Room at the Top

The Prologue

kempemat — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 01:40:53 +0000

Travel: The Prologue

The following collection of multigenre writing obtains one general theme. This theme is travel. Specifically, it embodies my experience during a specific travel excursion. Each piece adds up to allow you, the reader, to better understand how my experience on this journey through Europe has allowed me to better understand the diversity that this world has to offer. Each piece encompasses a different culture, race or gender. As I add a small glimpse into each of these cultures, you should see how I adapted to their way of life and allowed myself to diversify my own thoughts and experiences. Europe has allowed me to better understand the world and appreciate my culture, as well as those that are different to mine. If I have succeeded, my writing should allow you to have the same experience.

The Letter Genre

kempemat — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 01:38:03 +0000

Dear Lindsey,

Things are good here. We’re tired and dirty. I went ten days without shaving, and finally when we arrived in Monterosso yesterday I bought a few razors. They had two blades each, and I had no shaving cream. Do the math. It hurt real bad; I actually bled for an hour and a half straight. Sorry I haven’t called, the only place that had a phone so far was Amsterdam, and the shop was closed by the time we got in. My bag didn’t arrive when we did, but some how it was sent in the mail to the hostel that we stayed at for the night. I’ll explain when I get home. We are sharing an apartment with a few people from Canada; they taught us a new card game that will get us through the long train rides. Anyways about the apartment we are staying in. We got off the train and spent about two hours trying to find a place to sleep. Everyone was booked solid. We ran into an old man pushing his bike and he noticed we were American, and offered to let us stay in an apartment that he owned. It’s nice; we get to stay away from the tourist area. It feels real here. Next stop is Rome. I am sure I will be able to call from there. Hope you are doing well.

Love,

Tyler

10 Comments

kempemat — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 02:50:23 +0000

Morgan: http://meliser.edublogs.org/

Jamie: http://ringelja.uniblogs.org/

Christie: http://christiedeanna.edublogs.org/

Eric:http: //ideamen.edublogs.org/

Walter: http://kimw.uniblogs.org/

Shakura: http://www.weathesh.uniblogs.org./

Ashley W: http://wrightas.uniblogs.org/

Eric: http://ideamen.edublogs.org/

Eli: http://ebarsy.uniblogs.org/

Hilary: http://hpiette.uniblogs.org/

The End

kempemat — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 02:43:11 +0000

So after a total of seven posts about technology and social networking in the classroom, and a conference review post, I realize that one general thesis throughout. Teachers need to be creative, and they need to adapt. The internet grows by the day, and is rapidly becoming a tool that will be crucial for everyone to understand. Teacher’s who incorporate this tool into their classrooms not only provide a creative learning tool to their students, but also prepare them for the future with tools that will be necessary to understand. Social networking sites I feel fit well with the classroom if used properly, for example if they are used to better understand characters from books. The introduction of social networking sites does however bring its problems. There is the possibility of bullying, misuse of time, and then the problems that parents have with it all. Speaking of parents, I feel that they can benefit from the use of social networking sites as well. Whatever site the teacher decides to use, parents could be able to track their child’s success throughout the year. As for the RSS technology, I think it is very effective when it comes to gathering information. To hop on Google and have an updating source for news and info in such an organized way is so helpful when writing. I am sure the technology will only grow and become more popular, so students should start to become familiar with RSS now in order to stay ahead of the game. The internet is the future, and a teacher’s job is to prepare their students for the future.

Celebrate Literacy Conference Review

kempemat — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 02:42:42 +0000

While the conference didn’t focus specifically on teaching methods in the classroom, it did inspire me to be creative, and to encourage my students to be creative. The first session that I attended was the introduction featuring Gijsbert and Robbyn van Frankenhuyzen. The two probably don’t need an introduction as they are known for their farm and children’s books. The couple talked about their farm and their inspiration to start it. Then they moved into the creation and process of writing their books as well. At first I struggled to see how I could use the information they were giving me to use in a classroom, but towards the end, these people taught me the very lesson that I need to be teaching my students some day. The family started with nothing. They had a farm in the middle of endless fields. That didn’t stop them from meeting their goal though. They planted trees, helped animals, dug ponds, and fixed up the house and barn. Years passed and soon their farm was a vibrant, nurturing safe haven. I thought if this farm as a classroom. My goal should be to create a classroom that is a safe haven for learning. It won’t come easy though. I’ll have to plant seeds, help students who need it, and make English something the students can care about.

The second session that I sat in on was “Read for Mama” where the speaker was Lori McElrath-Eslick. She too didn’t talk about classroom issues really, but instead she focused on how important it is to be creative and how much that can enrich your life. Lori focused on her experience illustrating and how important it is to do work that you care about and means something to you. Instantly a light went off in my head. She was repeating the same stuff that we have been emphasizing in class all semester. Lori does her best work when she cares about what she is drawing. Well this sort of relationship is true for anybody. If I can allow my students to write about topics that they care about, and have them do projects that they enjoy, then they will do better work, and will get more out of the assignment. Also Lori talked about the diversity in the classroom and how important it is to encourage and discuss diversity as it is a source for new ideas.

