English Teaching Blog

I was emailed, like many others I'm sure, the link to the BYU English Teaching blog. I went to the site and read several of the blog posts. It was really interesting and I think it's a great idea. There were opportunities for the sharing of ideas and there were questions posed that everyone could participate in and answer so that we as teachers can get ideas from each other and help each other to get the best materials and utilize them in the best way possible.

Jing

Something I discovered at work this week is a program called Jing. Somebody may have already found it, but for me it was a great discovery. This program is free and it makes taking screen shots fast and easy and you can edit and save them just as easily. I have used it a lot already in my work and for my assignments just this week in this class and I'm sure I will use it plenty in the future. In the classroom it would be a great tool because you can use it to take screen shots to show students how to do things online without having to explain it in writing, but you can do it so quickly that it's great. Also, you can teach students how to do it so that they can do instructional projects or other things where they can take screen shots and edit them with arrows and other things. This is really a great resource. In fact, I'm so excited about it, I'm going to take a screen shot of this blog post and post it right... here.Pretty sweet, huh?

Storyboard

Here is my storyboard for the instructional video project. I am doing a video about commonly confused words.

Internet Safety

Reading

I read the Ensign article entitled "Just A Game?" by Charles D. Knutson and Kyle K. Oswald. It was a great article I thought. Some of the most important things I learned from the article were the signs of addictive internet gaming behavior. The questions that it presents to ask yourself to figure out if you have an addiction or not I thought were great and were a very straightforward way for people to see that they have a problem when they otherwise might not have. I also learned a lot about the games themselves. I've never been involved with one or been really close to someone that is. I have had people close to me get involved in interactive games with other people online but never something quite as intense as this and I wasn't aware of how much of a commitment these games can become. So it was really educational in that way.

What I read in this article will effect my actions in the future as a parent and teacher in that I will further encourage the youth around me, as well as my husband, to stay away from these kinds of games in general. And if they still become involved in them, to try and limit their usage early on and teach them the dangers of them before they become too involved to see what is happening. I already felt that gaming was something I didn't want too much of in my family, but this has only reaffirmed my beliefs about that. There is so much to do in this life that is productive and good that it would break my heart to see someone close to me become addicted to something like this.

I think I can use what I have learned here to look out for addictive behavior in those I love and to possibly help them see that what they are doing is harmful in a loving way. It has also helped me understand the appeal of these games in some way and so hopefully in the future I can be a little bit more understanding if I encounter people with these problems so that they will be able to listen to me instead of just reject me saying that I don't understand.

I also have read Elder Bednar's talk, "Things As They Really Are" and felt that it was a great article and something that everyone in this day and age should read because it is so pertinent and important. These are real problems facing thousands and thousands of people and they are effecting even me in some ways and so it is good to notice them so that we can keep these harmful habits in check.

Watching

I actually listened to a podcast called "Internet Safety Podcast". I got the link off of the Internet Safety Videos link. It was really interesting. I learned about a lot of malicious software and a little bit about the motivation behind the people that create them. It's not always malicious, but sometimes is just a matter of someone seeing whether or not they can do it, but there is a lot of malicious software created with malicious motivation and some of them can be very damaging. This podcast examined different kinds and I found it very interesting and educational.

Doing

I talked to my cousin who is a sophomore in high school about internet safety. In asking her what she knows about internet safety, she said that she's not supposed to go to chat rooms or give out her information without talking to her parents first. She also said that she's not supposed to download anything without asking her parents first. I said that those were great guidelines and I explained to her what can happen if she does those things without their permission and that they really can happen to her. I also showed her a little bit from the talks I read by Elder Bednar and the one I read online and she thought they were interesting and informative as well, even though she's not involved in online gaming. She said it was good to learn more about it and be aware so she can help her friends that might have the same problems. I also explained breifly some of the terrible things that viruses and malicious software cna do and helped her further understand the importance of checking with her parents before doing anything that she doesn't usually do or downloading anything at all. I feel that it was productive because we both learned some things, and I hope that she shares her knowledge with her friends and family as well.

Video Communication Project

Here is my screen shot of me using a synchronous video tool. I used Google Video Chat and I talked to my parents and my dog because I didn't know of any other classmates doing this project. It was fun to talk to them and learn how to use this new tool.


This is my screen shot of me using an asynchronous video tool: posting a video on facebook for a friend. This is a lot of fun. After doing this one, I did about eight more. :)


Here is my video on viddler. I uploaded a video I took on vacation this summer and left comments as if I were a teacher critiquing it. This is a fun tool.

My weekly participation idea which was my previous blog kind of talks about this because I did it before I decided I wanted to do the video communication project, and that post has some great ideas about using these tools. However, to expand, after I actually experimented with them, I found that they are easier to use than I thought. I feel that using the synchronous video programs can be very useful for communicating with say a pen pal across the world, or relatives that you don't see often and I would be interested in exploring these possibilities in the classroom. I would perhaps want to set students up with pen pals that live in our sister city or something like that so that they can get to know about different cultures and I think this would be a great way to do that. Also, it would be good for discussion groups and things of that nature. On a more personal level, it would be a good way for me to communicate with teachers throughout the teaching community who might be able to share with me some new insights on teaching and they would be able to demonstrate things to me instead of simply trying to explain them and because it is live, I would be able to ask questions of them as well.

The asynchronous video programs are great because they allow you to post a video for someone to view later and comment on or reply to you via video. They were a lot of fun for me just in sending my friends videos, but they would also be useful in the classroom for students wanting to communicate with each other as well as me as a teacher being able to record a short video and share it with students outside the classroom.

Video commenting is one of the most innovative things that I discovered while doing this project, and as I mentioned in my previous blog, it's a great way to comment on films or clips that need to be analyzed for class and it would be a great way, as I did for this project, to comment on student work. Say students created a video project and submitted it (something that has been done for years and years and were some of my favorite projects in high school) and I wanted to be able to tell them the things that I liked about it and the things that didn't meet requirements while watching the film so that they knew exactly what I was talking about. This is a great tool for something like that. And, as I also mentioned in the last post, I think this would be a great way for students to teach students when there isn't enough time for a lot of presentations in class.

Videos to Assist in Instruction

Watching the tutorial on Viddler got me thinking about different ways in which webcams can be used in the classroom. Also, I just started using my own webcam and in realizing how easy it is to use, I've come to the conclusion that it can and should be used in a lot of different ways, especially with teaching in the future.

One idea I had was that I could use Viddler to help students analyse videos or compare and contrast them with the written word, since I am going into English teaching. This way, students can have assignments to watch videos and they will have the opportunity to make comments and annotate as was mentioned in the tutorial. This will make it easier to communicate what point in the film the student is referring to instead of simply trying to describe it and getting confused. It also will cut down on time spent describing and taking notes on where something occurs in a film, which can be time consuming and really annoying.

I also was thinking about using Voicethreads in a similar way to the way that we receive instruction for this class, but in reverse. This was inspired by the devotionals that we give. I have always been a firm believer that when we have to teach something, we learn it better, but there is not always enough time in class for students to teach the class certain ideas or theories and so it would be a great way to help students learn to have then prepare a lesson plan and record it on voicethreads and then let the rest of the students learn from it and comment on it for homework. This way, the students learn and teach eachother and they have more opportunities to become experts on subjects because they are responsible for teaching them.

Also, sometimes it is difficult to describe how to do something in written word and so for some assignments, while I plan to explain them in class, I can also post the assignment along with a video of myself demonstrating how to do the assignment correctly so that students can refer back to it as they go about doing the assignment on their own.

There are many ways in which webcams and various video programs can be useful. I feel as though a whole new world has been opened up to me. :)