Steve Hargadon, who led this session, mentioned that the wiki associated with Classroom 2.0 hasn’t taken off as he hoped and wanted to “create an action plan for developing good repositories of lesson plans and training for the use of technology and Web 2.0 applications in the classroom.” Vicki Davis took notes: Classroom 2.0.
What do you think would make it easier for teachers to find ways to use Web 2.0 technologies in the classroom?
[tags]edubloggercon07, ebc07cr20, classroom 2.0[/tags]
One of the things that jumps out at me as I hear various stories (we are in a circle introducing ourselves) is that Flat Classroom Ideals are perfectly suited for UbD curriculum and unit planning. Many of the teachers mention that the curriculum as it currently stands in their schools impedes the introduction of the kinds of projects Julie Lindsay and Vicki Davis were able to construct.
What makes an effective international project? Julie and Vicki are interested in responses to this question.
Vinnie Vrotny says students need to “actively collaborate within in the same window of time.” How would this work with two (or more) groups spread across time zones?
Vicki mentions that a lot of the work they are going to have to do will necessarily be “asynchronous” simply because of time zone differences. Everyone seems to feel some synchronous collaboration is necessary.
Kristin Hokanson mentions the need for administrative support. Vicki says administrators need to “pull over to the side and let them pass” — administrators must get on board with Web 2.0 technology.
Take a look at the wiki Vicki created during the session: Global Connections.
One thing that strikes me upon reflecting over this session is the sheer excitement about teaching and learning I am seeing among teachers who are actively using Web 2.0 technologies in their classrooms. Having experienced it to a small degree myself, I cannot wait to try to be much more involved in the future.
[tags]edubloggercon07, ebc07gcfc, UbD[/tags]
I am Edubloggercon 2007 here in Atlanta, and I am in the first session — Expanding the Circle. How can we draw educators, reluctant or otherwise, into using Web 2.0 tools? Some educators are not just reluctant, but outright hostile about using these tools.
Some teachers do not see the value in using these technologies. Julia Osteen pointed out that in many cases, using Web 2.0 conflicts with some teachers’ beliefs about teaching. It doesn’t fit their style.
A huge issue for educators is time. When I presented a session on using blogs and wikis to my own colleagues, one of the first questions they asked me was how much time I spent doing this each day. The question inferred that these technologies take up so much time — is it really worth it, Dana? I gathered that they had already concluded they didn’t have time.
Steve Hargadon mentions that we are dealing with a wide variety of audiences — administration, teachers, parents, and students.
Tim Stahmer mentions that we can introduce teachers by showing them how many of the practices they are already buying into, i.e. journaling, are perfect for Web 2.0. He also adds that many teachers are afraid of allowing students to comment on their blogs. Is this insecurity?
Jim Gates asked how many of us have blogs blocked in our schools? Tim Stahmer mentions that Blogger is blocked in his. I don’t have as much of a problem with issues like this, as I teach in a private school, and I believe that many of these blanket blocking issues seem to crop up in larger schools and school districts, whereas smaller schools (like mine) still enable access to these sites. MySpace and Facebook are blocked at my school, mostly because the sites are seen as a distraction. Actually, when our educational technology teacher sent us an e-mail informing us of some blocking, he asked that we e-mail him if any sites we used were blocked. I found that Bloglines and my hosting provider were both blocked, so I e-mailed him, and he allowed access. Of course, I realize that with larger schools and districts, this involves much bureaucratic red tape. I think we initially blocked access to some sites when the big MySpace scare happened last year (and to be truthful, my husband contributed to our administration’s decision to block these sites because of a presentation he gave about being safe online to our students and faculty).
Our session ended on an open note, and it’s clear these issues are not resolved. Like Steve Hargadon said at the beginning of the session, however, I think many of us feel obligated to try to draw educators into Web 2.0 technologies because we ourselves have been transformed by them. I know my teaching practices have been transformed by the interactivity, feedback, and networking I have been able to do with other educators. I would like to draw my students into Web 2.0 even more next year.
