Mr. Laguzza's House of Learn

Reflection on Wikis – Thing 8

jlaguzza — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 19:20:14 +0000

Some of the wikis I looked at looked like very good ideas, particularly any that made a point of connecting people from different parts of the world or simply inviting any classes to join (1001 Flat World Tales and The Great Debate 2008). Some seemed like decent ideas that may have helped get their kids writing and interacting with each other (Go West and Kubler Reading). Some looked like redundancy if there was classroom teaching all year (Dr. Reich’s and Censorship and Responsibility) and one looked like an excellent tool for this modern world, but has a stupid name like everything else on the Internet (DiRT). I’m sorry, but the Wiki Wiki Teaching blog was a little embarrassing. Not only did the Scarlet Letter Review look like a poor man’s SparkNotes but it actually had LINKS TO SPARKNOTES. I think any English teacher is nuts if they think none of their kids are using things like SparkNotes at times but it’s probably not a good idea to direct them to it. That will kill off any potential they had to develop the skill set necessary for analyzing and criticizing classic literature pretty quickly.

As for me, I may start a Wiki called something along the lines of “The Greatest Books in the World” and have my students write book reviews of books they think deserve to fall under such a heading. I would enjoy contributing myself, and I know I have a load of feverish readers returning in my seventh and eighth grade classes that would love to share why The Hunger Games and others totally rule.

Reflection on Feed Your Reader

jlaguzza — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 19:03:23 +0000

This RSS tool is pretty overwhelming and sloppy. I think I will stick to Google searches for now. I came across this: http://bookseer.com/.

It’s an instant book recommendation provider. I suppose it takes the fun out of talking to your librarian and friends if you use it too much, but if it ever took off as a very intuitive tool (It doesn’t seem too bright yet from the tests I ran.), it is something else out there that can get kids reading and keep them reading. I am certainly all for that.

Reflection on Getting Started with RSS

jlaguzza — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 19:11:09 +0000

I am pleased to finally completely understand what RSS is. Looking over the required links I found this article on TeachPaperless:

http://teachpaperless.blogspot.com/2010/07/blog-recommendation-fed-up-with-lunch.html

It is actually a recommendation to read another blog called Fed Up with Lunch. I thought this was a very good idea and wish it would get the amount of attention that that woman who cooked all of Julia Childs’s recipes got. I worked in a public school in the Bronx and I am pretty sure they were alternating between gruel, mush, and Soylent Green every three days. I cannot exaggerate how bad the food looked at this middle school. It was often unidentifiable and while kids in public schools throughout other areas in our country at least like the taste of the rather unhealthy lunches they eat in school, my M.S. 302 students barely ate at all because it was so unappetizing.

Now I work at a small private school in Manhattan, Professional Children’s School. Here the kids have the opportunity to eat a balanced and healthy lunch every day and many do. Unfortunately, it is freedom that ruins a lot of these kids’ diets. There is more than one middle school student every year who is eating entirely different forms of sugar at lunch every day. I make a point of setting a good example and giving these students a very hard time when I catch them.

There is a variety of ways lunch in school can turn out to be bad news for American students, and I am crossing my fingers for Fed Up with Lunch to get lots of media attention and make a change for the better in American public schools.

Reflection on Voices in the Blogosphere (Thing 4)

jlaguzza — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 19:10:24 +0000

The genre of blog writing in general is almost always more conversational and revelatory of the writer’s personality than any other style of writing. There is a certain amount of self-promotion that is undeniable, but when the comments don’t disintegrate into people swearing at each other, the conversation created by the writer has value.

Blog reading is different from other types of reading in that there is much more skimming. Looking at an established blog involves navigating past all the entries that don’t interest you and stopping at the ones that do. It’s fairly similar to reading a magazine or newspaper and very different than reading a novel.

Commenting on blogs contributes to the meaning-making because it lends a chance for the reader to question and challenge (or simply defer to and congratulate) the writer. This is obviously a new aspect of public writing that makes blogs different than any other form of published writing. As long as the comments don’t disintegrate into juvenile arguments, as they so often do in pop culture blogs, the comments can be some of the more enjoyable and meaningful parts of a blog.

Blogs, in my experience, are not such a good idea if they are used only within the class itself, with no outside interaction. The occasion in which they provide the opportunity for the students to interact with an author or public figure is the occasion in which blogs do present a value and educational opportunity not easily available in another form.

Thoughts about 2.0

jlaguzza — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 20:06:36 +0000

I am terrified that we can casually refer to my student body as “digital learners”. Does this mean they might verbally “skip”, fall temporarily mute, or visually scramble from time to time? My students are not digital learners even if their world is way, way, way more digital than mine was at their age. I may use these tools to engage them, but it will only be because it proves to be particularly useful, and it will be done with the same general goals in mind that I always have for my students (I want them to love literature, I want them to realize everyone can write something worthwhile, I want them to understand and develop their own ideas about what it means to be a good, useful, successful, happy citizen, etc.) If the Web 2.0 tool can play well with all these goals and teach a specific skill fantastically, then I will use it.

These tools can help with my own learning simply because they are the means by which more and more professional development courses are being taught. I certainly am thankful for this courses scheduleless nature, but I do not yet see an advantage of blog interaction over human interaction besides convenience.

I’m sorry I’m such a stinker. I’m really a pretty nice guy.

Reflections on Lifelong Learning

jlaguzza — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 19:50:06 +0000

The habit that may be most challenging for me to employ as part of my K12 Learning 2.0 experience is actually using any Web 2.0 options in my classes. I have done a blog with my students in years past and found it to result in far and away their worst writing. I am a bit of a nay-sayer for all that this class stands for, but I am here to be shown that I am wrong. I think that students use plenty of this sort of technology on their own and that the human interaction they experience in my classroom becomes more valuable by the minute as I see more and more people every day about to walk into me because they are texting.

The habit that will be easiest for me will be operating any Web 2.0 option if I actually choose to do so. Ironically (situational irony here, kids!), I am fairly tech savvy and figure these sorts of things out fairly quickly despite my love / hate relationship with technology.

The habit that will be most important for me will be making the best decisions about technology use for my students. I am not wholly against technology just because I have read so much Bradbury and Heinlein, but I do wonder if it is getting introduced more and more in classrooms because it is so effective or because it covers up for the lack of something else. I hope to make the right decision for the right reasons when choosing between adding a blog or wiki (or whatever other Web 2.0 option seemingly named by my one year old daughter that may make sense for a part of my course) and not adding it.