Learning is Change

01.24.07

Core 1:

  1. Write-On: Why should you care which words you use in talking to your friends?
  2. Explore some resources for learning about words you want to learn about:
  3. Add five words that you want to put into your vocabulary and write down all of the pertinent information (an exact copy of the elements in your vocabulary book) on a piece of paper and staple it into your vocab book.

Core 2:

  1. Write-On: What is there difference between an idea and a belief?
  2. What happens when you string enough beliefs together?
  3. What idiologies exist today?
    • How do you think they got started?

Core 3:

  1. Write-On: Why did you pick the words that you did to get to know better?
  2. Now that we have become word collectors, we need to put them to good use, and what better way than to become sentence collectors as well. We must be able to use these words as powerfully as we can, understanding just how they fit together. We must come to know sentences intimately so that we can wield them to their greatest effect. We will become Word Doctors, identifying areas of concern in our writing and prescribing solutions for what ails our words and sentences.
  3. Brainstorm-On: Come up with all of the things that can go “wrong” in a sentence.
    • Why are they wrong?

Core 4:

  1. Discuss-On: How does your personal dystopia compare and contrast with the world of Harrison Bergeron?
  2. Why is it important to dream up, write out, and/or analyze a dystopian society?
  3. Where is there room for rebellion in a dystopian society?
    • Where is there room for rebellion in our society?
    • Why is rebellion so important?
  4. How should we measure the worth/value of a society?

Why All Teachers Should Be Using Web 2.0

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I have been thinking a lot about this question. Should all teachers be using the Read/Write Web in their classrooms, or am I merely a part of the latest educational technology trend. I try to answer it in a fairly in-depth, before-school podcast.

The Future of Literacy

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This is a podcast about how I see the world of literacy shaping up in the next few years. This idea was brought about by discussion ideal learning environments with my 7th and 8th grade students.

01.23.07

Cores 1-4:

  1. Check out our collective blogging identity.
  2. Submit your Sem2_Week3 weekly authentic and Del.icio.us post. If you don’t know what to write about, consider building upon the question from the guest blogs.
  3. Comment on del.icio.us posts.
  4. Nominate for Authenticity Awards.
  5. Work on Personal Curriculum.

What our Del.icio.us says about us.

I was looking at our del.icio.us bookmarks this morning, and I was flabbergasted at the diversity of topics that are being talked about in our blogosphere. The tags go from “Best Friends” to “Books” to “Abuse” to “Making a Movie” to “Middle School Romance” and everywhere in between. As I was looking at these community-centered topics, I realized that this is who we are. These things are what we are thinking about. This is what we are interested in. Now, this list is by no means complete, but I believe it will become the visual representation of the Discovery team. Anyone who wants to learn more about who we are and what we are about shouldn’t read about our demographics; they shouldn’t analyze our test scores. It is all right here in our del.icio.us account. We are unafraid to talk about love. We aren’t bashful about liking funny movies. We like to make lists and explain them. These things are digital artifacts of our identity.

When we started blogging at the beginning of this year, I knew that each one of you would develop an online identity, a persona that would be the budding writer, making comments and creating new work. Yet, I had no idea that we would also be forging a collective identity, or more appropriately, a collaborative identity. We now have the power to show the world just what we can be as writers. We can show off the best of collective self. With just a few tags, we can change the way that people see us and access our pulled-together thoughts. So, I guess what I am trying to say is that I think our del.icio.us account is beautiful. It is beautiful because it is us.

01.22.07

Cores 1-4:

  1. Look at the Authenticity Awards for Semester 2: Week 1.
  2. Check out a few of the Guest Bloggers.

Core 1:

  1. Explore some resources for learning about words you want to learn about:
  2. Add five words that you want to put into your vocabulary and write down all of the pertinent information (an exact copy of the elements in your vocabulary book) on a piece of paper and staple it into your vocab book.

Core 2:

  1. Discuss-on: How do you know when you have successfully constructed a new word? Which of your 5 words should be in the dictionary?
  2. How can we get our words to be used in the greater lexicon?
  3. Use Pseudodictionary and submit your best words. (As always, do not use your real name.)

Core 3:

  1. Explore some resources for learning about words you want to learn about:
  2. Add five words that you want to put into your vocabulary and write down all of the pertinent information (an exact copy of the elements in your vocabulary book) on a piece of paper and staple it into your vocab book.

Core 4:

  1. Discuss-on: What does your own Personal Dystopia look like?
  2. How does your personal dystopia compare to that of Harrison Bergeron?

01.18.07

Cores 1-4:

  1. Decide new Guest Blogging Question:
    • Is technology a good or bad influence on our lives?
    • How much should parents “protect” their children?
    • How have you (and your personality) changed over time?
  2. Don’t forget to post to Del.icio.us.

