Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Memorandum Reflection
The memorandum was an interesting assignment, I felt like I was summarizing all of the articles that I read. However, I learned a lot by reading and rereading and then trying to put my findings into my own words. I really liked the idea of encouraging a lot of outside reading with students of all ages. Literacy in reading is extremely important and I understand how it can impact literacy in writing. I love to read and after this assignment I can see why I also like to write. I believe that reading a lot helps students develop more vocabulary and they learn how to use it in proper context. Another point I really liked was that writing should take place as often as possible, it made me think of our blogs. Even though they are not papers or essays they keep us thinking, writing and expressing!
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
The Importance of Correctness
This seems like a really good guide for writing papers and actually seems like something I might use in the future. When I was in High School (just kidding) :-), the English teachers put together a reading and writing resource handbook that had a lot of this same information in it but it only focused on teaching how to write MLA style papers. This is full or a lot more information and it will be useful for writing papers using other styles. I really liked; "A word about Correctness" on page two because I felt that it related to the set of articles I read for the Inquiry into Writing project. I think it is important to worry about errors after you have written your papers because otherwise you get distracted while you are writing. It is just sometimes hard to remember to go back and proof your work, especially when you are in a hurry. Correctness really does matter when someone is reading your piece. I know that if I am reading somebodies paper and there are a lot of errors I tend to get bored with what I am reading or irritated because I feel like some of the mistakes are aviodalbe if people payed better attention or went back and proof read.
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
Learning From Research
It has been so long since we had to write a blog!
I read set 4 for our Inquiry into writing project, and found the articles pretty interesting. There was a lot of useful information that I will hopefully remember to implement in my own classroom someday. I especially liked the idea that the classroom is a community and all of the members of the class are real players (Co-Authoring...Larson and Maier). I feel that the idea of community was a constant theme in the four articles and that all of the teachers who were involved in the studies found it important for the students to communicate with the class in a formal tone and environment as well as an informal tone and environment. The teachers felt that by allowing the students to know a lot about their peers there was more room for creativity and a more open classroom. In the same article I mentioned above, the teacher; Maryrita Maier taught first grade and she and her class had lunch family style in their classroom everyday. This definitely changed the classroom from a formal learning environment to a much more informal one.
The articles also mentioned how important fluency is in both reading and writing. A point that I found particularly interesting was; In order to become a writer you have to read!. This was from the last article in the set but it really summed up a lot of the ideas from the previous articles because all of the teachers put a tremendous amount of influence on both subject and tried to devote about two hours a day to the study of Reading and writing, even incorporating writing in other subjects. As long as students are writing they are learning to appreciate writing and their own work which will eventually help them figure out exactly what they want to write about!
I read set 4 for our Inquiry into writing project, and found the articles pretty interesting. There was a lot of useful information that I will hopefully remember to implement in my own classroom someday. I especially liked the idea that the classroom is a community and all of the members of the class are real players (Co-Authoring...Larson and Maier). I feel that the idea of community was a constant theme in the four articles and that all of the teachers who were involved in the studies found it important for the students to communicate with the class in a formal tone and environment as well as an informal tone and environment. The teachers felt that by allowing the students to know a lot about their peers there was more room for creativity and a more open classroom. In the same article I mentioned above, the teacher; Maryrita Maier taught first grade and she and her class had lunch family style in their classroom everyday. This definitely changed the classroom from a formal learning environment to a much more informal one.
The articles also mentioned how important fluency is in both reading and writing. A point that I found particularly interesting was; In order to become a writer you have to read!. This was from the last article in the set but it really summed up a lot of the ideas from the previous articles because all of the teachers put a tremendous amount of influence on both subject and tried to devote about two hours a day to the study of Reading and writing, even incorporating writing in other subjects. As long as students are writing they are learning to appreciate writing and their own work which will eventually help them figure out exactly what they want to write about!
Thursday, March 8, 2007
Now that I'm finished with my Digital Document...
This was a very long process for me, I started and stopped and restarted this project a few times. I would work on it for a few days and then go back to it and hate everything I had done and start from scratch.
My audience is supposed to be my mom, but I think it may come off a little more like it is dedicated to my mom and then I am explaining how it came to be that I started to hunt.
