This weekend, I looked at a couple of edublogs for my Teaching With Technology class. I skimmed a few weeks of Langwitches, reading 4 or 5 posts in-depth, and read a few posts of Teachers At Risk. It's been really cool reading my colleagues' amazing blogs, seeing their different takes on the same or similar readings and classes that I've experienced. It's also nice to read the blog of someone who hasn't been following more or less the same path as me this last month and a half. I think I'll start reading these, and a few more edublogs, on a semi-regular basis.
One of the first things that struck me while reading Langwitches was the importance Tolisano gives to authorship. The latest entry (at the time I'm writing this) is about creative commons copyright. To those unfamiliar with CC, the idea is that anyone can use the images, text, etc that you post/publish/leave lying around your living room labeled as CC - as long as they credit you, and as long as they don't make any attempt to profit off of your work. It's beautiful and idealist, like CouchSurfing before they sold out (a rambling post for another day), a testiment that people are basically good and that the internet is a great way to foster communication and collaboration. Tolisano makes an all-too-common lament that people, for various reasons, subvert the purpose of CC, particularly with leaving off authorship. She lists a number of reasons people seem to do it, ranging from malicious intent* (claiming her work as their own) to simple ignorance**. I'm glad she addressed the fact that many people break copyright law online simply because they don't know any better. We have to remember that many users of the internet are children, or adults with limited technological literacy/experience. All the more reason to educate people about important internet norms.
Scrolling down to June 11th, you can see some e-books her kids made about animals. I clicked through (totally worth it - they're adorable!) and was struck by two things. 1) There was some misinformation in the book about sharks, so fact-checking wasn't as emphasized as it could have been (humans are NOT a major food source for sharks!) and 2) the e-books ended with a bibliography. Yes, the bibliographies had only one book each. But Tolisano is teaching the kids, early on, that it's important to cite your sources. This message cannot be given early or often enough!
Langwitches is filled with useful tutorials and flow-charts, including a poster about how to use e-mail for school, and how to use different tools. I think I'll find this website pretty useful for getting more familiar with common technology. I was pretty turned off by one post she had, though, about how technophobes need to "just get over it!" While you don't want teachers who don't know basics, like how to check email, telling those of us with lower technological literacy to "get over it" is not particularly encouraging. In fact, in makes me less likely to want to read her blog, and thus less likely to learn to use what she's berating me for not already knowing. Maybe she was just trying to blow off steam after a particularly frustrating exchange with another teacher. But blogs are editable, and she should have changed the title of that entry by now.
The other edublog I read was Teachers At Risk. I really liked the entry titled Nine Questions I Ask My Students on the First Day of School. She wrote it for her special ed math class, but it's easily adaptable to any subject matter, and seems like a great way to set a positive tone on the first day, while also getting a good idea of what areas/skills your students will be able to leverage well, and what will need more scaffolding***.
Does anyone else have an edublog they would recommend? Comments welcome!
* Kate Beaton's reaction to the Grumpy Cat people stealing one of her jokes to make a profit.
** FAQ for Hyperbole and a Half. Scroll down to see Brosh address reposting without crediting the author.
***Did I really just write scaffolding in my blog? Alternately, p<0.005.
EDIT: Thanks, Anne, for catching the spelling error! I had interpreted it as a sandwich of languages, instead of a magician of languages. That would have made it difficult for people to find the blog, in case of link-failure!
One of the first things that struck me while reading Langwitches was the importance Tolisano gives to authorship. The latest entry (at the time I'm writing this) is about creative commons copyright. To those unfamiliar with CC, the idea is that anyone can use the images, text, etc that you post/publish/leave lying around your living room labeled as CC - as long as they credit you, and as long as they don't make any attempt to profit off of your work. It's beautiful and idealist, like CouchSurfing before they sold out (a rambling post for another day), a testiment that people are basically good and that the internet is a great way to foster communication and collaboration. Tolisano makes an all-too-common lament that people, for various reasons, subvert the purpose of CC, particularly with leaving off authorship. She lists a number of reasons people seem to do it, ranging from malicious intent* (claiming her work as their own) to simple ignorance**. I'm glad she addressed the fact that many people break copyright law online simply because they don't know any better. We have to remember that many users of the internet are children, or adults with limited technological literacy/experience. All the more reason to educate people about important internet norms.
