Suppl_eMINTS

Classroom Management & Online Projects

Wow!  That was a long day we all spent together!  I hope everyone was able to glean something from all the content we covered and discussions had over the seven hours or so of training.  I also hope you are not already burnt out.

I wanted to revisit a few of the key points and some great resources to get you on your way…

Classroom Management: I know that many of you are masters at managing your classrooms and some of you are always looking for new ways to facilitate learning.  With the new year approaching, you have different considerations for classroom management than you did just a year ago.

Really think carefully about your classroom norms.  It’s alright to have a few in mind.  It’s even OK to include a couple that are extremely important to you, but make sure to include student input on those norms.  They will feel more ownership in how the classroom runs this year than if a list of rules are dicatated to them.  Also, be sure to word your norms as what students should do instead of what not to do.  For example, instead of the rule “no talking,” try the norm “listen to others when they speak.”  The goal is to get students to pay attention to each other or the teacher.  A norm should give the desired behavior.

To get your year off to a great start, you should focus your efforts on management and behavior almost exclusively.  The best way to ensure that these norms can be maintained throughout the year is by building a positive classroom community.  Check my links for community building activities here.  Don’t reinvent the wheel.  Use some of these resources to plan out your first days of school.  For secondary teachers, you could do the same activity with every class.  Elementary teachers may want to do one in the morning and one in the afternoon in order to break the monotony of the day.  Either way, have a little fun with it and get to know your students.  Building relationships with them now will pay off in the long run!

For the rest of my links related to classroom management, click here.

Online Projects: The key to a good online project is to think about the ways in which you can make it transform student learning through an authentic task.  Start out small, like an email project or a class blog, then think of ways you can transform some of your old lessons into a real world project that incorporates some form of online tools or networking.

If you wanted to access many of the resources from our training session, go here.

Some tools to consider for online projects are listed below:

EduBlogs - This is a safe, user-friendly tool for blogging.  You may remember that we had trouble with this tool last winter, but it seems to be working much better these days.  I still use it, in case you couldn’t tell.

Gaggle - Gaggle offers blogging and email options that can make online projects interactive and transcend borders.

E-Pals - Some people mentioned E-Pals as a great resource for pen pal projects.

Youth Twitter - This is the kid-safe version of the micro-blogging pioneer.

Top Ten Things to Consider When Writing a WebQuest

As you all begin the process of writing your WebQuests, I thought I would impart some knowledge and helpful tips to keep in mind.

10. Be creative. We really have to think outside of the box when writing WebQuests. David Warlick recently posted on his blog, 2¢ Worth, that the creativity we need to encourage in our students “will not come from lessons about creativity, but from a different kind of lesson that makes room for, invites, and values creativity.” Think outside the box and find ways to help your students do the same.

9. Think: What do adults do with this information? Think of your WebQuest as an opportunity for the students to practice applying what they learn in school to the real world. Thinking this way can also help you understand why the topics you teach are so important for preparing students for their adult lives.

8. Web 2.0 is your WebQuest’s friend. Not only can you provide resources from which your students can gather information, but you can also utilize all the great tools online for their WebQuest work. Wikis, like those at Edublogs or PBWiki, can be useful for group plans, note-taking, and even final products. Additionally, there are always things like blogs (Edublogs, Blogger, etc.), Moodle, various media hosting sites (TeacherTube, Switchpod), online productivity tools (Google Docs), and even social networks ( Youth Twitter, Edmodo).

7. WebQuests are best accomplished in groups. Here is your chance to put together a cooperative learning activity that is positively interdependent, able to hold each individual accountable, provides equal participation, and gets all the group members simultaneously active. However, WebQuests could also be valuable as tools for distance learning or independent studies.

6. Hook your students’ interest with great role-play. This doesn’t only mean you have to come up with great scenarios and characters for the students to carry out. You can also incorporate some “fake” email addresses for the students to contact clients, mysterious informants, or any character needed to make the project feel real.

5. Provide scaffolding for the learning whenever you see fit. It’s OK to link graphic organizers to the WebQuest that help students organize their learning. This could be a good opportunity to use software like SMART Ides or Inspiration. Just remember that this sort of work is to help the process, not to give you something to grade. You could also add a section for “learning advice” that could suggest techniques for organizing or how to aggregate the information.

4. Include brief descriptions of each of your resources with the links. This will allow students to know exactly what sites they should be researching. It’s sort of a preview of the site that prepares them for the other side of the hyperlink.

3. Be clear. Whether it’s the task, process, or expectations, you will want to be crystal clear for your students to be as successful as possible.

2. Consider including a teacher page in your WebQuest. A teacher page can provide others who want to use your WebQuest with contact information or tips for implementation. It may also be a good place for you to keep notes for the next time you use the WebQuest.

1. A WebQuest is a work-in-progress. Just because you assign a WebQuest to your class and they complete the task doesn’t mean that you are done with it. A WebQuest can be revised over and over in order to keep the links updated, the task fresh, and the strategies effective. If something doesn’t go smoothly, change it before you use it again. If you see a way that it could be altered to give students different perspectives, make the revisions. It’s your creation for you to mold into the perfect learning experience.

A WebQuest is a great way to provide real, student-led inquiry in your classroom. The best part is that it is also something that you can create to fit your students’ unique needs and gifts.

Why Visual Literacy?

To many of us, “literacy” has always meant reading and writing, but it means so much more.  Literacy is how we read or create almost any form of communication.  There is literacy in understanding a friend’s emotional state or interpreting a great piece of art.  Literacy is not confined to the written word, and neither is illiteracy.

My partner, who is a college professor at Mizzou in English and Gender & Women’s Studies, focuses much of her work on images.  She is a rhetorician, specifically, who looks at how images are used to make arguments.  Often times, she assigns students images to read or alter in order to make their own meaning.  Visual literacy is a definite reality at the college level, and if we are preparing our students for college, we must include visual literacy.

One of the most discussed examples of visual literacy has revolved around the photographs in National Geographic.  Often times, NG uses images to convey a sense of exoticism even though the accompanying articles have little to do with the photos.

One example of this use of an image to demonstrate the exotic is found in Steve McCurry’s picture of the Afghan girl (seen below).  The photo provides a sense of wonder as to the life of this wild-eyed girl in a strange, war-torn land.  The topic is both intriguing and problematic.  It is intriguing in that NG uses images like this over and over to give their readers a sense that the publication opens the reader to strange, new worlds of exotic beauty and wonder.  It is problematic in that the images are of real people with real histories and issues that stretch far beyond these depictions and should not be limited to the perceptions of the publisher and reader.  In other words, it’s very complicated.  We need to prepare our students for these complexities in society.  We need to make our students visually literate.