It's Not About Making It Fun

Educating the Net Generation: How to Engage Students in the 21st Century by Bob Pletka

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


The NetGen are even harder to engage than their predecessors, but, aside from adding technology to the mix, what's needed to engage them is less "teaching to the test" and more complex, relevant projects that challenges different skills (language, a subject such as math or history, technology) at the same time.  They need to go at their own pace and I know from experience even as an adult that classes only go as fast as the slowest student.  Technology can actually help in those instances, because a student can get instant feedback in how they are doing and then get one-on-one tutoring either from the program or the teacher.

I wasn't terribly impressed with the writings of the students themselves - maybe I need to go back and read some of my scribblings (GAH! NOOOOO!!!).



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Storytelling Workshop in Columbia

LeVerne and I attended the Panning for Gold Storytelling Workshop with Pat Feehan. Love that Pat! Pat always wonders what I'm doing there and I always say, "You can always learn something new!" Pat's take on storytelling, that is, telling a story without the book, without a net (as it were), is that anyone can do it. And she proceeds to prove it to us.
First we had to tell about ourselves and what we hoped to get out of the class. Next, we had to tell three facts but one of them had to be ... (shock! horror!) a fib! You have no idea how hard this is on me. I strive for accuracy as a matter of policy. How can I ... dare I use the "L" word? ... speak an untruth, worst of all, an untruth about myself? And then make it convincing? I nearly had a nervous breakdown. I am sooo bad at lying. (Eeek! I said the word!)
Next, we were to take a known story and tell it from a minor character's point of view. It was a story we already knew, but we were doing something different with it that required creativity on the spur of the moment. We were divided into teams for this and LeVerne and I picked the Henny Penny story. That's the one about the sky falling on the panicky chicken. We told it from the point of view of the acorn, whom I called Nutty Wutty and LeVerne called Wutty Nutty, which gives you an idea of how well we were going to collaborate on this. I told the first half and LeVerne finished it off, starting with Nutty Wutty (or whoever) crying out, "Help! I've fallen and I can't get up!" and finishing off, literally, by having a squirrel eat him. LeVerne is so cruel.
There were some really great stories that came out of these, and from individuals trying to wrestle a story to the ground by turns.
Next, Pat told a story and we had to retell it (Imitation, one of the ways of learning/telling stories), going around the room, each person contributing another part of the story. Thereby Pat proved that we could hear a story told once and tell it.
Last, we had lunchtime to learn a new (and preferably short) story to tell and be video'd, to watch and have critiqued later. Pat said this would be hard, not so much because of the video, but because we were performing in front of peers. As an example, she mentioned how stressed she was in the previous part of the class when she had to tell that story for us to learn ... and the Dean was sitting in on the class at that time. She kept hoping the Dean would leave and go do her work, but she stayed and stayed until finally she had to tell the story before we ran out of time and had to go to lunch.
This was quite the time-consuming class because it was rather large and each person was telling a story or a part of a story about 3 or 4 times. Despite this, the class went very, very fast. I suppose that's because we were wishing we had more time to learn before performing.
We each performed a story of our choosing that was video'd and then we watched it. Others were permitted to give their "appreciations" while Pat reserved the right to critique. She says you don't know what you are doing that's annoying or distracting until you see yourself on video. And what did I notice? I noticed that I need a facelift. It is really hard to look at yourself on video and not just cringe at how you look.
Coincidentally, I had been to Westview Middle School the day before to do a story for Teen Read week ... on video. I had read a portion of Richard Peck's A Long Way from Chicago last year and thought that would hold them, but they asked me to come back and this time maybe do something with puppets. Now they're getting pushy. sigh. So, I brought the puppets and shirt to do "Jack and the Three Sillies," a fairly long story that I have done before many times. I didn't even have to review it in my head. I don't get to see the videos, which is a mercy, I can tell you.
We learned the perils of live storytelling: upspeech (where your voice? keeps going up? like you're asking a question? but there's no question there?), saying "um" alot, flipping your hair. If you have any of these bad habits, you just need to be shown them and then when you are aware, you can start cutting down. "Oh! I've scratched my face again! I have to stop that. There! I did it again! I need to pay more attention. Don't do it ... don't do it ..." Eventually? you should be able? to stop it?
The room was filled with terrific storytellers. Their stories were really good and they were either already great tellers or Pat did a fantastic job in just five hours!
Pat said something about putting the videos in a podcast so we could be tortured all over again. If I can get the url for that, I'll post it here.

LiveMocha!

