What do you think about that?
Friday, June 8, 2012
Do we live in a dystopian future?
Today I read a New York Times piece about Ray Bradbury by Tim Kreider, where he talked about the author's foresight about the role of technology in our contemporary world. His view is that we live in a dystopian future already.
What do you think about that?
What do you think about that?
Thursday, June 7, 2012
My First Text Set Collection: Doing Educational Action Research
http://www.edu.plymouth.ac.uk/resined/actionresearch/arhome.htm
This website is arranged with questions about action research followed by answers that clarify what it is and how it should be conducted. A good basic resource.
Age: For college students
Action Research for Science Educators
http://www.drawntoscience.org/educators/action-research/index.html
This site has great resources, definitions, and examples of action research projects that I think would be very helpful to the novice researcher in any educational discipline/content area.
Age: For college students
Educating as Inquiry
http://www.lupinworks.com/ar/change.html
A website that collects different teachers' views and works on action research. There are so many helpful links on this site. It's a great resource for the teacher who wants to engage in mindful inquiry.
Age: For college students
Student Action Research for University Access
http://sarua.ed.qut.edu.au/
From Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia, this project involves high school students in doing action research in their schools and communities. It's a great look at the potential for using AR to effect social change.
Age: For high school/college students
Action Research Primer
http://www.peterlang.com/index.cfm?event=cmp.ccc.seitenstruktur.detailseiten&seitentyp=produkt&pk=46698&concordeid=69527
This book by Patricia H. Hinchey contains the basics and ins and outs of conducting action research projects. I plan to use this book with my own classes starting in the fall.
Age: For college students
Participatory Action Research
http://www.sagepub.com/books/Book230910
This book written by Alice McIntyre is an introduction to action research, a review of its basic principles, and a guidebook that could be used for starting projects. If I don't like the Hinchey book, I will give this one a go.
Age: For college students
Action Research
http://arj.sagepub.com/
A scholarly, peer-reviewed journal from SAGE. This is a great source for examples of action research studies as well as a prime source to publish such work.
Age: For college students
Educational Action Research
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/09650792.asp
A scholarly, peer-reviewed journal from Taylor & Francis. This is a great source for examples of educational action research studies as well as a good place to publish such work.
Age: For college students
Center for Collaborative Action Research
http://cadres.pepperdine.edu/ccar/projects.school.html
A website that contains information about AR projects done by Masters of Arts students at Pepperdine University. The portfolios show work done with elementary, high school, and college students.
Age: For college students
Undergraduate Action Research Projects
http://educationprogram.duke.edu/Research/Student-Action-Research
These are online videos of PowerPoint presentations done by education students from Duke University. These are good models for what a final presentation should look like and contain.
Age: For college students
UW Action Research Projects
http://www.aimcenterseattle.org/action-research-projects
These are pictures of posters made for presentations done by University of Washington graduate students as part of their action research work. These are also good models for students who have to produce posters for presentation.
Age: For high school/college students
Research Report Format
http://uacoe.arizona.edu/short/Syllabi/Research%20Report%20Format.pdf
This site is a PDF file that spells out all the sections that go into a research paper. I feel like it is a great model that beginning writers would benefit from using. Written by Kathy Short.
Age: For high school/college students
APA Formatting and Style Page
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/16/
From Purdue University's Online Writing Lab comes this helpful resource to APA 6th edition Style, which is the reference style used in the majority of educational research.
Age: For high school/college students
Guide to Grammar and Writing
http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/
An online resource that has information about writing from sentences to paragraphs to various formats. It also has frequently asked questions sections that can help with common questions (like, When do you use affect/effect?) and other mechanical issues. The site is text heavy, and I think it would work better for older readers/writers.
Age: For high school/college students
Participatory Action Research Guidelines
http://research.utk.edu/forms_docs/human_subjects_action.pdf
From the Human Subjects Office at the University of Tennessee, this form spells out the guidelines for doing ethical and approved action research while being a university student or faculty.
Age: For college students and professors
Tuesday, June 5, 2012
Funbrain - Is It all that fun?
For my first review I checked out Funbrain. This site is supposed to be for students grades in grades 1-8. It has stories, comics, games, and I felt it was more something for younger students. There is no log-in, but the site gives you passwords once you have passed certain levels so you can resume play without losing any progress on the gameboard (kind of like Candyland).