From both sessions, I gathered two important ideas. Plant seeds, and do something that you care about. I can plant seeds if I find a way to offer projects and papers that will give my students think about the important things in life, epically in their own life. The conference was very interesting and I enjoyed hearing the speakers discuss their passion for creativity, I think it is a must see for anyone who needs to remember how important it is to be creative.

Dad…I’m Doing Fine…Don’t Worry About It!

kempemat — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 20:07:24 +0000

No matter what the focus of the article may be when it comes to social networking and the classroom, there is always one element that is considered: the parents. With social networking comes the threat of online bullying and other online predators. Parents rightfully have a problem with these types of problems and this has been a large barrier when it comes to filtering social networking into the classroom. The article “Powering up our education system” has acknowledged this problem, and has worked to introduce the positive aspects that Facebook and Myspace, and other blogs have offered to parents. With the use of these networking sites, parents can track their child’s progress better than every. What if each classroom in high school used the blackboard application for students and parents to access? Let’s say I’m in high school and I’m doing terrible in math. (Hypothetical example of course). My dad is asking me every week how my grades are and I tell him everything is fine. He believes me because he doesn’t really have any way of finding out the truth, unless he calls my teacher and he really doesn’t want to do that. So he backs off and assumes that I’m passing. The report card gets sent home and I failed math. Dad is raging mad. Things aren’t good. If only we had had access blackboard. In case I didn’t make it clear, I think the use of blackboard, or some other type of networking site in classrooms would be greatly helpful for parents. My dad could have asked me how my grades were, and I would have said fine. But maybe he had checked blackboard before he asked me, saw my grades and progress, and knew that I was failing. He would know on a daily basis if he wanted how I was doing in school. For a student, this access for parents might be a nightmare; at least it would have been for me when I was in high school. But realistically it is the answer for communication. It is easily accessible, up-to-date, and confidential.

Source: Google Blogs

Author: e Government & E.U.

Title: Powering up our education system

Link: http://www.siliconrepublic.com/news/news.nv?storyid=single9702

The Future of Homework

kempemat — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 19:43:30 +0000

The article “Could networking sites be future homework” seems to be a fitting piece to cap off a goal that I have been pushing for the past six articles. The article addresses the financial issues that surround the meshing of technology and teaching, but what I found to be more interesting was the teacher and school board interviews conducted in order to gain a better understanding of how instructors truly feel about the future of homework. Many were excited, they realize that the technology not only excites students, but it also provides a new and valuable method for students to express themselves and solve problems. Take for example the student who struggles with writing. Maybe they despise the typical research/word document standard format that I have been enduring for the past three years of college, four years of high school, and two years of middle school. At this point, I die a little inside when I start a new essay. The procedure is simply getting dull. I sit down, fire up the laptop, open a word doc, open up thesaurus on the web, and start digging into the pile of books I have on the table next to me. Sometimes I wonder why I pursue an English degree. Anyways, the student who doesn’t want to go through the process that I went through, or struggles with it, could have the option of the blog or any other type of online writing. It is the start of an entirely new genre; one that students get excited about these days. If teachers can find ways to get students excited about homework, then do it, because when I was in high school, the good old’ fashion word doc didn’t get me fired up too much.

The article goes on to discuss one major problem that online networking brings when introduced to the classroom: advertising and marketing. Students who had the opportunity to use Facebook, Myspace, YouTube, and any blog would also be exposed to endless advertisements that flaunt themselves on these sites. So the question is how do you access and introduce the muscle of these sites into the classroom without adding all of the fat that comes with them. I don’t have the answer to that because, quite frankly, I don’t know how to separate the two. I do know that there are multiple sites that the schools can subscribe to or find for free that have limited to no advertising, so teachers can start there. Whatever the answer may be, I do know that teachers can change the future of the classroom and start to excite students about education, and that possibility cannot be ignored because of a few minor problems such as advertising.

Source: Google News

Author: Michael Brindley

Title: Could networking sites be future for homework?

Link: http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/apps/pbcs.dll/

My Three Comments #2

kempemat — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 16:51:27 +0000

Walter: http://kimw.uniblogs.org/

Shakura: http://www.weathesh.uniblogs.org./

Ashley W: http://wrightas.uniblogs.org/

Use Technology Because…You Should

kempemat — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 16:45:26 +0000

“Schools need to teach children to not only live in this world but to thrive in it. Reading skills and math skills will always remain important, but we must also focus on problem-solving and expose our children to the technology that they will rely on in this ever-changing world.”

