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Journal 6 (NETS-T I) "Ten Reasons to Get Rid of Homework"

Spencer, J. (2011, September 19). Education rethink. Retrieved from http://www.educationrethink.com/2011/09/ten-reasons-to-get-rid-of-homework-and.html

The article “Ten Reasons to Get Rid of Homework” by John Spencer makes the argument that homework does more harm than good for most students in the U.S. In the article he provides ten reasons to get rid of homework as a way of supporting that argument. Some of the reasons he provides are: “Kids need to play, homework creates adversarial roles, homework de-motivates, children are busy, and homework teaches bad work habits. I actually agree with most of his points. I feel that homework can be detrimental to student learning. However I do feel that some homework is necessary at least in the higher grades because of the more complex topics being taught. In the last section of the article Spencer describes what homework related practices he does advocate, such as treating homework as extracurricular activity.

           

Will you eliminate homework from your classroom?

            -No, I think eliminating homework from my classroom would be very difficult. I would need to at the very least assign reading outside of class so that class time can be devoted to analysis and discussion of the text.

John Spencer refers to bad homework in the article, give an example of what you consider to be bad and good homework:

            -An example of bad homework would be a packet of work resembling what the student already is asked to do in class. This is what I would call busy work and I think it is unnecessary and does not greatly enhance student learning. An example of good homework would be asking the students to write a one page open form response to the reading that will be graded on a “done, or not done” basis instead of by letter grade based on quality of work. This would encourage students to write freely about how they felt about a section in a novel without the distraction of worrying about structure and grammar. This type of exercise promotes creative response and self-reflection and can give students something prepared to discuss during class discussions.

Journal 4 (NETS-T V) "Join the Flock” and "Enhance Your Twitter Experience"

Ferguson, H. (2010). Join the flock. Learning and Leading With Technology, 12-14. Retrieved from http://www.iste.org/learn/publications/learning-leading/digitaledition/digital-edition-march-april-2013

Miller, S. M. (2010). Enhance your twitter experience . Learning and Leading With Technology, 14-16. Retrieved from http://www.iste.org/learn/publications/learning-leading/digitaledition/digital-edition-march-april-2013

                In the article "Join the Flock,” Hadley Ferguson explains the benefits of building a professional learning network, or PLN, through Twitter. She describes how building up your PLN will connect you to other educators around the globe and help you with your life-long learning goals. She posits a few easy steps to getting your PLN started. The first is fairly obvious, to set up an account. Second is to learn how to follow people with similar interests as you. Third is to get familiar with lists and how they help you find great people to follow. The forth tip she provides is to simply watch the twitter feeds and listen to what those you are following have to say. The last tip is to participate in Twitter and post information or opinions that others might find interesting.

Does this article succeed in persuading you to start a twitter account and begin creating a PLN?

               -Yes, the article breaks the process down into very simple easy steps to follow and it describes a very interesting learning community online. I am defiantly interested in building up my own PLN and connecting to other educators like me.

                In the article "Enhance Your Twitter Experience," Shannon McClintock Miller discusses the convenience of certain tools associated with twitter that can make creating and working inside your PLN much easier. The main resource she talks about is Tweetdeck, an online Twitter feed organizer. Hootsuite is another such organizer resource she mentions. Both programs organize the tweets in your twitter account. In Tweetdeck she explains how you can organize your tweets into columns. The columns can be All Friends, Mentions, Direct Messages, or you can create special columns to organize particular lists or hash tag searches. Another resource she mentions is a Bookmarklet which sounds like it works very similar to Diigolets where they bookmark a site and enable you to share that bookmark with online communities.

Do you think Tweetdeck is a useful online tool?

                -Yes, I think Tweetdeck is an extremely useful online tool. Twitter confuses me and I have a hard time keeping up with all the different feeds and groups I’m interested in. Tweetdeck makes it easier to organize and access tweets. Even with Tweetdeck it still feels a bit overwhelming at times but it defiantly helps.  

