I graduated from Georgia Southern University with a B.S. in middle grades education. I won teacher of the year this year and am wearing hats on top of hats on top of hats at my school.
On to my learning goals!
For this class, I hope to be able to maintain my PLN, now that I know what one is. My school is working to create something like a PLN with all the faculty. It is mostly in its infant stage at this point; people still working out the kinks, mostly a loose social network using Google as a foundation. So, I hope that with the creation of a PLN I can help my school develop a better network of professionals and ideas.
I also hope that this class will help me stay on top of all things educational. I had attempted to start a professional network, as it were, a little while ago. But, it never got off the ground and I never remembered to keep it updated. Using this PLN, I can attempt to incorporate more up-to-date educational materials.
Lastly, I hope that through this class, I can extend my professional network. If I am able to extend my personal network, I can gain new ideas and lessons for use in the classroom.
I suppose that's about it for this post.
1) A quick reminder of who I am.
2) My learning goals for this class.
First off, I'm Richard S. Arenal-Mullen II. I am in my second year of teaching English and math. I graduated from Georgia Southern University with a B.S. in middle grades education. I won teacher of the year this year and am wearing hats on top of hats on top of hats at my school.
On to my learning goals!
For this class, I hope to be able to maintain my PLN, now that I know what one is. My school is working to create something like a PLN with all the faculty. It is mostly in its infant stage at this point; people still working out the kinks, mostly a loose social network using Google as a foundation. So, I hope that with the creation of a PLN I can help my school develop a better network of professionals and ideas.
I also hope that this class will help me stay on top of all things educational. I had attempted to start a professional network, as it were, a little while ago. But, it never got off the ground and I never remembered to keep it updated. Using this PLN, I can attempt to incorporate more up-to-date educational materials.
Lastly, I hope that through this class, I can extend my professional network. If I am able to extend my personal network, I can gain new ideas and lessons for use in the classroom.
I suppose that's about it for this post.
Monday, January 13, 2014
Testing, testing, 1, 2, 3...
I will be creating a PLN for my FRIT7234 class. Part of my PLN is to have a blog and a linked twitter account. This first post is simply a test post. The following is part of my first assignment. I am required to view the following links and respond with my reactions and thoughts. The links are:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWkQq5qmdmc>
<http://bryanalexander.org/2013/12/26/my-daily-info-wrangling-routine/>
<http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/03/creating-classrooms-we-need-8-ways-into-inquiry-learning/>
<http://www.reading.org/general/Publications/blog/engage/engage-single-post/engage/2012/04/23/the-journey-from-digital-literacy-to-digital-fluency#.UtBlfrTs0gE>
Edit: I forgot about the 2-4 learning goals that I need to do as my first official class blog post.
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWkQq5qmdmc>
<http://bryanalexander.org/2013/12/26/my-daily-info-wrangling-routine/>
<http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/03/creating-classrooms-we-need-8-ways-into-inquiry-learning/>
<http://www.reading.org/general/Publications/blog/engage/engage-single-post/engage/2012/04/23/the-journey-from-digital-literacy-to-digital-fluency#.UtBlfrTs0gE>
Edit: I forgot about the 2-4 learning goals that I need to do as my first official class blog post.
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