Wiki

This is such a cool discovery for me! I think Wiki's are great, I would definitely use them in my classroom. This is an excellent resource for collaborative group projects as well as teacher/student communication. I would probably use the Wiki as more of a class website where I could post homework assignments and links. Students could post their finished assignments and I could comment on them, edit them, and utilize the Wiki for peer editing as well. Here is a link to one of the lesson plans I have posted on my Wiki.
The blog that I added for the Language Arts section was huffenglish.com, a blog that I have found highly interesting and will be even more useful to me when I am actually teaching.

INTERNET SAFETY

From the readings and videos I watched, I learned two important things: the importance of staying safe on the internet and not giving out any personal information, and how crucial it is for us teachers to stay on top of technology so that we are aware and can use it to the benefit of our students.
Such a technological world can be harmful, however, if students aren't aware of Internet Safety and its importance. A lot of times we tend to think that bad things won't ever happen to us. We hear stories of other people's horrible experiences but shrug them off after an hour or two because we have better things to think about. Internet safety is not something we can shrug off. I don't know how predators, hackers, or phishers choose who they will target, but we need to be proactive in staying safe and helping others to stay safe as well.

all of the articles and videos I watched were linked on our Class Diigo Website

"WordPress as a Learning Management System – Move Over, Blackboard"

- "BuddyPress" interactive online community for class...teacher can't really monitor it

- good points about how important it is for us as teachers to teach our students how to be flexible and learn how to access and use all different platforms of technology

- I'm intimidated by the thought of such an entirely technological classroom...I guess I'm old school at heart 

"Provo man buys old cell phone, finds amazing list of numbers"

- Moral of the story: don't donate your phone to a thrift store? I guess the thing to learn from this is just how long personal information can stick around. What you think is private, may not be so private later...especially if you forget about it and someone else stumbles on it 10 years later.

"Building a Better Password"

- Scary! my password system is definitely a mess, I am motivated to fix it now...but it's so intimidating because it seems like hackers can get into pretty much anything these days

"Internet Safety: A Cautionary Tale"

- Again, this is a really intense, scary look at what could happen if you give out too much information. This is a little over the top but it reiterates to me how important it is to be overly cautious. As soon as I finished watching this I did a thorough google/facebook search of myself to see how much information people can see. I recommend this for everyone, also make sure and review your privacy settings on sites like facebook and myspace.

"Finding and Sharing the Gospel Online"

- A nice, uplifting way to finish off this assignment. The internet can be good and can be used as a missionary tool. We can be successful in online missionary endeavors as long as we are safe and smart about it.

 ---After learning about all of these internet safety warnings and suggestions I taught them to one of my roommates. We both got on our facebook accounts and edited our privacy settings to make sure that we weren't sharing too much information.

Reflections on the IIC Competition

My favorite presentation from the competition was the SS6 "Road to Revolution" pitch. This project presented a number of technologies that could be used in the classroom and focused on how to best bridge the gap between "research-based elements of effective teaching and the real world that we, and especially students, face: a world of technology."
The thing that I appreciated most about this presentation was that they focused on how, as teachers, we want to use technology to enhance our teaching but we need to be careful not to let it take over. I thought it was funny when they used the term "bot students" because that is exactly what we don't want; robot students who aren't comfortable unless they are safely behind a screen. We don't want technology to dominate our classrooms and I think that unless teachers have a clear idea as to how they are going to use technology, it can easily overtake everything.
Basically what this group did was create a class website that compiled resources like Prezi, Wufu, GoogleDocs, and YouTube, to make them readily accessible for the students. The resources are all aimed at helping students learn history by creating building blocks; getting them out of the textbooks and into the mindset of interactive, historical thinking.
Another really cool thing about this website is that it can be translated into different languages. I think this would be especially helpful for ELL students as well as students with non-English speaking parents.

Video Project

Video presentation of a character sketch of Asher Lev! At this point students have read the first half of the book so they are analyzing Asher as his character evolves through Book One.

Storyboard

Here is the link to my storyboard for the multimedia project

"The Perils of Teaching the Books We Love"

As I was looking over one of the blogs that I follow, huffenglish.com, I came across a post called "The Perils of Teaching the Books We Love." I thought it was really interesting since I too have experienced the disappointment of recommending a favorite book to a friend and them not liking it or appreciating it as I do. However, I think that as an English teacher this is just something that we need to be prepared for. Because lets be honest, what kind of a world would it be if everyone had unhealthy obsessions with Chaim Potok? I think our job is to share our enthusiasm and try to cultivate appreciation and understanding of good literature. And I'm not talking about Twilight.

