Recently I was interviewed by Angeline Duran Piotrowski for the Momstyle News podcast. We discussed reluctant readers and about how to motivate children to read. Momstyle News is a great resource and news site for parents educators of any gender. I had a lot of fun doing the interview, and you can find the original interview here on Momstylenews.com.
Maos on Parade on Flickr
These are some paper cut out pieces I have been working on. I was going to use these for a piece about Chinese pollution, but these are so creepy I feel like I should use them for something else. These came out so good that I might not want to waste them on my original idea.
From Flickr: “These are some of the Mao faces I was going to use for the final project, but they maybe too small. These are made out of construction paper. I took an image of Mao and flattened it into 4 layers in photo shop. Each layer is cut out of a different sheet of colored paper. It’s a lot like making a stencil or a screen print.
I’m really happy with how well these came out. Even if I do not end up using these images for this project I will probably find a use for these in the near future.”
China Says 6 Americans Detained Over Protest Could Be Held 10 Days from the Washington Post5 Americans Are Arrested for Protest in Beijing from theNYTimes.com
While I was away at Camp Fatima it turns out that friend of the show and former guest Brian Conley of SmallWorldNews.com was amoung 10 Americans detained in Beijing by Chinese Police. Brian was documenting a protest and was deported along with another videoblogger and 8 pro-Tibet Activists. The detaines are now in the US.
The camp that lives on Love from the Star Ledger
Camp Fatima of NJ
P.O. Box 654
Harrison, N.J. 07029
or call (201) 487-8688
Camp Fatima’s web address is:
campfatimanj.org
The Momstyle News Ep29: Teaching For The Future
Angeline from Mommystyle News interviewed me to talk about reluctant readers and about how to motivate children to read. Mommystyle News is a great resource and news site for parents educators of any gender. I had a lot of fun and I will be including the interview in the Teaching for the Future podcast.
“Oh, You Doll! Tweens Embrace American Girls” by CARRIE STETLER from The Star-Ledger”The e-mail trail: Electronic messages can come back to bite the hand that typed them” by J. SCOTT ORR from the Star-Ledger
“Officials suspect pregnancy pact” from Associated Press via the Baltimore Sun
**UPDATE**
I found this while looking up the above links I found the below story on the Baltimore Sun’s website.
“Mayor: No support for claims of pregnancy pact”
If you would like to contribute to the 100th episode feel free to email me your ideas or some audio to teachingforthefuture@gmail.com.
For the last few episodes we have been discussing YouTube in theory, almost at a distance. I have even read some comments on blogs like 7 Inch Cinema saying that I'm being a little abstract. To fix this, today we are going to be looking at some YouTube videos for kids.
I will admit that YouTube was definitely not designed for kids and teachers. I know that YouTube filters content, but often I find that I'm too young for the videos. Despite all that, today we're going to get a little deeper and we're going to be looking at a few specific videos. In this episode we go over some recommended videos.
Before we get into that I continue the Better Know A Listener series with an interview with Aaron "The Art Guy" Smith. Aaron is the edu-blogger/podcaster behind on of my favorite sights, The Academic Aesthetic.com. If you are interested in technology education and/or art education you can find interesting information and web tools from Aaron.
Though this is the end of our current series about YouTube, we will continue to compile a list of recommended videos. If you have a favorite YouTube video for kids and teens, leave a link to the video and your site so that I can give you credit.
Suggested Viewing
Chocolate Rain (Played during the intro)
TeacherTube - 50 States and Capitals cartoon song
Did You Know 2.0 (Thanks Aarron)
Signing Time
Thanks Made Loud & Freya's Mom Casey
Silent Miaow aka Amanda Baggs
see her blog at http://ballastexistenz.autistics.org/
Links
7 Inch Cinema
In this episode I interview Dr. Scott McLeod. Scott is the coordinator of the Educational Administration program at Iowa State University and director of the UCEA Center for the Advanced Study of Technology Leadership in Education (CASTLE). You may be more familiar with Scott’s work on his blog, DangerouslyIrrelevant.org, where he discusses education and technology from the perspective of administrators and teachers.
