by Tracy Rosen, teaching & consulting since 1996, blogging about it here since 2007. All views are my own and you should take them with a grain of salt, I do.
Xtranormal (beta) seems like a pretty neat idea. You supply the text and choose the characters, soundtrack, set design from the site’s templates. Cool way to quickly give dialogue some life. Pros are that it was really quick to use and easy to register. Cons are the digital sounding voices and that I couldn’t get my character to move more than the funky in-place dancing. A major con is the advertisement at the bottom that states publishing movies is free for a limited time only.
This is really a major con because I had initially thought this would be a great way for my students to give life to their writing. A great way to make writing a monologue or a persuasive essay fun. But that threat of bits of the site becoming un-free soon, well, doesn’t make me want to start using it with my students because who knows when all of a sudden we’ll have to stop, or certain elements will no longer be available to us.
Don’t think I’d pay for this when it comes time to do so. But until then, it is fun to play.
Have I ever mentioned how much I love Michael Doyle? His science class must be one of the funnest places to be for a student.
I’ve been writing forever on my wariness of technology as the golden egg, about how digital literacy is but a means to an end, not the doorway to a utopic state of education.
And Michael sums it all up better than I ever have.
I love toolboxes, I have several in my basement. If you want to make me happy, buy me a toolbox for my birthday, loaded with tools.
If you want to disappoint me, however, buy me a gold-plated heavy duty shovel and expect me to use it on my next project, no matter what that project is.
and….
The best teachers I know can squeeze their lessons into just about any new technology thrown down from on high. The best teachers I know can teach the same lessons just as well using a crayon on the back of a paper towel.
I’m off to Blogher o8 – The Reach Out Tour in Boston. I’ll be leaving after work – luckily it is a PED day today so I won’t be too exhausted for the 5+ hr drive once the day is done.
I’m a bit relieved to not have a Friday this week, after last Friday’s….activities :)
This is what 24hrs can look like sometimes:
Underwater 'dust storm'. That's what the day felt like. Image by Karen Glaser (click image for source)
2-4:30 – Thursday
Conversations with a student we suspect of being high. Denials. Silence. Caring. Silence. He runs out. Returns. Tells the truth – he gets high every single day. More conversation. He agrees to talk to Dad. He goes home. We decide that, even though he has made a breakthrough – we can not let him back into the program. He’s broken one of the absolute rules – no drugs or alcohol on you or in your system.
Sigh.
6-9:30ish
HPT – Human Performance Technology. I had a test. An hour and a half of application of knowledge to different situations and a bit of definition of terms. Test was conducted on a mac, which I (yeah, I know…) have never used before. I couldn’t right-click, I couldn’t format…frustrating. Test was followed by regular class time.
7:00 Friday morning
Back at school. Happy to know that it is a) Friday and b) Day 6, which means the students have Phys Ed first thing, so I can ease into the day. Kids come in at 7:45, they get changed and head off to gym. I walk around with my list of To-Dos….
8:15
We notice a girl sitting in the hallway looking morose. Collin asks why she isn’t at gym, she starts to cry. They go into the den to talk.
8:30 – 9:00
I hear loud crying. Go into the hallway, a 2nd girl is sitting cross-legged on the floor, weeping. The den is being used, so we go into the lunchroom, where we have a couch. Other girls were ganging up on her in dodge ball (man, I hate dodge ball). She then goes on to tell me her story – of girl drama, cliques, allegiances, friendships that come and go, how she doesn’t care that she is a loner sometimes (you sure about that?). We talk some more, she goes back to the gym.
9:15
The gym class comes back 15 mins early. Got one item on the long To-Do list done…
9:30
Morning break. The drama and tears between girls continues, accelerates. There are many discussions in the den that continue throughout the day. Some try to deal with things by themselves in the bathroom. Meanly. So I cough a lot outside of the bathroom door and send girls on their way.
9:45
History study hall. I set the kids to work on old history tests and try to get my presentation finished – the one I wanted to do during my morning prep period. I’m cranky because the kids are edgy after the morning’s activities and I need a silent room. Takes longer than usual to get them settled. I type up to the end of the period, but the other class still isn’t released. 5 minutes later I go to check.
10:45 – 11:30
A girl (different one) has passed out in Science class – that is why they were late. She is out for a good 10 minutes. She stood up and fell down, hitting her head. The nurse is called. She finally comes to and we find out she has taken too many Robaxicet for her back pain. We bring her to the hospital, Collin waits until her parents meet them there. I’m with both grade 11 classes in the lunchroom. (Good thing I finished that presentation, eh?) Students are a combination of worried for their classmate and worried that they will lose some of their lunch break. It’s like herding cats keeping them in there until Collin, the girl, and her boyfriend leave for the hospital. I run to the cafeteria to get some food, come back up and sit for a few moments.
