Wanderings…

Good writing and references to the “cannon” remind me of the power and the beauty of reading and writing – and why I became a librarian in the first place.  The Power, the Truth & the Immortality of Words

It has also started me thinking about  communication on the interactive web – ranging from email, to forums, to blogs, to Twitter etc..

We teach expository and creative writing in English class all the time.  How much do we teach about communicating in public?

My questions:

• Are we teaching students how to communicate effectively ONLINE?
• Are there writing conventions that we should be teaching to increase the quality of that discourse?
• Do we teach students how to express their ideas in a compelling and succinct manner?
• Do we teach students how to express disagreement/dismay/disgust respectfully through powerful language, free of expletives?
• Do we teach kids the power of using common  literary & cultural references in their writing outside of English class?
• How many teachers give students the opportunity to practice these skills authentically through blogs and such?

At the risk of being a curmudgeon, when I read the opinions posted on YouTube et al, I despair for the fate of rational discourse in the internet era.

I’d love to hear your thoughts, specific units taught in your school, opinions on how to keep internet communication civil and meaningful, references to articles….anything you would like to share with me – and the small number of folks that wander into this blog now and again.

I just read Chris Potter’s latest blog post – Lose the Paper.

We are ALL creatures of habit. Some of us are just a little more willing to break an old habit and create a new one.

Even if most of our teachers knew how to use wikis, blogs, social bookmarking, et.al…..even if they not only knew how to use them, but also used them regularly at home & conferences….why would they trust that they could use them at work? First there was (and still is) the barking dog problem (Bess – our favorite filtering fido who prevents the use of wikis and social bookmarking etc.) Yes – you can “get creative” as our tech person suggested, and use filter friendly blogs and our new school web page to create/store/share information. But would teachers assume they could actually USE these resources in a staff development where everyone is trying to access the same page at once and the network starts behaving like a snail? And why would teachers post files etc. to their school pages to use them at home, at a conference and at school – when the “at school” option is an old white box computer? People tend to stick with stuff that works.

It will be another generation before paperless options REALLY take hold. It’s not just the “older” teachers who are not adopting it. Lots of younger teachers are not into this way of thinking either. I have been trying to bridge the gap a little with workshops I attend and workshops I run. Where I used to bring tons of handouts, now I tend to provide a one page handout with the basic link(s) to where my materials reside. That way – folks can file it easily in their staff development/conference binders – or just put it in their “to do” file as a reminder to go back to the materials as a refresher.

Here’s a “new technology” that EVERYONE knows how to use and EVERYONE could easily use to work in a “paperless” mode. Email. Before I had access to google docs, the school webpage etc. – I used to attend conferences and open my email for note taking. It worked great – except that it filled up my email in-box

So – when you come right down to it. We have a choice. Drown in a sea of paper or drown in a lake of links. Either way – we sink

The trees (and Al Gore) would vote for digital drowning, I suspect!

I am working on an Internet Literacy Page for this blog.

If you know of any good articles – please send me a citation or a link. Right now the page has just one citation. Pretty pathetic. But I am tired. I hope to find more articles and add them to the page this weekend.

Or…. maybe I will just relax and read a book…..

I will TRY to remember to add to this post as I discover  ideas.  Someone on LM_NET recently asked for non-powerpoint presentation ideas for upper level classes.  Some of the ideas that have come in are:

• iMovie is a great alternative…they could compose music with garage band (MACS) and add it to the movie.  Audacity is a program for PCs – similar to garage band .
• A Periodic Table of Visualization methods
• Create a website on thier topic
• Digital Storytelling and Reformning PowerPoint
• VoiceThread
• Animoto
• Flowgram
• PicLits
• GoAnimate
• Glogster