There are so many things I love about what this woman says in her speech on how to view the Common Core Standards as a "map for student literacy learning."  Here are a few of her particularly brilliant observations:

• If we want our students to be readers and writers, we [teachers] need to be readers and writers first.
• We need to shift our focus from tasks to learning.
• We all [teachers and students] need to embrace failure, gentle failure.
• Everyone in the classroom [teachers included] is elevated to the level of learner. The hierarchy between teacher and students disappears.
• We need not to erase students’ anxiety, we need to sit beside them as they figure it out for themselves. [Yes!]
• We all need to become intellectual risk-takers. Teachers need to be willing to do it first, and we need to be able to do it in [students'] presence.
• What may appear chaotic [in a classroom where real learning is happening] is deliberate, precise and carefully designed.

Watch for yourself:

:

Via NCTE Inbox

As reality strikes in for many prospective literacy teachers,  technology integration, "in a pedagogical," constantly comes into question. How are we going to make enough time to begin any such integration within our own classrooms? How will we be sure students don't abuse their internet privileges? If we use the technologically in our classrooms, are we going to be alone? Naturally, the list goes on. In reference to Will Richardson's blog post, entitled The Next Generation of Teachers, the inherent predicament is: How can literacy teachers provide their students with the necessary "devices we give kids as connections," while removing the barrier between their classrooms, and the outside world?

Sure, it's easy to continually discuss the, "yeah, but's" when it comes to the pedagogy embedded within technology integration; however, we need to begin conversing upon the, "How can we get it done" notions. Richardson acknowledges a rather troublesome idea, in which, "...People think nothing is going to change until the old guard retires out and you guys take over." Basically, if future literacy teachers want to succeed in creating a 21st century classroom environment loaded with educational technologies: challenges must be surpassed. As a future literacy teacher myself, I need to "accept that challenge."

    Just as the world changes, so does technology, and the ways we learn. English Language Arts is being replaced with the term…

In Teaching the New Writing, chapter 7 focuses on senior culminating research projects. Personally, when I was a senior, I didn't have to complete a project and instead focused on many other little papers and tasks throughout the year. Has anyone completed a senior project? As teachers, I feel that this project could be a little bit of a cop-out. Yes, you will be teaching seniors different conventions they may use in their papers, but if the first half of senior year is focused on completing the culminating project, what are you getting done in the classroom? What are your experiences? What seems to work best in the classroom?

Parents know best- Summer Rant: What’s up with Parents?

As a future educator, the blog “A Summer Rant: What’s up with Parents?” by Will Richardson is quite a frustrating read. Richardson expresses his main concern with parents and why they are not more “demanding in terms of engagement and learning from their schools.” (105) Do parents not care what their children are doing in school, or is it that they simply just do not understand? If they do understand, why are they not angry about the education their children are receiving or lack thereof?

It seems as though parents are not expressing any concerns because their children are learning in the traditional ways that they also experienced. The issue here is that times are advancing and technology is changing. The parents do not understand this aspect of learning. They do not understand that their children are being deprived of ways of learning which are necessary in current society. We need to prepare the students for what is out in the world, and right now, this is a technology-filled generation.

Richardson creates a list of questions that he feels would be important for teachers to ask parents.  These are some I found to be important.

• Do you want them to be able to work constructively with others to create useful stuff?
• Do you want the things they create to contribute to the community?
• Do you want your kids to be creative, imaginative and curious?

These are just a few examples. Generally we would hope that the parents would answer YES to all of these questions.  The issue raised here is how these traditional class settings are actually successfully meeting these goals. Are they? According to Richardson, not…

This interesting article discusses the affects technology and online communication are having on our ability to stand as individuals. Is Facebook making us lonely? I would be interested to see what educators think about this. The author states that in one study "Facebook users had slightly lower levels of “social loneliness”—the sense of not feeling bonded with friends—but “significantly higher levels of family loneliness”—the sense of not feeling bonded with family."

