On My Vlog...

I spent the day working on a vlog. I decided to try and make this assignment not only a learning experience, but also productive. I am going to make a short film about my classroom and post it onto my new classroom blog (a work in progress). That way parents can see what my classroom is all about even if they can't come to open-house.

I've got pictures, video footage, and I wrote a script. I had started to piece it all together in iMovie, when I realized I was desperately wanting a little background music. Nothing fancy, just a simple instrumental.

Of course, unless I was going to compose and record something myself (which wasn't going to happen) I don't actually have any music to which I own the copyright so that I might use it in a film that I will put on the internet. The film is non-commercial, but still I can't just use whatever song I want.

So, I went to Creative Commons, and spent a couple hours exploring their website. There I found a link to a related site called Jamendo. A site which host the music of artists who wish to publish their work under Creative Commons copyrights. It took me a while to figure out, and I had to install a piece of software called Azureus (a bit torrent download program -- although it does more than that, too) in order to get the music I wanted, but I have a song I can legally use in a movie I send out into the internet as long as I credit the original artist..

The song isn't exactly what I wanted, but its a simple little piece of instrumental elevator music that will do nicely for a background and give the whole piece a more polished feel.

I can't wait to get it done and post it for you all to see.

On Inspiration:

I love inspiration (or other digital mapping tools). I’ve used it with my students before and students who would never outline or brainstorm on their own are suddenly making beautiful mind-maps.

Here is my digital map on a few ideas for my final project:




I think the colors and pictures and other bells and whistles really help them get fired up about a process which otherwise might seem like a waste of time to them. As I said in my last post, getting them to slow down and add a few steps to their writing is hard but almost always greatly increases their final product.

I also really like inspiration for use with my ELL students. Graphic organizers in general can be really effective with kids who are struggling with a language barrier. Allowing them to use technology to create their own graphic organizers can really improve their computer skills while at the same time really helping them develop their ideas more concretely.

Inspiration is a great first step for student projects, papers, or even to facilitate discussions both as a class in small groups. It is an especially great way for students with widely varying learning styles to explore relationships between topics. The tried and true "Compare and Contrast" essay is fine, but many students will have trouble with such an abstract assignment. Inspiration makes the exploration of relationships a visual and tactile experience. Once students have their mind map, all they have to do is record their ideas to write an essay. It will free them up to think about the act of writing rather than the content.

On digital note-taking tools:

Students are so reluctant to take notes. They seem to just want to print out everything and highlight key points for presentations or cut and paste others words directly into their own work. I think the digital note taking tools are fun and easy and would ease my students into slowing down the writing process. They are in such a rush to finish that drafting is never something they naturally do.

This week's Assignment:

Conduct research on Dinkytown (subject of extensive scholarly work).

Here is the site to organize materials found

Then, reflect on what you did--the processes you employed in conducting your searches, what you found (or didn't find), difficulties and challenges in collecting relevant material, the importance of the assignment itself, and how you might teach search strategies to students.

…

I began my search for materials on Dinkytown with a few general searches on Google. I searched for words like “Dinkytown” and “history,” or “Dinkytown” and “architecture.” This was mainly to get a sense of what is out there, although I did find some interesting articles from local newspapers and on local zines.

Most of the articles I found were about restaurants, shows, and other entertainment related topics. Also, I found a few sites related to Minnesota history like “James Lilek’s recollections of Dinkytown”.

Next I checked out wikipedia. I am, of course, critical of the information I find on wikipedia, although no more so than many Internet sites. I read the article on wikipedia and explored the footnotes that the authors had left behind.

I decided to concentrate on cultural aspects of Dinkytown because no one had yet posted any information under than sub-heading. The most interesting sites I found were a site on the Dinkytown tradition of protest and another on a current student’s reflections on the Friday night college student release into Dinkytown.

When I am doing research for an academic paper I admit that I rarely use the Internet. If I find a page that is from an academic source and well supported and footnoted I have been known to use it, but I am always tentative. You see, I believe the Internet is a reflection of the real world, and so I trust the information I find there as much as I would trust what I heard someone say on the street. Of course, you can hear some pretty cool things on the street if you listen.

I think this was a valuable assignment, in that it was a relatively easy and high interest research topic for us to use in exploration of the research process itself.

I do use the Internet for quick research to use in my classroom. If I need some background information on a historical figure, the quickest things I can do is look on wikipedia or biography.com. I try to use my knowledge of history and previous experiences on the Internet as a guide when deciding how much of this information is valid.

I have a lesson plan I use with my students before beginning a lesson plan where we explore the racist page martinlutherking.org and I allow them to discover for themselves how misleading and incorrect a web page can be. The lesson asks them questions, which will eventually lead them to see that although the site claims to be the “truth about Dr. King,” it is actually a thinly veiled white supremacist site. By the end, the lesson shows them that little on the site can be trusted.

From this lesson, I teach them some search strategies and be begin an inquiry project into a subject of their choice requiring good amounts of internet research. All research is done in class, supervised by me.

I recently went to MinnesotaStories to explore the uses of videoblogs. I was really impressed with how entertaining this site is. I have not spent a lot of time watching video on the Internet, but I was instantly pulled in by the bizarre and the beautiful within the videos on this site.

I have only lived in Minnesota for about four years, but the sense of community I felt watching these videos was tremendous. From the fantastic at MN’s state fair (which I recently attended for the first time) to the poignant at the 35W bridge collapse memorial service.

This website is a great community building site, made by and for Minnesotans. Also, it gives voice to elements of the Minnesota community that otherwise don’t get attention in more mainstream media. The video clips often have a playful feel about them, and seem to celebrate what it means to be a Minnesotan today.

Many of the videos are fairly well cut and edited, although they still have a homemade quality that helps, in part, give them their charm. Some of the clips have a more bootlegged feel to them, video footage taken from the audience at various events, for example. These clips, although low quality, have a gritty reality to them that I enjoyed.

Check out MinnesotaStories.

After thinking about vlogs, if I were to create one for this course, it would probably be related specifically to the content of the course. Perhaps I would make a demonstrational video on the positive effects of technology in the classroom, or on how I have used technology in my own class.

Using Blogs, Wikis, and On-line Discussion to Teach Writing

This will be a log of course materials for University of Minnesota's CI 5410.