Wiki What-What? The Trials of Thing 8

I am familiar with Wikipedia; truthfully, who isn't familiar with Wikipedia? Next to using Google as an educational search engine, students use wiki as their source for most information, whether that info is accurate or not. Mostly, I appreciate Wikipedia for its service as a jumping off point to other sources, which is, I suppose, what the point of it is. Some of the entries are very well written, while others not so much. But all of them have a list of links to further your education on a point. Sadly, I think my students don't use those links, but take the info on the page at face value.

Anyway, as I searched through some of the wikis linked to the 23things page, I was at first completely overwhelmed. I guess I was expecting something more like Wikipedia, including the Encyclopedia set up. Instead I was bombarded with too much extraneous stuff on the page, or at times, a lack of obvious student work.

I took notes on my whiteboard while perusing some sites; the first few I checked, I was not really thrilled with, including the first high school one, the wolfden, which I thought sounded interesting. When I got there, I wasn't sure what exactly to be looking for, so I just browsed. But there was so much, and then some of it was just links with no explanation where they went. I wasn't sure how to check for what the students did, and then, thinking like a high school student myself, I got tired of thinking about what I should be doing and moved on to another page.

Code Blue seemed like a good idea, but not really very inviting, just a list of links to other sites with no explanations really. While it is a good base of knowledge, I wondered how much of the knowledge listed was actually digested by the students (pardon the pun). Donning my high school thinking cap, I decided I could very easily find a site dealing with my topic, link it to the page, and go off and surf or go to facebook or wherever I wanted to spend my time. I'm just not sure the kids who put it together actually learned anything.

So I thought I would visit some lower grade sites just to see how they were doing. The School Then and Now site seems to contain information that the kids gathered themselves, maybe by interviewing family members or neighbors. The listings are organized somewhat, but still not necessarily attractive or attention getting. But I can see that the kids were more involved in putting it together. The learning and skills were more obvious to me, and got me thinking back to Coolcat teacher's blog where she listed off what she was having the kids do. With that information, I could see how one would go about constructing a wiki properly because she states that kids have to summarize what they are reading to put on the page, not just link to the page they are supposed to be reading. At least with this step, you know your students are getting some of the information and not just slapping links on a page to get a grade. She had more tasks, and I will keep those tasks in mind when I start constructing my own wiki lesson.

Another site I really liked was a third grade site which, for whatever reason, I found attractive; it was easy to follow and had the voice of the kids about it. Hard to explain and I'm not making myself clear, but the page was easy to follow; the links on the side were not just other pages about the topic, but pages created by the kids, complete with recipes, maps, and student produced art work. The images borrowed from the web were cited with links so visitors could go straight to the source. I liked this site, but is it a wiki or a collaborative website?

I think maybe I am having a semantic issue.

Maybe I am thinking about wikis in the wrong way. When I used a wiki in my class last year, we were compiling ideas based on research the students had done over decades and the western. They had to be familiar with their decade before they could answer the wiki needs. The nice thing was that because they could see the other students' posting, they could comment on those other ideas. My wiki didn't look like these, but it was called a wiki on the moodle, so I assume it was.

Maybe I'm confused by what looks to be entire class websites, not just wikis. There are so many tabs on some of them they seem like an actual sites, not just wikis. Or is an entire site able to be referred to as a wiki?

I would like to have my kids this year compile information about the Greco / Roman myths and, in their own words, make a database over the basic stuff we should know about the gods, goddesses, and major heroes / tales. I don't want just links to this information; I want the information already digested and compiled for quick reference when reading other works that will inevitably allude to all these myths. Links to other sites would be fine, but I want thumbnail sketches that make the information quick and easier to digest. I think I can create the basics for this on GoogleApps Collaborative Spreadsheet. Perhaps there is then a spot on my moodle to turn it into a more organized form accessible to all the students for whenever they need to access it.

So is there a wiki in my future? Most definitely. I just have to figure out how to make it happen the way I want it to happen and in the time frame I need it to happen.

Lucky Seven: Or How to Carry On an Internet Conversation

Seven is a lucky number; it's a perfect number--the number of man + the number of the divine. Thing 7 is pretty special too. Here is where we have the opportunity to teach our students the dying art of written conversation, including the skill of being tactful and constructive, even in our criticism, as opposed to hateful and destructive.

My students and I joke during writing workshop days about how to positively peer edit a draft. Comments like "good job" or "best draft I ever read" do no one any favors; the writer loses out on having a new set of eyes discover a mistake he may have made, and the editor loses out on the benefit of enhancing her own writing by learning to help others. And in a multi-grade classroom, nothing is more frightening to an incoming freshman to have an upper class student tell her she writes like a third-grader. I use that example because it happened, and it took months for me to coax that student into writing again.

