Slideshow

I have never been the biggest fan of powerpoint presentations. I always felt that it was an excuse for me to furiously copy everything and not pay any attention to a word that my teacher was saying. This can be attributed to several things. First of all, my teacher's slideshows were always long, boring, word for word accounts of what they had to say. It was like copying down the bible or something and just when you thought you were going to finish before the slide changed, it did. This left you with incomplete notes and with no way to fill in the blanks because your mind had been so set on copying that you hadn't heard a word of the lecture. Secondly, I always felt like it was a teacher's easy way out. There was no innovation in what we were learning. It showed that the teacher had given that exact same speech to every class that day and we were just mindlessly listening to it. There was no humor, room for going off to different discussions, or anything of that sort. I'm a big believer that in order to learn, students need to be having fun and powerpoint presentations are far from being fun.

Having said all of that, I do think that they can be successful if done correctly. As the video and article showed us the slides should only have talking points on them. The information should be coming from the instructor, not the slides. They are there just as a basic outline of what is going to be said. Also, the distractions are immense when words and colors start swirling and whirling around the screen. I think that the simpler the slides can be made, the better. My slideshow highlights some of the things that I would like to teach my students in my future English class. In the slides that follow I showed some of the ways that the students will be learning these tasks and next week I will be adding more in depth analysis when I add my voice to it. The final project is in depth and jumps across the many different things I want my students to learn. It will teach them to work together, use technology, critique, and write well written and thought out stories.

Podcast Assignment.

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While making my podcast I really had a wonderful time thinking about the assignment that I would want my students to do and pushing it forward to them in a unique way such as a podcast. This really got me thinking about how if I'm having so much fun with this educational tool than my students could have just as much fun. As I've mentioned countless times, having fun is one of the key ingredients to getting students engaged and involved in their education. I also really loved the idea that the video gave about giving feedback to students through podcasts. Every student becomes disheartened when they receive a graded paper that has more red ink on it than their own handwriting. By giving feedback through podcasts students don't need to see that discouraging sign. It makes a student feel as if the teacher is constructively giving a personalized critique of everything that they had written. The red ink can sometimes feel like an unfair attack by the teacher.
For this assignment I asked my students to do quite a few things. First, I asked them to choose a poem that they enjoyed. This poem could come from any poetry book or website that they choose. The next step is for them to read the poem extremely carefully and note the poetic devices that the author uses such as metaphor, simile, personification, allusion, etc. and speak about how effectively (or ineffectively) they though the author used them. This is where I want the students to give me an overall impression of the piece.
The next step is research based. I want the students to research the author and the time period during which the author lived. This should raise some interesting questions for the students. How are the poems a product of their time period? How did the poet's life affect the way he or she wrote? How did the other author's of the time period or from times before influence the author? Was the author part of a major poetry movement? If so, who were the other important authors of the time? How are the authors different from their chosen author? How are they the same? I give the students a lot of freedom to choose what kinds of issue he or she would like to explore when it comes to their poems. I feel like when a little bit of freedom is given to the students they become mush more involved in their research and writing because they enjoy it so much more.
The next part of this assignment is technology based. The students are asked to create a podcast in which they will be reading the poem that they have chosen for the first part or a poem that they have written themselves. If the student chooses to use the poem from the first part then the reading should be followed by their impressions of the poem and whether the poem was effective or not in their eyes. I have also urged students to have fun with this and perhaps read the poem in the style of the poem's author. If the student chooses to do a poem of their own then I have urged them to follow up the reading with a short response about what inspired them to write the poem. Who are some of their poetic influences? How did the student make decisions about rhyme, metaphor, simile, etc? As I said before this assignment is meant to blend poetry knowledge, research skills, and technological skills together to create a fun and interesting project that I believe the students will get a lot from.

Google Docs.

Having not used Google Docs much before this assignment I was amazed at how easy and useful it can be. I can't even count the number of times that somebody not receiving my e-mail or something being wrong with the e-mail server compromised my ability to produce the work that was due for classes. With Google Docs everything is made so much simpler. There is no copying and pasting and worrying about whether the e-mail got through or not. I love the idea of students being able to collaborate, change things around, and really interact with the work and each other through using this tool while still being in real time. Earlier in the semester I wrote about how I would love to have my class do a class newspaper and while wikis may still be a more appropriate tool for the newspaper, Google Docs could definitely be utilized during the brainstorming and planning stages.
I love the idea of students being able to interact online while working on English based projects because it just can be so useful in today's society. Being able to read and write have always been basic standards that are necessary for us to move along in our education but in this age of booming technology another area has emerged. Technological literacy is extremely important for young students that want a chance to compete in the job market once they graduate school. With technology changing so fast, it is our job to prepare these students with the skills to operate the basic online based tools such as blogs, wikis, and Google Docs so that later they can add onto this on their own. It is essential that students continue to explore technology outside of the classroom because technology changes so fast that what they learn today could be obsolete tomorrow. It is the educators job to provide the basic skills and try to motivate students to continue to grow on their own.