Certificate of Educational Technology and Information Literacy: Final project will be looking at 2nd Semester and creating a unit and assessment based around your content area that address ISB TAIL Standards (Technology and Information Literacy).
Detail Brueghel's "Landscape With The Fall Of Icarus"
Blog Unit: IB HL English, Year 1: Ekphrasis
(Ekphrasis, alternately spelled ecphrasis or ekfrasis, is an ancient Greek term used to denote poetry or poetic writing concerning itself with the visual arts, artistic objects, and/or highly visual scenes.)
The Argument:
In his book, The Educated Imagination, the Canadian literary critic Northrop Frye says, “There are two main kinds of association, analogy and identity, two things that are like each other and two things that are each other. One produces the figure of speech called simile: the other produces the figure called metaphor” (Frye, 32).
An issue that I often encounter when I teach literature I associate with building bridges. Many of my students see the relationship between the shoreline of the “real world,” that world wherein they live, and, say, the shoreline of biology or economics. They can imagine that someday, somehow those academic subjects might play a role in their future careers. My students have constructed a bridge between themselves and those disciplines. My subject does not offer them the ground of cause and effect or demand and production. I offer them a world founded upon mere imagination where almost any argument is as good as the next, a world that in comparison appears groundless, and any bridge under construction seems but a “ghostly paradigm of things” (“Among School Children,” 43, Y.B.Yeats).
My students often ask the pertinent question, “Why should I study literature; why should I spend time on a subject which is a place where there are few, if any, absolutes, where rights and wrongs are relative?” Any honest consideration of these questions begs another question even more basic, one with significant ramifications: Why Art?
Suppose we go on a trip to a distant planet, but it’s a planet like our own, one that will sustain human life. The first thing we notice is that this is a place that is not “us.” We see this planet’s mountains and valleys and oceans and sky. But we realize that they are not a part of us. Two things happen: we become curious about this world, and we have feelings about it. Our curiosity leads us to explore and measure and weigh and make distinctions: this thing is heavy; this thing is wet; this thing is green. Eventually our emotions run the gamut from curiosity and wonder to anxiety and fear. But regardless of our itinerant emotions, our habitual state of mind is one of separation; this place is not a part of us.
Soon we realize that there’s a difference between this world we see and the world in which we want to live. We begin to realize that we have needs and desires: when it rains we want to be dry; when it is cold we want to be warm. We want to live not in the world we see, but in a world that we build out of what we see. We want to build and live in a world that is human/humane; we want to build a home. Art is born. Northrop Frye says, “Art begins as soon as [the idea] ’I don’t like this’ turns into [the idea] ‘this is not the way I could imagine it’” (28). In our imaginations anything can happen that can be imagined, and “the limit of the imagination is a totally human world” (Frye, 29).
The imagination is the place where we can create the sense of identity with our surroundings. The poet doesn’t write a poem because he wants to simply describe nature, he wants to create a world that is totally absorbed and possessed by the human mind, and we’ve come round to an answer to the question about why we should study literature. Two of the tools that the poet uses are simile and metaphor; tools, as mentioned earlier, of association. “The motive for metaphor,” according to Frye, “is a desire to associate, and finally to identify, the human mind with what goes on outside it, because the only genuine joy you can have is in those rare moments when you feel that although we may know in part, as [St.] Paul says, we are also a part of what we know” (33).
Unit Lesson Plan/Outline:
Students, I want you to search the web (and others sources—i.e., books, magazines, etc.) and “find” a work of art. It can be a painting or sculpture or photograph or tapestry; it can be a dance video or music—you choose. Please “check” with me when you have decided what “object” of art you have chosen to use. Regardless of your respective artistic talents, you are required to sketch (reproduce as it were) the work of art that you have chosen. If you’ve chosen a dance video, think about some of Degas’ paintings that feature dancers; if you’ve chosen music, think of Disney’s Fantasia. You are allowed to also use a photograph of your object in your blog if you wish (Flickr: Creative Commons), but you are all required to draw! You must post your sketch on your blog! (with or without an accompanying photograph). Are you an artist? If you are a photographer, painter, sculptor (etc.), you may choose a work of your own. Just remember: you still must do a sketch! Think of it as a variation on a theme.
You need to reflect upon the reasons that led you to choose that particular object of art. Each student will write and post a brief explanation (a kind of abstract) on your blog in which you discuss the reasons that led you to choose that object of art.
You are then required to compose a poem (of no less than ten lines) inspired by your object of art.
