Week 8, PLNs: Under Construction

Is it terrible that I haven’t created a personal or professional learning network throughout this course yet? I mean, I’ve certainly started to. I use Diigo on a daily basis now--but I don’t share my notes with anyone. I blog about educational videos and articles and read others’ blogs--but that’s mostly within the confines of this class. I find some of my friends’ links posted on Facebook interesting and useful (how I found out extra details and opinions about the riots in London and the Fukushima earthquake & tsunami), but I ignore most of them (couldn’t care less about the score from the latest Jets game or another anti-Obama news article).

As I get more and more comfortable with the different web tools, I think the next step, then, is to start including the right kinds of people in my PLN. Up until now, I’ve limited myself to social networking (Facebook, for example) for purely personal purposes. I see pictures of my friends’ babies, get invitations to parties, share comments about the quirks of day-to-day life via status updates. If I were to broaden my network to include people also interested in using web tools as learning forums, then its potential as a PLN would expand indefinitely.

There are a few reasons, I think, why I haven’t yet done this. First of all, I have always appreciated a compartmentalized lifestyle, meaning that I like to keep the different groups of people in my life (social circle vs. work colleagues, family vs. friends) unofficially segregated from each other. I feel like it keeps my life organized and uncomplicated, with clearly defined boundaries of what belongs where. This makes me think of one of Dan’s past blog entries about Google+. If I’m going to build a professional learning network, I like the idea that I can keep it separately from my personal networking. Secondly, I’ve been automatically involved in a PLN in some way for the past year through my PSU classes. Moodle discussion forums might be more limited than global bookmarking or microblogging sites; however, ideas and resources are still being shared and questions are still being asked and answered. I think once I complete my degree and exit the academic community, I will be more likely to use more conventional sites and web tools in order to maintain my PLN and keep myself informed.

Week 7: Project-Based Learning: Imitation + Adaptation = Innovation

“That’s nice for them, but I couldn’t possibly do that given the constraints at my school.” How many times have I had this exact thought?! It's a pretty classic I-give-up excuse for educators in less than ideal teaching situations who can’t imagine themselves as capable of the same accomplishments and creativity of their more privileged peers. And it’s not as if they (I’m including myself in here) are totally off base. We’re not magicians! We can’t make something out of nothing, and grant writing, which so many people tout as the solution to all of our funding and resource problems, can only get us so much and, even then, only under certain circumstances.

I don’t mean to argue against a learning network. We each have our own strengths and weaknesses, our own creative abilities, which we can augment by observing others putting theirs into action. If we consider ourselves to be only as good as our best ideas, then we are limiting our potential, both personally and professionally. If we allow ourselves to be influenced by the work and ideas of others, learning from their mistakes as well as their successes, then the possibilities multiply.

The key, then, is to be realistic. Work with what we have instead of wallowing in professional jealousy by wishing for things that just aren’t possible for us. We might not be on level playing fields as far as resources, finances and peer support are concerned, but this doesn’t mean we’re imaginatively segregated or limited to a pre-determined set of creative ideas. We can adapt lesson plans and activity ideas, redesigning them to fit our specific teaching situations instead of attempting to imitate directly. The question should be how can I do that here? not why can't I do that here?

Week 7, Brian Crosby: I Schema, You Schema, We All Schema

Anyone with a language arts background out there? If you’ve ever taken a course or attended a professional development seminar on literacy, you know plenty about schema. It’s all about background knowledge. We have to activate the background knowledge that students already have by helping them make connections between that which they already know and that which they’re learning. Boom: schema. For students lacking background knowledge or for those coming from environments where their experiences differ greatly from each other (ESOL students, for example, or those from nonmainstream cultural or ethnic backgrounds), it is our job to help them build it within a motivational, meaningful context. Say it with me: schema.

This is what I love so much about project-based learning--the instant schema. Everyone is starting from nothing, working towards a common end point either as individuals or as a group. The students share in the background knowledge-building experience as the parameters for the project are introduced and the terms and concepts for carrying it out are examined. They all have access to the same information and resources, which means that they’re starting out on an even playing field. Where they go from there, then, is up to them.

And look at the kinds of things they can accomplish! Access to schema not only provides students with a deeper understanding of the material covered in class, but it also prepares them to make connections and apply what they’ve learned within other contexts or experiences. This is project-based learning, as Brian Crosby would like us to understand it.

