"... a dream that became a reality and spread throughout the stars" -- Kirk (Whom Gods Destroy)

The dream was to be able to communicate to other people across great distances.  And then someone invented "The Internet".

We learned that we could produce creative ideas, writing and images with a single click on a computer.  But the real benefit of this is learning to read.  We have to be able to read to use the Internet.  There is no other way around it.

The presentation of Reading on the Internet was very interesting to me because it symbolizes multimedia and visual communications.  This is the field that I specialize in. Trying to produce high quality and effective reading lessons by utilizing the Internet is a challenge.

We also know that the Internet has no boundaries or rules in place that dictates what is placed on it.  Although it is a great tool for researching, analysis of information and acquiring ideas, it also has its detrimental effects too.

For students to utilize this tool in the correct way and to be able to receive the benefits of its vast information without also receiving some of its negative effects, we as teachers have to guide them and instruct them into the learning activities on the Internet.  And of course, not everything on the Internet is fact-based and can be misconstrued by the brightest of us.

The good thing about reading on the Internet is that it's a great resource and very appealing to our young students.  Its graphical images plays a great part in getting students to read, especially for those who are visually inclined. The videos, games, activities and lessons on the Internet can be an asset for a teacher who knows how to use it.

It is a tool that is immediately available and can be used in different ways to engage our students.  This is something that I have learned being a Computer Technology Teacher.  My students love computers, but I have to guide them into the areas that I think will help them to learn to read and write and that means not dismissing paper and pen to support what they do on the computer.

The great thing about the Internet is that it gives me the ability to tailor my students' learning into interests that appeals to them, which keeps them engage.  And since technology is our future, like it or not, our students need to be prepare to know how to use this tool in order to be successful as they transition into higher educational forums and into society.  Otherwise, we have failed at our prime directive, which is "No child left behind".

So, yes, it is a dream that became reality and spread throughout our world, but we need to know how to use it for the benefit of educating our students.


http://www.educationworld.com/a_lesson/lesson230.shtml

The truth is usually just an excuse for a lack of imagination. -Garak, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

Why Drama?

One of the presentations that really grabbed my attention in my class was the "Why Drama?" presentation.  It was something that I think my students would be very engaged in.  They are all Middle School Special Education students and they love to use their imagination.  Not to just do their school work, but also to try find ways not to (smile).

Using drama techniques to support reading would be a tremendous help.  The Frozen Moment technique would be definitely something that they could relate to and do since most them have a hard time communicating, but know how to act out their frustrations. This would give them a great opportunity to express themselves without the frustration and would give me a great deal of insight as to their individual characteristics.

Since most of my students have Autism, they tend to go with body movements and repetitive words.  When they are upset or confused by something they either wave their hands around  a lot or repeat a line.  If you say something to them, they repeat it.  But the best part of the Frozen Moment is their ability to use this technique to show how much they understand what is read to them.  If they can act out what is happening in a story that is read to them, then it shows that they comprehend it.

But how to teach this skill.  That is something that is challenging.  Here are some resources that might help.

Here is a book that I found was very detailed and easy to implement.  It can be a great resource for teachers to kick off this type of literacy technique.

And here is an article that gives us more insight into how it can be used for Special Education students.

http://www.artsonthemove.co.uk/education/secondary/specialneeds.php

It can be argued that a human is ultimately the sum of his experiences. -Benjamin Sisko, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, “Emissary”

We grow from experiences and we also grow through writing.  In the video podcast on the National Writing Project, a teacher discusses how he engages his students to develop their writing foundation.

In the video he shows how his students are learning how to write through use of multimedia and digital technologies.  His students, who look to be of middle school to high school age, are working diligent at their computers, but when the screen spans onward, we see them writing before they start using the digital tools and techniques to create the ultimate blog, video, podcast or publication for review by their teacher and peers.

He states that writing is more than just getting your thoughts on paper.  It also initiates critical thinking and editing and the things that go hand in hand becoming the sum of expressing their views, thoughts and ideas into a digital display.