Commenting works much this way. I loved the advice given by CoolCat about Darth Commentor. When I waited tables for a living, people would come in to eat for the sheer pleasure, I believe, of harassing their waiter. Some people are just not happy, and who better to take it out on than a waiter who can say nothing. Of course, these days with ethics where they are, I think more waiters are spitting in coffees than when I was waiting. And no, I never spit in anyone's coffee (I was more of a visine / beer gal), but I know someone who did, and the woman deserved it. Maybe commenting is the new outlet for those angry people, and here they don't even have to drive anywhere or shell out bucks for a meal. And no one gets spit on.

Also I bring back the hate mail link from last post. The comments, including the actual hate mail, are so telling in and of themselves. The grammatical issues, the misspellings, the left out words--these things alone nearly negate the argument trying to be made. The instantaneous puking out of venom rarely leads to a positive or constructive debate over ideas, but then fanatics and naturally angry people usually don't want to debate, do they.

On the other hand, the constant back patting, or as Blakester put it so eloquently in one of her comments, the "self-massaging" smug attitude taken by those in support can also negate the argument in the midst of being so self-congratulatory.

All of these moments in commenting become "teachable" moments in both rhetoric and mechanics. Perhaps, as Rhonda pointed out in another post, blogging could be used as a place to work on writing skills instead of just a social moment. The problem then becomes keeping up with all those blogs and making sure kids aren't abusing them.

I'm having trouble keeping up with my own reader! But this is something I want to think about more because I sense the possibilities, and they could be good . . .

Information Overload: The Reality of Thing 6

Ouch, my brain hurts. I left my reader alone for maybe two days, and NPR blitzed me. 92 things I had to catch up on, and some of them were a bit repetitive, but I think I made some sense of it all. More interestingly, the Texas Freedom Network kept me entertained as I read through some of the hate mail they were receiving from Neo-cons. I'm not sure why hate mail intrigues me so much, or why I am especially fascinated by hate mail from people who claim to be Christians. I remember being at church camp when I was a young'un, and singing those good old stand-bys "Pass it On", and "They Will Know We Are Christians By Our Love". I guess some of them don't feel that way anymore and are using God as a kind of club and shield combo.

This attitude makes me both sad and humored at the same time. I have had some of the most interesting conversations with Rhonda (we solve all the problems of the world on our shared conferences--last year we solved Welfare) and the kind of mental / intellectual stimulus that gives my brain is very rewarding. I think as a culture we tend to forget that there are fanatics and nutters in all beliefs, all religions, but the majority of people of any faith seem to be pretty mellow. This is no place for a religious debate, but the last time someone told me I was sure to go to hell, I said I'd save them a seat. Tolerance, I'm beginning to believe, is a dying art, though maybe the internet / blogging can keep all the nutters together under the cover of their anonymity and their inability to be touched or have to face off with someone in person.

So I left a comment there, the same one about the song lyrics. Now I'm REALLY going to hell I suppose. I do love to live dangerously that way, and let me add that using my gmail address and my pseudonym gave me a rush. The anonymity is intoxicating in many ways.

But I digress. What I really wanted to comment on from the TFN disappeared when I skimmed it; this happened before I discovered the "mark as unread" check box. Now I'm skimming smarter, not harder (whatever that means). So I searched the blog itself and found it. Mississippi is apparently more stupid than Texas when it comes to education. I particularly loved the comment about "girls should be" taught about abstinence where as boys can just go their merry way impregnating "bad girls" right and left. Is there a correlation between the sex-ed policy of a state and the overall IQ of same? Maybe I could get a federal grant to do some studies.

So before I left my reader, I zipped up to the Dilbert Daily feed and read the funnies. Ahhh, funnies. Dilbert makes me happy, and the more public education tries to emulate business, the funnier he gets. While I was there, NPR slapped more in feeder.

And it never ends; and that is overwhelming.

The World at My Fingertips, aka Thing 5

"Is it amazing and positive for a nine year old to be able to share her perspectives and ideas with tens of thousands of people around our globe, all within the space of 48 hours? I'm inclined to think it is." I had to comment on this quote as I think it reflects what I was trying to express in my last entry. I don't think, personally, that I would put a video of my little girl on YouTube simply because I can't bear the thought of some stranger "thinking" about her. Send it to my family and friends? Absolutely. Of course, speaking from a non-parent view point, I don't really care what your nine year old thinks about the President; it's kind of like vacation pictures or drawings. I can feign interest for only so long, but then. . .

That last link is just a little something I found while surfing. I especially love the comments; maybe I'm a cynic, but come on . . . "haunting"? I've always been more of a fan of that guy that critiques kids' drawings, but that link might be offensive to some, and I don't the school filter would let us visit anyway. But trust me, it is good for a laugh--a big gut-busting laugh.