Ordinary People Doing Extraordinary Things

Like the "We Didn't Start The Fire" video, this video includes a song and a number of photos of ordinary people who have done extraordinary things. I find nothing in this video that violates copyright laws except for the song. If she was just showing it in class it would be fine as long as she had obtained the song legally. But since she has it posted online without the permission of the artist she is breaking the law.

50 States Song

This is another good history video that will help students to learn the state capitals. It is a clip from the cartoon "Anamaniacs." The clip is only 2 minutes long and since the episodes of this show are 30 minutes long, this is less thatn 10% of the final work. It is for educational purposes and, to my knowledge, has not been made into multiple copies. This clip is safe under copywright law, but I think it would be a good idea for the teacher to cite where he or she got the clip from.

We Didn't Start The Fire

This is a really fun video that I found on Teacher Tube. It is a collage of pictures and videos depicting historical events mentioned in the song "We Didn't Start The Fire" by Billy Joel. The creator of this video didn't cite where he got any of his media from but I think it's ok because all of the clips are so short. None of them are longer than a few seconds so it is definitely less than 10 % of the work that is being shown. However, he includes the entire song and posts it online which is in violation of copyright law.If he was just showing this clip once in his classroom it would be fine, but since he posted it online without permission it is technically illegal.

Personal Technology Project

Here is a screen shot of the MindMap I made for Jane Eyre. I will divide my students into groups and they will work together to create one of their own. Basically they will all have the same character, each student will choose his or her own event to focus on. They will summarize the event and then analyze it in relation to the character.

Here is a link to the lesson plan on Google Docs

Lesson Plan: Jane Eyre Mindmeister

Utah State Standards for 9^th Grade Language Arts
Standard 1: (Reading) Students will use vocabulary development and an understanding of text elements and structure to comprehend literary and informational grade level text.
Objective 3: Comprehend literature by evaluating the contribution to meaning of several literary elements within a work of literature

A.      Describe how conflict, character, and plot work together.

                 B.     Explain how character is developed through implication and inference

Objective:

Students will work together in groups to put together a collaborative “Mindmeister” of a character from Jane Eyre. This activity will help them to learn how to analyze different aspects of the plot as they relate to one of the characters in the novel.

Introduction:

One of the most important literary skills for you to develop is the ability to analyze characters based off of the things that happen to them in the book. Oftentimes we assume that the information we have of a certain character relies on what the author tells us, but it is important to learn how to make inferences on our own. [Review what an inference is: a conclusion drawn from evidence or reasoning]

Discussion:

-          What makes a situation worth analyzing? How do you know if it is significant or not?

o   If it involves the main character, has some kind of effect on the main character either at the moment or later on in the novel, relates to an overlying theme of the novel

-          What’s the point of all of this? Wouldn’t the author tell us if there was something important about the character that we need to know?

o   When you are reading good literature there are different layers to the text. If you really want to get something out of the story then you need to be able to dig a little deeper rather than just accepting blindly whatever the author puts on the surface. Example: One of the themes in Jane Eyre is the need that all people have for supportive familial relationships. Bronte never comes right out and says that Jane wasn’t a complete character until she found her family, but we can infer that based off her relationship with St. John and his sisters. Remember, there are no wrong answers here as long as you can support your ideas!

Assignment:

Students will be divided into groups of 4 and each student will be assigned a day where it is their job to work on the collaborative mind map. By the end of the week each group will turn in a mind map that is a compilation of their group’s ideas.

-          Groups will meet together on Monday to discuss what character they want to map. Each student will choose an event that is significant to the character and write a short summary and analysis.

-          When it is their day to add to the map they will put up their event, summary, and analysis (as seen in the example). Each student will have his or her own color so I can see who does what.

-          Extra credit will be given to students who contribute to the analysis’ of other members of their group: be sure and post in your color so I know who to give credit to!