What I see from the video is the students grow in experience as they learn to research and analyze their own creative pieces and how they implement them in different modalities.  One student creates a digital poetry read, while another creates a video of his personal experience and another group creates their documentary on a subject that they have researched extensively.

Digital writing is something that I use in my class.  I am a Computer Technology Special Education Teacher and my class have journals.  They write daily in them and use them to make notations of something that they want to search for on the Internet or something they need to write about.

I feel there is always a need for the paper and pencil and that although technology and digital works are  great, there should be some writing foundations given to our students to support their digital works.

                                            http://www.youtube.com/user/NatlWritingProject

“Change is the essential process of all existence.” – Spock, Star Trek

We all fight change, but sometimes change is necessary.  In the autobiography by Francisco Jimenez, The Circuit, Franciso or also known as Pancho, finds that change is necessary for his family's survival.

Being the son of migrant workers who leave their home in Mexico to find a more financially stabled way of life in America, Pancho is excited, scared and have some trepidation about his new temporary home.

He has to go to a new American school and learn its language which is different from his own.  He makes friends with Miguelito, but has issues trying to fit into his new life until he wins in a competition for his drawing which gives him more self-confidence in who he is.

The story can be taught from several themes.  There is the the theme about people learning to live in a different country or a different way of life. There is the theme about self-respect and that we all have something that we are good at.  There is the theme about butterflies and how through their process of metamorphosis can be related to introduction of change for the better.

My students can relate to this as most of them come from Latin and South American immigrant families.  Most of my students have told me that their mothers and fathers had come to this country for a better life.  This book will most likely have experiences that they themselves have experienced.

My lesson would give them the basic foundation to think about how this also relates to other people such as the Irish, Italian, Jews and other immigrants who came to this country and help them to see that other nationalities have been on the same path for the same reason as their own people.

It could also be expanded to develop critical thinking in conjunction with cause and effect.  Why did Francisco's family have to find work in California?  What were the circumstances that made them seek employment outside of their country?  I would also lead my students into discussions to build their ability to draw conclusion and make inferences.  I would have them think about the conditions of Francisco's family living environment and how that might effect their health and their lifespan.

My students could also use multimedia to present their own interpretation of the book in a  book review of their own.

Here is an example below:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCVBfvfeImM

"By golly, Jim... I'm beginning to think I can cure a rainy day!" -- McCoy

“I hear the first drops. Like the tapping of a stranger at the door of a dream, the rain changes everything.”
― Karen Hesse, Out of the Dust 

This is a quote from the story "Out of the Dust" by Karen Hesse. Rain plays in intricate part in this story.  It is a story about a young girl named Billie Jo who lived during the time of the dust storms in the 1930s that hit the areas in Colorado, Kansas,Oklahoma and Texas, creating what was known as the Dust Bowl of America. This disaster was the cause for 500,000 people to become homeless and 200,000 to migrated to places like California.  Many people died from illnesses like dust pneumonia and malnutrition.


When teaching Social Studies this book gives our student a perspective on events of the past.  Our students, who are more caught up into today's events such as "whatever is going on with Snookie" and "how is Justin Bieber doing today" should be reading this book in order to get an idea about the big picture of past events and how they help us to predicate the future events of our world.

This story also deals with not just how such a great disaster could have been avoided if there were conservation structures in place, but how a young girl deals with her life living in these types of conditions and the loss she has as disaster destroys the life she has come to know.  Of recent events, we can have our students relate to this if we look at what happen in New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina.  Many of our students know about this event and how it affected the people of New Orleans by news accounts, re-telling by family members and in relation to people they know who had experienced this tragedy.

