My favorite work! and other important final thoughts...

My Giver Book Trailer

Although I think it could be better, of course, I am MOST proud of the work I did on my book trailer for The Giver.  I worked really hard on this, and I even showed it to my classes this term (REALLY) as part of our anticipation for the book.  The students LOVED it, and from this trailer, they were able to make really great predictions about what the book would entail.  Considering I was a complete computer idiot before this class, I feel like I've accomplished quite a bit by making this video.  I plan to do a lot more of these, actually, for future books and poems I teach my students.  It's a fairly easy thing to do, and it helps SO much in the classroom ;-*

What do I feel is the most useful technology (or teaching approach) I have learned this semester?

Well, I think that learning to use blogs and wikis has been really helpful for two reasons.  First, it  helps me as a teacher learn how I can better collaborate with other teachers and other professionals so that my teaching can improve and I can be kept up-to-date with the latest things going on in the teaching world.  Also, I think that using blogs and wikis allows me to stay on top of my students' work better.  By using a wiki for a class website, I can post homework assignments, class announcements, upcoming events, and even readings on the page and expect that students will have things done before class the next day.  Parents will be kept up-to-date with what we are doing, and students will have no excuse for not doing homework when they are sick and absent.  I can also do a lot of my grading--checking students' understanding and helping them to collaborate with one another--by allowing  them to have their own online conversations through blogs and wikis.  This is often much more comfortable a setting than the face-to-face classrooms, especially when students are addressing harder issues that are brought up in literature.  Students, once they have felt comfortable online and have thrown out several issues on their own, will then be able to have in-class discussions more fluidly and more comfortable.  Maybe even using these sites will help me with teaching students to back themselves up when they make arguments because they have all the resources in the world right here at their fingertips.

How do I plan to use this or other technologies in my future teaching?

I've described pretty well how I want to use wikis and blogs as a classroom material--they would actually be used more as an outside-of-class website for extra collaboration.  I would probably assign the students two days a week where they would have to respond to something on the website, and they'd be graded for each response.  This could count for their weekly reading logs, like we do now.  I would use the wikis also as a tool to help me stay very connected to parents and to allow the parents access into what their students are learning.  I wonder, though, how much privacy I should give the students.   If they know their parents will have access to their conversations, they may hold back a lot of their strong opinions, even if they wouldn't be "offensive" to parents.  But I really want the students to feel comfortable enough formulating their own opinions and responding to the arguments in the way that they would feel more natural, without influence of anyone else.  Maybe I could just give parents limited access or something?  I don't know, maybe it doesn't matter that much.  I would like the parents to see these kinds of conversations, though.  I think when parents are able to see the deeper discussions their children have at school, the more respect these children gain in their parents' eyes and the more trust they earn at home.  They seem to move into adulthood a little more, and that bond between parent and student grows so much closer.  While I am a teacher, I am also doing my best to strengthen family relationships.


How can I use technologies (the ones we learned or others) to engage my students in ACTIVE learning?

Again, I think as I use wikis and blogs to allow the students to collaborate, discuss, and argue about major elements, themes, heavy topics, etc. we cover in our English class, the students will find so much more fulfillment in their books.  Technology should never be used just to waste time or to fill students' minds with thoughts of high-tech sweetness (This is me gagging all over myself).  But instead, it should be used to enhance learning and allow for deeper use of the knowledge students have gained.  So, if the students learn something in class that they're not able to talk about as long as they need to, I should make it an assignment to get online that night and continue discussing on the wiki.  Each person should have their own argument, find someone else's opinion that backs them up, or find scientific (or other) evidence to support themselves, and go from there.  They should be able to use the website to make their arguments more detailed and more in-depth than they can do in a 45-minute class period.

Wikis have rocked my socks.  I am loving them.  And I plan to use them FOREVER.  What a wonderful invention.  My only struggle now is teaching students how to use them. ;-*