Musings on random stuff from week 3...

Week three has come and gone. Nothing terribly earth-shattering this week; there were just a few things that stuck out to me this week.

1. In regards to the constructivist ideas we read about last week, I'm currently debating something related to that. I'm preparing to teach the narrative essay in my sophomore classes, and I'm looking at the collection of materials I've accumulated over the past two years, and the usual fret and worry appeared in their usual form: the question "What am I even doing? This time though, the meaning of the question had changed; the question carried more weight. In the past, it meant "what activities and strategies am I going to use to teach this/fill time?" This time it morphed into "What is the purpose of what I'm doing?" That is, what is the purpose of teaching writing in schools? What is my purpose in teaching the narrative essay? Is it merely a tool to accomplish something else, like understanding and applying conventions, or is it for the content, giving students the opportunity to write about an event so as to "construct " their own understanding of the event.? I'm not sure yet, but I put the question to my fellow sophomore teachers and I hope we'll discuss it.

2. I found the article of teachers using machines to be very insightful. I sometimes get frustrated, as a practicing teacher, with non-educators recommending ways of doing things because they so often seem to lack a sense of reality. This author was the opposite. He put forth some cool, interesting ideas, but he didn't do it at the expense of reality and taking into account the systems and structures that exist and how they influence our practices. I enjoyed his article a great deal.

3. In our staff meeting today, our principal demonstrated a new technology that's like a quiz game, kind of. Everyone has a remote with letter/number buttons. Questions are put up on the screen via Power Point and you answer the question by pressing the corresponding button on your remote. The votes are tallied on the screen and you can even see how many people chose each response. Our principal described it as a great way to check for understanding quickly during a lesson. It seems pretty cool, and we as a staff had fun with it, but I'll be interested to hear how my colleagues use in their classrooms once that happens.

That's it for this week. More to come next week....