Technology-based Lesson Presentations!

Hello again! It's been a long two weeks with no posts, but I am back! March 10-14 was our Spring Break, so obviously, we did not meet! We did have class scheduled for March 26, but since the class was going to be a planning session for our technology-based lessons, Ms. Williams gave us the time to work at home instead. I was actually really glad about that, because I still needed more time to think about what exactly I wanted to do!

This week we presented our technology-based lessons in class. I know it's shocking, but I managed to use The Turn of the Screw yet again! My lesson was on how to communicate professionally through e-mail. In many classes, I hear teachers complaining again and again about the "unprofessional" e-mails they receive from students. The common complaint is that students often revert to the common “netspeak” when using technology (i.e. instant messenger, e-mails, etc.), so I decided to base my lesson off of this idea to try and close the gap between letter writing and e-mail writing. The lesson actually worked perfectly with the novel too, because at the end of chapter seventeen, the governess plans on writing a letter to her employer! :-D

I also really enjoyed seeing the other presentations. My peers (as usual!) came up with wonderful ideas to incorporate technology into their lessons. I really liked the lesson which used the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. I thought it was a great idea to have students use tape recorders to experiment with the difficult dialect of the text. Many students would give up trying to read this book simply because of the difficulty of the language, but I think a lesson like this could inspire students to be more willing to be engaged with the reading.

Well, next week is Ms. William's Spring Break, so we won't be meeting for class. Enjoy the break, but I'll be back on April 9!

E-Guest Speaker

Today our LAE4860 class interacted with an E-Guest Speaker via a Web Conferencing program on the computer. Ms. Diedre Price spoke on "Rewriting the Composition Classroom." I really enjoyed her lecture and her ideas, but it was very difficult for me to focus during the conference. I can see how this technology could be useful, but it was just so difficult to focus when the speaker wasn't physically in the room. I think this issue would be a serious problem for many students as well. If I used this kind of technology in my own classroom, I would definitely have an assignment to accompany the speaker. During our class, I knew I would be distracted, so I took notes. I would have my students do the same if I didn't have an assignment to give - It is just too easy to become distracted.

On the positive side, however, Web Conferences would be a great tool for inviting a diverse group of speakers into your classroom that otherwise wouldn't be able to join the classroom environment in person! I can just imagine how wonderful an experience this tool could be - Endless possibilities really... But you'd have to be a pro to get it to work properly and keep your students' attention!