Tim Fredrick's ELA Teaching Blog

Some interesting reading

With the start of the school year, education writing kicks back into gear and blogs come alive.  Here are some things I've read the past couple of days ...

The Blackboard Bungles at Newsweek.  Reviews three new books about education.  I've seen all three of them on the bookshelves, but my reading list is so long at this point, I don't know when I'll get to them.  Anyone read any of them?

An interesting article on the NCTE Inbox Blog.  It looks at Internet language and students' use of it.  Personally, I think this use of language is brilliant.  Face it, language changes as the world does.  This is where the language is headed and instead of being scared of it, we need to explore it and not just ignore or denigrate it.

Samuel Freeman write a piece about the Arab language and culture school opening its doors this year.  The hateful comments regarding this school are just completely shameful and bigoted.  This is not a new phenomenon, though.  The same thing happened when the city opened the high school for students who had been harassed for being gay - The Harvey Milk School.  The same furor and, just how the furor died down with that school, the same thing will happen here.  The sooner, the better.  At some point soon, I hope the more ignorant people in our society will learn that the majority of Arabs and Muslims are not 'terrorists'.  When I hear hateful statements to that effect it makes me ashamed to be American.

More shame ... book banning madness.

New post at the Teacher Research Blog

Go take a look at some of the new posts at the Teacher Research Blog, sponsored by the New York State English Council's Standing Committee on Teacher Inquiry.

The Teacher Research Blog

One of the things that convinced me to try blogging again was that I became involved with another blog, The Teacher Research Blog.

During my hiatus, I became the co-chair of New York State English Council's Standing Committee on Teacher Inquiry.  Our goal is to promote teacher researchers among ELA teachers in New York State.  We started the blog several weeks ago and I just finished posting my first post on Scientifically-Based Teacher Research and Teacher Research.  The work made me realize how much I like blogging.

Go check out the blog and make sure to add it to your Bloglines or feed reader.

Student teachers blogging

A blog has been started for my section of my methods and student teaching seminar.  It is called ELA - Methods and Madness.  It was started by me, an instructor from another section of the course, and a doctoral student who is studying building community online with teachers/student teachers.  Nancy was kind enough to be a guest blogger for the next couple of weeks, answering some questions the student teachers had for an experienced teacher.

This is definitely experimental for us.  We wanted the blog to be natural and organic - serving as a place for the student teachers to share ideas and reflect if they chose.  Our hope is that some (if not many) of them will find it a useful tool and continue doing it when they are full-time teachers.

A couple of links

RedKudu has a great link to some resources to TEACH about plagarism and not just FORBID it (I'm still upset about the post below!).  I think this is a great idea; I'm often of the opinion that students plagarize, not because they are lazy (see a couple of posts down!), but because they don't know exactly what the heck we are talking about.  This would be a good unit at the beginning of the year for all content areas.

RedKudu also pointed to this funny post at a school yard blog.  Does this mean ASYB is back?  I do hope so -- I miss her a lot.  (Hint, hint, hint.)

Writing lessons worth learning

Nancy at Se Hace Camino Al Andar is writing about her experiences at the Teacher College's Reading and Writing Project's Summer Writing Institute.  As usual, she has some great thoughts and has taken useful pictures of her experience.

What I commented on her blog was that the most important point I see in what she's written is the idea that we are teaching the writer, not the piece of writing.  See the post for my complete comments.

Something else that I thought about her post, but did not comment on was the relationship between what TC is probably training people on and how the NYC Department of Education mandates it be put into practice.  The keyword there is 'mandate' - which goes completely against the main philosophy behind the TC approach.  Since I'm not in the training, I can't say if there is a big discrepancy, but I'd put big money on there being one.

Teachers Teaching Teachers Webcast

Here are my notes on the webcast done by Teachers Teaching Teachers.  I'll write a few more thoughts tomorrow - I need to fold some laundry and do a little packing for my vacation.

9:07  Was finally able to get connected and hear what's going on.  Everyone is being welcomed and introducing themselves.

9:11  The moderator, Paul Allison, has been lost.  There seem to be teachers from all over the country.

9:12  Paul is back.

9:14  Something has happened and I can't hear anyone ... oops...

9:15  I got back on, thank goodness

9:16  One participant (Troy - from Michigan - working full time at the Writing Project site there) is doing a writing marathon - using wikis and blogs, etc.  They are using edublogs and using bloglines to read, but that can be cumbersome in terms of being able to respond to one another.  They are looking at how they can use tags and Wordpress.  Paul said he has used group blogs in the past, but never individual blogs.  Another participant is talking about using BlogMeister and is now using EduBlogs.  He liked BM because he had a lot more control over approving posts and comments, etc.  But, when he began to work internationally, the time difference prevented him from approving content in time for it to reach other parts of the world in a timely fashion.  He is now using Superglu - he is still able to supervise by subscribing to the RSS feed.  It seems like students can have individual blogs and combine it into Superglu to get one RSS feed.  He is reflecting on his use of RSS feeds with the students and wanting to use it effectively.

9:21  Paul (I think) had looked at Superglu, but couldn't get it to grab sub-RSS feeds in blogs.  One participant is talking about using Feedburner (my new personal obsession). 

9:25  One thing I like about the SkypeCast is that the person in charge can mute all the microphones and then you can request the "floor" and they can give it to you. 

9:26  Paul is talking about FeedWordPress.  He's talking about using it with individual and group blogs and different feeds going into different places.  A student could have an individual blog for all his classes, but tags each post for each individual class and those posts go to group blogs for each class.

9:29  Now they're talking about really advanced feed stuff and I'm getting a bit lost.  That could be in part because I'm also trying to get into the chat room.  Multitasking at 9:30 p.m. is not easy!

9:34  Paul is talking about having students individually blog for a while and then looking at their categories and comparing those categories to other students and having a group blog "bubble up" from those commonalities.  This could be very interesting and lead to some great conversations.  Finding those commonalities could be such a rich experience.  It reminds me a bit of the controlling idea essay on the NYS ELA Regents exam.

9:36  There's a lot of feedback and it is really hard to hear.

9:38  Now I'm hearing Ahnold.  I don't think he has joined ... Something has gone seriously wrong here.

9:44  After some unsuccessful attempts to rejoin, I heard nothing.  I should be packing for my trip tomorrow ... While I was trying to reconnect, I found a Skypecast about podcasting with students.  Perhaps I'll join that on 7/5 ...

Organizing your teaching stuff

A History Teacher has a good post on what to do with all your teaching resources.  In the comments, there are a lot of good ideas.

I personally like the blog and wiki for that purpose.  I can't tell you how many times I've come back to this blog or my wiki to look at lesson plans, reflections, and ideas.  What I like about these resources is that I can access them at home or at school (or anywhere there is a computer).  I still have a bunch of papers and books and binders and files and stuff that I'd like to scan in and store online.  But, then you are talking about a lot of storage space, not to mention time in scanning stuff in.  I wish they had computer scanners like copiers that have feeders (or perhaps they do?).  That would definitely help.

Electronic revision

Around the World - MGuhlin.net asked an interesting question about revising on the computer versus revising on hard copy and asked for comments.  He also posted his thoughts on the topic.  An important question as we move away from paper and move into digital.

Carnival of Education

Go visit this week's Carnival of Education!