Blog 4 (innovative way for instruction with software)

I participate in the PDS program at CSU and I was assigned to a Jr. High School, where I volunteer in Mrs. Nelson’s Read180 classroom. This class uses instructional technology everyday. Each class begins and ends with Mrs. Nelson directly instructing. In between these teacher driven lessons the students break off into three different stations and rotate between them. The first station is the Read 180 software; this is time to work on the computers. They read, listen, and write in this rotation. The second station is small group direct instruction; this is when Mrs. Nelson works with the students individually. The third station is silent reading or independent reading time. During the computer time the students practice their individual skills. The technology station helps the student better their spelling, reading, listening.

Blog 2 (copyrighted material)

I have always felt that if you did not create something then it did not belong to you so you had no right to use it. However, as long as you gave credit where credit was due then you would be ok, because you were asserting that some of this work was not yours. Creative Commons through me for a loop, I am still not completely comfortable using, modifying, and changing anything that is not mine. I can see the benefits of this and I can understand why people would choose to use this sort of collaboration, but I do not feel comfortable using it.

Blog #1 (resources available)

The AACE (Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education has great resources for educational technology. The site shows available jobs and allows you to post a job position. It also provides networking opportunities.
The AECT (Association for Education Communications and technology) mission statement “is to provide international leadership by promoting scholarship and best practices in the creation, use, and management of technologies for effective teaching and learning in a wide range of settings.”
ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education) provides a ton of resources for teachers wanting to include technology into their classroom. Some of the resources include assessment, curriculum, funding, and technology integration.
ITEA (International Test and Evaluation Association) also provides links to positions and job opportunities. It also gives links to the ITEA Journal.

Literary Theory Question

I posted a question in the web page “classroom 2.0” and I got an interesting response.

My question was: What are some strategies for approaching literary theory in a high school classroom?

My response was: I teach African American Lit and each week I introduce literary theory that corresponds to the contextual elements of the texts as well as the time periods we are reviewing--for example, when we discuss the 1930s, we go over Marxist Literary theory, when we talk about the Black Arts Movement, we go over African American Literary Criticism and Feminist Literary Criticism--however, I encourage students to explore the theories that reflect their views of the text (Reader Response, Historical, Biographical etc) as well. It's always good to work with a few different texts and ask students: How would a Feminist critic interpret this text? How would a Structuralist interpret this text? to show the students firsthand how a book can generate so many interpretations...if the specific elements of the text are used to coincide with the critical view.

What I find really interesting isn’t necessarily the answer but the knowledge that I gained from asking this question. Before I posted the question I did some research about literary theory and this site was very informative: http://www.iep.utm.edu/l/literary.htm

However I didn’t really learn any strategies. I guess what I am trying to say is that we as future teachers can learn so much about a topic but it will be extremely hard to apply that knowledge without some help from others in the field.

From the Start. . .

I started this blog for my Integrating Educational Technology into Teaching course at CSU. I am an English Education major here, so I will be in school for the rest of my life. Only on the other side of the desks, let’s hope is stays that way. This is a learning experience for me and one that I am very excited to undertake. I have never been very computer savvy so this will be a challenge. Please enjoy my blog and I hope you can take something away that you may not have known.