Well, this week I worked on my eclassroom at school and posted a few forum questions so that I could evaluate a starting point to provide authentic opportunities for my students to write and publish using technology. I was deeply impressed by the student work sited in Bringing the Outside In by Sara Kajder. I was also a bit intimidated by her awesome classroom practices and her ability to get assignments completed in two weeks. WHAT!!!???
I did encounter a few problems. Some students had somehow been dropped from my class, while others kept trying to input the wrong password and locked themselves out of the system. It took our school web manager a few hours to figure this all out, so I will be spending some time this weekend reactivating students into my classroom. You to Lori Gorman!! You are awesome.
Here are the questions and results from students who were able to participate. 90% of the students have access to the internet at home. I was surprised at this because of the poverty level at our school. One question I asked was what technology would you use to help you create a story. I found that most students didn't quite understand the question but how the answered made me realize that at least they understood my lessons on plagiarism. The most common answer - I would use the internet to gather information and ideas but I won't copy!
The other question I asked was where do you spend the most time when you are on the internet? Most common answer - facebook and myspace.
Many of the students mentioned a program called SCRATCH which Lori Gorman had shown them. This is a downloadable program that allows students to create comic strip characers and text. Of course, the district filter will not allow access to this program, so I'll have to write a proposal to ask that it be unrestricted should we decide this would be a good entry point for publishing student writing.
I'm still thinking......
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It's interesting that 90% of your kids have access to the internet. I don't want to assume it is in their household, though. Sometimes my kids have to go to grandma's house or to the public library for it. I think for us as teachers, we've got to teach the students that the internet has so much more to offer than just Facebook and MySpace. In one of the readings we've done it mentioned the fact we've got to teach responsible, ethical use of the internet and its tools. I agree. I just wish we had more access to the actual technology itself in order to do it. By the way, I've got Scratch on my computer, but I think I may have downlodaded it at home. I'm not sure it works at school (I sometimes hate those filters) but come by the room to play with it if you want. :) It is a cool thing the kids would really enjoy using. Goes along with the idea of digital storytelling. I guess you would consider that digital storytelling, right?
ReplyDeleteGreat Job Ann--having 6th graders on the web is awesome--keep up the great work
ReplyDeleteGreat post and thanks for sharing your experience with the world. You will love when you start creating a digital story for you blog post. We will do that in March.
ReplyDeleteI truly applaud you for taking these beginning steps. I know at the beginning it takes a lot of time and may be very chaotic but in the long run, it will be well worth it! Keep up the good work!
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