Where was this LiveMocha idea forty years ago when I still had brain cells? When I was still branching, instead of pruning? What a great idea this is! Well, it's a great idea for those of us who want to speak another language.
I signed up for Spanish. Okay, okay - y'all think I already know this stuff, but you don't really know it until you have to use it day after day with, like, real speakers and all. I wanted to see how this works and I should have kept in mind that it's in beta-test because there are some little niggly things that annoyed me.
I went for Intermediate because I'm definitely not a beginner but I'm nervous about my abilities. So I started with Spanish 202. And what are they teaching? Telling time ... People, I'm telling you, it was Math!!!!! I have no trouble with the Spanish. I've taught telling time in Spanish. But I have to figure out what time it was a half an hour ago, etc.! Talk about sweating!
First they showed clock faces and had written underneath (there was probably some audio that went with it, but I don't have a way to actually talk so I was going to ignore the audio portions) the time, then what time it was such-and-such amount of time ago (which is the "it makes so much time" construction in Spanish). Then it showed people being in certain locations (use of the correct verb for location is a tricky thing for non-Spanish speakers) at certain times. Then they were in those locations a certain amount of time ago. Then you were asked if it were such-and-such time, with the response being, "Naaa, that was three hours ago!" Fine. That was just showing you what to do.
Next came the finding the correct response portion. You had to pick from four possibles the correct time or phrase represented by the sentence. Not too bad, I only screwed one of those up because the photo was missing and I wasn't sure if I'd clicked it. Tch - beta-test!
Then there was the magnet board: you translated a sentence by clicking on separate words made available. It was easy enough to find the first and last words in the sentence because they were capitalized and punctuated. I messed up once when I used the right words with the wrong punctuation in the "Is it blank o'clock yet?" "Naaa, it was blank o'clock fifteen minutes ago." Obviously, in Spanish the word order is different:

¿Ya son las 7:15? Hace treinta minutas eran las 7:15.

And I screwed something else up being careless. sigh. So, you ask, what's the point of this? It doesn't sound like such a great system. Ahhh, but you forget the social aspects. You are also required to make friends. When you sign up, you are given a few people to ask to be friends that either are taking the same language, or are native speakers. If you are the misanthrope I am, this is a painful process. I rooted about and clicked on three people that looked safe (female). One of them has already contacted me! She sent me a simple note in Spanish and I have replied. She's a nice granny, semi-retired, and brushing up her old skills.

Well, hot damn!

I also had the opportunity to look over someone's written composition (only about 7 sentences). Shhhhhugar! Her English is worlds' better than my Spanish! As a native speaker, I could correct it and/or give comments. What could I say? It was all excruciatingly correct, if overly careful. So I told her it was perfect and gave the full five stars. Other people had been giving marks as well and it showed her average star tally.
Oops! I had written a short piece as well. I hope people are kind.
Also, I've noticed that there is a tote board that shows the rankings in each class of how many points students have accumulated. I guess that's for the terminally competitive. Me, I'm glad I didn't bite off too much by aiming too high in levels. Phew!

Hmmm, perhaps I should look into the German as well. Then again, Germans grade really hard. "Och, ja - nice of you to zend ze note, but ve don't use ze datif in zat case, you know ..."

Added later: Horrors! Someone graded my short written piece! They walked all over it! Then they sent another note and said they had misunderstood something and that other than a little tiny bit, it was good. Phew! You need a thick skin for this! Next time I will write le minimum. Fewer words, fewer mistakes.

Chichen Itza

LludiKris explores Chichen Itza in SecondLife as a Mayan Warrior

Sorry I haven't been posting lately, but I've been back at work and very, very tired. But not so tired that I can't sit in front of a computer and get bloodshot eyes finding more and more treasures to investigate in SecondLife.

Fellow librarian 50winx recommended the Chichen Itza sim to me and it was well worth an extended visit. First of all, you get these cool costumes: Mayan Warrior and Mayan Princess in full regalia! I liked the warrior costume best and I think it suits Kris, don't you? Shows off his tattoo nicely. The butterfly that usually gives the flying audio tour was not available so Kris and Lludmila actually had to walk around. Next time I might click on the info posts, but there was just too much to look at: pyramid, shaman's huts, sacrificial pool, tropical landscaping, village of gifte shoppes, and outdoor bar and dance flo- Is this place run by the Mexican tourism board or what?

Lludmila shows too much thigh as she admires the waterfall at Chichen Itza

Chichen Itza is just one of the high quality sims with educational (as well as entertainment) content in SecondLife. Also, there's no language barrier, bugs (well, there was a spider dangling down), amoebic dysentery ... what's not to like?