Tim Tyson says kids aren’t stupid!!! October 20, 2009

I loved this man. He really focuses on the fact that the children in his class WANT to learn. I think as future educators we all hear these horror stories of kids hating school and hating knowledge, and Tyson steps up and says “Not all of the hype is true!” I loved the idea of the film festival. By pushing the kids as far as he thought they could go he really learned that kids want to learn. Not only that, they want their work to be seen. Kids want to be acknowledged. While new technologies can be dangerous, we have the rare ability to share ‘ work with the world. The kids know that their work will be seen not only by you or their classmates, but also with the entire world, which makes them strive to have high quality work. Also, the children want to help people. Young children want to save the world. They want to make a difference. We underestimate children all the time. We assume that they ae self-centered and that they dont want to learn, but thats WRONG! They want to learn! They certainly dont want you to dumb things down. I think that if you monitor the kid’s progress you can give your students a bit more tha they can chew. It makes them struggle, and when they succeed they feel 100 x’s smarter and 100 x’s more confidant!

Here’s the link

September 20, 2009

Here’s another great Shakespeare video, with them not using Shakespeare’s plays, but making a play based on Shakespeare’s fame. It’s hilarious.

Kelley is so smart! September 10, 2009

This is our rationalle written by moi and the stunning Kelley Gaddis!!!!

Here is is!

This is our handout! September 10, 2009

This is our handout for our 10th grade(or appropriate grade level) British Literature class.

Hide and Shake- Finding Shakespeare hidden in pop culture

Due October 1st

Shakespeare is EVERYWHERE. You can hardly watch a sitcom or listen to the radio without experiencing something written by the man, the legend, Willy Shakespeare. In this assignment you are to find Will and coax him from his hiding space. Find a piece of pop culture ( a movie or TV show clip, a song, a painting, a commercial, a book- ANYTHING!) and tell us how it was inspired by Shakespeare.

• You will have over 2 weeks to complete this assignment, so late work will not be accepted!!!!!

• You will have a 5 minute presentation that MUST include a visual, and you must print out a notes page to hand out to your classmates.

Along with your presentation you will turn in a 1 pg. 12 point typed, times New Romans, double spaced paper. This is not an overnight homework assignment. I want some thought to go into this. Tell me WHY this piece of pop culture is important and, most importantly, what it tells us about Shakespeare.  This must be in MLA format and must include a works cited page. You absolutely MUST back up the idea that your item is related to Shakespeare with fact.  As always, plagiarized work will earn you a big fat ZERO.

You cannot use any primary sources. By this, I mean you cannot actually use the works of William Shakespeare. A 2009 publishing of ‘A midsummer nights dream’ is not pop culture, it’s a new book.

o We have gone over 3 plays in class so far this year (Othello, Romeo and Juliet, and Hamlet) If you can find something on one of these pieces, tell me how it relates to the version of the story YOU remember studying.  This is and individual assignment, so no sharing!

• You will be evaluated in 2 ways. You will have a peer review and a teacher review.

You will be graded on both reviews based on creativity, originality, coherence, relevance, grammatical mistakes, format, and content. Your grade will be out of 100.

• Resources that will be helpful-

o The Shakespeare Blog

o Shakespeare in American Life

o A list of Shakespeare blogs that center around popular culture snippets of Shakespeare

Above all HAVE FUN!!! Remember, Shakespeare was a play write, so play around!

We will give this handout to the students and then show them this video clip as an example.

We’ll go over the handout and the assignment and all of our expectations and answer any questions they might have.

Spindley, brindley spiders! September 1, 2009

So…. Orb Weavers. We looked up lots o’ info today on the little buggers with some shocking outcomes.

The Encyclopedia Americana has…mmm… like, 5 sentences on them. And most of it is how they build their web… See–>    “A spider of the Family Argiopidae, most familiarly represented by the garden spiders. These spiders build spiral webs that lie in a single plane. Typically, the web is made by first setting up a radial framework of dry silk strung between the branches of a plant. The spider then spins spiral lines of sticky silk that catches the spider’s prey. For an illustration of the building of an Orb web, see under SPIDER.”

