Archive
Classification Scheme
Here is my category scheme, the picture of which was created using the Visual Understanding Environment. It might seem a bit complicated, but I think this works for my way of thinking. The two main categories of Topic and Use are at the top along with the additional topic of Working. Topic will be specific with each individual link. Use is further specified to four sub-categories: Professional Development, which includes Tools (Open Source and not), Networking, and Research (journal articles, etc.); Resources, such as images, sounds, video, and reading texts; Independent Activities; and Ideas for Lessons. The last two are divided based on my Learning Elements, which I've started to grow used to.
Policy Brief
The parts of the policy brief that will become an entire policy brief in the end.
Policy Brief 1 - Access, the Digital Divide, and Special Populations
Access to the Internet is an important issue to consider as a part of our departmental policy. Knowing that different students will have different abilities to access the Internet should affect how we go about designing out courses and department.
In order to make sure that our students are given equal opportunities in our courses, we must ensure that they are given equal access to the learning. There are a few considerations we need to take into account:
- People of varying socioeconomic status will have varying access to the Internet;
- Distance students will require more constant access to the Internet than full-time students;
- Distance students are more likely to be working full time and thus have less time to access our classes;
- Literacy has a different meaning with online materials and physical access alone isn't enough to compensate source;
- Students will have varying experience with computers;
- Our adult distance students will not be "digital natives" and so may feel less comfortable using computers and the Internet to learn;
- Varying access will make it hard to require identical participation in classes.
In order to address these concerns, we should adopt a department-wide policy on what we require from our students in terms of Internet access. We should address how often they must be able to have access and for how many hours every week. We should standardize an idea of what will routinely be expected of them. We must provide support for those who are not as familiar with computers and may be lacking in digital literacy.
In sum, we must make clear our expectations of students, while providing necessary support to enable them to meet those expectations.
Instructional Blueprint - Narrative Tenses
| Topic | Using Past Tenses in Storytelling | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Subject Area | Practical Language | |||
| Audience/Grade Level | Upper Intermediate and above university students | |||
| Purpose | To get students completely familiar with the uses of past tenses in storytelling | |||
| Objectives | Students will be able to use all tenses properly in telling a story. Students will be able to structure a story properly. | |||
| Learning Element | Activity Description | Method Used | Web Resources | |
| Frame | Clear, Measurable Objectives | Start by stating the objectives to students in a clear way - working with different tenses to form stories. | Present | |
| Motivation | Tell a personal story to the class with vivid detail. Emphasize the use of various tenses. | Present | ||
| Shown Connections to Previously Learned Material | Elicit from students the various tenses and how they might be used. | Guide | ||
| Shown Connections to Students' Lives | Ask students to work in pairs and describe an interesting story that happened to them in the recent past. | Collaborative | ||
| Inform | Content Presented in a Clear, Structured Manner | Have students go through the website reviewing the various uses of the tenses and conjunctions. Draw timelines on the board and ask students to fill them in. | Guide, Active Learning | http://www.vivquarry.com/wkshts/narrative.html |
| Have students go through the website and fill in the gaps with the correct tenses of the verbs.. | Present, Active Learning | http://vivquarry.com/wkshts/narrex1.html | ||
| Clear Demonstrations/Modelling | Give students short stories to read with the tenses. They then memorize their story and do a similar activity as the Telephone Game, where they tell the story to a partner, who tells it to another, and so on. | Active Learning | ||
| Explore | Guide the Students | Divide students into groups. Give each group 5 phrases that they must hide in a written story. As students write, circulate and try to assist with an emphasis on tenses. After finished, students read stories out loud and others try to guess what the phrases were. | Collaborative, Role-Play | |
| Have students go through the website and think about how to create a structured story. | Present, Active Learning | http://www.glencoe.com/sec/literature/course/course1/unit/shortstory.shtml | ||