[tags]edubloggercon07, ebc07ec[/tags]
I have become extremely annoyed with site scrapers. These web sites exist solely to bring in ad revenue, and they derive all of their content through RSS feeds. I think the way that they work is that the operator of the site has configured the site to update using an RSS feed that is based on key words. I have noticed that certain key terms, at any rate, have attracted the attention of scraper sites. Why do site scrapers do this? Because their sites are littered with ads, and they want to generate revenue without doing any work.
I think publishing an RSS feed is essential. I rely on RSS feeds to keep up with all the blogs I read. If a blog doesn’t publish an RSS feed, I probably won’t remember to check it for updates. I have no plans to stop publishing an RSS feed. However, I think educators should be aware that publishing an RSS feed will leave your site vulnerable to scraper sites, and there really isn’t a whole lot you can do about it. Yes, most of the time, scraper sites are violating copyright law, but fighting them may or may not be worth the time it would take.
First of all, how do you know you’ve been scraped? The answer to that one is that you might not, but I have noticed some site scrapers’ links in Technorati results for sites that link to mine. Once I visit the site to see why I am being linked, I discover a blog with a series of posts on the same topic and a sidebar full of ads.
If you want to fight site scraping, my suggestion would be find out who hosts the domain of the website that is scraping your material. If the blog is hosted on Blogger, WordPress.com, or some other blog hosting platform, the blog is most likely violating the terms of service for those hosting platforms, and reporting the blog should take care of it. If the site is hosted independently and operated via WordPress, Movable Type, or Blogger (or some other platform), then look up the hosting provider. You can do this by searching Whois.net. You will find out who is the site’s host, owner, and registrar (if you searched huffenglish.com, for instance, you’d find that my host is Bluehost). Then you can visit the domain host’s site or even the abuser’s e-mail address and report the abuse.
I have found three site scrapers stealing my content lately. All three were registered by Go Daddy, who reported that they are not the sites’ host, and therefore, not responsible for content. All three sites did list an administrative contact when I looked up their Whois information. I will let you know what, if anything, results from my contacting these administrative contacts (two of the offending domains appear to have been registered by the same person).
And now it’s time to address the root of the problem. Blog ads. I completely understand why someone would want to make some extra money. The concept behind blog ads is that when readers click on ads, they will generate revenue for the blog owner. Let me go on the record as saying I hate blog ads. I will never put them on my blogs, and I don’t like it when I see them on other blogs. I know some people who have them, and my husband even tried them for a while, but found they were really useless in terms of generating revenue. If you want to generate revenue, you will probably earn more through generous PayPal donors than you will through ads. However, in order to receive donations, you have to provide content that people might feel is valuable enough to pay for. I only have donation button links on my pages that contain such content, but it is freely offered, and anyone who takes the material is not obligated to put a tip in the jar. I think ads have become the bane of blogging. Because of Google AdSense and its ilk, scraper sites find that it might indeed be lucrative to steal other writers’ work in order to generate income for themselves. Frankly, I don’t know; it might be. However, what I do know is that if it weren’t for blog ads, we wouldn’t have site scrapers. And if it weren’t for people who made blog ads lucrative — hapless readers who click on ads — we wouldn’t have blog ads.
I recently posted about comment spam at EduStat Blog, and one astute commenter, Pete T., noted:
Great post, but I’d like to bring another element to the SPAM control discussion, Education.
In 2006, 40% of all email was SPAM, 2200 messages per user costing $8.9 billion to US Corporations and $255 million to others. It’s estimated that 2007 will bring a 63% increase, why? Because 8% of the people who receive the stuff actually buy something.
Enter Web 2.0 with its Blogs, Wikis, and forums. These new media outlets open a whole new horizon for these spammers to not only to pitch their wares, but also to gain search engine link popularity (another form of spamming.)
Yes, we need to continually develop technology to identify and filter spam as the virus protection industry has done – but there needs to be an education campaign that teaches the community the risks of doing business with a spammer.
Legislation and filtering can’t do it completely, only when it’s not making them any money – SPAM will really go away.
The same goes for site scraping. I am not going to tell you not to put ads on your site, but I would ask you to think about it and be sure it’s really right for you. Educators are not paid a great deal; no one goes into education for the money. Another thing to think about is that ads are randomly generated. I think bloggers should be responsible for all the content and links on their site. I think that if the blog links to a questionable site, then it is the blogger’s responsibility to either take down the link or stand by their decision to link it and to weather whatever fallout results from linking to the site. Ads take away some of that control, and the possibility exists that the ads might link to sites that the blog owner (or his or her employers) don’t approve of.