Another study, done by Cacioppo, looked for a connection "between the loneliness of subjects and the relative frequency of their interactions via Facebook, chat rooms, online games, dating sites, and face-to-face contact. The results were unequivocal. “The greater the proportion of face-to-face interactions, the less lonely you are,” he says. “The greater the proportion of online interactions, the lonelier you are.”" I thought this was shocking!

Finally, the author makes the statement that solitude used to be good for self-reflection and self-reinvention. But now we are left thinking about who we are all the time, without ever really thinking about who we are." I would argue that this is who we are. We are a generation built on technology. Isn't it part of our identity?

Any thoughts?

Technology in the classroom. Some teachers and school districts have learned to embrace it, while others fear and ignore it. However, to believe that everyday we take giant leaps forward with technology integration into the classroom it to believe the absurd. We must realize that the integration and evolution of technology in the classroom is a gradual and additive process. In other words, everything that is "new" in the classroom is really just a natural evolution of what has come before. Traditional teaching practices are the building blocks and the basis for the new technologically savvy ways of teaching.

We did not jump from this...

A good visual representation of the gradual evolution can be see in this article. As you can see, giant technological leaps in education do not happen overnight. And to say there is an increase in technology use in the classroom is simply incorrect. We have always used technology in the classroom, it is just the type of technology that has changed. The same goes for the way in which we teach. We have always taught writing in the classroom, it is just the way we teach writing that has changed overtime.…

In chapter 12 of Teaching The New Writing, the three editors finalize what they have learned. With the inclusion of technology, our classrooms have the abilities to flourish with new unknowns that were never present before. Students no longer have limitations, projects can be illustrated through various modes, such as, "multimedia research reports, digital picture books on science subjects, blogs, podcasts, and other multimedia interpretations of poems" (199). No longer should of teaching pedagogies be restricted to print, consisting of a simple pen and paper. "We should replace the word writing with the word composing," (198) because literacy is no longer a stagnant process, it involves multi-faceted dimensions illustrated through the designs embedded within. The simple letters that were once presented on composition notebook paper are now evolving into something much larger, and more authentic, "something new and different" (199). 

As the editors began back tracking through their eleven previous chapters, they came to find " the changes that we found were gradual, as new practices and genres evolved from the old" (200). This notion exemplifies Kirby Ferguson's four videos on Everything Is A Remix. In reality, nothing is ever truly "new," or "original."  Everyone gets their ideas from someone else. Creativity feeds off of inspiration. Without a guide, or a visual example, how do we expect our students, or ourselves to compose, design, and create? Everyone needs a little "inspiration" at some time or another. What these three editors are trying to tell us is: The new practices that are beginning to evolve in the classrooms are…

When it comes to Facebook safety for children, many people immediately blame the parents for not teaching their kids how to properly protect themselves in the digital world. But think again. In Will Richardson’s blog “It’s the Parent’s Fault. Not”, he believes that it is not just the parent’s fault for adolescents’ naïveté with Facebook. Parents, administrators, and teachers should all be held accountable for teaching students how to expertly and safely navigate the web. Schools are willing to work together with parents to create programs that educate our children about Facebook and internet safety. Although some schools have not gone beyond “parent awareness night” (97), some schools are willing to create programs that will help education our children.

Many teens don’t understand that once something is on the web, anyone can see it. They are shocked to find out that someone they are not friends with was able to find their site and see that they inappropriately posted something. Teens need to know that even employers are looking at Facebook pages before hiring.  So what do we do? “Whose job is it to educate kids to use [Facebook] well and appropriately” (97?  Some may think it is the parents’ job, but Richardson “doubt[s] that most of their parents really have enough of an understanding of what they’re doing to prepare them” (97). How many parents fully understand the various ways kids can get in trouble on the web? Where do they even begin to teach their children? Therefore, schools need to step in to create a curriculum that can help parents and students fully understand the danger of the web. By working together with parents and the community, the school can begin to bring awareness to the…