IIC Competition Entries

I enjoyed seeing many of the entries, but I was really interested in Brittany's. She was talking about history, but the ideas could easily be applied to English. Her website is really nice looking--it can be easily navigated.
The differing views on the civil war can be used... in conjunction with Civil War literature! No surprise there. Students will be similarly involved in a historical analysis of the text.
I recently heard a suggestion that you teach students critical theory--the different ways of analyzing a text--by taking a novel and analyzing every chapter with a different kind of criticism. The historical criticism would definitely be different using a presi or making a web drawing, or anything else the teacher chooses to do. Different students learn by different methods, which is why it's best to change your approach often (and not just for changing your approach).

Reflection

I found a blog about reading: Reading Rockets
Here are some readily-available young adult book suggestions. It talks about the biography of Mark Twain, supposedly being born "fully grown with a cigar between his teeth" and other favorites. This website references a lot of things that I, as an English major, have already heard of; however, it could be a good tool for getting students interested in these things as well. Just pull up this blog and you have some ready-made explanations for your students. Or have the students look up books.
I don't think I ever had a teacher have us spend time choosing the books we read. It was our responsibility to come with a book every day and if we didn't have one, we had to read one of the teacher's boring books. I'm an English major, and I remember being bored. But if I could go online and search out what I wanted to read or have the teacher or my classmates present good books, I would definitely have enjoyed the required reading time more. Of course, I did enjoy it, typically. Yet I'm not the typical English student.
Its an English teacher's job to make reading interesting. Why not a blog?

Reflection

I see technology all around me and yet I worry that it'll be hard to get in my future classroom. However, I realize that creative teachers can really do a lot--and the most important part of getting this technology in the classroom is to do research and try, ad not just say, "I could never have that in my classroom."
For an assignment in a teaching literature and reading, I got to design my dream classroom. I decided, if I could have anything, I'd definitely have a computer projector on the ceiling, just like in so many BYU classrooms, as well as a laptop locker so all my students could have laptops (if you're wondering, I also had a lot of non-technology items, too).
Thinking, I realized that maybe when I'm a teacher, it might be easier to get enough laptops that every 3 students could have one so they could do group work in the classroom.
Now I do think a laptop for every student is a little silly. I own a laptop, and I hate to carry it around. Also, it's been proven that students who take notes on laptops don't remember and understand the notes as well (or so my Student Development teacher says--maybe I should find his sources). In fact, many parents think it's innappropriate for their children to own laptops because they bring them in their rooms where a parent can't monitor. I suppose this one is easy enough to solve--parents need to enforce rules, not teachers.
I prefer the idea of teachers having class sets and allowing students to use them at designated times (which can be often) but not allowing them all the time.
But back to my dream classroom: even if I could only get together 1 for every three students, they could still work in groups in class (and working in groups is one of the best ways to learn.) about anything, including internet searching.

Reflection

I've missed some reflections, so I'll just post a few.
My first reflection is about a class facebook group. For one class, we are supposed to have discussions on Facebook--doesn't sound like a bad idea, right? Yet, it doesn't seem to go very well. First, students are always forgetting to get on; second, students have trouble keeping all of the threads straight--for example, because it is discussion based and we are English majors, we each have a lot to say, so our posts are longer than Facebook allows without the reader having to "click to see more"; third, some students have a personal vendetta against facebook while others, like me, have very silly profile pictures.
Okay, the third concerns aren't really too big. The first concerns can be aided by developing rules; we're college students and so we don't need as many rules as middle or high school students.
First, teachers can require at least a weekly post. In a discussion type of site, they can quantify how many words or lines or something a post has to be (not just "I agree").
Second, teachers can prevent facebook's look from preventing long posts from being read by having students post it as a discussion, rather than just a wall post.
Also, there are other types of sites that can host students; this can be especially helpful when parents dislike their children being on Facebook because it gets such a bad rap (and publicity is everything). Look for discussion boards.

Copyright Project

This Youtube video is from 1951 and is a 8 minute movie on what to do on a date.
1) There is no evidence that the person who put it up has any rights to it, and there are no credits. 2) It seems fairly complete in nature, so I do not think that this is less than 10% of a work. Besides this, there is no indication that this is really for educational purposes, and so the law that you can use 10% of it may not apply.
3) There's music in the background, but we don't really know what it is or have a citation on that.

