This week I had a dream that my Henry James final paper literally tried to kill me. I am sure that is a totally normal dream, and I am a completely well-adjusted human person. Aside from dreaming of words coming off a page to strangle me, a personal crisis made the start of this week as stressful as I can imagine. Everything has worked out in that department, and I think I am fully recovered from the shock and agony. That being said, I spent the entire week housing my very first migraine. What a terrible house guest. My students noticed the change in my behavior, and instead of being angelic teenagers, they piled on to the tune of 30 students not completing a final draft, and another 20 who did not include any sources or Works Cited page. Considering a big part of the grading rubrics was implementation of sources, it has made it incredibly difficult to know if they learned a fucking thing during the last four weeks.
Such is the life of a public school high school teacher. All of that added up to a much needed sick day. I took Thursday off to recover, and it was glorious. I slept, watched like five episodes of the Great British Baking Show, and even cooked a nice dinner for my wife and I when I got home from TCC class. You may ask why I took Thursday and not Friday, thus giving me a 3-day weekend. That is an excellent question. Wednesday of this coming week is the AP Literature exam, and Thursdays I do not have my AP Literature students, but Friday I do, and I would have felt I was doing them a disservice missing one of their last days before the exam.
Two more weeks of my first semester of grad school. Everyone in my life thinks I am insane for tackling everything I am planning to tackle in the next year. Maybe I am, but I am going to conquer it. Well, if I can figure out my damn assessment plan for TCC I will conquer it all. For some reason I cannot seem to crack this thing. I use backwards design at the high school level all of the time, and I should be able to do this easily, but every time I sit down to do it, I stare aimlessly at the computer for like an hour, then type for a bit, then delete everything, cuss out loud a bunch, then slam my Chromebook shut. It really is the thing standing between me and having a solid draft of my portfolio.
Sunday, May 1, 2016
New Media Pedagogy response
At my school I am known as the teacher banging the technology drum the loudest. My high school is further behind in the technology department than most other schools, and while we have Common Core mandates asking us to push "21st century skills", it feels like a hallow question when we do not have the available technology to make it happen. This year I have been removed from three meetings for being too insistent on using funds for technology. Well, last week I got word that the school is adding over 200 Chromebooks next year. Each department is getting a roving cart of them and the English department is getting two carts. So, I am not getting my classroom set of iPads, but I did push us forward, so that is great. It almost feels like kismet that we would read the New Media Pedagogy section this week.
I want to focus on a small section of this chapter. The second point under the New Media Principles and Attitudes is "New media functions as a writer's laboratory, a site of experimentation." The second I read this section, I realized how a traditional classroom set up is the antithesis of a site of experimentation. Classroom set up is an intense topic at the high school level. Go into five different classrooms and you can find five different classroom set ups with five different explanations why the classroom is set up in those specific ways. Because I have a strong belief in New Media Pedagogy, Activity Theory, and Collaborative writing, I am on the search for the classroom set up that marries those three better. I approached the principal about ditching desks in favor of tables and chairs, and I am currently researching options. This is among the most excited I have been. I think by giving students work space, I can encourage invention and experimentation, as well as collaboration. Many high school teachers look at aspects of technology, phones, wifi, etc, as a distraction, but students have their phone out all of the time in my class. They are googling things, sharing information with each other, taking notes, etc. I am already envisioning a more tech friendly year next year.
It is strange though that I was hesitant to push my New Media belief hard into my proposed syllabus for this course. I am not sure why that is. I think it has a lot to do with the access challenges. At the high school level I can have the computer every day for a week or two to complete a major assignment because I have them five days a week, but at the college level that will not be the case. I cannot assume students will have access, and that makes me hesitant to push myself fully into the New Media realm. With access issues, one also has issues of the steep learning curve many students who have not been privileged enough to have computers around their whole lives. Assigning web assignments could prove doubly difficult for those students.
I believe it is important for students to have interactions online, and with all sorts of new media because that is where the world is going. My high school students do not read articles, they do not read the newspaper, and many do not watch the news, they watch Youtube videos. They do not journal, they vlog. They need to understand what these avenues of learning have in terms of value, and they need to know how to read them, access them, and master them.
I want to focus on a small section of this chapter. The second point under the New Media Principles and Attitudes is "New media functions as a writer's laboratory, a site of experimentation." The second I read this section, I realized how a traditional classroom set up is the antithesis of a site of experimentation. Classroom set up is an intense topic at the high school level. Go into five different classrooms and you can find five different classroom set ups with five different explanations why the classroom is set up in those specific ways. Because I have a strong belief in New Media Pedagogy, Activity Theory, and Collaborative writing, I am on the search for the classroom set up that marries those three better. I approached the principal about ditching desks in favor of tables and chairs, and I am currently researching options. This is among the most excited I have been. I think by giving students work space, I can encourage invention and experimentation, as well as collaboration. Many high school teachers look at aspects of technology, phones, wifi, etc, as a distraction, but students have their phone out all of the time in my class. They are googling things, sharing information with each other, taking notes, etc. I am already envisioning a more tech friendly year next year.
It is strange though that I was hesitant to push my New Media belief hard into my proposed syllabus for this course. I am not sure why that is. I think it has a lot to do with the access challenges. At the high school level I can have the computer every day for a week or two to complete a major assignment because I have them five days a week, but at the college level that will not be the case. I cannot assume students will have access, and that makes me hesitant to push myself fully into the New Media realm. With access issues, one also has issues of the steep learning curve many students who have not been privileged enough to have computers around their whole lives. Assigning web assignments could prove doubly difficult for those students.
I believe it is important for students to have interactions online, and with all sorts of new media because that is where the world is going. My high school students do not read articles, they do not read the newspaper, and many do not watch the news, they watch Youtube videos. They do not journal, they vlog. They need to understand what these avenues of learning have in terms of value, and they need to know how to read them, access them, and master them.
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