Scrolling down to June 11th, you can see some e-books her kids made about animals. I clicked through (totally worth it - they're adorable!) and was struck by two things. 1) There was some misinformation in the book about sharks, so fact-checking wasn't as emphasized as it could have been (humans are NOT a major food source for sharks!) and 2) the e-books ended with a bibliography. Yes, the bibliographies had only one book each. But Tolisano is teaching the kids, early on, that it's important to cite your sources. This message cannot be given early or often enough!
Langwitches is filled with useful tutorials and flow-charts, including a poster about how to use e-mail for school, and how to use different tools. I think I'll find this website pretty useful for getting more familiar with common technology. I was pretty turned off by one post she had, though, about how technophobes need to "just get over it!" While you don't want teachers who don't know basics, like how to check email, telling those of us with lower technological literacy to "get over it" is not particularly encouraging. In fact, in makes me less likely to want to read her blog, and thus less likely to learn to use what she's berating me for not already knowing. Maybe she was just trying to blow off steam after a particularly frustrating exchange with another teacher. But blogs are editable, and she should have changed the title of that entry by now.
The other edublog I read was Teachers At Risk. I really liked the entry titled Nine Questions I Ask My Students on the First Day of School. She wrote it for her special ed math class, but it's easily adaptable to any subject matter, and seems like a great way to set a positive tone on the first day, while also getting a good idea of what areas/skills your students will be able to leverage well, and what will need more scaffolding***.
Does anyone else have an edublog they would recommend? Comments welcome!
* Kate Beaton's reaction to the Grumpy Cat people stealing one of her jokes to make a profit.
** FAQ for Hyperbole and a Half. Scroll down to see Brosh address reposting without crediting the author.
***Did I really just write scaffolding in my blog? Alternately, p<0.005.
EDIT: Thanks, Anne, for catching the spelling error! I had interpreted it as a sandwich of languages, instead of a magician of languages. That would have made it difficult for people to find the blog, in case of link-failure!
You just referenced Hyperbole and a Half for a school assignment! You win the internet! Congrats!
ReplyDelete(Though I will take this as a teachable moment to point out that both of your links in the footnote go to the root website rather than the specific page you want. I'm not sure how that happened, but check your hyperlink and make sure there's the full address in there, i.e. http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/p/faq_10.html )
Also, not to be a total mean nitpicker (I'm sorry!) but the blog is actually called Langwitches. I think your Langwiches is cuter though!
I popped over to Langwitches and was immediately overwhelmed by the layout. I couldn't figure out what followed what, or what types of content there were. It sounds like she has some really nice content, but I tend to tune out of a blog when it's not immediately clear how to approach its contents! A lesson she could perhaps learn as someone who sounds a bit snobbish towards the less technologically inclined...
Hey Anne,
DeleteThanks for catching the spelling error! I'm gonna go update that now.
When I click the links, they go to the right places for me. The ones in the paragraphs should go to the specific posts, and then the ones in the footnotes should go to the home pages (my logic being that the specific posts had to do with "malicious intent" and "simple ignorance", but and then the bloggers' names went to their homepages to give people the context of who they were.) Is that confusing? If so, I'll rethink it maybe change the links, or at least find some way to make it more clear.
I totally agree that this assignment gave us a great opportunity to read blogs that were not on the exact same subjects as ours already are! It helped me to form a larger picture of what my blog could become in time.
ReplyDeleteI also think the post about CC, which prior to reading your post I had not heard of, was really interesting. It is easy to think that actions have a malicious intent behind them but more often than not it is like you said simple ignorance. I'm glad that blogger did admit that might be the case, although it sounded like the tone of that post my not have been very positive!
I think Kate Beaton's post was pretty toned-down but unhappy, but that's because she had probably been specifically ripped off by another blogger. Allie Bosh's (in Hyperbole and a Half) was more informative, assuming most people just don't know about the effects of reposting without crediting, which I think is probably true. I think Tolisano in Langwitches was a little in the middle, maybe leaning toward annoyed.
DeleteSee you in class!