May 25th-May 31st

Your readings for this week are:

1.) Willingness to be Disturbed
2.) Learning in the Shadow of Race and Class

I hope everyone had an enjoyable Memorial Day weekend and that the end-of-the-year whirlwind has left you intact.

What do you make of the readings this week? What's resounding with you? Are you willing to be disturbed? Other noticings?

Happy Mother's Day!

Hello everyone,

Hope your weekend was splendid and not too windy.

It is my pleasure at this juncture to direct your attention toward the Week 5 pieces. They are:

1). Giving It a Second Thought: Making Culturally Engaged Teaching Culturally Engaging,
2). A Focus on Inquiry, and
3). Exploring Inquiry as a Teaching Stance in the Writing Workshop.

While we have two seemingly separate areas to discuss within these three pieces, I think it's still important to leave this open to incorporate any thoughts that arise. So, what do you think? What do you notice? What ideas intrigue you or give you pause? Are there any specific lines--"golden lines"--that linger as you wash dishes or wait for sleep to come? Share them with us. Perhaps we can eat away at this stuff by nibbling together, whether it be inquiry, culturally engaged teaching or both.

Blogging About the "Demonstration Lesson Writings"

Gosh, the conversations about writing were great. They segue perfectly into discussion of summer institute demonstration lessons. We all were wondering about some aspect of our teaching practices. That is exactly what good teachers do and it is the foundational piece to the demonstration lesson - "inquiring minds want to know."

I've been to workshops at conferences where I have gotten great ideas to try out in the classroom. But that is exactly what they are - great ideas. I tried them out and kids had fun. So what? I didn't ever really examine the rationale for using them - I just glommed on and used them. I think the most important difference between this "make-it/take-it" workshop approach and the demonstration lesson is that whole idea of rationale - The who cares? Where's the meat? The depth? The demonstration lesson digs into the what's and why's and how's of promising and effective practices in our teaching practices. So . . . where is this all headed?

Got me! That's what we need to blog about! Actually, what do you think about this idea of creating a body of knowledge from our demonstration lesson? A theory? Art Peterson talks about that in his article "Digging Deeper: Teacher Inquiry in the summer Institute Demonstration." In some ways it seems presumptuous to think that I am creating a body of knowledge or adding to the body of knowledge, but I kinda think that is what I do when I stumble upon something that is successful with my students. Thoughts . . . wonderings . . . I don't get its . . . ? Let's muck around together!

Blogging About The Writing Readings

You've had a chance to skim through readings, read parts closely, dig into some portions of articles that tug more specifically at your teaching mind than others and ponder.

Now glom onto some aspect of the reading - an idea, something you did not realize or understand before, something you disagree with, something you would like to know more about, something that resonated with you in one specific reading, or perhaps some theme that crossed readings - and reflect about that in writing.

Remember to refer to key points brought out by at least one of the readings and work to place beginning understandings or reactivated understandings within your beliefs about teaching writing or your way of teaching in the classroom or assignments given to students.

"See" you in the blog.

Summer Institute Introduction: How Does Writing Happen/Develop?

Prompt:
How do you write? What kind of process do you use when you write? Do you wait for inspiration? Doodle around? Make an outline?

Spend some moments and reflect in writing about the processes you use when writing. When finished commenting, please read others' posts and write at least two follow-up comments.

Shake It Up

Here's another option for response.

Some overlapping ideas...different format.

http://www.teachertube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=8416a242f40fb7d7f338

Survival of Traditional Literacy in the Face of Advancing Technology

Below is a lengthy excerpt from an article by William Crossman. The issues he raises echo some Dave’s prompt brought up a few weeks back. His article makes a case for schools eventually moving away from teaching reading and writing at all, simply because the skills will be irrelevant. What do you think of what he has to say?

Don’t worry about composing a lengthy response that addresses every one of his points, just jump in quickly with a thought or two and begin the conversation. Check back as you have time to see how others responded or to add another one of your points when you have time.

Crossman, William. “Voice-In / Voice –Out Computers and the Postliterate Era: The movement away from text may be a positive step in human evolution.” The Futurist. March- April 2007.

“By the year 2050, voice-in/ voice-out (VIVO) talking computers incorporating mutisensorary, multimodal technologies will make written language obsolete, and all writing and reading will be will be replaced by speech and multisensensory content, recreating a worldwide oral culture. This will be a positive development.

Writing is an ancient technology…As with all technologies, writing can and will be replaced by newer technologies that do the same job more quickly, efficiently, universally, and economically, given the enormous resources it takes to teach everyone to write and read well.

Written language isn’t a necessity of life; it’s just a technology…

VIVO technology offers three great potential opportunities:

• VIVOs will allow the word’s millions of functionally nonliterate people to access all information via the Internet and Web without having to learn to read and write. Access to the world’s information storehouse should be considered a human right, as should the access to the information technology that opens the storehouse doors.
• VIVO’s instantaneous language-translation function will allow everyone in the world to speak with one another…Foreign language barriers will melt away.
• VIVO will allow people whose disabilities prevent them from either writing or reading to access all information by speaking, listening, looking, or signing.

Four “engines” are driving us into an oral culture by 2050:

• Humans are genetically, evolutionarily hardwired to access information by speaking, listening, and using our other senses. We start speaking or signing at age 1 or 2—we don’t just start writing.
• We now develop information technology that uses our innate ability to speak and we regularly replace older technologies with newer technologies that do the same overall job better.
• Young people are rejecting text in favor of these other information technologies. Reading for pleasure rate are going down while video-game use is going up Young people’s pro-VIVO revolution is going to change how education happens—and what education is—over the next decades.
• The large percentage of the world’s people who are functionally nonliterate are demanding access to the Internet, the Web, and the world’s storehouse of digital information.”

Crossman ends by concluding that “Our great-great- grandchildren won’t know how to write or read text and it won’t matter. They will become as skillfully ‘literate’ in the information technology of their generation as we are in ours.”

Response Possibilities:

• Crossman’s point of view is one which is certainly going to becoming increasingly more common and more supported. Since we are collectively exploring ways technology and writing could effectively intersect, how would you respond?
• Is there truth to any of his ideas and arguments? What makes enough sense that we need to be thoughtfully coming up with responses?
• How to we articulate the need for solid writers in the face of these arguments?