11:45
I hear keening. Seriously. Loud peels of uncontrollable wailing. It’s yet another girl. One who gets very anxious. She is shaking, has a hard time catching her breath. Shaking, crying. I go to the den with her, ask the girls who are there discussing morning events to use my classroom. She keeps repeating ‘It’s so hard’. Shaking. Another girl comes in with me, they are cousins. I ask girl 1 to hold my hands, to squeeze them hard. Girl 2 is stroking her hair. She shakes even more. She asks for her mother. Wailing. 15 minutes of keening. I am close to tears myself. Girl 2 is holding her close. Has her arms wrapped around girl 1. Tears streaking mascara down her face. I am struck by her kindness, by her non-judgmental offer of solace. The room’s air is thick, full of tears. I leave to ask Walter to call her mother. He looks concerned about me. I grab a stress ball, go back in. Her mother refuses to come, says she needs to calm herself down. Meanwhile, yet another girl (girl 3, let’s call her) works her way through her own bout of panic. She manages to calm herself down with the help of Sharon, our technician for the day (Marie was out…). I leave girl 2 with girl 1. They are holding each other and rocking, getting calm. I go out and try to get some more food in. Girl 1 comes out, Walter offers her a hug. The wailing starts again. This time I send girl 3 in to the den with her. She knows about panic attacks. She brings a paper bag to help with the breathing.
12:10
We start afternoon classes a few minutes late. I have a math test planned and decide to give it. I figure the students have not had anything they expected yet that day and they needed something they expected. Girl 1 comes in to class 10 minutes later. Girl 3 has calmed her down. She writes the test. The room is quiet. Students are working diligently. I’m glad I decided to give the test.
2:15 – 3:30
The day is done. We find out that girl 1’s doctor was supposed to call us to let us know what to do in event of panic attack. Oh well. We also learn of a teacher, a friend of ours, who is upset, torn, because she is getting married at Christmas time and the school board has taken back their offer of an extra 3 days leave before the holidays. We plan our next week. We talk, de-brief. We go for a beer.
So, yeah. 24 hrs can seem much longer at times….
It’ll be good to re-charge at a conference. Meeting with people who share my interests and goals, being reminded of the power of community, always manages to energize me. Plus, 2 nights at a hotel can’t hurt. I think I’ll treat myself to some room service when I arrive this evening.
This morning I commented on Beth Holmes post, which itself was a response to Dan Callahan’s comment on another post she wrote abour educational malpractice in our schools today.
A Malpractice Tree. Click the image for source.
Here’s the post I am referring to:Well, is this Educational Malpractice? in The 21st Century Centurion. So much to think about in this post! Here’s my start…and I’m not done thinking on it, but wanted to get this part of the conversation underway, so here it is:
A) If there is malpractice we need to define who is mal-practicing. I see a lot of talk about how teachers are not doing their duties when it comes to teaching thinking skills. If there is malpractice it is systemic. The teachers are only one element of what happens in the classroom. Though the strongest, they are not usually consulted when it comes to what we should teach children. Teachers deal with day-to-day live classroom activities while administrators, school board personnel, commissioners, and government ministers debate what policies and expectations need to be addressed at the school and class level. If there is malpractice it is systemic.
B) This is a values-charged arguement. In the 70s and still today, proponents of whole language learning believed that students needed to ‘discover’ language in authentic language-based situations, eschewing the explicit instruction of how language works. Many, if not most, students need to learn these skills explicitly. Personally I think it is malpractice to assume otherwise, but that is my value judgment.
C) Sophisticated thinking skills can be taught without the aid of computer technology. My most fruitful lesson so far this year has been sitting on the floor with groups of kids and construction paper creating mind maps of our learning system. Added bonus – construction paper doesn’t lose connection to a server :)
I’m now off to commit some malpractice in my classroom that has 1 working computer running a windows 2000 OS and a display that makes us think we have double vision…
:)
I’ve stayed away from this blog for the past 2 days or so. I’ve been reading a crime novel, making a necklace, playing with my dog, doing suduko, unpacking and organizing, facebooking, and tweeting – basically keeping my mind superficially busy so that it could be free to work away on some issues in the background.
The reflection was triggered by comments on my last post.
I teach, learn, and live with digital technologies. I do think it important to pass on skills and knowledge regarding these technologies to my students and colleagues. So, why am I unsettled?
Nice thing we’ve got going here, this “pro-internet,” “anti-internet” debate.
(go read his post to see what he was going on about).
And as I read his post it made me think that this has all become a debate – a this vs. that – and it’s so not about that. It is, however, a resistance to the growing feeling I have that ‘digital literacy’ (see bottom of post for more on that) is becoming confused with the goal.
I teach, learn, and live with digital technologies, among other technologies, because I have found them to help me in my goal mission – YES MISSION – to help kids learn…
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. ps – The term ‘digital literacy’ is starting to creep me out. I laughed OUT LOUD when I read Doug Belshaw’s tweet this morning. It was a good one:
