How I am going to use my Voki

I have been trying to think of ways to use a Voki. I liked Diane's idea to let the Voki voice her response to the last reading assignment, so I thought I'd build on that and try to find ways to let kids use a voki to voice their responses. My extremely difficult 7th grade reading class is about to read Stuck in Neutral, a book written from the perspective of a boy who has an extreme case of cerebral palsey and whose dad is starting to think it might be better to end the boy's life. The dad is convinced it would be a mercy killing, but the reader is inside the head of the boy and we know him to have a rich life, albeit a different one from ours. I wonder if there might be a way to have each student create a voki and let them talk for the main character, since he cannot? I just tested mine on the school's wiki site which (which I set up) and the wiki will support vokis. That might be kind of cool. At least it might get their interest.

I am also going to post my voki on the wiki and have her give directions for the the written response to the book we just finished that kids are supposed to post.

Another thing I am going to do is use it to create some oral practice quizzes for the root word page on the wiki. In case anyone wants to check it out, go to http://ojhs-imc.wikispaces.com

Okay, I'm a copy cat

Get a Voki now!

Twitter in the News

Here is a link to an article about how Twitter traffic more than doubled in March. I still don't get it.
http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=136020

Disruptive Ideas

I have been reading the Disruptive Innovation book the last few days. I find the business models it describes interesting, but so far I haven't found much new in the author's comments regarding disruption in education. I guess I thought he was going to talk about some really new ideas, but so far (and I am only 120 pages in, so it may yet come)he has really only talked about online courses--more or less what already exists. Of course, he is talking about ways it will naturally improve with more use. Still, I haven't really read anything in that book yet I would consider truly new.

What I did like and what I will say is a new idea for me is the idea that disruption comes from marketing products (ideas, etc) to NON-consumers. I thought the business examples he gave illustrated his point well and I like how he is starting to identify non-comsumers of education. Really they are non-consumers of certain aspects of education, or non-consumers of certain courses.

So I guess the question then becomes for me who is non-consumer of reading and how can I market reading to them? How can I use computers in new and different ways to individualize reading instruction for kids on my classes? This question comes at a time when the structure of my reading classes is being drastically changed as well. Instead of every day for a semester, the powers that be are looking to go to a yearlong A/B schedule or even a 3 week block schedule. How can I combine the schedule changes with some innovative online learning options? I don't know--more thinking is in order. Wish I knew HTML and could write my own programs.

What is a Text?

I have said it before and I will say it again: Part of this course needs to be not only how do we use these technologies, but how do we teach kids to use them AND think critically about what they are doing? I just read an article in the March 2009 Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy called "Teaching and Reading the Millennial Generation Through Media Literacy". This article defines Media Literacy as "the ability to access, analyze, evaluate, and effectiely communicate in a variety of forms including print and non-print text".

Non-Print text? This is surely a new idea for most of us. Yet this article uses movies, photos, videos and other visual media as examples of text. I think there is value in expanding our definition of "text". I think about my 13 year old son who spends, it seems to me, every available moment watching Youtube. He is an excellent reader and writer in the traditional sense, yet video is the text of his choice.

The main idea of this article is two-fold: 1) we can't assume that the "digital natives" actually know how to USE all this technology. Accordingly, we need to teach it directly. 2) we need to teach kids to think critically about all the information--visual and print--that the new technology puts at their fingertps. They need to learn to "negotiate meaning". Simply letting the kids use the technology cannot be the end goal.

Wordle.net is one of my favorite sites. Check out my creation below: