Thursday, April 4, 2013

Journal # 10

Growing And Leading With Technology.

Robert's " This I Believe" Essay Lesson.


The professor, Mr.Robert's is preparing his students, tenth- and eleventh-graders for  the state's English/language arts high school graduation test.  These students have struggled in school with writing and reading, for some, this graduation test is not their first time. To encourage and boost his students confidence, Mr. Roberts is having them compose" "This I believe" essays, these essays are statements of core values and personal philosophies made popular by public broadcasting's "This I believe" radio show, itself a revibal of a 1950s radio program of the same name that was hosted by the legandary writer and journalist, Edward R. Murrow ( Allison & Gediman, 2007)"

Mr.Robert's is helping his students using three basic, yet very important tasks. He has three different goals for his students to reach, he wants each student to "1) read and hear different types of "This I believe" essays composed by well-known ordinary Americans, including other high school students from around the country. 2) write a "This I believe" essay expressing important personal values and ideas and share it with other members of the class. 3) Develop greater confidence and improved skill as a creative and expressive writer who can then perform successfully on the English/language arts high school graduation exam."


As the professor of these students with struggles in reading and writing, he wants them to succeed, and with that, he is starting off with the correct steps. When working with students who may be at a disadvantage, an individual may want to step back, and take a look at the situation from a different perspective. Using the same tactics as before, may have not been the best result for these students, considering how they are students that have had trouble with the subject. I find Mr.Roberts ideology very useful because he is starting with a clean slate with his students. He wants to have his students build themselves a strong platform and continue creating on top of it, therefore, they will feel confident and useful by creating the " This I believe" essay, giving them the extra boost and skills that they had lacked in the past.

Advantages for his students is that they are in a school that has provides them with multiple internet-accessible computers and easy access to a large computer lab just down the hall. (Maloy, 303)
Which is to Mr.Roberts advantage, as well as his students. Some students may have trouble understand the teachers lessons when the student is getting lectured. When a professor uses internet, graphics, charts, and videos, this engages the students to stay tuned in. For Mr. Robert to help create successful students, with his " This I believe" Essay assignment, he may want to do a PowerPoint presentation with an example, as mentioned in the story. Show the students how another individuals essay may be like. Help the student with a "skeleton" of the essay, and have them to an online activity where they have to " fill in the skeleton."

Students at any age want to be active and involved, as students get older, and approach the graduation date, it almost seems like they want to slack, and they don't care.. "Senioritis"  ( College Board)
When a teacher feels that their students are wanting to back off from their lessons and activities, they should change the equation, to get a different result. Involve the students, students at any age want to be a part of something..FUN. Make it fun, make it rewarding, not literally giving them a physical prize, but to teach these young individuals that the fact of learning is a reward on its own.

In chapter ten, there are many different type of technologies to help students and help teachers, on page 290, the storybooks come into play. There are many advantages to have a storybook, if students find their own mistakes by listening to their own essays, rather than reading it (or skimming it) they will " hear" that it doesn't " sound " right.
" Other educators, concerened about students becoming overly dependent on computer, wonder if the interactive features of electronic stroybooks may distract students from the process of reading by decoding written words ( Cuban,2001; Healy 1999.)

These may be a concern for educators, but in this case, Mr.Roberts will be having his students read other examples of " This I believe" essays, where they will be brushing this skills on decoding and reading. Since Mr. Robert owns his own iPod, as well as a few of his students, yet his students only use these for music players, Mr. Robert can educate them in using these iPods for educational purposes as well... Say what? 

I know, I know, you're thinking.. " iPods for school?" Definitely, Mr. Roberts can assign his students to work with their iPods and download their essay to a storybook, and have their personal storybook on a computer, to download it to their iPod. Students can do anything now a days with the technology we carry, they can " bump" their iPods, with certain Apps to share their ideas and essays.

When students can teach themselves, not only does it help the teacher, but students sometimes seem to understand another student on their same intelligence level, as well as the same level of understanding.



1 comment:

  1. iPods for school - why, of course! :) We certainly have changed our thinking over the last couple of years ... well, we probably still need to get others onboard that idea, but its a start!

    Some other good web-based writing tools might include:
    http://www.inklestudios.com/inklewriter
    http://www.youareyourwords.com/
    and then there's http://oneword.com/ to keep students in the 'brainstorm' stage of writing.

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