Joyce Valenza’s Neverending Search

It’s been a lovely week for collaboration!

Yesterday morning Ken and I brainstormed new strategies to get his seniors to better understand characters and motivation in Hamlet.  This led to a nifty new strategy. 

We grouped the students into Hamlet communities–Hamlet, Gertrude, Claudius, and their choice of one other character.  Students are each maintaining blogs as their characters, reporting their personal responses to each scene as they read it. They are also responsible for commenting on the blogs of the other three characters in their communities. http://hamlet06.wikispaces.com/.  (Because no one selected Polonius, Ken is modeling good posting through his character.)

And in another activity relating to perspective and deeper understanding. . .

After watching the film Control Room, reading sections of Persepolis, and examining the current nuclear situation in Iran, Jeff, the Global Studies teacher and I, developed a new project.  Students will create a mock special issue of a news magazine originating from a non-Western country of their choice. http://mciu.org/~spjvweb/newsmagazine.htm

We’ve set students up with links to international news media and are encouraging them to frame their editorial decisions based on their selected country’s cultural norms, political concerns, government restrictions.

And, just for fun, they’ll be doing their covers using Flagrant Disregard’s magazine cover tool.

Yesterday, Michael, our technology director, Carol, our English Chair, and I presented a full day technology workshop for new faculty. Our focus was, technology and how to use technology to support research, communication, critical thinking, and learning.

You can see our agenda and the resources for my alternate 2.0 focused wikiworshop.

Here’s what really shocked me. Thinking I am talking to natives, I am describing Mark Prensky’s metaphor, labeling myself a digital immigrant. I talk about unpacking the good stuff I brought with me in my trunk from the old world.

As I look out at the faces of some 20 folks I would consider digital natives–some of them 20, some of them 30 years younger than me–I realize only a couple of those folks are shaking their heads when I describe common Web stuff like YouTube or Flickr or open source options. None of them have any real experience with a SmartBoard. What was truly shocking was that some of them never used databases before, not even in their preservice programs. Few had seen a streaming video database before they arrived at Springfield. None had ever created a WebQuest or a website.

So, I wonder. What are new teachers learning about technology in their undergraduate programs?

Last week I judged the video competition among Ken Rodoff’s seniors. The goal: Create a 30-second trailer for Ayn Rand’s Anthem, to be used to motivate the juniors who will be reading the book next year.  We are slowly working our way through the entire reading list.

This particular group of students had never before used iMovie. Few of them had ever before used video cameras. The project’s time restrictions were intense. We wanted to avoid straight on images of student faces. Students were judged on their creative screen shots, their appropriate use of music, their expression of the book’s theme, their “pitch” of the video to the judges.

Without exception Ken’s students rose to the occasion. Their motivation was obvious in their presentation. They gracefully managed the software’s steep learning curve. Although only one is the official winner, I’ve decided to post all five.

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Which would you have chosen?