I don't reference Gee's name because the people that I would be showing this to have no idea who he is. However I start out talking about some of the different identities I have and how this newest one is going to fit in with all of the other roles I already play. My new identity of hunter is not one that I portray on a day to day basis, where all of the most important identities of daughter, sister, cousin, girlfriend, best friend...etc are what people see and recognize everyday. Besides my family and close friends who know that I am learning to hunt, nobody else can look at me on a day to day basis and assume that I am a hunter. My attire only changes when I am in the hunting sphere with my boyfriend and when I am consciously trying to be in the hunting affinity group.
I mention a few times that I am learning how to hunt because I want to share a hobby with my boyfriend and his family. However, I don't really think that my boyfriends dad will ever identify me as a hunter. I may be able to talk to him about hunting and send him pictures of me all dressed up in my camo with my gun but he will probably still see me as the girly girl, and when I visit him in Idaho I will still be the epitome of a "California girl" even if I am gutting my own fish or hunting ducks with him. My personality will always prevail over my learned identity.
When I started this assignment I went through all of the pictures I have of me learning to hunt. After I decided that I wanted my audience to be my mom because even though she is my number one supporter she did not seem to understand why I want to learn to hunt, a thing so far from the type of girl I am, I had to add some other pictures that did not have to do with hunting but more with me and who I am. I had to find pictures that demonstrated why my mom would be concerned and confused about the new identity i was acquiring and then I had to show her that I am not changing so drastically that she will not see all of the qualities she loves about me simply because I am shocking her by hunting. To start I used a song that is "our song", "Wide Open Spaces" by Dixie Chicks has been a song my mom and I share for a long time. Then I showed my family because they are the biggest influence on the identities I have and they are completely different from the one I am adding.
I had chosen what pictures I wanted before I wrote my narrative because I wanted the pictures to hopefully be able to tell a story. After I wrote the narrative I moved the pictures around so they would all correlate with each other.
My audience is supposed to be my mom, but I think it may come off a little more like it is dedicated to my mom and then I am explaining how it came to be that I started to hunt.
I don't reference Gee's name because the people that I would be showing this to have no idea who he is. However I start out talking about some of the different identities I have and how this newest one is going to fit in with all of the other roles I already play. My new identity of hunter is not one that I portray on a day to day basis, where all of the most important identities of daughter, sister, cousin, girlfriend, best friend...etc are what people see and recognize everyday. Besides my family and close friends who know that I am learning to hunt, nobody else can look at me on a day to day basis and assume that I am a hunter. My attire only changes when I am in the hunting sphere with my boyfriend and when I am consciously trying to be in the hunting affinity group.
I mention a few times that I am learning how to hunt because I want to share a hobby with my boyfriend and his family. However, I don't really think that my boyfriends dad will ever identify me as a hunter. I may be able to talk to him about hunting and send him pictures of me all dressed up in my camo with my gun but he will probably still see me as the girly girl, and when I visit him in Idaho I will still be the epitome of a "California girl" even if I am gutting my own fish or hunting ducks with him. My personality will always prevail over my learned identity.
When I started this assignment I went through all of the pictures I have of me learning to hunt. After I decided that I wanted my audience to be my mom because even though she is my number one supporter she did not seem to understand why I want to learn to hunt, a thing so far from the type of girl I am, I had to add some other pictures that did not have to do with hunting but more with me and who I am. I had to find pictures that demonstrated why my mom would be concerned and confused about the new identity i was acquiring and then I had to show her that I am not changing so drastically that she will not see all of the qualities she loves about me simply because I am shocking her by hunting. To start I used a song that is "our song", "Wide Open Spaces" by Dixie Chicks has been a song my mom and I share for a long time. Then I showed my family because they are the biggest influence on the identities I have and they are completely different from the one I am adding.
I had chosen what pictures I wanted before I wrote my narrative because I wanted the pictures to hopefully be able to tell a story. After I wrote the narrative I moved the pictures around so they would all correlate with each other.
Monday, February 26, 2007
Reflecting on Digital Document
I worked on my digital document a lot over the weekend, but I am still not done. I used my digital camera to record him giving me instruction with my gun. I am not technically inclined so I was totally oblivious to the fact that when my camera records video it also records audio. Now I have a problem because the video turned out quite nicely but the audio is really messed up.