English Companion Ning

I spent some time this morning poking around English Companion Ning. This is basically a discussion forum for teachers where they can post a question and other teachers can answer and give their advice. There is a particularly long thread of comments in response to a post where a teacher asked for suggestions on how to run his classroom the day after one of the students in his school was tragically killed in a car accident. This is a difficult situation for sure and it presented itself a couple of times during my high school years. Reading the advice and condolensces to this teacher reminded me of the profound impact that teachers can have on their students. It reaffirmed to me that this isn't an easy job I'm signing up for, but it will be worth it. I have a feeling that resources like this one will be invaluable to me when my time comes to stand in front of the classroom.

Personal Technology Project

For my project I am going to learn how to use Mindmeister. My class will read Fahrenheit 451 and use Mindmeister to analyze and map out themes and characters.
The idea is that each student will choose a unique aspect of the storyline and then the maps can come together to give students a more analytical idea of what the book is all about.

Woops!

I had my class website all done by Monday night and I totally forgot to post the link! Here it is
http://sites.google.com/site/watkinsclass/http://sites.google.com/site/watkinsclass/

Some New Goodies

While poking around on the internet for some rubric templates I came across this awesome website. It doesn't look like much, just a page of links set up by some teacher. There are some really good links on there though, and they have a different page of links for math, history, language arts, etc.

As if my booklist isn't long enough already...

Thanks to Emily and Tasha I found a couple new blogs that I really like. Powell's Books and YA Lit: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. Powell's went straight into my Google Reader, hooray for yet another way to put off my homework :)

Yeah!

Finally mastered the screen shot. Also, Google Reader is my new best friend. Woo!

The Blogs

Here is a brief overview of each of my blogs, explaining why I chose them and what they are all about!

1. Teaching with Picture Books
This blog is set up by a teacher from New Jersey who describes himself as "a normal (if not boring) guy who has an occasional epiphany, and then feels the urge to share it with others." His recent posts include descriptions of free resources for teachers, and an introduction on "book trailers" and how to use them. From time to time he will take a theme like death and coping and recommend books that a teacher could use to help his or her students both deal with, and understand, death.
I especially like this blog because I love, love, love childrens books and what I would really like to do someday is be a librarian at an elementary school. This is a blog that will acquaint you with the marvelous world of picture books and how to use them to effectively teach your students.

2. huffenglish.com: issues, ideas, and discussion in English Education and Technology
Here we have more of a compilation of ideas and links than personal entries. I feel like this page could have been made specifically for our class. For example, each week  they post Diigo links that relate to English Education. I also found a post on Blogging tools that I think will be very helpful.

3. My Dog Ate My Lesson Plans
The description of this blog is: "A digital gathering place for the English Teaching majors at Brigham Young University. Post, comment, chat, share--everyone is welcome!"It is a place where teachers and English Ed students bring ideas, ask questions, etc. One of my favorite advice posts is this one. I like it because it shows how important it is for teachers to collaborate with each other and with their librarians.

4. JustRead!
This is a personal blog put together by an English teacher, Lisa Huff. I like this one because it provides a realistic lens for what it is like to be a legit teacher. Posts like this and this are especially helpful because she has some experience and I know that I have a lot to learn from teachers like this. Another helpful feature of this blog is her extensive list of EdTech Blogs and Educator Networks.

5. Discussion Forum- English Companion Ning
This isn't really a blog, rather it is a place where teachers can ask questions and have them answered by other teaching professionals. This is a forum so I know that if I ever had a question I could either place it here, or maybe find that it has already been asked.

Discovery

I've been poking around the internet and I have found some pretty cool stuff! It's super overwhelming actually because there is so much out there. I could seriously spend the rest of my life reading blogs and be completely entertained. Also, I figured out the Google Reader thing and I am a convert. It is so awesome! Now I have all my blogs, news, and other nonsense that I read instead of doing my homework, all in one place! I finally broke down and had my roommate set up my computer to receive internet at my apartment. Originally I figured I would be fine just doing all my "online stuff" on campus...but with all these fun new discoveries I just need it. So that's that.

Introduction To My Lack of Technological Capabilities

Well I'll be honest. I really have no idea what to say for this blog post. I guess I will just say that I am not very technologically savvy so I am looking forward to this class because I really want to be a good teacher someday! I admire teachers who are able to relate to their students. I want to be the teacher who knows what's up and since my 6 year old brother already knows how to navigate the web, I think I better start figuring this stuff out so that my high school students don't show me up.