The Encyclopedia Britannica had even less, unless you wanted to pay for the premium content.

Here’s the page

“Any spider of the family Araneidae (Argiopidae or Epeiridae) of the order Araneida, a large and widely distributed group noted for their orb-shaped webs. More than 2,500 species are known.”

Wikipedia, on teh other hand, is the s#!%!!!! It had so much information. Although there is no proof teh article is acurate, there is discussion about the relevance of the information, the acuracy of the information, and the detail given to each section.

“The orb-weaver spiders (family Araneidae) are the builders of spiral wheel-shaped webs often found in gardens, fields and forests. Their common name is taken from the round shape of this typical web. Orb-weavers have eight similar eyes, legs hairy or spiny and no stridulating organs. The family is cosmopolitan, including many well-known large or brightly colored garden spiders. There are more than 2,800 species in over 160 genera worldwide..blah blah blah… for ever“ Ok,so maybe not the blah blah blah, but you get the picture.

Here’s the Page

All in all, cool spider, cool search, and Wiki does it better. (mmm hmmm)

Billy Shax in pop culture August 27, 2009

This would be an awesome video to use to bring up the idea to students that classic literature is everywhere.

Its a jeans commercial that quotes Shakespeares ‘A Midsummer Nights Dream’

Chapter 2 August 27, 2009

First I’d like to say that I LOVE the word pedagogy. Really. It’s just fun to say! On another, totally different note, this chapter is really cool. I think the blog is an awesome tool to utilize in class, and this chapter gives so many exquisite examples and ideas that you can’t help but goo “Yeah! That’s kinda nifty!” That is, if you still say ‘nifty’…which I do. I think it tries to make us realize that no special knowledge is needed to make a blog, its just like writing an e-mail. I know from experience that these blogs can be very intimidating. Like if you do something wrong an angry tiger will jump out of the screen at you. It wont, its cool. Unlike other things blogs reflect their creators personality. Its like an interactive diary accessible to all. It really is a community tool. Blogs give you a chance to interact without the social pressure associated with peer gatherings, and they also force the writer to focus their analytical skills and writing skills. No one wants to read a blog littered with grammatical and spelling mistakes. These blogs, e-portfolios and online class communications make it much easier for the modern student to keep track with everything that is going on in their lives, and also supply a stress free place to find all of their necessary resources. Students can use the blogs in different ways, depending on what level of expertise they have in computer technologies. This is so great because it gives you a platform on which you are on relatively equal grounds with to associate with your students and really see what they re doing.  A great website fro elementary/middle school level blogs is ‘A really different place.org’

It has lots of cool things like:

their thoughts on books,,

Their feelings on standardized testing (which they hate),

and news reports they like.

All and all, good chapter (a little repetitive-but hey) with lots of ideas for class assignments and projects.

Chapter 1 August 25, 2009

So, I was really impressed that they have 2 to 5 year old using the internet. Then again, I suppose that my little sister uses it more than I realized and she’d only 5. Crazy! I feel so uneducated because although I use the tools available on the web (wiki’s, weblogs(blogs), social and video sites and the like), I can’t make them. Then again I suppose that though I can drive a car I can’t build one from scratch.  I like the idea of students using the web to create interactive learning web-pages or blogs. Something like Dan blogs Twilight is an awesome option to get kids(though Dan isn’t a kid) to talk about what they’ve read.

Wiki’s and such are also a great way. I can see using wiki’s( as in having the kids create a wiki or add to a wiki) to help the kids use and sshare their knowledge. The web offers so many ways to share and gain knowledge. Tapping into them will be as an important part of lesson plans today as books and magazines were 10 years ago.

First Blog ever… August 20, 2009

Scary… I am officially posting my first blog. My younger siblings are experts at these things. Im only 23 and I feel behind the times. Not a good start. I feel like I should be writing something more significant, and instead I feel like I should have started my post “Dear Diary”… Does that mean I have to write about, like, the super cool guy in my 3rd period geometry class who, like, has a car and stuff? I hope not. Well, we’ll see how this blog…thing… goes. Yay? Wish me luck!