School tech culture

Below is the link to access my "Anthropological Assessment" of the technology culture at my school (Bethel Regional High School).

View it here.

Technology is such a powerful, useful tool in my classroom that I depend on using each day. It is part of what I teach now in hopes of my students becoming responsible composers, researchers, networkers, and investigators. Even further, it expands their creativity and learning, becoming stronger readers, writers and thinkers.
This assignment helped me realize all the potential with our current technology offered at our school, and more importantly, the opportunity I have to further learn and teach my students through multi-media literacy projects. Despite the limitations we do have with network/connectivity issues and the demand for more technology, we are so privileged to have our current resources.

Futuring Reflection

Futuring Reflection- 9/30/09 

a.    How would you “grade” or assess Fox Becomes a Better Person, and School Train?

 

School Train could be adapted for my 9^th grade English students to assess understanding and application of the use of metaphor and the presentation of their composition through a multi-media resource. Specialty skills, such as the production of the movie using the media software, would have to taught of course and then assessed to ensure that they could complete it in groups or individually, however, the written work explaining how the element connected with school and life would be completed before the media production could be assessed as a written piece. In teaching metaphor, students could be based on the effective use of the literary device in their writing. Fox Becomes a Better Person could be assessed for the development of a short-story, including character development, moral/lesson, and presentation through the combination of writing, art, storytelling/speaking, acting and of course, technology production.  

 

b.    What impacts could the developments portrayed in epic2015 have on your classroom, particularly with respect to things like podcasting?

 

Clearly the events portrayed by epic2015 present a living reality for everyone. Our students we teach are more exposed and impacted by the technology around them and are experiencing an advancing technology. Teaching students effective research skills, how to read online literature, presentation of an “on-line self”, and understanding credibility and authorship are important. Podcasting has many educational benefits and avenues to supplement content material. Students can experience recording through podcasting instantaneously, clearly shown through this video.

 

c.     How might you use SabrinaJourney as a model for something you would do with your own students?

 

Sabrina’s video reminded me a lot my own journey and story to share. I’ve seen other digital stories created by students and adults and feel that they have a special effect to connect with the viewer. Digital storytelling can be a project extension for presentation of personal narratives or autobiographies, or even biographies. It could also be used for poetry and other language arts projects as well. I am very interested in designing a digital story unit in my English classes this year in relation to our personal writing, poetry and short-story units.