Cores 1+3:

  1. Write-On: How do you actually add words to your own personal vocabulary?
  2. Explore some resources for learning about words you want to learn about:
  3. Add five words that you want to put into your vocabulary and write down all of the pertinent information (an exact copy of the elements in your vocabulary book) on a piece of paper and staple it into your vocab book.

Core 2:

  1. Discuss-On: Does using a word in a humorous way demonstrate better knowledge of that word?
  2. Create humorous captions using a Nerd Herd Big Word Book word.
  3. Discuss the creation of new words and their definitions from available roots.
  4. Create a new word and its definition.

Core 4:

  1. Write-On: How can one person’s utopia be another person’s dystopia?
  2. What are the different types of dystopias we encounter, or could encounter if we try to reach utopia?
  3. What would be your own personal dystopia given modern circumstances.

01.17.06

Cores 1-4:

  1. Reminder to Del.icio.us post.

Cores 1:

  1. Dive back into vocab with vocabulary improv:
    • Write down the most interesting character you can think of on a small sheet of paper.
    • Write down the most interesting setting you can think of on a small sheet of paper.
    • Put them in the baskets and then we will draw them out and try to work our vocabulary words into each improvised situation.

Core 2:

  1. Write-On: Explain why this is false.
    • All rocket scientists are human.
    • I am a human.
    • Therefore, I am a rocket scientist.
  2. Dive back into the Nerd Herd Word Book:
    • Take a look at the most useful Idea from the idea page.
    • Tackle the translation together.

Core 3:

  1. Dive back into the Vocab book with wrong way sentences, daffynitions, and contextual conundrums.

Core 4:

  1. Explore the concept of Utopia through definition, brainstorms, and writing:
    1. Brainstorm ideas about utopias and write down ALL responses:
      • What words come to mind when you think about utopia?
      • What changes may have taken place as humans redefine the term utopia?
      • What things or places might be considered utopian?
    2. Categorize the ideas that were written down.
      • How could you categorize these ideas into groups?
      • What could you call each group? Why?
      • What are some commonalities of utopias?
    3. Brainstorm a list of things that man throughout the ages would consider utopian?
      • What can you say about these things?
      • What do you call each of these groups? Why?
      • Are the following characteristics of utopias: paradise, heaven, new worlds, perfection of some sort? Why or why not?
    4. Make generalizations about utopias and human’s changing ideas regarding them.
      • What can you say about utopias that is usally true? How are our examples alike?
    • Humans have been searching for or trying to create a utopian world in some way since time began.
    • Humans corrupt their utopia after finding it or creating it.
    • Each human strives to create his/her own personal and societal utopia.
    • Dreams memories, nature, emotions, and time help shape our ideas regarding utopia.
    • Individuality can be lost in our quest for utopia.

01.16.07

  1. Reveal the Future of Reading.
  2. Read/Comment, Work on 2nd Weekly Authentic for second semester, Work on Personal Curriculum, Nominate for Authenticity Award, or Post to Del.Icio.Us.

Creative Reading

Our discussion of perfect learning environments has stayed with me. It keeps eating away at my free moments. I will be taking care of my child, holding her, or singing to her, and I will have a brainstorm about what learning should be like. The majority of these brainstorms this weekend have centered around the question that most people seemed to ignore in our Conversate discussion: What is the future of reading? I just couldn’t believe that reading would go unchanged while everything else seems to be advancing, but I also had a hard time believing that anyone would want to give up their powers of imagination just so they could see movie clips within their books. So, I decided to take it in a different direction entirely. I decided that there is going to be a reading revolution:

The future of reading is interactive. It is non-linear. It is user-directed and open-ended. It is visual and collaborative. It is a new skill to be mastered.

Books are linear. You have to start at the beginning and end at the end. The author has already chosen how the story will go. There is a progression that must be followed. Yet, you have no part in creating this progression. All you can do is go along for the ride. Imagining all of the events and people in the story is about as interactive of an experience as you can hope for.

The future I see for literature is one in which all stories are 3-dimensional. What I mean by this is that you can put them together in an infinite number of ways. You can add to them and explore them by navigating a virtual space. It will be like you see the entire story at once, rather than looking at just one moment in time. All stories will somehow be connected to a visual counterpart, taking away some avenues for imagination but creating many more. You will have to be able to analyze both written and visual forms of text, and you will have to fill in the holes of any plot with events of your own.

N ow, I don’t believe that traditional stories and books will ever be extinct. We naturally have beginnings, middles, and endings. But, I believe that there will come a day when this new genre of Creative Reading comes to the forefront of our literacy practice. I believe that someday soon we will have the ability to walk through a story the same way that we walk through a mall. And to show you that this is possible, here is my rather crude example. (You will need Google Sketch-up to read it.)