final reflection

I really liked the technologies I explored for my personal technology project. In the teaching that I've done (I'm a Writing Fellow, so I do a lot of tutoring students with their writing) I think the thing I've struggled the most with is helping people organize their writing. We teach writing by outlining, but for a lot of people that really isn't an effective way for them to organize their ideas. I liked mindmeister and the website I found because they really allow the students to individualize their learning and take control of it themselves. I've had students physically cut out their ideas and move them around, but it's so much easier and neater to do it on a program.

I also really like goodreads. I think it's important for English students to see that their teacher enjoys reading recreationally, and doesn't just read Shakespeare and Chaucer. I really want to create a kind of reading community where my students can share recommendations with each other and with me and where my students can see what I've read and enjoyed. I think teaching my students to love reading is one of my biggest responsibilities as an English teacher, and goodreads provides a venue for me to facilitate that.

Personally, I just liked having all of these different technologies I had to learn. It overwhelmed me at times, and some of them I probably won't ever use (I despise video conferencing/comments and I think I always will) but it was really good for me to just try until I figured them out. I think I gained a lot of confidence in working with technologies and that will help me a lot. Technology changes so quickly that confidence that you can figure new things out is much more important than actually mastering one specific technology, I think.

internet safety video

This is my favorite of the internet safety videos I watched. It's very short, but communicates the idea well. I like that it's not as menacing as a lot of the other videos I watched. I felt like a lot of them were really dark and sinister and that adolescents would view them as being over the top or unrealistic and disregard what the videos were saying. This one seemed more down-to-earth and relate-able, but still clearly explained that it's dangerous to post too much online.

Personal Technology Project

My personal technology project involves mapping outlines for essays.

The objectives it relates to are:

11th grade

Objective 2
(Extended Writing): Write to analyze literary text and explain informational text. (Emphasize expository writing. Students should use the entire writing process to produce at least one extended piece per term, not necessarily limited to the type of writing emphasized at individual grade levels.)

a. Select an organizational pattern that suits the topic.
b. Provide detailed evidence and examples to substantiate arguments.
c. Support arguments with logic and text references.


In order to do this, I would first teach the students about the three main types of organization for essays (informational, persuasive and compare/contrast). We would discuss the different ways theses are written for these three different essays and different strategies for writing each type of essay. (We would write one type of each essay throughout the year.) I would initially have students think about a topic related to our class discussion that they wanted to explore more fully. I would then direct them to the following websites to explore which type of essay would best fit their topic idea. Their first assignment would be to do a rough outline of their type of essay on these websites and print them off to bring to class.

• http://www.readwritethink.org/materials/essaymap/ (informational essay)
• http://www.readwritethink.org/materials/persuasion_map/ (persuasive essay)
• http://www.readwritethink.org/materials/compcontrast/map/ (compare/contrast essay)

Here is an example of an essay map a student would produce. (the website lets you print, but not save, so this is just a scanned copy. Sorry it's kind of small.)


I would then put the students into partners with another students who was writing the same type of essay as they were. I would have them share their rough outlines and discuss their theses. I would then have them use MindMeister to create a detailed outline for their paper. I would tell them to have all the points from their essay map and then add quotes or facts and analysis of those facts. I would tell them to make these different things easy to recognize through the use of different fonts/colors/symbols for each different part of their outline. I would tell them to draw connections where they felt they were relevant.

This is an example. The purple nodes are quotes from the poem, and the green nodes are analysis/commentary on those quotes.



I would then have the students share their maps with their partner and see if their maps and connections made sense to their partner. After getting input from their partner, each student would begin a draft of their paper.

I think this is a useful tool for allowing students to organize their ideas and make sure they are clear BEFORE they start writing. Strong pre-writing makes the drafting process a lot easier, and this technology makes it easy map ideas, move things around, share with others and draw connections.

symbolism video

This video would be used in conjunction with the following UEN standards:

9th grade
Objective 3
(Comprehension of Literary Text): Comprehend literature by evaluating the contribution to meaning of several literary elements within a work of literature.
Interpret figurative language in literature (i.e., simile, metaphor, personification, hyperbole, and symbolism).

10th grade
Objective 3
(Comprehension of Literary Text): Comprehend literature by recognizing the use of literary elements across genres and cultures.
Analyze the use of simile, metaphor, pun, irony, symbolism, allusion and personification.

If I were using this in the classroom, I would have read Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken" with them before they viewed this video so that they were somewhat familiar with it. I would then assign them to watch the video and write down their ideas about symbolism in the poem and bring them to class. Then we would discuss the symbolism they saw together, emphasizing that sometimes people see slightly different symbols in the same thing, and that's ok. Then I would give them more symbolic poetry to interpret in small groups.

teaching internet safety to an 11 year old

While I was home for Thanksgiving my sister was begging my mom to let her get a facebook. My mom has decided that she's too young and that it's dangerous to let her put that kind of information online. She was really put out and thought my mom was being unreasonable. So I sat her down and talked with her about the kinds of things people put online that can be dangerous. I signed on to my facebook account and started looking up some of her friends who have facebooks. I told her to try to see if she could tell from the information on their page which school her friends went to or how old they were or where they lived. We found pictures of her friends in their elementary school t-shirts and even found a girl who had posted her phone number in her status. I actually know the older brother of one friend who had way too much personal info on her page and I told him that to help her figure out how to change her privacy settings. After doing that she realized a lot more how easy it is to post personal information online and how she really isn't old enough. (Especially because facebook requires you to be 13, so she'd have to lie about her age.) She's still not very happy about it, because apparently facebook is the it thing for her group of friends right now, but she gets that my mom isn't just being strict for no reason.

internet safety

The Ensign article I read gave these instructions for how to blog safely:

• avoid specifics
• moderate comments
• selectively post pictures
• think before you post
• be positive
• respect others' work

I think these are really important to remember, especially because blogging is such a new technology, and something we don't really know exactly how to deal with yet. We all know not to open the door to someone we don't know who looks suspicious, but there are a lot of dangers in blogging that we don't anticipate. Mentioning school or posting pictures of your house can be dangerous, especially if your blog isn't private. I think it's important that we discuss these safety issues with our students. My little sister is only 11 and wants a blog and a facebook already, but she doesn't really know what's safe to put online. I also think we need to be careful to protect our students. We shouldn't post anything about the name of the school we teach at or information or pictures of our students, especially because they are minors.

Technology Resources for Students

I LOVE the OWL at Purdue. We use it all the time in Writing Fellows. It's a great resource that succinctly and comprehensibly explains how to write well. It encompasses everything from pre-writing strategies to how to avoid plagiarism to how to paragraph well. It's a great resource to share with your students so that they can easily look up information when they need it. I know there are a lot of style guides out there, but I think that this website is more friendly to techno-savvy youngsters, and also is a lot easier to navigate. (Have you ever tried to look something up in a style guide? It's awful!)