Confessions of a student teacher

Just a short brainstorm about how I could use blogging with English students:

- get them to blog from the perspective of a character in a novel

- have it as an ongoing reading log, responses to books they’ve read in wide-reading

- record their responses to English lessons

- as a kind of journal, and site for dialogue with the teacher about class-related issues

- to network with other students in other schools on a certain project

- as a creative writing journal, detailing inspiration, images, things they’ve read and bits of their writing

Here is an audio podcast of a response to the Radio National discussion/interview about ‘Literacy and the internet‘ and the effect the web has had on students’ reading capacity.

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I really enjoyed making this short photostory. It reminded me how easy it is just to make something simple. I will definitely use Photostory in my English classes in the future.

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Bruce Stewart questions the usefulness of webquests. I agree that it is difficult to find a situation in which all students have access to computers, and are hence able to do the webquest. But I have also seen evidence of webquests being an engaging and valuable learning tool in the History classroom. Students enjoy the interactivity and hands-on learning. It is just a matter of finding a webquest which is exactly suited to your teaching needs, rather than shaping your teaching around using a certain webquest.

The Sunday Telegraph ran an article called The school with no paper on page 40 of their paper on October 19, 2008. It’s about Manildra Public School – a small primary school between Orange and Parkes in Western NSW – which is ‘virtually paperless’. Children have daily handwriting lessons to ensure their writing skills aren’t lost, but the rest of their work is done digitally via email, the web and computer programs.

The teacher says he doesn’t see the point in kids “coming into the classroom and ruling up a page like they did in 1955″ and calls paperless classrooms “the future of schooling”. From the article, the students certainly seem to enjoy it.

As I have talked before about the disadvantages of a paperless classroom I will instead look at what applications this can have for an English classroom. Assuming each student has access to their own computer, it gives the opportunity for more student-centred learning, building on student interests. This could link in well with the ‘Area of Study’ concept, in which senior English students study one main text about the theme ‘Belonging’ and are then asked to find complementary texts that deal with the same theme. In a more digitally-based classroom, teachers could build on this concept from the lower years of highschool, familiarising students with the concept of finding thematically linked texts on the internet. Just one of, I’m sure, many ideas.

The Center for Digital Storytelling is a California-based arts organisation, which focuses on the worth of digital storytelling.  I love their slogan: ‘Listen deeply, tell stories’ , as it brings digital storytelling back to its focus of bringing people together and creating a connection through narrative.

The site has great instructional pages, with practical tips we can use in the classroom, as well as links to good examples of stories made by people from their workshops, and interviews with ‘digital story practitioners’. It seems it is a whole creative field of its own.

I was glad to hear Mechelle M. De Craene say that pre-production is the cornerstone of making a digital story. For us, as English teachers, this is the real difference we can make; kids can make a slap-dash story on Photostory at home, but we can teach them the value of preparation, planning, good storytelling, deep thought and learning, and creative techniques.

Mechelle’s idea of incorporating the literature circle into digital storytelling is a fantastic one. It puts students in key roles and makes them ‘colleagues’ and ‘collaborators’ rather than just classmates. It takes the traditional roles for the sharing of literature and puts them in a new media context. It also ensures everyone is involved and supports the NSW Quality Teaching Framework‘s emphasis on substantive communication, engagement and social support.

I have seen the idea of the literature circle work with adults, but look forward to seeing it in practice in the classroom once I get my own class!

Image: “CIMG1928.JPG” on Flickr at http://www.flickr.com/photos/vanessabertozzi/110676677/

I found Tom‘s point about students becoming increasingly reliant on technology very interesting. The fact that students are able to click a mouse a few times and find any information they want is both a plus and a minus in terms of their learning. It is a plus in that information is accessible and they are skilled in finding it on the net, but it’s a minus in that the internet has come to dominate any other form of learning information.

A discussion I recently read called ‘Literacy and the internet‘ (which I will discuss further in my podcast) related the story of an American university professor who asked his students to find obituaries of famous writers without using the internet. The response? Students stared at him blankly. They had no idea how to do this.

This story emphasises our increasing reliance on the internet…and as we move towards things like ‘paperless classrooms’ we should ask ourselves if this reliance is really something we want to encourage..?

I have long had an interest in digital storytelling. Digital stories are a fantastic way to explore a personal narrative. They are accessible to students and teachers alike. They are engaging, culturally adaptable, motivating and collaborative, and the stories told can break down barriers and bring people together.

BECTA has done some research on the benefits for teachers and students.Their findings back up my initial observations (as above) but also note the benefits of digital stories in improving literacy, using students’ background (and out-of-school) knowledge, relating to different learning styles (visual, verbal and active), increasing visual literacy and as a gateway to understanding stylistic effects such as transitions, sound effects and music.

While I have primarily used Vegas as a tool for creating digital stories, I have also seen the benefits of using Photostory in the classroom, as it is easy to use and accessible. However, I feel it is important teachers dedicate an appropriate amount of time to understanding the digital story format (through viewing already made examples and discussing them – what works? what doesn’t?) and planning and writing their own story. This preparation should take up just as much time as the technological making of the story, if students are the learn how to create a quality product.

Image: ‘Create digital stories using Photostory 3′ from Flickr photos, http://www.flickr.com/photos/stevenraymondparker/2802119325/

Seymour Papert devoted a lot of time to discussion teaching vs. learning, and instructionism v. constructionism. He defines the theories, as relating to ICT, like this:

Instructionism = “To get better education, we must improve instruction. And if we’re going to use computers, we’ll make the computers do the instruction.”

Constructionism = “Giving children good things to do so that they can learn by doing much better than they could before.”

This is a useful anchor for discussion about education. And it essentially comes back to the divide between students as consumers and students as producers/creators. If they are merely receptacles for instruction, they are passively consuming ICT rather than using its full potential for creative problem solving and higher-order thinking. But if they are creating, or constructing, through using ICT they are using deep knowledge, deep understanding and problematic knowledge, as is supported by the NSW Quality Teaching Framework.

However, I still think it is important to note that constructionism can work as a theory without ICT – providing good things for students to do, and learn from, is not dependent on using technology. There are plenty of creative teaching strategies teachers can use if they are determined to provide quality, engaging tasks that promote deep learning and understanding.