| Inform | Review What Was Learned | Review timelines on board and other things learned in class. | Present | |
| Try | Allow Students to Perform Independently | For homework, assign each student to create their own stories. | Problem Based, Active Learning | |
Instructional Blueprint - Limericks
| Topic | Limericks/Stress and Rhythm | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Subject Area | Practical Language | |||
| Audience/Grade Level | Upper Intermediate and above university students | |||
| Purpose | To try to familiarize students with stress and rhythm in English by using limericks and meter in poetry | |||
| Objectives | Students will be able to identify stressed syllables. Students will be able to create their own limericks. | |||
| Learning Element | Activity Description | Method Used | Web Resources | |
| Frame | Clear, Measurable Objectives | Start by stating the objectives to students in a clear way - trying to work with stress and rhythm in English by identifying it in poetry. | Present | |
| Motivation | Ask students to look at the first 10 poems with pictures and work together to identify similar characteristics between the poems. The pictures and nonsense rhymes serve to capture interest. | Present, Collaborative | http://www.nonsenselit.org/Lear/BoN/bon010.html | |
| Shown Connections to Previously Learned Material | Elicit from students structures of poems that they have studied in Introduction to Literature class. Focus of the differences between meter in Czech poems and English poems (e.g., based on syllables and stress. | Active Learning, Guide | ||
| Elicit from students known rhymes. Focus on problematic sounds (e.g., ones that sound the same if read in a Czech way, but not in English). | Active Learning, Guide | |||
| Shown Connections to Students' Lives | Emphasize the use of stress and rhythm in English speach. Focus on reading poems out loud and over-stressing the stressed syllables to show how they appear. | Present, Guide | ||
| Inform | Content Presented in a Clear, Structured Manner | After students have come up with their ideas of what makes the poems similar, ask them to share it as a class. Together come up with a list of what makes a limerick a limerick. | Active Learning, Collaborative | |
| After students have an understanding of the rules that go into limericks, have them visit the website to see how different words can be replaced for other phrases. They then share their ideas of what makes the phrases the same. | Active Learning, Collaborative | http://www.learner.org/teacherslab/math/patterns/limerick/limerick_acttxt.html | ||
| Clear Demonstrations/Modelling | Ask students to browse through websites to find their favorite limericks, which they will then share with the rest of the class. | Guide, Present | http://www.math.fsu.edu/~mesterto/Unscramble/limericks.html | |
| Have students visit the section of the website called Scrambled Limericks and put the limericks into the proper order | Guide | http://www.iatefl.org.pl/call/j_lesson20.htm | ||
| Explore | Guide the Students | Together as a class try to use the elicited rhyming words to form a limerick. | Guide, Collaborative | |
| Inform | Review What Was Learned | Remind students of the important parts of limericks - stress, rhythm, syllables. | Present | |
| Try | Allow Students to Perform Independently | For homework (or if time in class), assign each student to create their own limericks. | Problem Based, Active Learning | |
Internet in the Classroom
My name is Aaron and I am excited to be pursuing my Master of Education in Instructional Systems — Educational Technology.
Here is a picture of me at the beach in Greece: 
I am interested in the integration of educational technology into second language classrooms (both in-person classrooms, as well as virtual classrooms). Within this, I am interested in how communities form and work with learning. In addition, I am currently studying digital stories in EFL (as inspired by a class from PSU).
I currently live in Brno, Czech Republic, where I teach at the Faculty of Education of Masaryk University. Brno is a nice city: not too big and not too small. The public transportation is great and gets me everywhere I need to go, and they have some nice theaters and sports and such.
At the Faculty of Education, I am a foreign lecturer (though I only teach seminars) and also the Head of the Practical Language Section. I teach classes on English (the practical language part), both in-person and online. We have a rather large department for the faculty, and one online course we teach has reached up to 3,500 students in a single semester. Most of the day students we teach are college-aged (19 - 25), but we also teach extension programs for adults. The main program is 3 years for a bachelor's degree plus 2 more for a master's.