If I could I would copy and paste about twenty quotes from the website that I found off of Google Reader. They support my ongoing thesis with every sentence that has been written. This of course doesn’t make the issue of writing about it very hard, but I do have to find a way to bring Christensen into the whole mix. I want to stick to Chapter 3 because that is what interested me most. Let’s try out Essay’s With An Attitude because I liked this section, and because it seems like it would be a little bit more challenging to tie into the technology world. The article online goes into depth about how students now are able to access news, articles, everything they can think of with the click of a mouse. Okay so we can say that students who have access to the internet at school, or at home, can look up endless information for research. I flipped open to page 68 in Christensen and did a quick re-read. Christensen talks about how she doesn’t teach introductions anymore. The problem was the kids didn’t have enough evidence to back up their opening which took so much of their time. Instead the kids write about an issue that peaks their interest, and are told to back it up with evidence, with examples. Say one of your students wants to write about a serious issue like rape or gang violence because it really hits home for them. Hopefully they don’t have a personal example; if they do, let them use it, if they don’t, get some examples. They go to Google, cnn.com, anything, and within a matter of minutes they have multiple examples. Is this possible in the library? Well I guess it is if there are computers in that library. What I’m trying to get at here is technology, which is not just social networking but everything from the internet to the iPod, changes the way kids write today. Educators need not only to teach math, science, and English, but technology as well. It is the future of all subjects. Math is done on computers now instead of calculators, scientific research, well, I don’t know anything about science but I mean come on, its science, I’m sure that’s on computers now too, and English (writing) moves deeper into the web everyday with newspapers switching over to websites, and blogs are popping up everywhere. We cannot allow our students to fall behind the movement that is technology, and as long as there is a computer handy, a teacher should be able to blend the two in some form or way. We just proved that we could do it with essays with attitude didn’t we?

Source: Google News: postcrecent.com

Author: KathyWalsh Nufer

Title: Education Advisory Panel: Technology can be Blessing and Curse

Link: http://www.postcrescent.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071023/APC06/710230595/1036

Homework

kempemat — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 02:08:36 +0000

I sit down in my chair after a run to start writing. I flip open my laptop, turn on the television (HBO On Demand, Lord of War, to be specific), start searching, and my cell phone starts ringing. I answer it, talk for ten minutes, sit back down, and finally get to work. Wait, first I’d better check my email to see if my uncle wrote me back. Alright now I’m ready to get going. An article pops up on my Google Reader account, “Protecting The Hyper-Connected Kids.” I start reading.

Picture this: Fifteen-year-old Lucy comes home from school and sits down on the couch with her laptop to do her homework. She turns on her beloved iPod, flicks on the TV and opens her Web browser to check her e-mail. Sure enough, her mom has just emailed from work and is asking if she got home OK and will she check the landline for any messages. Just as she’s getting up to do that, her cell phone rings and the distinctive sounds coming from her laptop alert her to a slew of instant messages.”

I did not make this up. It’s a little scary. I don’t know what to be more concerned about; the fact that I am part of this new-age tech world that I continue to write about, or that I do the exact same things that a fifteen-year-old girl does. What I do know is, the activities that the tech world entails will become apart of life for the kids upcoming. Downloading the new pod cast will be like brushing your teeth, laptops will be like putting your pants on, and TiVoing your favorite show will be like eating.

Alright to the point. I’m starting to sound like a broken record with the technology stuff, so I tried to take a new angle at this article. Hopefully I didn’t drag on too long. The point of the article that I found on Google was the idea that technology, Facebook and Myspace included, are beginning to fill the daily schedules in student’s lives. The author goes on to talk about the time issue of school work and all of this other stuff; will there be enough time to get that English or Geography assignment done when the students are replying to all of their messages that come from, well, where don’t they come from? I can testify from personal experience that school work is very hard to get done, and done well when you are on the internet, the phone, and the t.v. all at the same time. What is that again, televisaphonernetting? Something like that.

I cannot get to the point; my ability to ramble is getting the best of me. A new paragraph was all I needed. The question that needs to be answered after listening to all of this mumbo jumbo is what can teachers do for students to help them get their work done at home with all of these distractions. This is where I introduce the idea of an open forum. We are going to be teachers, we are going to be dealing with Facebook and Myspace, so we better have some ideas to use to introduce to students. And we can’t just say, “um, I’ll have the kids write to each other and have info online and network and stuff like that.” That doesn’t work; we should be more specific at this time in our education. How about doing something along the lines of a book report, or a movie report, something done in class. Separate the kids into groups. Give them a topic, and make them choose their stance on that topic. Allow them to argue about it on a discussion board online. That way when they fire up the Mac or the Dell, they can open one more tab and get this done as well. Or maybe you could allow for students to post a personal essay online, something with the same philosophy as the “This I Believe Essay,” and really open up. maybe to allow for maximum potential you could allow the students to leave their name off of the paper, and hand in a hard copy to you with your name. comments would then be required, which, is starting to sound pretty familiar all of as sudden.

I am starting to develop a pretty obvious theme, and that is social networking is so prevalent that educators are better off adapting to it rather than separating it from their classroom work.

Source: Google News

Author: Stephen Balkam

Title: Protecting the Hyper-Connected Kids

Link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stephen-balkam/protecting-the-hyperconn_b_68649.html