Podcast, Podcast, Podcast! (And Webinar Reflection)

Week 6 Webinar Reflection: Two Birds, One Stone

So I've done my webinar reflection in the form of a podcast (see above)...pretty dry stuff, but I figured it might be more pleasant to listen to as opposed to read. It's an entirely "um"-free podcast (in 5 minutes, I said um 23 times!), thanks to Audacity's handy editing tools...although I didn't experiment with the features much beyond that. Baby steps.

Also, a ridiculous (and totally hilarious) oversight: the creator of Faces of America, which is the documentary series upon which this webinar was based, is Henry Louis Gates, Jr. NOT Henry Rollins. OOPS! I'm not even sure that I know anything about Rollins except for his name...but apparently that was enough. Sorry about that.

Finally, here are some useful links from the webinar:

PBS Webinar Archives
Faces of America
Episode 1
Episode 2
Teacher Resources
Faces of America Blog

Week 5, Technology & Projects: Well...duh

I really didn’t enjoy Capelle’s article. I was expecting it to provide insight into standards-based implementation of blogs and wikis in the classroom, but I found the content lacking and his tone almost condescending. If there’s anything I’ve had hammered into me after a year of taking M.Ed. classes and working in a public school, it’s teach to the standards! The main point of Capelle’s article seemed so obvious that it makes me wonder if writing it was even necessary. I mean…if lessons are usually structured with the learning goals in mind, then why would a tech-based lesson be planned any differently? We think about the content, the competencies we want our students to achieve and the process and tools that we can employ to help them do so. We take into account the needs of our class as a whole and each student as an individual. Then we plan, modify, and plan again. It’s almost as if Capelle was suggesting that educators might get so mesmerized by new tech tools that they would forget to consider the most 

effective ways of learning for their students.

So, going back to Kim’s original question, is it the technology that drives the project or the project that drives the technology? I think it can be interpreted as going in either direction, depending on the situation. It’s entirely possible to design a lesson plan based on a certain tech tool. An educator might be inspired by the technology they encounter in their personal life and decide to create a completely new project or activity that allows them to integrate it into their classroom. Or, alternatively, a seasoned teacher could be looking for a way to update old lesson plans by modifying them to include the use of some modern tech tools with which his or her digital native students are already familiar. In either case, the project itself might be dependent upon the tech tools, but the idea behind it and the overall content of the lesson is not.

Does this answer the question? Maybe it’s the slightest bit verging on chicken or egg territory, because I think either one can create--or in this case inspire--the other. For the time being, I guess, we can take Capelle's article as a reminder to keep lessons meaningful and teach content in contextualized ways that make it relevant to our students.

Week 5, Chapter 3: Ding!

I feel like I have a light bulb hovering over my head this week. Things are just really starting to click. I had to make a podcast for my linguistics class (a first for me!), so I downloaded Audacity, recorded a ridiculous conversation about turning an old chicken coop into a sauna (not my idea), and figured out how to convert it from an .aup file to an mp3 (per my instructor’s request). I was sort of worried about the entire process, but it turned out that it wasn’t horrible, it wasn’t impossible. It was actually fun! I felt proud to have successfully created something that I could share with other people, especially in such a short period of time. And now here I am, totally curious about all the features of Audacity that I haven’t even started to explore yet.

This got me thinking more realistically about integrating tools like podcasts, blogs and wikis into my own lessons, specifically within an ESL/EFL context. I mean, if I can do it… First: blog journals. Every foreign language classroom I’ve ever been a part of has involved some sort of journal writing component. You probably know what I’m talking about--the notebook that each student has, where they write a certain number of entries per week, which are subsequently read and commented on by their teacher. Light bulb! Blogs are a modern, interactive version of old fashioned language journals. Students get writing and reading practice from generating their own posts and commenting on their classmates’. While they would gain agency through the process, creating and personalizing their blogs and choosing their own topics, they would still be held responsible for the learning materials covered in class through their incorporation of grammar, vocabulary and language goals into their posts. And what a different relationship they would have with the material! Their journal experience is no longer secretive or private, just them and the teacher’s red pen. They can share their anecdotes or expertise and learn from others doing the same.

And what about a class wiki? This, I’ll admit, is still very much over my head. But I’m curious and would like to explore this tool more with my final project. I like the idea of a class site that any member can edit or update, and where assignments might be accessible to everyone. I also love the idea of portfolios as an assessment tool, both for students and teachers to use. A class wiki seems like an amazing resource for this, making it easy to see each student’s contributions and chart their progress. DING! Now I just have to learn how to do all this…