Of course, it was a different type of disaster in different time and place.  But to have our students to be able to compare and contrast the two would be a great lesson.  As a teacher, I could ask questions that would start my students thinking about the book and what it was trying to convey to its readers.  Questions about the "theme" of the book, the "characters that are portrayed and how to understand this is "historical fiction" and how the writer came to create such a vivid and close to realistic story.  They could even create their own story based on the facts of the Dust Bowl of the 1930s and also create a video such as these students have done about the book to show their comprehension of what they read.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ympUoMwk590&feature=related

Believing oneself to be perfect is often the sign of a delusional mind." -- Data to Borg Queen

We all believe that we can be perfect.  Well, at least some of us.  But when it comes to being perfect we all have bits of holes in our persona that creates imperfections.

The same can be said of our beliefs and values.  We all believe that we do have any bias or that we know ourselves so well that we have no prejudices and that our values are unquestionable.

In the story of "The Jacket", young Phil, a sixth grader, has stumbled on a quandary that affects what he believes his values are.  When he accuses another school mate of stealing a jacket, which he had given to his younger brother, he finds that is now questioning his values and beliefs.  We are all not perfect and we have bias and prejudices based on our own experiences and what we acquire from different sources, whether they are true or not.

To teach students about how our bias and prejudices can affect our judgements and decisions, we need to create a lesson in which students can come to these conclusions on their own.  If we tell them what they should think, then it is not their own decisions and they learn nothing from the exercise.

The story "The Jacket" has many different scenarios and not with just Phil.  There is the bias of Daniel in that he believes that his grandmother was given the jacket out of pity, instead of out of gratitude from Phil's mother.  Daniel believes that the type of work his grandmother does for Phil's mother is degrading.  This is because he has been given the information that when someone works in this type of position it means they do not deserve the same respect as someone who works in an office or as another professional.  This is something that our students also have to deal with in real life and something that I have dealt with in my own life in the history of my grandmother.  Respect of one's job profession comes from how do the job, not what type of job it is.  His grandmother had earned the respect of Phil's mother by doing her job well and so did my grandmother.

Another point in the story is the fact that it delves in how we determine relationships in our lives.  For instance, Phil believes that being friends with everyone and being someone's friend are
two different things.  This is how he segregates his relationships with different students and peers.  But students can question are whether Phil is saying this because he does not want to be classified as someone who is prejudiced against Daniel or is this really how everyone else classifies their peer relationships.

This also creates critical thinking and can get students to develop their own understanding of self and how we interact with our environment as it relates to relationships, including friendships and our motives behind how we choose our friends.

Here are great lesson ideas that can be used in conjunction with the book to help new teachers how to engage their students and create critical thinking skills.

http://www2.stillwater.k12.mn.us/sites/363874ed-8822-4032-b432-366a02d38aa1/uploads/The_Jacket_by_A._Clements.pdf

Resistance is futile...

Yes, resistance is futile, but we resist anyway.  We resist change, we resist new things and we resist anything that might create chaos in our lives.

But education is always changing and always have new things and a lot of times those changes makes chaos in our lives.

But sometimes it is for the best of our students, our community and our way of life.

Take for instance "The Breadwinner".  A book about how a young girl had to change in order to help her family survive.  When we get deeper into the story, we start to feel the fear, apprehension and other tensions that exists for young Parvana.

Using this story as a basis to help students understand what life is like in other countries is appropriate and it shows how we have to deal with the issues of not just race in bias, but sex as well.  I would also probably have a lesson plan that relates to women in America and the issues surrounding fair wages and bias around employment of certain jobs such as construction workers, firefighters, police and even the military.

Here is a link to a lesson plan that specifically can be used for Middle School students on the breadwinner.  I found that it delved deeply into doing a compare and contrast into a week of life of the main character and the student themselves.

http://www.scu.edu/ethics/publications/cblp/responsibility/middleschool/breadwinner.pdf

It shows how the "Breadwinner" can be used to create critical thinking and start discussions on how life is in other places different from their own experiences. What would they do in Parvana's place?  How would they deal with the issues she faced and if they thought what she did was right?  It also gives students a way to develop their language skills as they learn about the intricacies of another culture and their beliefs.  They could develop new insight into how something that might not be important to us is very important to another culture and its way of life.

Here is a video that I would show my students before they read the book.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObKRVQDKMwU.