So my wife and I have been working on compiling a list of books that we want to read this summer. Of course, we are trying to avoid two things: running ourselves into the poor house, and drowning our little house in books. The latter part has proven difficult. Although, we did recently gut a closet to replace it with a bookshelf…leaving an empty bookshelf in the spare bedroom, hmmm…forethought?
Anyway, I thought I’d use this space to share both my reading list and my wife’s reading list. If you have any suggestions, feel free to let me know in a comment below. Also, make your own list through this site, and share it with the world…makes a really easy way to find other books that might interest you. Folksonomy at its finest!
Oh yes, to try and avoid running ourselves into the poor house with all the books we want to read this summer, my wife has found an ingenius little service that may be helpful…kind of like a netflix for books. There are a few of these around, but this one seems like a pretty decent deal.
That’s it for now. G’bye!
May 31st, 2006
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In response to Doug Johnson’s call for letters, here is my letter to my local representative. Thanks to Doug (for the first real comment on this blog, no less) and to others, including Will’s wiki letter for the inspiration in getting this young teacher politically motivated…at least a little bit. :-) Anyway, thanks folks. Hope you enjoy the letter.
Dear Representative Barrett:
I am composing this letter in opposition the the Deleting Online Predators Act, bill number H.R. 5319. While I agree with the sentiment that the safety of our children should be a very high priority, this particular bill, as written, is not an acceptable solution. Representative Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania has sponsored this bill in order to protect our students from “potential dangers posed by the use of the Internet by children.” Instead, what this bill will serve to accomplish is prevent a vast amount of viable educational and research-oriented Internet resources in our schools.
In our modern society, the largest, most constantly updated, and most readily available repository of knowledge is the Internet. Many of the educational opportunities for students available online are through a new brand of Internet applications we call Web 2.0, or the Read/Write Web. Web 2.0 applications are grounded in the educational principles of social constructivism: that people learn better through collaboration with learning communities. This bill blocks any “commercial Web sites that let users create public ‘Web pages or profiles’ and also offer a discussion board, chat room, or e-mail service.” This would effectively block millions of valuable educational sites like Wikipedia, blogs, newsfeeds, and classroom message boards. This legislation would also block the ability for teachers to research these sites for possible use in the classroom.
As an English teacher at __________ High School, I have used Web 2.0 Internet technologies in my classroom. My students have created online portfolios of their work, written blogs about characters in our readings, discussed thematic, literary concepts on our classroom discussion board, and contributed to our online Wiki textbook. These are all valuable educational opportunities that have benefited my students. However, under this bill, all of these classroom activites would be inaccessible.
Any place where teenagers and children can congregate could be considered dangerous. The Internet is no different. However, as parents and educators, we teach our children how to safely go to the mall, church, and school. Each of these locations, sadly, has proven to be an environment where students may be in danger of predators. But for some reason, this bill does not consider the option to educate our students on how to safely conduct themselves on the Internet.
The social networking technology targeted by this bill is growing daily. My fear is that with legislation like this, we, as educators and parents, will not be prepared to show our children how to use this technology safely. Students may begin to see sites like Myspace.com as a temptation to be accessed only without parent supervision. When students are not on school grounds, and have access to these sites at home or at a friend’s home, how will they know how to avoid compromising situations like those described in the bill? My classes this semester are not composed of upper-middle class children, yet almost 90% of my current students have access to the Internet at home or at a friend’s home. Over two-thirds of them have pages and profiles on social networking sites. They will continue to use this technology regardless of the outcome of this bill. In my opinion, this bill should not be focusing on blocking student access to social networking sites at schools and libraries, but on educating students on how to wisely use these potentially powerful tools.
There is one portion of the bill that I agree with. Designing a website to educate parents, teachers, and students to use the Internet safely would go a long way towards accomplishing the intent of the bill–protecting our children. My suggestion would be to go further. Create pamphlets, lesson plans, articles, speeches, broadcasts, and other media resources for the same purpose. Use the same social networking technologies (blogs, podcasts, discussion forums, and wikis) that this bill would block to educate people on Internet safety.
Representative Barrett, our society is becoming more and more connected to the online world. We are no longer required to simply teach our students how to become productive members of the real world, but also the virtual world. It is essential that our students become members of this global community, but this bill, in its current state, would “delete” our opportunities to teach them how.
This technology is already out there. Our students are already using it, in and out of school. It is in our best interests to play the role of the educator, not of the censor.