In addition to practical language classes, I teach writing and drama courses. In the drama course we write a play one semester and perform it the second. In most of the courses I teach, I try to incorporate a variety of formats, though more and more seems to be shifting online with more projects, both group and individual. So some classes are entirely online, while half of the practical language classes are taught in a room with computers for each student (even though this is usually a very bad layout for a language class, because the computers interrupt the ability to talk) and the other half have one computer connected to the Internet and with a projector.
For my computing needs, I generally prefer open source solutions, so I have Ubuntu Linux installed on this computer. Unfortunately, the computer I have is not as open as I would like, and I have some problems with Ubuntu, so I use Windows just as often (and it is what I use at work).
Below you will see a list of other assignments from this course.
China's Greenhouse Gas Emissions Threaten to Double
Beijing, China: Upset over all of the attention the recent financial crisis has been getting, China's greenhouse gas emissions decided to fight back. Not content to remain silent, they have threatened to double in size unless full attention is paid.
"We used to get stories written about us all of the time," said China's methane emissions, "but now all you hear is money this, crisis that; mortgages over here, bailouts over there. We need to get people's attention back on what's really important here: us."
A mere two years ago, many stories (such as one in the Christian Science Monitor) were being written about how China's greenhouse gas emissions were becoming the largest in the world. Now that news has mostly faded behind stories of the world's economic crisis.
"We're still the biggest, you know?" said China's carbon dioxide emissions. "We haven't gone anywhere. The highest levels in the whole world. And that was before the Olympics. What's it going to take to get a little respect?"
Apparently, doubling in size. "I know we were the biggest, but who respects that these days?" asked China's ozone emissions. "All anyone respects is extremes, so that's why we're going to take it to the next level: two times what we are now. Unless our demands are met."
Those demands include 20 reporters devoted to full-time coverage, as well as at least 5 cover stories every two weeks. "It has to be real covers, too," said China's nitrous oxide emissions. "We're not going to count The Sacramento Bee. Try to pull anything like that, and we'll be talking three or four times our present size."
Climate scientists warn that the results could be disastrous. Australian mathematician Glen Peters of the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research in Oslo claims that it will just take "simple things" to keep China's emissions down. "We just have to give into their demands if we want to keep this planet inhabitable."
Reminded of recent trends in globalization, Dabo Guan of the Electricity Policy Research Group at the University of Cambridge in England warned that if the demands are not met, other country's emissions could follow suit. "That," he says, "would be a dangerous path."
The financial crisis could not be reached for comment.
Friday Not-So-Random One
It's been a long time. A real long time.
- Damien Jurado
The song Ohio by Damien Jurado has been running through my head for the past few days. I originally heard it on a mixtape 1 given to me by a friend of mine, I think because I didn't know who the Mountain Goats were2. It's an eclectic mix, but this song was one that really stood out.
It's a sad song. The first way this becomes apparent is the music, and especially the tempo. But there is also something haunting about the lyrics. I'm not precisely sure what it is that brings this out. I mean the story isn't exactly full of thrills, but there is something in the way that it is told that brings out the
It's a simple story, and I have come to like these sorts of stories a lot. Being away from America, I find one way to keep in touch is the stories told on This American Life3. They seem to collect just a piece of what it means to be living in America. It's similar to what Studs Turkel did with his oral histories. Sometimes the best way to learn about things is just to listen. The stories are also a lot of what I like about many of the Mountain Goats and Pedro the Lions' songs.
To return to the original song, there is something about the style of the song that gives it depth. It is possible to think of the lyrics as metaphorical, but except in the broader sense of all words being metaphors (and the horses passing4), most of them can be taken straightforwardly. I think it is this fact that gives it its depth: the fact that we can take this simple structure and add on to it and adapt it so that it fits in with our worldview. There is something allegorical about it.
To think about it more, below is a video for the song I found made by high school students. For those who didn't grow up nearby5, the city pictured here is Boston. One of the interesting things about the video is they adapt a lot of the song literally; some say too literally. Does this add to it? Detract? Judge for yourself.
