Our wiki address
July 14, 2009
The passing of a Media Legend-News Coverage Fit For a King?
Posted by vchuntington under UncategorizedLeave a Comment
June 30, 2009
The link for the video project “Treadmill = Party? by Roxane Day and Carol Huntington.
June 25, 2009
On georgiastandards.com, more help for teachers, prospective teachers, and parents is available than just the standards. There are numerous videos about a variety of subjects that would be helpful to teachers. One of the videos I tried to watch was not available; I’m not sure whether that is normal or not, but assuming that is an abberation, the videos could be very usesful. I was able to find a great deal of information about the 8th grade writing assessment, including aggregate data of scores, methods of testing, and methods of grading. I also saw that they have a Professional Learning Program. Under the Teacher section on the home page, I was able to see that specific information about the gifted program works, with information from how students are qualified to how teachers qualify for teaching in the gifted program. I definitely need to explore this site further.
June 23, 2009
I read Literacy for the 21st Century by the Center for Media Literacy, an article that describes a method for teaching students to “access, analyze, evaluate, and create messages in a variety of forms.” Much of the information in the article is extremely useful, such as the five key questions and the five core concepts and how to teach them; on the other hand, much of the article is testimonials of the program and advertizing-type text. I found this fact to be just a little ironic since the point of the program is to teach people to see through that type of thing. In effect, they are using testimonials to sell us something that will help us see through their testimonials and other such material.
“The convergence of media and technology in a global culture
is changing the way we learn about the world
and challenging the very foundations of education.
No longer is it enough to be able to read the printed word;
children, youth, and adults, too, need the ability
to both critically interpret the powerful images of a multimedia culture
and express themselves in multiple media forms.”
Elizabeth Thoman and Tessa Jolls
Media Literacy: A National Priority for a Changing World
The quote points to the need for the teaching of media literacy in today’s classrooms. While I agree that media literacy is crucial to a well-rounded education in the 21st century, I took issue with some ideas from the article. The article implied that in the past literacy focused mainly on learning and memorizing knowledge in our brains. The authors argue that with new facts just a click away, teaching facts is no longer necessary. What is necessary now is to be able to analyze and evaluate information. While the article makes a plausible argument, I believe that storage (in the brain–not in a computer) of knowledge is also important. As Kelly Gallagher pointed out multiple times in Readicide, students need a basis of knowledge upon which to draw in order to be good readers or good citizens. While I don’t see that learning all of the dates of the specific battles of the Civil War is necessary now that the information is a click away, a knowledge of the general time period and the general concept surrounding it is necessary to analyze or evaluate further information about it. If we as educators go too far in throwing out learning facts and figures, we will be a nation of the kind of people Jay Leno finds on the streets who don’t even know who George Washington was.
Now that I’m off my soapbox, I will say that this program is sound and helpful. Good arguments are made as to why media literacy is important. These are: 1) the influence of the media is central to our democratic process, 2) there is a high rate of media consumption, 3) the media shapes perception, beliefs, and attitudes, 4) visual communication and information is increasing in importance, 5) there is a need for information and lifelong learning in society.
The company’s website gives further information and links to other articles that have been published about media literacy (along with more promotional material.)
June 16, 2009
Our group picked the ice skater, Sonja Henie, to research. The article in Encyclopedia Americana was brief and filled with nothing but facts. No pictures accompanied the article. The language was very sterile and encyclopedic in feel. On wikipedia, the language was much more colorful and descriptive. There was much more information about her life and other talents and accomplishments. Also, some controversial information about her was exposed. We were concerned that the only reference listed in the site was one book written about her. There was a discrepancy as to the age she won the Norwegian championship. According to Marsha’s extensive knowledge of skating, wikipedia is actually right. When we looked at Enclyclopedia Brittanica, we became very frustrated with the site. It was very hard to navigate and hard to even find the article about Henie. The information was not much more extensive than what was in Americana, so I do not see any point in messing with it again, unless information on a subject is impossible to find somewhere else. We did notice that the language in Britannica was more colorful than the language in Americana. Overall, I appreciated the wikipedia site.
June 14, 2009
I had no idea what a wiki was until I read this chapter. I didn’t even know that just about anyone could edit wikipedia. Now I understand why teachers and professors are always saying that wikipedia is not an acceptable reference site for a research paper. It is cool though that it tends to be very accurate because the people who care greatly outnumber the people who want to sabotage it.
I could see that using wikis in the classroom could be beneficial for collaborative projects. I think it could develop a real sense of community in the classroom as well as serve as a learning tool. The Wetpaint tool that Richardson mentioned on page 65 that allows teachers to track the participation of their students seemed very valuable for the classroom. This tool would ensure that everyone is contributing to the project.
I also was fascinated by the example of Shelley Paul from GA whose class created a wiki based on the book Turn Homeward, Hannalee. She said, “Collaborating on the Hannalee project was one of the most rewarding teaching experiences I have ever had. Students instinctively invested in the idea that the project was an evolution–that it could always be made better….” This sounded like a memorable learning experience for the whole class.
Just for fun (did I really say that?) I decided to google a wiki on a subject that interests me-ballet. I found the wiki very interesting and dynamic. Maybe I have really been missing out on great stuff by remaining computer illiterate.
June 11, 2009
This video always makes me smile.
June 11, 2009
I love the beach! Whenever I am near the ocean, I feel energized. 
June 11, 2009
My husband is a self-employed muralist and faux finisher. Sometimes we are rolling in the money, but since the economy bottomed out, we have had to run a lean machine. Not easy to do with a daughter getting married, but things have been better in the last two months. We pray everyday that this will continue. For a woman who values security, it is a hard way to live. My husband has done some amazing work. Take a look!
June 11, 2009
As I read Chapter 2 of Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools, which expounds upon the many uses of blogs in the classroom, I came to appreciate its possiblilities for learning. As the mother of a twenty-five year old, a nineteen year old, and a sixteen year old, I have seen blogging emerge in their educational experiences. When my oldest child was in school, blogging did not exist. Now, my sixteen year old relies heavily on Class Portal blogs to get her assignments, handouts, etc. One of the biggest complaints I hear from other parents about teachers is that some of them are not consistent with their blogs. Reading this text and drawing on my own experiences as a parent have made me aware of the power of blogs to keep parents and students up to date and “on the same page.”
On the other hand,I had some strong reservations about the usefulness of blogs as reliable resources. As Richardson says, “If anyone with an internet connection can now get online and start blogging about any topic he or she wants, how do we know whom to believe?” In the end, unless a person is willing to go to extreme efforts to authenticate a source, it comes down to trust. I doubt that adolescents are going to go to the kind of effort that it takes to authenticate sources, and they tend to be too trusting. In fact, I think it could actually be somewhat dangerous for students to be seeking information and believing what they read on blogs. Then again, they will be on the web searching around anyway, and using blogs in the classroom could be a good way to teach that you can’t trust everything you read, whether it’s in a blog, a newspaper, etc.
Again, from my experience as a parent, I have seen blogging be very effective in having students discuss what they are learning. In my daughter’s AP Lit class, the students were required to read As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner. Chapter by chapter, they had to blog with a partner about their thoughts on the novel. I know my daughter gained insight from discussing ideas with a peer.