Journal 3 (NETS-T IV) “Students Need a Digital Driver’s License Before They Start Their Engines"

              Swan, Gerry, P. M. (2013). Students need a digital driver’s license before they start their engines. Retrieved from http://www.iste.org/learn/publications/learning-leading/digitaledition/digital-edition-march-april-2013

               

                 The article “Students Need a Digital Driver’s License Before They Start Their Engines,” by by Gerry Swan and Marty Park addresses a hot topic in education today. How can we as educators teach our students about internet safety, proper use, and digital citizenship? This article informs educators about a great free to use internet resource that will instruct students on how to conduct themselves online. The resource is called Digital Driver’s License or DDL. DDL is an online program that teachers’ students through what they call “cases.” There are five cases which include instruction on topics like communication, etiquette, and security. The focus group of DDL is currently high school students but they are working on adjusting the program to be appropriate for the lower grades as well. I like that the program includes practice and testing components. They call the practice work “practice-its” and the testing work “prove-its,” I think these names are clever and amusing. Overall I think this is a very useful and practical tool to use in the classroom.

Would you use this in your classroom and why?

                -Yes I would use this in my classroom because living in this age of great technological advancement it is important for students to understand how to properly interact with the online community. In particular, since I will be teaching English I want my students to know how to properly identify a scholarly source. I also take all forms of bullying very seriously and would want my students to be taught about the dangers of cyber bullying. A free, easy to use, program like DDL seems like the perfect tool to accomplish these goals.

Why is it important for students to learn about online etiquette?

                -It is important for students to learn about online etiquette for the same reasons we teach them how to write a business letter. Most of the business communication our students will be working with as adults will be in an online form. Like a business letter there are certain ways you must address people respectfully and professionally online.

Journal 2 (NETS-T I-V) "Learning without borders"

Anderson, S. (2012). Feature: Learning without borders. Retrieved from http://www.iste.org/learn/publications/learning-leading/l-l-december-january-2012-13/feature-learning-without-borders

“Learning without Borders” by Sue Anderson is an article about her involvement with the Schoolwires Greenleaf program.  She agreed to pilot the program with some of her high school social studies students. Together they connected with the Beijing Yu Yuan Tan Middle/High School who were also piloting the program.

The Schoolwires Greenleaf program aims to bring students together from all across the world to work collaboratively in a technological medium. Anderson and the others involved in the pilot program were responsible for testing out the collaborative tools and the platforms that Schoolwires created as well as help aid in forming curriculum associated with the program. They also were responsible for providing feedback and suggestions to the company about how to make the program better. One of the suggestions she made as to include a tool that would work like Google docs and provide the students a with a web document that they could work collaboratively on. In China it is illegal to use Google Docs and they had older versions of Microsoft Word so a new solution was needed.

They divided the program into six units addressing ISTE’s NETS, the National Curriculum Standards for Social Studies, and the Common Core. The curriculums they build addressed global awareness, global citizenship, diversity and multicultural understanding, and develop project based learning.

They experienced some difficulties with the language barrier but enjoyed working through that and gained a better cultural understanding by doing so.  One point I found particularly interesting was how Anderson’s students learned that the stereotypes they held about Chinese students were false and that they enjoyed discussing common interests with students from another country. I also thought it was interesting that the students also gained some workforce challenge knowledge when they attempted to do a video project together but were faced with unforeseen difficulties with file size. This experience gave Anderson’s students some real-world workplace experience in how sometimes things just don’t work as planed and you have to start from the beginning and re-strategize.

This was a very interesting and enlightening article I hope that one day I can participate in such an innovative program like this one.

Question 1: How would you integrate a program like Schoolwire Greenleaf into your classroom?

Answer 1: I would integrate a program like Schoolwire Greenleaf into my classroom as a way to build cultural understanding. One of the commonly used books in High School English classes is a book entitled Chinaboy. This book features a Chinese-American boy growing up in a Chinese community in the US. It references many different cultural traditions, religion, and celebrations. I think I would use a program like Schoolwire Greenleaf to connect my students with other students in China and give them the chance to connect what they learned about in their readings with real-world people outside of class. I feel this would be a very rewarding and educational experience for my students and help them not only understand the literature better but also be able to connect it to the real-world.

Question 2: What do teachers get out of working with a program like Schoolwire Greenleaf?

Answer 2: Teachers working with a program like Schoolwire Greenleaf will gain a better understanding of the education systems in other parts of the world. They will be able to collaborate and share ideas with instructors from around the globe, and they will be able to enhance their own global citizenship and awareness.