Food for thought, as the cliché goes.
[tags]site scraping, scraper site, spam, blog ads, AdSense, whois, RSS, Technorati[/tags]
To quote Robert, whose opinion I respect:
I never knew you had a Harry Potter blog! How cool is that? You should advertise that more.
I went through my archives and decided to post a link to an essay I wrote on my Harry Potter blog about what I regard as J.K. Rowling’s thinly veiled critique of a problem in modern education: “Harry Potter and Government Interference in Education.” Caveat: as I re-read the essay, I think it sounded as if I thought students who speak English as a second language or who come from a lower socio-economic status should be “left behind,” and I assure you, I don’t believe that. I do believe that these children start out behind, and to expect them all to perform at grade level puts all of the blame for problems that go much deeper than education on the schools.
[tags]Harry Potter, education, NCLB[/tags]
I have been grading student essays this morning and just detected plagiarism in one of my students’ essays. It’s not the first time a student has turned in a plagiarized essay to me, and I am sure (sadly) that it won’t be the last. On the one hand, I know this student was sick when the essay was due, but I did offer her more time to complete the essay, and she declined. What is particularly troubling to me is that the essay contains sections entirely copied and pasted from Wikipedia or Answers.com. I find this distressing for many reasons. First of all, I think it is rather insulting to my intelligence that a student believes she can copy text from such well-known websites without my knowledge — indeed, I had provided students with links to the Wikipedia article she copied in order that they might find it a useful source. Second, it bothers me that the student must have believed turning in writing culled from Wikipedia was OK. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised; our current culture encourages plagiarism — you can purchase essays online. I find it frustrating that students continue to steal content from the Internet. I imagine they do so because it’s easier than stealing it from a book, but I don’t think they realize how much easier it is to catch them at Internet plagiarism.
I have learned a couple of tricks that help me catch plagiarists. First of all, look for straight quotes as opposed to curly quotes. Straight quotes often indicate copying and pasting from the Internet because web standard displays quotation marks as two small, straight lines, whereas the default font in MS Word, Times New Roman, displays quotation marks as two curly marks. Straight quotes don’t always indicate plagiarism, but they are something to look for if you are suspicious. If you suspect plagiarism, type a sentence or two from the paper word for word into Google search. You should yield a result if the language is identical to that of another site or even if only a few words have been changed (if you don’t put quotes around the sentence). I found my plagiarist using both straight-quote identification and Google search.
What should you do if you catch a plagiarist? It depends upon the nature of the assignment. I give students zeroes. If the assignment is a major assignment, such as a term paper or research paper, I think discipline needs to be taken further. I think students who plagiarize long-term assignments need to have their parents notified and possibly be referred to administration. I didn’t elect to do that with my student. I think the zero will be enough. I think she’s a sweet girl, and I hate that she’s put me in this position. I did try to be understanding about her illness, offering her more time to finish her essay. She declined.
We all make choices. Part of our job as teachers is to help students realize that plagiarism is never the right choice. Even a poorly written essay wouldn’t have received a grade lower than an F (50-59) in my class. I have a hunch she would have earned at least a C if she’d done the work herself.
[tags]plagiarism, education, writing, instruction[/tags]
Wil Wheaton wrote eloquently about a memory he has of being treated unfairly by a teacher on Parent Night, and it really resonated with me, as I am sure it would most teachers. You have to go read it first, so go on do it, but come back here for the rest. I’ll wait.
…
OK, now that you’re back, wasn’t that heart-wrenching? Many of us probably have a memory of being called out or being treated unfairly by a teacher. My only memories of kindergarten are of sitting in the middle of the floor (which was the equivalent of time-out). My teacher also wanted us to write our full names one day, but I couldn’t spell Michelle (my middle name), and she wouldn’t tell me how. Her name was, ironically, Mrs. Love. To be fair, I was one of the youngest kids in my class and really immature. I was a real tattler. But I count myself lucky because I can’t recall a time when I thought a teacher was really unfair to me. I was wrongly accused of chewing gum once. A couple of my teachers doled out class punishments. Once I received a detention (my only detention ever) for not turning in a permission form on time. I had probably been told a million times. In all, though, I can’t say I was singled out and humiliated by any of my teachers.