You can watch the video and see. I thought it would be funny, but it's really not that entertaining.

Now here is a video for the Innovative Instruction Competition.
1) They used an image, which is cited for just a moment below the image the first time it is seen. This is done correctly. Personally, I think they should also put this in the credits for further clarity, but their technique still works.
2) They use music, which they cite in the credits
3) They also use different technologies, which they decide to cite in the credits. This is good--although I didn't realize that this citation is necessary.
4) Lastly, they also cite some other people who helped them with their movie. I'm sorry Catherine and I didn't put your name in our video, Brother West.

My movie--Entry for IIC

Magazines Corrupting Teens?

http://jvidinha.glogster.com/magazines-corrupting-teens/
This is a sample of what a student might write about persuasion.

Movie Script

Catherine and I have been hard at work at our movie script--we're still working on how to present the last section. My little brother has made stick figure animations, but I hear that they take a lot of time. We just need an interesting way to present the Grammar Checker portion.
Here's the Google Doc of the current script.

Fair Use

After last lecture I realized that I just needed to look up a fair way to cite the pictures in my Glogster. Sure enough, Owl at Perdue has the answer: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/08/

Looking at my Glog and the website that I thought everything was kosher to use (once I figured out how to cite it) I realize that some things are obviously not fair use--like one is looks like a scanned image from a calendar. I'm going to have to clean up a lot.
I used images from Flikr (the website that the technology competition suggested), but I didn't make sure they had the symbols that allow me to share. Looking at the photos, I think the only one that I might be able to use is of Severus Snape, and that would be if I got permission. See, all the other photos look like they were stolen and put online, but this one the user actually painted it using a computer program (she also posted the original that she took Snape off of).
So, yes, I've learned how to Glog, but I need better images.
My reflection for this week is going to be howstudents need time to use these technologies because there are problems: for example, I need to find some new images for my Glog because the pictures aren't fair use.
I think that as teachers who want to use technology in the classroom, we're going to have to be accomadating to these problems.
As a TA, I know that some English second language students accidentally plagarized parts of their Book of Mormon Final. Yes, they were allowed to use other sources because they do not speak English as well, but they copy and pasted material from the web and I happened to find it--2 students copy and pasted the same thing from the web.
That sort of thing can get you kicked out of BYU or get my future students in really big trouble.
I think the point is that we teach as we go along and accomadate and make time and even allow for real mistakes.
The students at BYU did not get into trouble, but they were introduced to what plagerism is. I hope it's okay that I shared the story on this blog.

Just a reminder, I'm in the competition and will complete my fair use project later.

Teaching editing and grammar componants with grammar check

Potter, Reva and Dorothy Fuller. "My New Teaching Partner? Using the Grammar Checker in Writing Instruction." English Journal. 98.1 (Sept. 2008): 36-41. Web.

For another class we read a great article about a teacher who used grammar check to get students interested in editing. Sounds crazy, doesn't it?
First, they had the students type papers with grammar check off. Then they had them turn it on and see all the squiggly green lines appear underneath. Next they had them write down what the grammar checker. The class then tallied what kinds of errors occurred most often in their papers (comma splice, fragment, passive voice, etc.) Then the class chose what errors were most interesting to them and that is what they learned about. What is a comma splice? A fragment? (yes, I just used a fragment here to talk about fragments.)
Next, students got the opportunity to purposefully trigger the grammar checker. Go on, write a fragment! Next, students worked in groups with the goal to try and trigger the checker when the sentence is correct ("Little Women was a good book"--the checker would probably correct it to say, "Little Woman were a good book.")
Throughout this students learned 2 valuable things (hopefully)
1. they learned grammar concepts. This gives the opportunity to slip in "Here's how you make sure you have a complete sentence"
2. That the grammar checker doesn't know everything. They can't just trust it because it's often wrong. And yet, they'll learn how it's a good tool, as well.

This is the next direction I think I want to take the competition. It's simple, but I imagine it working--and it worked for these two teachers. Yes, if I use this, I will cite them and possibly send them an e-mail letting them know.