Alien Pedagogy

I decided to spend this weekend adding and removing feeds from my Bloglines and Twitter accounts. One thing that always bothers me about new feeds is that I rarely take the time to look back at what the author has previously posted.

This is why I’m going to take a moment to encourage people to follow Ferlazzo’s “A Look Back.”

I worry that a lot of our best edubloggers are assuming that someone out there is going to take the time to read their early work, so they leave previously mined topics in their blog calender. I doubt that many are reading these.

Moreover, I’ve yet to find a suitable index of blog histories, perhaps because we rarely expect bloggers to familiarize themselves with what other bloggers have covered.

I gave a presentation to my coworkers today on Professional Learning Networks (If you read this, you already follow Jeff Utecht whose presentation I attended at EARCOS).

I have long enjoyed being one of the only teachers on staff who knows about RSS feeds and PLNs (like when you hoard your favorite music and hope no one else discovers it), but felt it was time to share with others.

Method:

• POW – Used “how not to use Power Point” and some of the new Google search options to show how my PLN has influenced my teaching.
• Distinguished PLNs from Online Learning Communities (which my group has so far associated with a network designed for students).
• RSS Feeds. Introduced the idea of a feed and showed them my Reader and Bloglines feeders. I mentioned Feedburner, but I don’t use it.
• Microblogging – Introduced Twitter and Wefollow as sites that we can use to rapidly browse the educator’s online community.
• Social Bookmarking – Introduced Delicious as a place where we can rapidly store information and share it with other teachers.
• Provided the staff with some links to educational blogs and set them loose on the Internet. I also sent an email of the links we covered to them.

In review:

• I wanted this to be a completely optional session that teachers could opt into or not. So I tried to make it happen in just a half hour, which was too rushed. Having said that, delivery of content did not take very long; most of the time was spent surfing.
• I found the staff bought into the idea of using RSS feeds.
• I’m not sure that they saw the value of edublogs. If I were to do this again, I’d try to find some of Dy/Dan’s best posts.
• Twitter was adopted by some, but not all. I was not surprised by this since it took me quite a while to get into micro blogging.
• I tried to stress that a PLN is only as good as the time you spend working on it. So we’ll see how it goes.

If you use PLNs, have you considered sharing?

In novel study, my own teachers relied heavily on class discussion (4/20 students speak) and handouts (copy and paste the correct answer). I’ve been trying to push comprehension, analysis, and active reading through marking the text and summary strategies. From there, we’ve been working on expressing our analysis through book club style group chats.

(I patched this together from literacy circles and a book club presentation I attended at the EARCOS Teachers Conference.)

The Process So Far

We began by building background knowledge, interacting with photos, videos, and articles. At this point, we focused on identifying and summarizing important information.

When we began to read our novels, we began marking the text to identify important information and then summarized the text in bullet points at the start of each chapter. I modeled this, then the class worked in pairs, and then moved to individually going through this process. Compared to double-entry journals, this is a speedy process of recording personal response.

We then used our chapter summaries to begin generating group discussion. Because the students have read the text and identified the important information, they suddenly find that they have something to say about the books they’re reading.

The discussions have gotten better over the course of this week, especially after we worked on verbal and non-verbal strategies for creating an effective conversation. We also spent time thinking about what we thought made effective discussion of literature.

We’ve spent two weeks on this process, as recorded here. It has taken us through the exposition and much of the rising action. It has allowed us to build comprehension and identify conflicts. We’ll explore them in more detail next week.

Review

Though it’s May, my class is full of energy. Better yet, that energy is focused on the text we’re critically reading. Very few students are falling behind in their reading.

For many of my students, this is the first time that they have had something to say about a book beyond “it’s good” or “it’s nice.”

I am always surprised by the amount of diversity humanity’s able to produce. Take Dylan’s new album, who saw this coming back in 1962?

Some say we’re strongly influenced by our childhood. I grew up listening to Dylan, so I wonder if one day I’ll look back and see myself living according to the things I valued about Dylan’s music and career. Here are some details about how I teach close to the start of my career.

***

• Currently, I value the freedom to design my own lessons and I enjoy creating resources and rubrics that are unique to my students and my classroom culture.
• I enjoy setting up classroom dynamics and icons that exist with one class and no where else.
• I want my class to be one that students remember and I want them to be able to remember their contribution to that classroom environment.
• I don’t want my students to rely on me too much.
• I try to use a variety of teaching styles and activities.
• I want to try out new strategies.
• I don’t need a widget to know which way the wind blows.
• I strive to be professional and helpful in my behavior with other teachers.
• I strive to create units that are very directly built around my curriculum standards and activities that are designed around my lesson objectives and my students abilities.
• I read a ton of edublogs to develop perspective.
• I want my class to fit into the school’s culture and vision.
• I want to feel like I’m a part of a healthy team.
• I’m very happy to teach in an international school.

I wonder what I’ll say as I get older. I always liked this line from Love and Theft.

“My heart is not weary
It’s light and it’s free
I’ve got nothing but affection
For all those who’ve sailed with me”

Bob Dylan has released a new album this week and it’s good.