Advertisement: Visual with words

Script: Structured

[Scene one setting: classroom. Students sitting in rows and columns waiting for the teacher to give them a test]

Teacher: Ok children, today we will be taking... [Flames shoot up around the walls and great demons with giant clubs fall from the ceiling] AN ESSAY TEST!
Students: NOOOOOOO!
[The teacher begins to laugh in standard villain fashion while the demons beat the children severely.]
Mark: I have a feeling -ouch, that club has a nail in it- I have a feeling this will reflect negatively upon my psyche years from now. Ouch, seriously that nail is sharp and rusty!
[Fade to black]

[Scene two setting a similar classroom with a different teacher.]

Teacher: Ok children today we will be writing in our journals. To save time, you should finish up in class and turn it into me.
[Mark begins to scream and look to the ceiling for club wielding demons.]
Teacher: Mark, is everything ok?
Mark: Well sir, because of negative experiences with essay tests in the past I have developed a severe, if implausible, form of test anxiety.
Teacher: But you are not taking a test at all, this is journal writing.
Mark: I understand that, but the situations are so similar (e.g. writing within a time limit) that I experience the same feelings as I would if I was taking an actual essay test. It is called stimulus generalization. I have been conditioned (via demons) to react with anxiety towards the stimulus of taking essay tests. The stimulus of journal writing is so similar to an essay test that I cannot help but feel anxious.
Teacher: Like being afraid to get in a hot tub after being half devoured by a shark!
Mark: Precisely!
Teacher: Is there anyway around this phenomenon?
Mark: Yes. Try mixing things up. if you present something in a different way, the stimuli will be so varied that I can distinguish between the conditioned stimulus and another stimulus that is sufficiently unlike it so as not to elicit the same (or possibly any) level of conditioning.
Teacher: Interesting I will try and think of something new.
[Fade to black]

[Scene three setting: same class different day]

Teacher: Well children I have thought about the odd episode we had the other day in class and I have decided to try out blogging as your new journal writing activity. I have created one blog with a writing prompt for each day. All you need to do is write as you normally would in the comments section. this way not only will you be doing the same amount of work, but you can also view what other students have written and see if your writing matches up or even alter what you were going to write so it responds to other issues that other students bring up.

Students: HUZAH!

[Fade to black]

Interview: Informational

can be downloaded at

this page which loads very slow and isnt a virus

Poem: Creative

Badly writen MI poem

My Call? Language
a beast beautiful and toothy
capable of grace
capable of delicious evil
I tame that beast
I shape it
that is my talent

My Call? itrapersonal
reflective
like a pool
deep and still
I know thyself
I shape myself
that is my talent

My Call? Interpersonal
outgoing
be it group or diad
this is where I shine
knowing the motivation of others
I dive in the conversation
I shape the conversation
that is my talent

on a blog, we all shine
on a blog I can use language
crafting and mastering prose
on a blog I can be reflective
searching my mind answering deep questions
on a blog I can be outgoing
joining the community making my voice heard
on a blog I can shine.

Picture: Visual display

Avatar. who am I on the net?

Short story: Creative writing

The young monk had journeyed long to reach the great and wise blogosphere. Resting upon his heavy and travel worn wooden staff he looked upon the radiance of the lightning scared blogosphere and spoke thusly:

“Blogosphere! What is the primary advantage of using a blog in the classroom? Conversely, what is the biggest disadvantage?”

Green lightning streaked across the wise being’s surface. And thus, the Blogosphere responded.

The primary advantage is the most obvious: blogging gets students writing, and since writing is a critical part of literacy acquisition, anything that encourages more writing should be closely examined and adopted if it works to encourage writing. In classroom use, blogging can also contribute to community building, another critical literacy skill. Most obviously, perhaps, using blogs also promotes technological literacy, a critical literacy for both present and future. Also, blogs are an easy way for teachers to make use of the Internet. Given the ease of creating and maintaining blogs on template driven sites like Blogger.com, the time investment for teachers is small. If they would be reading paper-based writing, they’d be spending a similar amount of time, and the blog has the advantage of being accessible anywhere/anytime you have a connection to the Web.

Disadvantages to blogging include resistance by students who do not see or do not want to see the positive potential to this kind of non-traditional “non-academic” writing, as well as the potential for mis-use of the medium. If anonymous posts are allowed, for example, that could lead to problem—nasty comments or hijacking the discussion. Both can be avoided by NOT allowing anonymous posts and by setting up protected or private blogs. Student resistance can be addressed in the same ways you address resistance to traditional academic endeavors. A blog is a tool, one potential element in your pedagogy, not the only one.

The young monk scratched his chin and said,

“With that in mind, great blogosphere, do you think middle schools or junior highs today are ready to integrate blogging into their classrooms?”

If the teachers have a clear understanding of the pros and cons, if they have the support of their administration, and if they can create “protected” blogs (password-protected sites that prevent predators from accessing the students’ writing), then I think blogs would be extremely helpful. The format and context of blogs are so non-academic that students more readily accede to writing in them than they might given the traditional pen-and-paper assignment. In addition, using blogs allows teachers to continue discussion beyond the physical constraints of the classroom. Some people have questioned the use of blogs v. discussion boards, but the critical point there is that threaded discussion boards can pull participants off into side threads and fragment or derail the discussion.

“I see,”

said the monk,

“the argument that seems to always come up against blogging is that some schools may not have the means to provide computer time to every student, and that many students may not have internet access. Also, many argue that many educators lack the training to properly implement a blog in the classroom. How would you counter this argument?”

The issue of access is a critical one. Schools in poorer districts frequently have trouble providing access, a problem that may be addressable by appealing to wealthier districts or nearby colleges or businesses for help in the form of hand-me-down computers. Grants are another way schools can expand their resources. In terms of training teachers, it is relatively easy to teach someone to create and monitor a blog—much easier than a website, for example. In many cases, if schools appealed to their local universities or colleges for tech-savvy faculty and grad students to volunteer a few hours to train teachers, that problem could be solved. When I was WPA here, we did some of that. We also had a regional conference for K-16 teachers here that introduced many of them to using the Internet (this predated blogs, but we had a bunch who built MOOs and websites). There are almost always was of dealing with these kinds of problems.

“I understand.”

Said the monk. And thus, he was off to reflect on what he had learned.