Blog Post 5

I think that using the internet for research can be both helpful and harmful for students, especially students just learning how to use the internet. I think that it can be helpful because the new resources open up the mind to new possibilities, and helps students to understand the importance of backing up ones research. I think that it can be harmful because there are many places that they can find papers that have already been written. Also, it is very simple to just copy and paste information without actually digesting it. Furthermore, it is very easy to find a lot of information that doesn’t necessarily come from a credible source.
For this reason, it is very important to teach children how to find a good source. I, personally, like databases like jstore and project muse for finding sources because I know that the source I have found is always going to be trustworthy. I also think that most school libraries have similar sources available for their students.
I am interested in working with students who are in middle school and high school. With both age groups, I worry about not enforcing enough the importance of understanding how to use a library because the internet is a very easy way of finding sources and I worry that my students will want to take the easy way out. I also worry about the other things that the knowledge of understanding how to use a search engine can provide for children, the things that aren’t necessarily all that great to know. Knowledge is power, but knowledge can also lead to harmful actions, and that worries me a lot.

Blog Post 4

I am very interested in using the computer to create concept maps and outlines. I mentioned in my last post my interest in using Inspiration in my teaching, but I think that outlines, concept maps, etc, are very helpful to understanding, not just how to write a paper but to understand how a story is written. I am interested in teaching English and I think that this sort of understanding is essential to understanding the authors’ intent. I also think that diagrams, drawings, sculptures, and the like are helpful to students understanding, especially students who aren’t particularly adept readers.
I think that, because of this, I would absolutely encourage my students to make outlines and keep diagrams. I have not yet determined if I would want it to be for a grade, but I think I would like it to be for a participation grade. I think that concept mapping would be a great class project, especially for a novel.
I think that coming to an understanding of how to do a faster Google search was incredibly helpful to my career as a teacher. Doing the Web Hunt assignment helped me to realize how valuable of a resource the internet is for teaching. It actually made me really excited about making tests and lessons and worksheets because I’m discovering just how simple it will be thanks to what I’ve been taught.

Blog Post #3

I think that, because I had so much fun using Inspiration, I would like to use that sometime in a class. I did my homework assignment on poetry and made a web that went line by line and for each line named at least one poetic technique and then explained why that technique was influential to the text. It made dissecting a poem really easy. I would like to be able to let the middle schooler’s who I’m teaching use this program to do a similar thing.

For my website I chose the website of the Art Institute of Chicago: http://www.artic.edu/aic/ This website has a balance of words and graphics. It is easy to figure out where to find information because the links are labeled not only with words but also with pictures. It uses only three types of fonts and two different colors (greys and red). The words use both upper and lower case letters appropriately, the text lines are short, it is single spaced, and the audience could easily be a person of any age, since that is who goes to that museum.

I think that my experience with copyright laws in school is similar to my usage of MS Word: it has much to do with writing papers. I think that parenthetical documentation and footnotes are such much a part of me now that I actually site things in regular conversation. Which may just be because I’m a nerd; I think it has more to do with having to write at least one paper a week for the last nine years of my life. But the fear of being caught claiming that someone else’s work is mine, even accidentally, overwhelms me, and seems to me like a lazy way to get kicked out of school. I think that, since I’m going to be teaching English, one of the things that I would like to do, is something I was taught to do: writing all of my quotations/paraphrasing on note cards, a different color or shape note card for each source. I was introduced to this in 6^th grade, and it made research a lot more fun, and then all the information was laid out for me so it was very difficult to forget, and because the project was fun, most students wanted to do it. I think that I would like to do a similar thing with my students because I know it’s something that I do even now. I also think that turnitin.com is a fantastic website and I think that most students understand that they can’t get away with plagiarism when a teacher is using a source that scans the entire Internet.

Blog Post #2: With Regard to Chapter 9, Among Other Things

As a student, I have primarily used Word to write papers. As such, I have only ever viewed Word as fitting for writing papers and the occasional excessively long letter. However, this class has changed that greatly for me. At the same time, I have never before considered how my teachers have used Word and now I’m realizing that they must be pros at it because it seems to be in every corner of teaching. It has been very eye-opening.
I think the idea that I liked best that I saw in Chapter Nine was the newspaper. I even told my best friend about it. I’m really excited about discovering a way to incorporate that in to my teaching. I haven’t really thought too extensively about the ways that I could use computers in the classroom. I mean, I have in terms of games and databases but since having started this class, everything has changed.
As such, I feel like that is the main thing I have learned in this class. Though I recognize the practical aspects of what I am learning – how to write a test and a newsletter, that Twitter can be used in the classroom too – I think more than that, I’m discovering that my fears about using computers with my students are dissolving. And though I recognize that things like Sparknotes will never go away, I hope that I can use computers to help encourage the feeling of fun that I believe should go with learning. And hopefully that fun will lead to students wanting to do reading and other activities that are generally thought of with dread.

MS Word creates a blog posting?

Apparently, this makes a blog post.