Meanwhile, back on my reader, I hit "mark all as read" as I finished the NPR stuff, and POOF everything went bye-bye. I spent some time looking for them, but, alas, I cannot figure how to retrieve them. I even asked Techno-husband, but he doesn't use Google as his reader so he couldn't really help me. So next time, I'll just hold off on that until I'm really done, with everything. Live and learn--glad they weren't my important notes for my meeting with the President later; would you like to see the pictures of my linoleum?

So back to the world of YouTube, etc. While I was surfing and found the precious drawing cite, I also discovered peopleofwalmart.com (travel here at your own risk; again, not including the link on purpose--this one is disturbing). I think there are some privacy law issues here, but oddly, I could connect from school. This cite troubles me to no end. At any time, someone can snap a picture of you and upload it somewhere, make snotty little comments, and if you respond, suddenly you can't take a joke or something. Lawyers must love this!

So that got me thinking. Have we become so narcissistic that we crave approval from anyone just to feel validated. I had no idea who Kanye West was until he shows up all over the news for being a "jackass." Just quoting the President here because he put it so succinctly. Who cares what this guy has to say about videos or otherwise, but he apparently thinks we all do. He, Mr West, suffers from the "I'm the Center of the Universe Syndrome." Many of the blogs I've stumbled upon seem this way. And the responses / comments can be frightening. The aforementioned and linked blog above references what percentage of the responses contained "four letter words". To me that was creepier than the number of pedophiles who posted because you had to expect that--the dark curtain of anonymity pulls all the muck off the bottom of the swamp. But come on, if you don't agree with a 9 year old's politics, do you swear at her? Them's good arguing skills, Bubba. Yer maw must be proud. And this is just a sampling of the dark vitriolic nature of the average human being these days.

Remember the old Morton Downey Show? This set up seems so trite now as ugliness and hatred seem to be what feeds our collective unconscious. Why do we like controversy and conflict so much? Are we still that close to The Coliseum?

Looking back on the post, I think the world of the internet scares me--not because I am afraid to use it or I think I can't use it--it frightens me because I'm not sure the world needs to be in each other's pockets all the time.

Thing 4: Blogging Begins with Reading

Post 3: Responses to Blogs I read.

Once upon a time, I was asked to be a “timer” for a series of One-Act Plays that were happening at our school. All I had to do was sit, sometimes in the audience, sometimes backstage, with a stopwatch in hand, timing the play. I was witness to many works that day—absurdist dramadies, heart-wrenching tragedies, and one little number I like to call “Kabuki Hamlet”.
Anyone who has read Hamlet, or watched the uncut Branaugh version, knows that Hamlet, even if the actors are rushing their lines, takes about 4 hours to perform. These kids had 40 minutes.

They did it—the entire Hamlet in 40 minutes. Well not the entire Hamlet, some of it was cut out, like almost two-thirds, but the gist was there, I guess.

You might be wondering what the heck this little tale has to do with blogging. Bear with me.

I could be commenting on how it’s all the rage, and the teachers who aren’t doing it should be flogged and we aren’t really teachers if we aren’t doing this, and someone who insisted a blog be required reading for High School English teachers (I read that as a “or else” statement--fill in flogging rhymes with blogging, get it? here).

Or I could touch upon the poor dude from the bullying site whose own site was ransacked by malicious self-righteous idiots who were set upon him, like trained dogs, by some editor at Wired magazine. I would, were I to do that, bring up an old Law and Order where some guy was killed because someone put up a hate fan site and well, killing him was then justified since he was some sort of zealot, as was the guy who put up the hate site. Where indeed does the responsibility reside?

But it was easier for me to tell the Kabuki Hamlet story because it sums up all the other arguments and points I would like to stress. Case in point.

Hamlet is a long play, and while some of the scenes may seem superfluous, they, in total, add to the whole product. Hamlet has some very comical scenes in it, especially where Polonius is concerned, but because they don’t lend themselves directly to the obvious plot, though they are terribly important to the overall read, they are the first scenes excised from the work when editing. What’s left after this wholesale chopping is 40 minutes of ?

In short, just because you CAN perform Hamlet in 40 minutes doesn’t mean you SHOULD.

And I think of blogging this way: it’s easy to attack in writing; it’s easy to say offensive things and then use the 1st amendment for protection; it’s easy, and I suppose confidence building to imagine that your words are so important the whole world must be exposed to them. Perhaps blogging has taken the place of the earth in the center of the universe. Once that theory was disproved (sorry if you thought it still was) we needed something to fill that void of being the center of the universe, and voila, we are important again.