There are lots of games that are secretly drill activities: matching exercises, math computation drills, and mouse moving activities that seem to be about motor control. Some games are combinations of all three things, like Bumble Numbers. I think there is lots here for younger folks, but I bet older students would feel this site is "for babies" and not so challenging after a short time. I think that this site would be great for kindergarten to second grade students.
The hardest part of the site for me was Math Baseball, which features some pretty difficult computations, at least if you try to do them in your head, like I did. I can see it being a quick way to get some students to practice simple algebra exercises, but also something that could get old quick. I did like running the score up though...
I also tried the Mad Libs because I liked those so much when I was a kid. I was almost immediately frustrated with the words moving. Typing them in was not as much fun, and when I was finished choosing I was bummed to see some grammar errors and omissions in the actual passage. Not a good showing, I am afraid.
I think this site is ok for basic skills work, and there are certainly links to books like Diary of a Wimpy Kid (seem like they are all Scholastic products), which is good, I guess. They also have comics, like Brewster Rockit: Spaceguy, which is full of lame Star Wars jokes and does not seem even aimed at kids, but I thought they were subpar, so no links to those.
There is a moderate presence of ads, and they certainly are pushing an app and site called Poptropolis (I am not linking out of spite) that seems to be more of the same. Funbrain also advertises DVDs, cartoons, Froot Loops cereal, and other popular culture things.
It seems more a slight diversion or skills work than something that would be appealing over a long period of time, which bummed me out. I had higher hopes for this site!
I would get fun for my brain elsewhere.
There are lots of games that are secretly drill activities: matching exercises, math computation drills, and mouse moving activities that seem to be about motor control. Some games are combinations of all three things, like Bumble Numbers. I think there is lots here for younger folks, but I bet older students would feel this site is "for babies" and not so challenging after a short time. I think that this site would be great for kindergarten to second grade students.
The hardest part of the site for me was Math Baseball, which features some pretty difficult computations, at least if you try to do them in your head, like I did. I can see it being a quick way to get some students to practice simple algebra exercises, but also something that could get old quick. I did like running the score up though...
I also tried the Mad Libs because I liked those so much when I was a kid. I was almost immediately frustrated with the words moving. Typing them in was not as much fun, and when I was finished choosing I was bummed to see some grammar errors and omissions in the actual passage. Not a good showing, I am afraid.
I think this site is ok for basic skills work, and there are certainly links to books like Diary of a Wimpy Kid (seem like they are all Scholastic products), which is good, I guess. They also have comics, like Brewster Rockit: Spaceguy, which is full of lame Star Wars jokes and does not seem even aimed at kids, but I thought they were subpar, so no links to those.
There is a moderate presence of ads, and they certainly are pushing an app and site called Poptropolis (I am not linking out of spite) that seems to be more of the same. Funbrain also advertises DVDs, cartoons, Froot Loops cereal, and other popular culture things.
It seems more a slight diversion or skills work than something that would be appealing over a long period of time, which bummed me out. I had higher hopes for this site!
I would get fun for my brain elsewhere.
Children's Websites to Check Out
Hey all, for class on 6/6/12, I have us down reviewing children's websites. Please check out the following websites on your own, then pick one to review in an in-depth, written entry (about 300 words). Then check out what your classmates have to say...
Here's a list of sites:
Some things you might mention in your review:
- What age level student should use it?
- Is this a site that could be used in school? If so, how?
- Are there any content area connections?
- How interactive is the site?
- How commercial is the site?
- Pros about the website?
- Cons about the website?
- Does it require you to sign up?
- Is adult supervision required?
Knobel & Lankshear Chapter 1
1. What was the chapter about?
This chapter lays out what the book is all about. It also hits on the major theorists, like Gee and Street, and also on the major parts of new literacies, namely sociocultural theory, D/discourses, and the presence of different technological interactions.
Probably what I appreciate most is how they talk about what "new" means. The practices are not new: even before fan fiction for example, there were people who engaged in the activity. They just could not share or get feedback as easily. What is "new" is how we can talk about literacy as something that not everyone does exactly the same way for exactly the same purpose. This might not be a new idea in and of itself (Street called this an ideological model of reading in 1984!), but the ways some people talk about stages of development and learning standards you would think literacy was a unitary process.
I am glad we have new literacies studies to highlight this important fact.
2. What does this chapter tell you about teaching students?
Building from my first point, the main part I get is that we need to find ways that students want to interact with reading and make learning worth their and our whiles. I know that the references in this book are dated (and it is so OLD - it's from that faraway time 2008!?!) but I still see the points applying today.