I do remember a time when I think I hurt a student of mine, though. It has actually most likely happened more than once because I don’t think we realize sometimes what sort of a ripple-effect our actions cause, and something that seemed to us to be a minor incident can be much larger to a child. The time I remember, however, involved an 11th grade male student. I was a first-year teacher. He was horrible. He locked me out of the classroom once when I had left to get the principal’s help with a discipline issue — and the principal laughed about it, which says a lot about that principal, but I digress. This kid had to do something every single class period. It might be making annoying noises, talking out of turn, not doing his work, etc. You know the kind of kid. He fancied himself the class clown. He was difficult. I didn’t really like him, to be honest, because he felt it necessary to make my job so hard. I talked with the teacher who had taught him the previous year, and she loved him, so I couldn’t figure out what was wrong. One day, I was so angry, I threw him out of class. I said something hurtful, which I can barely even bring myself to repeat here. Deep breath. OK, told him as he left the room not to let the door hit him in the rear on the way out. In the grand scheme of things, it might not be the most horrible thing ever said by a teacher to a student, but it’s pretty bad, I think. I said it in front of his peers. I shouldn’t have said what I said, and I have turned it over in my mind for years. I do regret it. Not that the kid didn’t have the trip to the office coming — he fully deserved to be sent to the office. He was out of line, and no one supported me — not the administration and not his parents, whom I can remember calling more than once. But I saw the kid’s face after I said what I said, and the best description I can give is that his face sort of crumpled. He was clearly angry, but under that was a layer of hurt I didn’t expect to see. He had been so obvious, I thought, in his sheer disrespect for and dislike for me. What could it matter what I thought of him? But at that moment, I realized it did matter. He slammed the door and stalked off.
This incident happened in 1997 or 1998, which means it was nearly ten years ago. The kid is in his mid-to-late-twenties by now. I think about that incident often. I have never said the same thing I said to him to another student. I feel regret that I said it to him, no matter how poorly he behaved in class. I feel rotten that I could possibly be this kid’s Mrs. Krocka.
The old aphorism is true: a teacher can never tell where his or her influence stops. We can indeed touch lives forever. The aphorism doesn’t elaborate, but the obvious conclusion is that we can be a negative influence or a positive one. I strive to be a positive one, but I don’t always succeed — in this particular case, I failed miserably.
B.C., your name and face are etched in my mind. I can still see you wearing your quilted orange jacket. You’ll probably never read this, but I’m really sorry I said that to you.
Most of us have heard the dire statistics regarding teacher attrition. Perhaps as you sat in your teacher education courses, you were even asked to look to the left and right — of the three of you, one would quit within the first three years in the profession and another would quit within five. Teacher attrition is blamed on many factors: NCLB, difficult students, lack of support from administration, and lack of adequate preparation or mentoring. Of course, all of these problems exist. I left public school teaching for all of the above reasons. I was ready to quit teaching for good after four years because of all of the above reasons. One of the things I still find difficult about being an educator is that I don’t feel as if I am trusted to do my job — to make educational and curricular decisions in the best interest of my students, evaluate them fairly, and plan and execute meaningful lessons and assignments. I’m not sure this feeling ever leaves a teacher because I have had colleagues who were near retirement who still felt this way.
Some days, I think teachers get a great deal of satisfaction out of their jobs — because truly no feeling can top working with a class when everyone’s really getting it and engaged in learning — and those days are worth the days when we don’t feel appreciated or satisfied, but it’s difficult, and I don’t think a lot of people are willing to or may even be capable of the endurance it takes to make a career of teaching these days.
I think positive feedback is important. I think teachers need to feel less alone, and I think it is critical that that feedback come not only from mentors or peers, but also from administrators.
Read more:
[tags]teaching, attrition, education[/tags]
I recently read Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own for the first time (I know, but I had been meaning to get to it). Woolf argues in this classic essay that the main reason women do not populate the canon of Western literature is simply that they haven’t had time and opportunity (never mind encouragement) to write. She points out, and rightly so, that we do not begin to see major women writers until the nineteenth century (with a few exceptions, of course).