Maybe when we teach kids the responsibility which comes with blogging, we should think about teaching them a little humility as well . . .

Oh, and the Kabuki Hamlet production was disqualified--they used too much fabric in their costumes and their sets.

Thing 2: Thoughts About Web 2.0

Okay, so if this blog is supposed to be a record of my learning journey, in my voice, then I'm afraid, dear readers, that you might find me a bit acerbic. The Educational Utopia of every child with a laptop and internet connection, which, working in tandem, suddenly make said children crave education the way they crave Skittles is just that--a utopia. And even Thomas More had a dark side to his. . .

I think, for example, if I see one more video of silent, sad-faced kids writing stuff down on white boards while heart-string jerking music wails in the background, I may be sick. Or one more "Ken Burns" transitionally loaded flash movie that either compares us to China or scolds us for how far behind we are in the world of education, and then promises me that technology will cure all that I am going to puke out my liver and stuff it down someone's throat. Having taught rhetoric of the visual and verbal kind for the past 13 years of my life, I think I know when I'm being manipulated.

Why are there more honor students in China than there are people in the US? China has 1.3+ BILLION people; the US-300+ million. China is mostly populated with a homogeneous group of people; the US has people of all cultures and religions, many of which don’t revere education the way the culture of China does. And don’t get me started on the religions that handicap our educational system; China doesn’t have the issue of a "religious right".

Should we be including technology in education, yes; should we throw away our books because kids don’t like to read? The Scarlet Letter is going to be as hard to understand on Kindle as it is in print.

Sorry, I am really tech friendly, and I attempt to offer my students a variety of lessons built around technology, but it is not the be all-end all cure for educational woes, and sad-faced kids who listen to Harry Potter on their iPod still need to be able to read. Last time I checked, the TAKS exam, the SAT, the AP, the ACT, the LSAT, the GMAT, etc were written exams, be they written on paper or written in a word document down-loadable from the web.

And that, I'm afraid, isn't going to change.

Will I continue to use technology in my room? Sure. Some lessons fall into tech plans nicely; will I force all my lessons into some technological format? No. When I told my students we were going to do peer editing online, they were distressed. They actually like having their physical essays in another student's hands being searched and studied. Should I force them to do it online? We aren't a paperless society yet.

I took the Intel Teach course and learned a great many things that changed the way I do certain lessons. I love the collaborative spreadsheet for brainstorming; so do the kids, but when half the class can't get logged in due to a tree issue or a context problem with the laptop system itself, the magic starts vanishing. Thirty minutes later, when finally, after multiple shut downs, battery pulls, entire computer swaps, and finally, merely using stuguest to get online, 1/3 of my class time is gone. Sometimes, ladies and gentlemen, you have to punt; and sometimes punting involves pulling out the old pen and paper method.

Are my students getting 21st century skills? Yes they are, and they are also getting skills to get them through a project if the electricity goes out, if their ink cartridge explodes, and their flash drive melts in the Texas heat. If we want well-rounded kids, then maybe we should teach them new skills but also update the ones they already have--like note-taking and active reading with a pen in hand, annotating for meaning.

Thing 1: Reflections on Lifelong learning

I love learning. Always have, probably always will. I love the school supply aisle in the grocery store and office depot the way a computer nerd loves Fry's Electronics. Come to think of it, I love Fry's.

I've never enjoyed being lied to or horn-swaggled, that's why I enjoy rhetoric and deconstructing language so much. So, for example, when I get magazines from New Jersey promising to help with my TAKS scores, I just shake my head and recycle them. You don't buy TAKS materials or salsa from New Jersey.

I'm plenty challenged, but I don't find that a problem--an inconvenience maybe.

With that in mind, of these 7.5 habits, I must say that I find myself always beginning with the end in mind--my problem is I don't always see the route to get there. To quote Ratbert "I'm more of an idea rat." In fact, looking over this list again (for the 9th or so time) I think I find most of these easy to achieve. I could learn to use technology more efficiently and more to my advantage--just as soon as I finish grading these essays, and these timed writings, and these quizzes--yeah, I'll get right on that . . .

What do they say about the "road to Hell"--it's paved with, oh yeah, good intentions. Sigh.

Okay, so maybe number 6 could be difficult; and let's add number 5 to that, too. Toolbox? Does it have to be virtual? Does my cool highlighter with post-its in the barrel count? No? Hmmmm.

Right, well taking this course might buy me some time to actually start "creating" that toolbox, and today during my conference I went to the library to learn more about my Moodle from TR; I learn something about that site every time I meet with her, but I forget to do it immediately, and then I forget how to do it altogether. . .

Where was I?

Just kidding; I can handle 7.5.