We live in a world where people can get fired up about books like Twilight and interact with the media to the point where big factions of Team Jacob and Team Edward arise. They mobilize around social networks, buy t-shirts, watch movies, debate, and bring these texts into their lives.
Additionally, some people write fan fictions about the characters they like. They post their stories online, get feedback, build connections with other fans, and in one case make something derivative that they can shift, twist, and shape into something new that draws its own fans, creates its own sensations, and becomes a phenomenon of its own.
Is all of this work crap? Is it garbage? Is it worth our while? That's not for me to say. What I do see is that people get mobilized and excited about a book and about literacy practices in ways I wish I could get our students interested in school. And they make things!
Our job is to find out what we can do to get the kind of connections and relevance to work in our favor. That is a tall task, I understand, and it will take us some big changes to get our instruction to meet students in terms of interest, relevance, and usefulness. It is not just about technology but what we can do.
3. Can this chapter be applied in your content area?
I can't think of a content area this chapter doesn't apply to.
This chapter lays out what the book is all about. It also hits on the major theorists, like Gee and Street, and also on the major parts of new literacies, namely sociocultural theory, D/discourses, and the presence of different technological interactions.
Probably what I appreciate most is how they talk about what "new" means. The practices are not new: even before fan fiction for example, there were people who engaged in the activity. They just could not share or get feedback as easily. What is "new" is how we can talk about literacy as something that not everyone does exactly the same way for exactly the same purpose. This might not be a new idea in and of itself (Street called this an ideological model of reading in 1984!), but the ways some people talk about stages of development and learning standards you would think literacy was a unitary process.
I am glad we have new literacies studies to highlight this important fact.
2. What does this chapter tell you about teaching students?
Building from my first point, the main part I get is that we need to find ways that students want to interact with reading and make learning worth their and our whiles. I know that the references in this book are dated (and it is so OLD - it's from that faraway time 2008!?!) but I still see the points applying today.
We live in a world where people can get fired up about books like Twilight and interact with the media to the point where big factions of Team Jacob and Team Edward arise. They mobilize around social networks, buy t-shirts, watch movies, debate, and bring these texts into their lives.
Additionally, some people write fan fictions about the characters they like. They post their stories online, get feedback, build connections with other fans, and in one case make something derivative that they can shift, twist, and shape into something new that draws its own fans, creates its own sensations, and becomes a phenomenon of its own.
Is all of this work crap? Is it garbage? Is it worth our while? That's not for me to say. What I do see is that people get mobilized and excited about a book and about literacy practices in ways I wish I could get our students interested in school. And they make things!
Our job is to find out what we can do to get the kind of connections and relevance to work in our favor. That is a tall task, I understand, and it will take us some big changes to get our instruction to meet students in terms of interest, relevance, and usefulness. It is not just about technology but what we can do.
3. Can this chapter be applied in your content area?
I can't think of a content area this chapter doesn't apply to.
Monday, June 4, 2012
D/discourses
Ok, for this one I am going old school and refering to something I write a long while ago, my dissertation. The whole thing is available here (you can read it if you are having trouble sleeping :p)
James Gee (1991, 1996) expanded on Foucault’s (1969/1972) notion of discourse as a set of rules that linked language, institutions, and social relationships and also incorporated features that spoke to de Certeau’s (1984) notions of strategies and tactics. Gee (1996) divided the concept of discourse into two versions, one lower-case, the other upper-case. Lower-case discourses were described as specific behaviors, “ways of being in the world” (p. 127) that included language, gestures, clothing, values, and beliefs. Abstractly speaking, they were specific actions and features stripped of their meaning. In conjunction with lower-case discourses, upper-case Discourses were the sets of rules that dictated “how to act, talk, and often write” (p. 127). These rules were tied to notions of identity and related to a complex system of social connections. Discourse involved following certain social conventions to “‘pull off’ being a culturally specific sort of ‘everyday’ person” (Gee, 2005, p. 7). Discourses included the myriad rules that constituted social identities. Gee stated that practicing a Discourse included being a convincing member of a social group, whether it is a regular at a bar, an award winning physicist, or an avid hip-hop fan. These rules gave meaning to and also dictated how to use various discourses.
D/discourses were always bundled together. Gee (1996) emphasized that the division of lower-case and upper-case was artificial and only separated the terms to make his academic arguments. An example of the intertwining of D/discourse can be seen in making eye contact. As a behavior, making eye contact is an example of a discourse that belongs to a number of Discourses. Depending on the context of the person making eye contact, the Discourses that constitute her/his social identity, making eye contact can be used variously to insult, ask a question, indicate attention, or show sexual interest. Gee (1991) likened Discourses to “identity kits” (p. 3). In a manner of speaking, big D Discourses were kits that contained the little d discourses.
