The Calvin and Hobbes from 02/23/95 would be a great discussion starter for talk of media and gender. I may revise Comic Makeovers: Examining Race, Class, Ethnicity, and Gender in the Media, or perhaps I could write up a 6&8211;8 lesson plan that uses it for a similar exploration.
In the News: New Media and Podcasting
Education’s Next Wave? Duke Augments Its Embrace of iPods With Beta Trial of Apple’s iTunes U outlines ways that the university is using podcasts in the classroom to share media files. There’s so much potential here: giving students copies of things rather than relying solely on one-time projection, for instance. And the possibilities for professional development are also great—imagine conference sessions where you could copy the presentation media to your own MP3 player. As these things happen, teachers will need to rethink the presentations that they give. Not only do they need to think about what students can see and hear, but how to get those files on their MP3 players, and how to deal with split attention (What are they looking at? The presenter or the MP3 player?)
ReadWriteThink: It Doesn’t Have to End That Way
Finished revising and published a fancy new version of It Doesn’t Have to End That Way: Using Prediction Strategies with Literature, a K-2 lesson plan that now uses one of my computers in children’s literature and technology books, Arthur’s Computer Disaster.
Inbox: Reading Across America (and Across the Grades)
March 2 is Read Across America Day, so it’s time to begin making plans for celebrations in the classroom. This week there was also an article in The Grand Rapid Times about a cross-level reading collaboration: Reading unites Calvin, Lee. As a result, the Ideas section of this week’s Inbox focuses on Reading Across America (and Across the Grades), which includes resources to celebrate reading with students in different grade levels.
In the News: E-mail and Teaching
“To: Professor@University.edu Subject: Why It’s All About Me” from the New York Times has caused a stir on all the teaching listservs that I’m on. It just seems like another one of those articles that really ought to focus on audience and purpose in writing—along with a dose of understanding writing environments and situations (for students AND teachers). Overall, the folks in the article seem to lack any real understanding of the media they choose for their messages. Until they understand that important piece, e-mail is never going to work for them.
Daily Work: Accomplishments!
Today we found that one of my lesson plans is mentioned in IRA’s Reading Today—and I’m offically named. Fun to look down and find my name in a publication :)
I spent most of the day reworking a lesson plan which is going to be used in a forthcoming MarcoGram (a free e-mail newsletter that highlights lesson plans and resources on specific topics). The lesson was okay, but there were broken links and it needed an interactive.
Tonight was the Math Summit for BlogShares, and my appointment to the GIC was announced. I was a little surprised. I thought it was going to be announced after the summit, not during it. I began work on a personal GIC blog, but I’m having a horrible time getting it to FTP to the server. There’s not much content anyway, so I’ve given up for tonight.