I found some great pictures for my digital document, which is something I am excited about. Unfortunately the excitement is dampered by the fact that I still do not have my narration recorded and I have no idea how to add the music that I want to use.
I am feeling a lot more confident about my ability to finish this project than I was in the beginning but I think I am going to definitely need more time, especially since I am going to need to fix the audio from my video clip and I will not be able to do that until the weekend.
I found some great pictures for my digital document, which is something I am excited about. Unfortunately the excitement is dampered by the fact that I still do not have my narration recorded and I have no idea how to add the music that I want to use.
I am feeling a lot more confident about my ability to finish this project than I was in the beginning but I think I am going to definitely need more time, especially since I am going to need to fix the audio from my video clip and I will not be able to do that until the weekend.
Thursday, February 15, 2007
Learning and Action
Before reading chapters five and six I looked at our schedule and noted the title of our next blog. Learning and Action; I started reading thinking that the words would come together and be easy to find and easy to think about. Silly me! I also thought that Gee would simply state the obvious that students learn from doing, not only from reading or listening. Students need to be active learners, whatever that means.
A few pages into chapter five I still thought that my assumption of Gee stating the obvious was true. On page 119 he says; " Learners cannot do much with lots of overt information that a teacher has explicitly told them outside the context of immersion in actual practice." To summarize students need to hear the lecture, read the books and be active in the learning through touching and experiencing a science experiment, right?
I was sort of right, I mean it is obvious that a student is not going to do well in a class where they do read and listen but are given no guidance in the hands on lab that they are actively participating in, will they?
So I kept reading about Lara Croft and trying to picture scenes that I think I have seen from the Angelina Jolie movies, when suddenly I get what Gee is saying! Transfer and Beyond...
Just like a good player can get to higher levels and make more achievements to ultimately win the game, a good student can grow and become smarter by applying the things they have learned before to new tasks and challenges within their curriculum. How does a student do this? They have to transfer prior knowledge and then get creative. This is active learning because the student is actually helping themselves by reaching back in their old memory files and applying an obscure fact from the past to something that is relevant to the present.
I plan on becoming a teacher, and I can only think of a handful of times where I know that I transferred knowledge obtained in one class and used it to be successful in another. My biggest challenge and a new goal is going to be figuring out a way to encourage and incite creativity in my students, no matter what age they are, so that they can be active learners.
A few pages into chapter five I still thought that my assumption of Gee stating the obvious was true. On page 119 he says; " Learners cannot do much with lots of overt information that a teacher has explicitly told them outside the context of immersion in actual practice." To summarize students need to hear the lecture, read the books and be active in the learning through touching and experiencing a science experiment, right?
I was sort of right, I mean it is obvious that a student is not going to do well in a class where they do read and listen but are given no guidance in the hands on lab that they are actively participating in, will they?
So I kept reading about Lara Croft and trying to picture scenes that I think I have seen from the Angelina Jolie movies, when suddenly I get what Gee is saying! Transfer and Beyond...
Just like a good player can get to higher levels and make more achievements to ultimately win the game, a good student can grow and become smarter by applying the things they have learned before to new tasks and challenges within their curriculum. How does a student do this? They have to transfer prior knowledge and then get creative. This is active learning because the student is actually helping themselves by reaching back in their old memory files and applying an obscure fact from the past to something that is relevant to the present.
I plan on becoming a teacher, and I can only think of a handful of times where I know that I transferred knowledge obtained in one class and used it to be successful in another. My biggest challenge and a new goal is going to be figuring out a way to encourage and incite creativity in my students, no matter what age they are, so that they can be active learners.
Situated Learning
Well, I am finally getting caught up in my Gee readings and my blogs. Even though the chapters are amazingly long they are full of information and I am surprised at how my interest seems to peak at certain times and I actually find myself doing more than just reading because I have to for class. Instead of having to reread a page because my eyes read the words but my brain absorbed nothing I am actually rereading paragraphs because my eyes are reading the words but my brain is still thinking about what I just read.