Yours sincerely,
R. Scott Bevill
May 31st, 2006
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My last session today was a presentation by three instructors, Beth Beggs, Christy Desmet, and Anita DeRouen, at the University of Georgia about their freshman comp E-Portfolio system. I was extremely impressed with the software used to organize the portfolios and with the rigor of these portfolio assessments. They really seemed to provide a great framework for these first year writing students. <br />
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The UGA E-Portfolio really focuses on creating a sense of Audience Awareness for the students. Many of the instructors make it a focus in their classes to discuss that Absent Reader. Considering this fictional person as almost a second grader. Someone else, aside from the instructor or their classmates, that they wil be writing for. I think that’s a great idea. Providing an audience is so important for our students.<br />
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I’ll give a quick rundown of some of the great things these professors at UGA are doing in their freshman comp classes.<br />
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The E-portfolio has 6 main requirements:<br />
<li>Biographical Information and an Image<br />
<li>A Reflective Introduction<br />
<li>2 of the 4 essays that were assigned to the class (these should have gone through a specific revision for the portfolio).<br />
<li>An example of Personal Revison.<br />
<li>An example of how the student has participated in Peer Review<br />
<li> and a Wild Card (which can be nearly ANYTHING).<br />
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Another great assignment was an E-Anthology of literary works around a specific theme. Students would search and find poetry or short stories that all deal with a similar theme and put them in an anthology.<br />
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Another was an online poetry ‘Zine. Students would take a poem and write about it in a variety of ways, podcast (they didn’t call it a podcast, however) their reading of it, and reflect upon their study of the poem in a website. <br />
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All were really great ideas.<br />
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But what struck me the most was the online learning environment used by the UGA English department. This is a piece of software called <a href=”http://www.emma.uga.edu”>emma</a>. This looked to be a fantastic piece of software that is specifically designed for student E-Portfolios. Students have an easy to use template to follow, where they simply plug in their writing. Now, it does take away some of the creativity of complete free-form web design, but really allows the instructor to focus on teaching the students writing…not web page creation. Looking at the site, I see that they are working on integrating <a href=”http://www.openoffice.org”>openoffice.org</a> technology into the site, to allow students to create .xml style sheets for their portfolios. Looks to be a really cool developing technology, similar to elgg or moodle, but completely in-house.<br />
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I have to say that I really enjoyed this day of the WAC conference. I wish I could have seen some of the presentations from yesterday or that I could come back and see the ones for tomorrow. While most of the sessions I attended really seemed to be more focused on college-level application, I really got a lot out of the sessions. <br />
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My favorite quote of the day came from Doug Downs’ presentation, saying “Doing Writing is not the same thing as teaching writing.”<br />
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That is absolutely true. How many times do I simply assign writing assignments without actually teaching solid principles behind them? How many “teachable moments” have I missed simply because I’ve been so focused on getting a specific writing assignment done? I dunno. But it is definitely something to think about.<br />
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Anyway, a great day in Clemson. Well, everyday in Clemson is a great day…especially when I get to eat at Ancheaux’s and have Clemson Ice Cream! Thanks to Dr. Young at Clemson for reminding me about the conference and to my school for allowing me to go. Now I need to go through my goody bag and start to wrap my head around all the things I learned today!
May 19th, 2006
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Hi again.<br />
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3 more presenters this time. A really interesting session. It deals with the uses of multimedia applications in the educational system.<br />
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Our first presenter was showing off a new Multimedia Center at U of Delaware. All I have to say is wow… I wanna work there. <br />
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Second presentation was interesting to me, particularly because I do focus on using Internet technology in my classroom. It was focused on how to evaluate Web sources. Kathleen Keating from Greensboro College presented a web evaluation game. In many cases, I agree with her that it can be very difficult to determine which Internet sources are viable research sources and which ones are unreliable. My biggest beef of her presentation was the only mention of Wikipedia…as very negative. Seemed like she used her only example of a Wikipedia article in her Web Evaluation game as a negative one. Without paying attention to recent studies of Wikipedia’s accuracy. Even so, it was a very interesting presentation.<br />
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Last presentation was by Carl Whithaus of Old Dominion. I’m really trying to wrap my head around this right now. Trying to find new ways of evaluating and assessing student work that is presented in multimedia and multimodal formats.<br />
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For example, a student creates a song, or a video, or a powerpoint storybook, or a website…<br />
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How the heck do we grade this stuff? Is that typical holistic grading method really viable when dealing with multimedia assignments. Whithaus promotes a Situated Writing Assessment…with multiple readers, constant interaction in the process, descriptive judgements, and grading materials in context. <br />
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Looking at these last two presentations in the context of each other and my own personal views on multimedia student products, I can see a lot of connection here. By having student work published, through blogs or on Wikipedia or simply in an online E-portfolio, those students would be exposed to multiple readers and evaluators…people who are looking and evaluating their work in the same way that they must also evaluate Internet work. Perhaps in the process of finding and evaluating websites, a student finds an error in a Wikipedia article… CORRECT IT! Take part! Put your own voice out the the audience…but know that your work will be looked at by a big audience, and that magnifying glass will be used on the students.<br />
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Great presentations and really led to some great discussions. A lot of things to think on.<br />
May 19th, 2006
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