D.A.T.E ~ part 2

The session that I enjoyed the most throughout the conference was presented by Patrice K. VanSlyke and Kjersti VanSlyke-Briggs. The title of this session was "Dealing in the Digital".

Six things stood out the most to me:

• Increased Demand: This included Multimedial literacy, digital communication, a competitive job market, and literacy as social practice.

• Digital: Is the definition of literacy keeping up? Everything is becoming digitalized: libraries, music, films, movies, etc.

• Cross Curricular: Create natural bridges as communication, such as: "fear free" explorations, student teacher blogs, wikis, youtube, and discourse mapping. (http://laurie.sl3dge.net/speak.htm)

• Text Analysis: Technology is reshaping society, critical literacy, and can we live without technology anymore?

• Technology in the classroom: Danger!! Use Wisely!

Teachers need to be prepared for their students finding misinformation on the internet, their students misusing the internet resources, performitivity, and critical literacy. (www.easywhois.com)

• Risk to Students:

Non-Authentic experiences, Limited use and vocabulary, and teacher knowledge.

D.A.T.E ~ part 1.

I was thrilled to have the opportunity to see Jennifer Donelly at the conference last week. She is such an inspirational woman, writer, and speaker. She discussed the four main categories that she feels are necessary when planning to write a book:

1. Inspiration
2. Imagination
3. Research
4. Emotion

Of course I would have assumed that these things would have been necessary in order to write a book, but the impact of hearing an author say it, while we were under the same roof, seemed to have more of an impact on me. I do have intentions of writing a book one day and when that day comes, I will look back and remember the encouraging words that Jennifer said.

I also found it interesting that she said: "Nintendo, television and DVD's are ruining the imagination of children." Of course I agree with this because now a days there aren't many educational lessons within these resources. However, I also agree with her when she said: "Technology is gradually increasing children's imaginations." There is proof of this right in our 307 classroom. We have learned so many tools already that are helping us connect, share, and progress as readers, writers and teachers.

I am very grateful for having the chance to see an author speak publicly, especially an author whose books I love!

LibraryThing

I was updating my LibraryThing tonight and my father was interested in what I was doing. I showed him how to sign up, how to add books, how to rate them, what the point of tool is, etc. He was so impressed that this resource is free and how easy it is to use.

Right now, my father has his own account on librarything and is addicted to it. He loves to read and has already read hundreds of books which are now all organized online.

So I wanted to thank Jami's group for showing me how to use this social bookmarking tool because I was finally able to teach my father something for once!!

My mother's classroom

At the beginning of the semester I mentioned that my mother would be using podcasts in her classroom of special ed. students. At the time my mother and I did not think this would actually happen because her students struggle to even write their names on paper every day. Well, it turns out that we were wrong.

As of Friday, March 9th, my mother was trained how to use a podcast in her classroom. The training will continue for the rest of this week as well. Although my mom was excited to learn how to use some form of technology in her classroom (and in general!) she unfortunatly does not see herself pressing her students to use this tool. The reason for this is that my mother has eleven students in her class and the room is extremly small. "It would be a ligistic nightmare."

Although my mom does not see her students being able to use this tool now, hopefully in the future her students will be able to use it.

Also, from the blessing of grant money, all eleven students in my mothers classroom will have their own laptops. They are scheduled to arrive this week and the students will spend 2 periods a day learning how to use their laptops. All students from grades 3-5 will also have their own laptop.

It's amazing that I thought not every school would be able to afford having laptops for each student. Turns out that my doubts are occuring up the block from my house!!

uh - oh

http://money.aol.com/bankrate/credit/canvas3/_a/top-internet-scams-to-watch-for-in-2007/20070227144209990002

NAEP Scores

In 2005, the reading score on a scale from 0-500 was an embarrassing 286? I CANNOT BELIEVE THIS!

I am shocked by this score and I cannot fathom how this is happening. However, there are many reasons why the score has declined so drastically:

1. Parents are not encouraging their children to do their homework/complete it. They may also not be encouraging them to read for pleasure. Instead, children are glued to the T.V, video games, and computer.
2. Are teachers really enforcing reading and/or reading exercises in the classroom? How many books are teachers having their students read throughout the school year?
3. The students themselves. So many children dred school and do not take it seriously.

Something obviously needs to be done about this. I do not mean to bash parents because there are tons of parents out there that do the best they can to enhance their childrens reading ability, but with the way society is today, I cannot help but say that parents are slacking. They are the ones who really need to enforce extra-curricular reading at home.

When I first learned how to read, my mother and I read a book or two a week together. Once I was able to read totally on my own, she bought tons of books for us to read at the same time and then we talked about it once we were done. I never hated doing this because my mom was involved. She made it fun and I loved that she was reading with me. The after school hobbies in homes need to change.

Going Wireless

The percent of people using wireless in anyway possible did not suprise me throughout the article.

I personally have never used my phone to access the internet or to check my e-mail, but over the Christmas break I used wireless in my house every day. Here at Cortland I use broadband simply because I kept getting kicked offline when I was using wireless.

I find it humorous that people are accessing their e-mail so much at work. Makes a person wonder how much of the day they are spending playing on the internet as oppossed to actually doing their job.

I was a little suprised to see that more men used the computer/cell phone/other devices more than woman simply because I mainly talk to my female friends when I am online.

I think there will come a time when you can only access the internet through wireless and dial-up will be completely eliminated. But then again, who knows what "they" are going to come up with next.