Though it seems like I have been spending a lot of time defending YouTube, I want to make it clear that video sharing sites are not all butterflies and rainbows. YouTube has greatly effected the way interpret and interact with the media. Just think of the recent controversies in national politics. In an article in the Hartford Currant, aptly entitled "YouTube, A Blessing and a Curse". The author discusses how the permanence and the availability of video news, gives certain videos an impact they would not have had earlier. Just think of McCain’s “Bomb Iran”, Clinton’s sniper fire, and the controversy surrounding Jeremiah Wright. How would things change if video coverage and the videos themselves were not available on demand 24 hours a day. “In past years, controversy… might have lasted a day or two before people lost interest.” (Weir)
This ‘on demand effect’ isn’t limited to the presidential campaign. What if you applied this to classroom management? More specifically issues like behavior and cheating. With little or no effort it is easy to find a ton of instructional video on how to cheat on tests and game the system. Over at his blog, Learning in Hand, Tony Vincent collected many of these interesting videos. What happens when kids have access to material that allows them to game the test and cheat their way through class? While these videos are concerning I am more interested in what I found on Scott MeLeod’s Dangerously irrelevant. In this post Scott has collected videos by students taken with their mobile phones. These videos show scenes of teacher/student confrontations in class. One one hand these are an invasive look at a few bad moments in what are probably good classrooms, while on the other hand these videos could be student-citizen journalism exposing the abuses teachers. To try to make sense of all of this I brought Scott McLeod on the show to talk about his post and the changing role of YouTube in the Classroom.
LINKS:
YouTube A Blessing and a Curse By William Weir
http://www.courant.com/features/lifestyle/hc-youtubepolitics.artapr06,0,4268424.story
How to Cheat
http://learninginhand.com/blog/2008/04/how-to-cheat.html
How can I cheat on the test? Let me count the ways
http://www.teach42.com/2008/04/02/how-can-i-cheat-on-the-test-let-me-count-the-ways/
Cell phone cameras in the K-12 classroom: Punishable offenses or student-citizen journalism?
http://www.dangerouslyirrelevant.org/2008/03/cell-phone-came.html
During a session at PodCamp NYC 2 led by Christine Cavalier, I had a revelation about the way we look at YouTube. Christine's session was all about "how to raise kids in this digital world" and there were a lot of interesting ideas brought up. Christine talked a lot about becoming digitally literate so that we can speak to the digital natives in our lives. She also drew a lot from ELL education, and made the case that we should teach technology in the same way we teach children to speak and interact in an English(American) culture.
As I figured it would the conversation led to the recent controversy surrounding a staged video of a group of girls beating up a younger classmate. One of the attendees, Aldon Hynes, talked about the dangers of social networking as a tool for bullying and abuse. I don't want to misquote anyone, so I'm going to do my best to paraphrase what I heard and hopefully if I'm off base someone can come on the show and correct me or just fix and inaccuracies in the comments. Aldon talked about how a lack of proper modeling/teaching/supervision led to the assalt/video and how it had the potential to ruin the lives of everyone involved because these kids didn't understand to scope of their actions and the permanence of the Internet.
It was at the moment that I realized that most of the people in the room not only spoke a different "technological language" than many young people, but that we are not even part of the same paradigm. Aldon's comments made me realize that kids are operating under different social codes, norms, and perspectives about how to use social media/networking/the Interwebs. Which brings me back to Christine Cavalier's point about teaching digital skills and responsibility like it is a language. Just as everyone thinks and sees the world through the lens of their native language, the "digital natives" in our lives see the world through their own lens.
To better explain this idea I wanted to talk to someone who understands young people, particularly teens, and the role of social media in the lives of kids. Vanessa Van Petten is a blogger, author, podcaster, and life coach who teaches parents to better understand their teens.
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