Posted on April 7, 2009 by jmcmaster
Blogs provide a really useful medium for sharing ideas, personal learning, and growth. For both teachers and students, they are easily accessible and public, and they provide a record that can be reviewed. I think that an important part of the student project that I’m hoping to do will involve working closely with the students, making sure that I am actively involved in their research process. Commenting on their blogs will provide the opportunity to record my thoughts and suggestions. But, it will be important to find a manageable way to keep up with the work that comes along with that management. Additionally, I do think it’s interesting how the blog world and the classroom world are often kept separate. What I mean is, students might have an interesting conversation online, but it doesn’t often transfer to the classroom. In some ways, I think it’s ok that some conversations that happen on blogs don’t come into the classroom. At the same time, it can seem somewhat awkward when the two “worlds” aren’t connected. So, it will be important to make some face-to-face time available during class as well, to discuss the research and continue to push the thinking.
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Posted on April 7, 2009 by jmcmaster
As an 11th grade teacher, I have learned to avoid assumptions about my students’ proficiencies in what I might think are skills they should already have mastered, like reading, summarizing and notetaking. What I’ve found is that students still need to learn a lot about reading for meaning, analyzing their reading, and taking notes that are useful, effective and accurate.
For a project like the one I’m thinking of doing with my creative writing class, the notetaking process could actually be a little complicated, and the students will need to do a good bit of analysis and “meaning-making.” It will be useful to teach them to use Ubernote or diigo.com to help them gather their materials and take notes online–this way, they’ll be able to keep their information online and won’t need to rely on transporting materials from place to place. I’ll need to talk with them about some skills for taking notes from nonfiction, like biographical articles and critical analysis, as well as from fiction or poetry. We’ll need to discuss the ways that we synthesize our information as well. Overall, this type of project will be about a lot more than the content; it will also involve a lot of skill building.
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Posted on March 24, 2009 by jmcmaster
The internet is a huge resource: other teachers and I often talk about how different “researching” was for us just 15 years ago. Books were our sources, and though they allowed us to access information, there were limitations. Now, it seems that all the information in the world is available online, which is a wonderful but challenging feature. There’s a lot out there, and students know it, but they are not necessarily motivated to make sure they’re finding all the information, or the right sources. Often, even if there are better search engines or resources available, students will Google a topic, take the first 4 articles that appear, and call it research.
Part of the problem is that students have trouble navigating websites; this problem especially noticeable when they have to do source citations. It has become very clear to me that the students don’t understand that organizations often host sites, and that Google images pulls images from other sources…that it’s important to go to the source to really understand the image. A lot of the web is context, and the students often miss context, which can skew their understanding of the information they’re getting.
The article “It’s all in the discussion,” about Wikipedia, posed some really interesting questions regarding the “openness” of information. Wikipedia shows how much information and learning can still evolve. We want to encourage our students to be life-long learners, so something like Wikipedia, which can show how knowledge and understanding can continue to develop after “publication,” is important. To contribute to a Wiki requires caring about the topic, about learning and researching, and about communicating clearly and effectively. There’s so much information out there, and more is constantly being learned and shared. Students need to realize the opportunities that the internet provides, and be willing to put the time into using the resources effectively.
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Posted on March 24, 2009 by jmcmaster
In doing research to check out resources, I found that there’s really a lot out there that would support this type of project. Students would be able to choose from many different authors, and would be able to find a lot online that would help them develop a thoughtful, detailed author study. Many authors have websites of their own, or sites are available through their publishing companies. Sites like poets.org provide authors’ works, interviews and critical analysis; salon.com is also a great resources for interesting interviews. The NPR website provides a lot of resouces, including a series of interviews and a feature called “Book Tour” which can be accessed via podcast. One library website has done a lot of the work already for my students; they provide an annotated list of author resources.
I think this project will provide the students with many opportunities to do research. If students are researching contemporary authors, they could e-mail or write questions to the author, hoping to “create” their own source instead of just using the interviews that others have already conducted. They won’t necessarily hear back, but some will, and that experience of communicating with an author will be very significant.
The great thing about the students’ blogging their experience is that they will become resources for others who are interested in the author or topic that they studied. They can compile links, share information, and the blog will allow them to present their information in a way that others can benefit from, too. Social bookmarking tools will allow them to get involved in active research and contribute to the “conversation” about the available resources. The social networking sites will help guide students toward useful and interesting sites that will help them develop and deepen their understanding.
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Posted on March 10, 2009 by jmcmaster
I’ve started thinking about an idea for my project, which might involve researching an author through his or her literature, then sharing information with classmates through blogging about interpretations of different texts. I have some essential questions that are relevant to the course, as well as some initial ideas for authors that might lend themselves well to this type of project. Students would have to define a question that relates to their author and their interests regarding the intersection of writing and culture.
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Posted on March 2, 2009 by jmcmaster
As an English teacher, I teach some unique classes–an Honors American Studies class that is co-taught with a history teacher, and two Creative Writing classes, one of which has a multicultural focus. There are a lot of ideas I have regarding potential research projects, or revisions to current projects. The American Studies class is very project based. Each unit has a major research project of some sort; none of those projects ends with a traditional research paper. On the most recent project, a very complex group project that involves writing plays about the Civil Rights Movement using primary source documents, my co-teacher and I helped our students use wikis pretty effectively to coordinate their research and develop their plays. I’ve really enjoyed figuring out how to use new technology to facilitate learning for my students.
For this project, I’m not sure what direction to go in yet. I’d like to develop one of the American Studies projects to be something that gets “published” online. I also think it would be cool to do something involving blogging for my Creative Writing class–maybe a research project that will allow students to research an author’s life and style, and create some original writing. At this point, I feel my project could go in a number of different directions.
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Posted on February 27, 2009 by jmcmaster
Welcome to this new blog. I will use this blog to help develop research projects for 11th grade Honors American Studies classes.
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