Lovecraft Masterpiece Theater Podcast

Podcast Practice

Google Docs, Yes, Yes, Yes

I love Google Docs.  I think ultimately this style of application will become the basis for how we get students to work collaboratively and present group work in the classroom in the future.  The most amazing aspect of Google Docs, to me, is the ability to create a "form" that students can fill out, helping you obtain survey information.  As has been demonstrated in class, where we fill out account info and user-names, the "forms" aspect of Google Docs can completely organize "secretarial" aspects of classroom management and organization.  Most importantly, the sharing aspect of the files is incredibly useful for users, allowing team editing and effective benchmarks to establish progress in a particular project.  I always hated in school dividing up tasks, completing my assigned section and wondering all the way until the due date if my partners were keeping up their end of the deal.  With Google Docs, ideally a student would be able to see how his/her partners are managing the material and assist them if need be.  Also, as a teacher it can be more easily identifiable as to which students contributed and how much, based on timestamps, for any piece of group work.  Again, I love Google Docs!

Twitter

I'm not a huge fan of Twitter.  I can understand its use as a social network, but it seems to me if it were brought into the classroom, as some of the articles I read did, that it would create more distraction for class than aid it.  In the collegiate classroom maybe this would not be such a problem, but as for me, thinking about my future high school classes, I just don't think it would work as well.  I know we would all like to assume that our future students will be studious and hardworking, refraining from "outbursts" of unruliness, but the truth is if one were to use a program like twitter, there will inevitably be a student that will exercise poor judgment in a text just to get a laugh.  Also, if your class were like a huge lecture hall, such a program like Twitter could prove useful in order to address comments that cannot be touched upon during class, but in a smaller environment, a class of fifteen or so, hopefully you would be able to address any problems on the spot during your lesson.  I just think the social stigma associated with programs like Twitter ultimately hinders the usefulness said application can contribute to the learning environment. 

Wiki, Wiki, Whoooooooo!

I enjoyed using the wiki for our class and can see how useful a tool like this could be in the classroom.  I think it's a great way for a class or even just groups of students to collaborate and compile information on topics they are investigating.  I can foresee some short-comings, especially how revisions kept getting erased because of users posting at the same time, but I think these kinds of mishaps will be less likely to occur for work done over longer periods of time.  I think it is vital that the group members to come together before starting to edit the wiki in order to establish some guidelines for formatting and presentation, as I spent a lot of time adjusting forms on our class wiki to assemble some kind of unity.  If everyone has a uniform grasp of what font, size, structure of layout, etc. then the "making it nice" would be a lot less of a hassle. 

Headaches on Homework

I remember when I was going to middle/high school, when the internet was in its infancy, having to come home everyday and take 1-2 hours out of my afternoon to complete various homework assignments.  Sometimes I would have a couple of chapters to read between my History and English classes and nothing else, sometimes I spent an hour and a half on my math.  Each day it varied as to the time spent on homework for any one of my subjects, but inevitably I would have to invest a decent chunk of my "free time" after school to complete this work.  In recent talks with some current teachers it seems that times have changed.  "Homework," I've been told by several instructors, "is nearly impossible to get the kids to do when you assign it anymore."  They've gone on to explain that many of the students are just so involved with extracurricular activities or active lifestyles that they, the students, tend to "slack off" on their assigned homework.  Still, others just fail to complete assigned homework out of lack of supervision to keep them on task (i.e. a teacher/parent checking in on them making sure they have done the work).   In some cases, entire school policy has been re-structured asking teachers not to assign more than 15 minutes worth of out-of-the-classroom work each day for their students.  The thought behind this action is that if every class gives no more than 15 minutes worth of work, no student should fail in completing all the tasks in a reasonable amount of time.  Taking these ideas and other insights you may have into the homework dilemma, I would like to ask you what you think about homework.  Is homework necessary?  Should there be a designated maximum time allowance per subject?  What about fields like math, and even English?  Are kids these days really that involved?   Where do you stand on homework?  Please feel free to respond to any and/or all of the above.

Excited

I am very excited to be learning about blogging and working in this new medium for communication.  I believe this tool will become invaluable in classrooms as the decade progresses and I want to make sure I have adequate skills in navigating through this technology for the years to come.  I have always been a "net junky" and cannot wait to utilize the skills we are introduced to in this class in my future classrooms.  I just hope wherever I land as a teacher my students and I will have the opportunity to use the web to its full potential.