Summation: So the little d is the behavior and the big D is the rule of society that makes you do the little d like you do in that particular context. Simple, right?
James Gee (1991, 1996) expanded on Foucault’s (1969/1972) notion of discourse as a set of rules that linked language, institutions, and social relationships and also incorporated features that spoke to de Certeau’s (1984) notions of strategies and tactics. Gee (1996) divided the concept of discourse into two versions, one lower-case, the other upper-case. Lower-case discourses were described as specific behaviors, “ways of being in the world” (p. 127) that included language, gestures, clothing, values, and beliefs. Abstractly speaking, they were specific actions and features stripped of their meaning. In conjunction with lower-case discourses, upper-case Discourses were the sets of rules that dictated “how to act, talk, and often write” (p. 127). These rules were tied to notions of identity and related to a complex system of social connections. Discourse involved following certain social conventions to “‘pull off’ being a culturally specific sort of ‘everyday’ person” (Gee, 2005, p. 7). Discourses included the myriad rules that constituted social identities. Gee stated that practicing a Discourse included being a convincing member of a social group, whether it is a regular at a bar, an award winning physicist, or an avid hip-hop fan. These rules gave meaning to and also dictated how to use various discourses.
D/discourses were always bundled together. Gee (1996) emphasized that the division of lower-case and upper-case was artificial and only separated the terms to make his academic arguments. An example of the intertwining of D/discourse can be seen in making eye contact. As a behavior, making eye contact is an example of a discourse that belongs to a number of Discourses. Depending on the context of the person making eye contact, the Discourses that constitute her/his social identity, making eye contact can be used variously to insult, ask a question, indicate attention, or show sexual interest. Gee (1991) likened Discourses to “identity kits” (p. 3). In a manner of speaking, big D Discourses were kits that contained the little d discourses.
Summation: So the little d is the behavior and the big D is the rule of society that makes you do the little d like you do in that particular context. Simple, right?
An identity kit? (Not to scale; contents may vary)
The point here is that we teach students lots of little d behaviors and tasks, but sometimes (always?) we do not so much take into account their big D identities. It's a way of talking about why students do not think tasks done in school are important outside of school. Because the little d activities may not jell with their big D experiences or desires. That is an issue of relevance and worth.
Web 2.0
What is Web 2.0 and why should we care?
I think for those of us now, we don't really think about Web 1.0 because we have been in the Web 2.0 world for more than 10 years now. So what is this things we are dealing with? Taking a cue from Tim O'Reilly who originated the term, it's about a few things: interaction, production, seamless application, and easy use. Web 2.0 is highly interactive and invites people to take part not just as readers or consumers but as writers or producers.
Why I see this important in education is because students are often treated liked only consumers: they have to learn what we have to teach. But they are also used to interacting and answering back. How can we reconcile these matters in classrooms. Realistically through class discussions, but most of those, studies show, are glorified "tell the teacher what she wants to hear" sessions and not true discussions (IRE - Initiate-Response-Evaluate). Maybe using blogs or other networking ideas we can allow for more thoughtful interaction. Also maybe we will figure out such work may work better than cramming a whole bunch of standards down students throats...
If you want a lot more on O'Reilly's thoughts (and I do mean a lot, this page is HUGE and DETAILED), check out this link.
I think for those of us now, we don't really think about Web 1.0 because we have been in the Web 2.0 world for more than 10 years now. So what is this things we are dealing with? Taking a cue from Tim O'Reilly who originated the term, it's about a few things: interaction, production, seamless application, and easy use. Web 2.0 is highly interactive and invites people to take part not just as readers or consumers but as writers or producers.
Why I see this important in education is because students are often treated liked only consumers: they have to learn what we have to teach. But they are also used to interacting and answering back. How can we reconcile these matters in classrooms. Realistically through class discussions, but most of those, studies show, are glorified "tell the teacher what she wants to hear" sessions and not true discussions (IRE - Initiate-Response-Evaluate). Maybe using blogs or other networking ideas we can allow for more thoughtful interaction. Also maybe we will figure out such work may work better than cramming a whole bunch of standards down students throats...
If you want a lot more on O'Reilly's thoughts (and I do mean a lot, this page is HUGE and DETAILED), check out this link.
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