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This one was a real mixtape. On a cassette and everything, with a nice collage as a cover. ↩
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A problem that has been corrected, many times over. ↩
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I just recently found out it started out being called "Your Radio Playhouse". I think everyone can agree that the name change was a vast improvement. ↩
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Yes, similes are metaphors. No, I will not argue about this fact. ↩
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And can't extrapolate from the location of the course. ↩
First! Friday Random One
Take a music bath once or twice a week for a few seasons. You will find it is to the soul what a water bath is to the body.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
In the feminist blogosphere, it is a tradition to do a Friday Random Ten, where you user your iPod (or whatever) and listen to and list 10 random songs. I first came across this tradition through Lauren at Feministe, but she isn't sure who started the trend.
Regardless, as I said in my first post I tend to think badly of shorter forms of things. I like the long, drawn out thought. This also means I tend to prefer albums to individual songs. When I'm on the youtube, I watch videos for songs, not albums, because that's what's given to me. And you can find some great shit there. (And also elsewhere.)
But I prefer the album as an art form. I like the ups and downs and just the feeling of completeness that comes with a great album. I like the juxtapositions and analogies and everything. A well-done mix-tape1 can also be a work of art, but I usually stick to original albums.
So this is the start of a new tradition here. Each week2 I will start up my music player (set to random and shuffle by album) and listen to one album. I'll put up some sort of review here. I think the review will depend on which album it is, whether it's one I know by heart or one I hadn't listened to before. The latter will be a good opportunity to clean my collection out of some junk. I also envision speaking about lyrics a lot, given the format of the site.
So the first in the series is . . . Stop Making Sense: Special New Edition by the Talking Heads.
Interesting beginning. I got turned on to this album from an ex-girlfriend. We watched the film it was based on, which was pretty amazing. This was during a period where she was determined to watch all the classic rock movies3 (Stop Making Sense, The Wall, Tommy, etc.). I'm not sure where she ended up in that quest.
Anyway, the film is great. The whole thing is full of such great energy and feeling. I'm not the Talking Heads' biggest fan, but there's something in the film that makes it eminently appealing. A little crazy, but undeniably awesome. This special edition of the CD from the film includes extra songs that were in the film but not on the original CD.
Starts off with Psycho Killer, the Talking Heads' song I have the most history with. I first learned the song at the summer camp I went to as a kid4. We song a lot of songs together, and many of them were rock/pop/etc. songs before I really knew what popular music (or any music, really) was. So I loved this song before I understood it or had any context for it (other than the long-haired cook who rocked it to bits).
Then comes Heaven, which I like, and a few songs which have energy, but don't stay with me. Burning Down The House and Life During Wartime follow, and if you don't want to get up and jump around, then I don't know what to say to you. I don't know if I can keep up the one-by-one conceit (which was my original plan for every Friday Random One). We'll end it here.
I will say it took me a while to get what Once In A Lifetime was about (I think the same ex explained it to me), but I always liked it. And Take Me To The River might be my favorite track and I just found out it was by Al Green. I'll have to look into it5.
I don't have much to say about this album's lyrics. It didn't strike me as one of the most important parts. I'm not saying it's not well written, just that the lyrics don't leave me with pictures beyond their inclusion in the songs.
So, I'd recommend this album to just about anyone, and probably the movie as well. We'll leave with the opening scene in the film (Psycho Killer):
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No, they aren't tapes these days, but I think that name sounds best. ↩
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Note that it likely won't happen every week. For example, next week I'll be in the land of Zeus and Hera and am unlikely to post anything. ↩
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That's classic rock movies, not classic rock movies, although they somewhat overlap. ↩
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I'm sure I will have more to say about this camp in time. It did much to form who I am. ↩
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I just saw a version from Al and I gotta say I like the Talking Heads' version better, but that's always influenced by what I'm exposed to first. ↩
