Useful NINGS

I am using Ning.com in another course, so I have been becoming familiar with its functions. I think that is great because there is a lot of control over who can join and collaborate. There is now a "Ning" for students in the English Education program which I just joined. This is a new place for old, current and new graduate students to catch up with one another, stay in touch with professors, share ideas, questions, issues and even job postings.

http://ubenglisheducation.ning.com/

I also found the following Ning site which seems to serve a similiar purpose. This one is for English teachers from anywhere and everywhere who can collaborate and share ideas.

http://englishcompanion.ning.com/

This Ning site seems incredibly useful, especially for a new teacher. There are groups within the Ning that seemed to be organize by sub-topics in English. For example, there is a group for teaching middle school and one for teaching mythology. These might be great places to start if one is teaching a new genre or topic of English. I will definitely use this site as a resource for me in the future.

The Learner Bee

After reading Siemens' article and viewing the video "The Conflict of Learning Theories with Human Nature", I can liken the "learner" to that of a honey bee. The learner, or worker bee, travels through nature looking for flowers from which to gather pollen. Pollen cannot be taken from just any plant, so the bee must decipher and recognize which flowers or plants will supply the correct pollen for the hive. Then the bee extracts what he needs and takes it to the hive. There, hundreds of other individual bees are also bringing what they each found to be useful from the outside world into the hive. Then, all of the individual bees add their contributions. The hive survives only upon the connection and synthesis of each bee's bit of pollen. Once added together, this creates the honey that comes from the hive. Each bee will then individually benefit from the honey that is produced. As the hive grows, old bees pass and new bees are born. The honey created will fuel the new bees, who in turn, will add back to the hive.

I best understand Siemens' theory through the quote, "The starting point of connectivism is the individual." It is then the individual who contributes to a "network, which feeds into organizations and institutions, which in turn feeds back into the network, and then continues to provide learning to the individual." I like this idea because it allows for individuals to have an impact on a large body of knowledge. Honey can be seen as a loose analogy for knowledge and information because it is not permanent nor guaranteed to last forever. The taste, texture and quantity of the honey depends on what the bees bring to the hive, therefore the honey created today might be different from what was created 5 years ago or 5 years from now. It all depends on what was available and what the bee deemed sufficient for the production of honey.

I am not an expert on bees, hives or honey, so there might be flaws in this analogy. However, I feel it is somewhat useful because the production of the hive depends on its individuals. One of the quotes that caught my attention from the video was "our desire to externalize our thoughts" and the "power of connecting in an external fashion". The hive might represent the connections being made by each bee's contribution for the greater good.

While the article outlining connectivism proved to be somewhat thick to understand, I am refreshed by the new approach to education. I think that the more we model instruction off of how people actually learn, the more effective we will be for our students. I agree that externalizing thoughts and making connections is such a vital part to our learning process, and I hope to keep those desires in mind when I plan lessons. I do not have many memories of K-12 education that involved making my own connections, so I hope to bring that into my classroom. If students cannot connect my lessons to any part of their lives, then I need to work at how I present my material.

Staying Afloat!

The video that stuck out to me was the updated version of the video: Did You Know? I remember my first day of LAI 414. It was class necessary for my ungraduate minor in Education. My teacher pulled up Youtube.com, and we watched a similar video. I was blown away by the information presented. And yet, just 3 years later, I am watching an updated version of the video and I am just as surprised at the information.

I am on my third laptop. I text more than I make phone calls. I have had an instant messaging screen name for 11 years. I consider myself fairly up-to-date with technology when compared to most, however the information in the video shows me that I am far from the most expert! I am 23 years old, and I probably send about 200-300 text messages a month. But a teenager, under 10 years younger than than I, sends nearly 1000? I am truly amazed! Have

I turned into my parents already?? Am I so distant from the students I will soon be teaching!

In many ways, no, but in other ways, yes! I have slowly been coming to terms with the explosive progress of technologies. I would be lying if I said I wasn't intimidated by the fact that younger generations will be at the forefront of new technologies. I consider myself young, but I already I have already realized that my students will probably always know much more than I when it comes to new technologies.

While I am still unsure the exact steps I will take, I want to take advantage of my students knowledge. I want them to keep my updated on what is new or interesting to them. I remember teachers who seems so resistant to new technologies. My grandparents never used the VCR we bought them. I had an English professor, just three years ago, who refused to use email. I never want to be that closed off! I am taking this class for exactly that reason. I know that there is something to be said for traditional practices and there are dangers associated with jumping into new technologies blindly, but that video showed me quickly progress is being

made. I must make conscious efforts to stay abroad of trends and shifts in technological progress. Teachers can becomes somewhat isolated in their classrooms, so it is important to step outside of the classroom and interact with technology in the same ways students do.

Blog Safety

I feel that I, myself, have learned a lot about internet safety over the last few years. I myself have had myspace accounts, facebook accounts and photo albums that I usually never thought twice about in terms of security. But as the internet keeps growing, I myself have been maturing. I have learned to edit, revise, monitor and secure the information that I post, so I appreciate the similar need for classroom use. Teachers themselves need to be so careful about what they post about themselves, that I feel more comfortable about helping students do the same. The following are some important guidelines for using the internet in classrooms.

1. Avoid using any major identifying information such as home address, last name, phone number, photos, or any personal information one might not want a stranger to access.

2. Maintain open channels of communication between parents, students, and faculty. There should be no surprises and no secrets about what is being blogged for classroom use.

3. All comments and posts should be approved by the teacher. Students should be taught what this kind of material looks like, but the teacher should ultimately be able to control what gets posted, for the safety of the student.

4. Care should be taken to secure the blog from outside or unwanted viewers. In some cases, a blog might be intended to address a wide audience, in other's it might be necessary to restrict the posts to the class itself.

5. Students be taught and exposed to tips for navigating the internet safely when using the blog. Often, information and websites that are not conducive education can leak through even the most effective filters, but teaching the students how to handle those situations is far more important that placing simply placing huge blocks or denying large amounts of information to students.

I hope to learn more about this, especially because each school is different about the kind of access they allow to teachers and students. I hope to add to this list before implementing blogs in my teaching.

Blogs in the Classroom

I have really been interested in the use of blogs in the classroom over the past year. I took a graduate course from a professor who used them often in the high school English class she teaches, and I was able to see it first hand when I student taught for her. While I am able to easily understand how useful they are to the classroom, I am still eager to learn more on how to practically implement them into my teaching.

The example that I saw in her classroom was a blog that acted as forum for posting film reviews. In addition to her English class, she also taught a film course. Students were required to write about one post per week about any film they had seen recently. It sounds like a simple enough assignment, but the results were of a wide variety of and complex content. Students reviewed all sorts of films: recent box office hits, unknown indie flicks, classic favorites or internet-only movies. Students would also comment on one another's posts, and it was great to see students discussing and analyzing in a forum in which they might find more comfortable than a live classroom. I feel that students will excel when given more options, and blogs provide a useful alternative for student expression.

Thinking back on my student teaching, I think I will try and use blogs for the following ideas in the future:

-Discussion about texts we use in the classroom

-Discussion about future topics that are student-centered or student-initiated

-Free-writes and creative writing

-Student-composed articles and reports

-Question forums ( not unlike our Peer Help thread on UbLearns)

-Feedback forums (not unlike our How Did it Go? thread on UbLearns)

Blogging opens up another form of communication which can enhance our channels with students. Technology is growing at such a fast pace that we, educators, would be foolish not to tap into its potential!