Harold Bloom, that famous champion of the closed canon, once opined,
I began as a scholar of the romantic poets. In the 1950s and early 1960s, it was understood that the great English romantic poets were Percy Bysshe Shelley, William Wordsworth, Lord Byron, John Keats, William Blake, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. But today they are Felicia Hemans, Charlotte Smith, Mary Tighe, Laetitia Landon, and others who just can’t write. A fourth-rate playwright like Aphra Behn is being taught instead of Shakespeare in many curriculums across the country.
I have never heard of the women he mentions, with the exception of Aphra Behn, and I have no plans to ditch Shakespeare in order to teach her, but Bloom’s argument bothers me on a number of levels. First, I see no mention of Mary Shelley, arguably the most influential of the Romantic writers in that Frankenstein so captured public sensibilities that it continues to be adapted and even remixed up to the present day. He is insinuating women can’t write as well as men, and even if that is not his intention, he mentions later in the article I quoted above that four great living writers include Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, Cormac McCarthy, and Philip Roth.
Last weekend, I worked very hard on a list of major works for the British literature curriculum at my school for next year. It’s not finalized yet, but I was very proud of it. I deliberately tried to find good works by women that not even a Harold Bloom could object to opening the canon to (and I don’t think he objects to Jane Austen), but it was difficult, and I was reminded again of how many “Shakespeare’s sisters” we probably lost over the centuries, for we surely did. I chose works by Jane Austen, Emily Brontë, Virginia Woolf, A.S. Byatt, and Mary Shelley, among others.
I do not advocate throwing higher caliber works out of the canon in favor of lesser works written by women, but are we not to consider the possibility that a woman is as worthy of a spot in the canon as a man? I don’t think a high school survey course can begin to address the entire canon of American or British or world literature, or whatever the course is, but I do think it is our responsibility to expose students to a variety of representative works. And I don’t think neglecting women writers so one can teach more Shakespeare plays is representative. What is wrong with studying one or two Shakespeare plays at most in a high school class? That would still expose students to the great Shakespeare while allowing room for other authors. Then, when students are studying in college or even reading on their own, they might decide to read more Shakespeare.
I suppose I’m just thinking out loud about curriculum choices. Well, I shouldn’t be surprised at the reticence to welcome women writers, even in this day and age. Even as far back as the 1850’s, Harold Bloom had a compatriot in Nathaniel Hawthorne:
America is now wholly given over to a damned mob of scribbling women, and I should have no chance of success while the public taste is occupied with their trash — and should be ashamed of myself if I did succeed. What is the mystery of these inumberable editions of The Lamplighter (by Maria Susanna Cummins), and other books neither better nor worse? Worse they could not be, and better they need not be, when they sell by the hundred thousand. (Letter to William D. Ticknor, 1855)
[tags]literary canon, scribbling women, women writers, teaching, literature, education[/tags]
Turnitin.com, the subscription service designed to help teachers root out plagiarism, has been sued by two high school students who believe the service’s archives of submitted work constitutes copyright infringement.
After the McLean school adopted the system, a group of offended students banded together and hired a lawyer to send Turnitin a letter in September 2006. The letter generated a strong response: Turnitin filed for a “declaratory judgment” from a federal judge in California, looking for a ruling that its service was legal. In that case, filed in early December, the company claimed once again that it was protected by the fair use exemption, and that it was actually protectng [sic] student copyrights. “Rather than infringing intellectual property rights, iParadigms is trying to protect copyright interests by students and other authors by preventing plagiarism of the very student papers that Turnitin receives,” the company wrote.
At the beginning of this school year, my department head charged me with checking into adopting Turnitin.com for our school’s use, but we never felt the principal was behind it, so we dropped it. I have to say that their salesperson was really vigorous about signing us on once we contacted her. She didn’t give up for several months!
My students write papers in class on computers, but nothing really prevents them from saving the documents to flash drives or e-mailing them to themselves to work on at home. I think the only way to prevent plagiarism and be 100% sure you have the students’ own work is to require all essays to be handwritten in class. In this day and age, that seems unreasonable and impractical.
[tags]Turnitin.com, plagiarism, copyright, writing instruction, education[/tags]