In Chapter 4 about Situated Meaning and Learning I found that I had to stop reading for awhile because I kept thinking about what Gee says on pages 86 and 87. My attention was first peaked at the top of page 86 with; "While video games actively encourage such situated and embodied thinking and doing, school often does not. In school, words and meanings usually float free of material conditions and embodied actions. They take on only general, so-called decontextualized meanings." I think I had to stop and think about this because I know for sure that there have been times when I am sitting in the classroom or reading the assigned texts and I have absolutely no idea what is going on. It finally dawned on me here what Gee has to say about video games. He is not encouraging them in the classrooms but he is showing how important it is that students are given the time and materials to probe, hypothesize, reprobe and rethink. This is especially true in science and math classes. I learn nothing in a class that does not have some sort of hands on activity and where I am discouraged from approaching the same problem from a variety of different angles.
The quote from Chapter 4 that really summarizes situated learning to me is on page 87; "If all you know-in any domain-are general meanings, then you really don't know anything that makes sense to you." If you simply read the book but you don't take the time to analyze it or search for more than the bare meanings then you are not going to learn anything from the author. If you read the science vocabulary, but you don't work more than once in a hands on lab where you can ask questions, make mistakes and then retry things then the vocabulary that you mastered will mean nothing later.
In Chapter 4 about Situated Meaning and Learning I found that I had to stop reading for awhile because I kept thinking about what Gee says on pages 86 and 87. My attention was first peaked at the top of page 86 with; "While video games actively encourage such situated and embodied thinking and doing, school often does not. In school, words and meanings usually float free of material conditions and embodied actions. They take on only general, so-called decontextualized meanings." I think I had to stop and think about this because I know for sure that there have been times when I am sitting in the classroom or reading the assigned texts and I have absolutely no idea what is going on. It finally dawned on me here what Gee has to say about video games. He is not encouraging them in the classrooms but he is showing how important it is that students are given the time and materials to probe, hypothesize, reprobe and rethink. This is especially true in science and math classes. I learn nothing in a class that does not have some sort of hands on activity and where I am discouraged from approaching the same problem from a variety of different angles.
The quote from Chapter 4 that really summarizes situated learning to me is on page 87; "If all you know-in any domain-are general meanings, then you really don't know anything that makes sense to you." If you simply read the book but you don't take the time to analyze it or search for more than the bare meanings then you are not going to learn anything from the author. If you read the science vocabulary, but you don't work more than once in a hands on lab where you can ask questions, make mistakes and then retry things then the vocabulary that you mastered will mean nothing later.
Tuesday, February 6, 2007
Video Games
This blog is a bit late, sorry!
When we started to read the Gee book, I thought for sure that I would not like it or that I would not understand it because I don't know anything about video games. H0wever, Gee does a good job of explaining what he is saying and I am learning some new ways of thinking myself which I think is the point of his book. I am beginning to look at things differently when t comes to reading and literacy. After we read chapter two and did the activity in class about what we are learning I began to understand Gee better because I was applying his ideas to something that pertains to me and my life.
When we started to read the Gee book, I thought for sure that I would not like it or that I would not understand it because I don't know anything about video games. H0wever, Gee does a good job of explaining what he is saying and I am learning some new ways of thinking myself which I think is the point of his book. I am beginning to look at things differently when t comes to reading and literacy. After we read chapter two and did the activity in class about what we are learning I began to understand Gee better because I was applying his ideas to something that pertains to me and my life.
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
Learning Something New
Well, it took me a while to think about how to respond to this question. I am trying to become more organized with school and my life. I am going back to the gym and trying to implement a healthier lifestyle into my kinda hectic schedule. I have more calendars and I am trying to start the semester the right way by having everything printed for the first week of school and making all the changes I want to make right away.
I am doing this organization thing mostly for me because I want to have a successful semester.
For Christmas my boyfriend of three years got me a shotgun. He is a big Duck Hunter so I am currently learning about my new gun, which includes the proper way to hold it, load it, clean it, shoot it...etc. I have been hunting with him twice so far and I am pretty sure he is bound and determined to turn me into a huntress, which, quite honestly I am not so sure I am ready for. But, I love him so here goes!
I am doing this organization thing mostly for me because I want to have a successful semester.
For Christmas my boyfriend of three years got me a shotgun. He is a big Duck Hunter so I am currently learning about my new gun, which includes the proper way to hold it, load it, clean it, shoot it...etc. I have been hunting with him twice so far and I am pretty sure he is bound and determined to turn me into a huntress, which, quite honestly I am not so sure I am ready for. But, I love him so here goes!
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
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