When we return from Christmas Holiday, in class we will read “Musee des Beaux Arts,” by W.H. Auden. I will have an image of Brueghel’s “Landscape With The Fall of Icarus” for us to observe (this painting inspired Auden’s poem). Together we will do a close reading of “Musee des Beaux Arts,” paying close attention to Auden’s literary devices and allusions. We will discuss Auden’s tone.
For homework, subsequent to our class discussion on Auden, you are required to compose a comparison/contrast personal reflection paper comparing Auden’s poem with your poem (think of it as a kind of Commentary on your own poem where you include a discussion of “Musee des Beaux Arts”). An emphasis should be placed on whether you think the similarities or the differences between your poem and Auden’s are more significant. This, too, will be posted on your blog: word limit: 750—1,500.
Conclusion:
In our first section, subtitled “The Argument,” I discussed the world of the imagination. I’d like to finish with a quote from Northrop Frye, to whom I am completely indebted for much of the substance of this lesson plan (including planetary exploration). Frye writes:
But the study of arts, such as painting and music, has many values for literary training apart from their value as subjects in themselves. Everything man does that’s worth doing is some kind of construction, and the imagination is the constructive power of the mind set free to work on pure construction, construction for its own sake. The units don’t have to be words; they can be numbers or tones or colors or bricks or pieces of marble. It is hardly possible to understand what the imagination is doing with words without seeing how it operates with some of these other units” (Frye, 120).
Action Plan:
Activities: Students select an “object” of art.
Students sketch their chosen object.
Students post their sketch (students may include a photo of their “object”).
Students post a brief abstract (one paragraph) that discusses what led them to select their work of art.
Students compose a poem inspired by their “object” of art.
Students post their poem.
Students compose and post a Personal Commentary discussing their poem and Auden’s poem, “Musee des Beaux Arts”. Timing: IBHL 1: 2009-10; Spring Semester Resources: Described in length above. Monitoring: Student Self-monitoring, Socratic Seminar, Criterion-based Rubric (for the student’s reflective essay: IB “Written Paper 1: Commentary” Rubric, pages 61-66 in Language A1 Syllabus). Evaluation: Individual student self-assessment via conferencing with the instructor (me). (Process) HAL: 1-7. (Product) GPA: A-F. Success Criteria: Bloom’s Revised Taxononmy (hierarchically—from least to most important): Remembering, Understanding, Applying, Analyzing, Evaluating, Creating (Bloom’s Traditional Taxonomy = Knowledge, Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Evaluation, Synthesis).
Landscape With The Fall of Icarus, Pieter Breughel, c. 1558; Oil on canvas, mounted on wood; 73.5 x 112 cm;
Musees Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels.
Musee des Beaux Arts
by W.H. Auden
About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
Certificate of Educational Technology and Information Literacy: How do you manage the use of technology peripherals with students? What are some things you’ve learned and hope to implement.
The single most “important” peripheral that we (my students and I) use in our classroom is (this answer sounds so abvious) the Smart Board (interactive whiteboard).
We use it for a myriad of purposes. We analyze poetry together; we do close readings of student compositions. I often include digital images to enhance our lessons. My IB students use it for their Individual Oral Presentations: creating iMovies (or MovieMaker videos) and Power Point presentations. YouTube has become a “real” teaching tool!
On my RSS feed I have The Interactive Whiteboard Revolution. This site is a place where I have conversations with other educators, and we share our ideas about how we use our SmartBoards (interactive whiteboards).
My colleague Dana Watts and I have been implementing student blogs in our curriculum. We hope that we can help nurture the idea in our high school of the use of electronic portfolios.
My next blog will outline a “blog unit.” I have already introduced my classes to this unit, and our SmartBoard was instrumental.
It seems to me that the use of our classroom SmartBoard is only limited to our individual and collective imaginations.
Photo courtesy of Mrs eNil, Creative Commons: Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 Generic.
Certificate of Educational Technology and Information Literacy: What are ways you manage the use of laptops in your classroom and what additional best practice ways might you add?
Back in the day . . . when I was earning my degree in Education, one of my professors gave us advice that has been a boon throughout my career. It is also one that translates well into how I “manage” laptops in my classroom.
Our professor advised us that when it came to classroom management we teachers should try to engender in our students the fact the we teachers had (what the professor termed) “with-it-ness.” She suggested that when it came to students who were having “side-bar” conversations, or, say, in a test situation if we were worried about student “collusion;” that we teachers should just confidently sidle (her word) over to that area of our classroom with which we were concerned and just linger there for a bit.
It is amazing just how successful this with-it-ness sidling works.
I have rarely had to admonish a student during class. My students see me move around my class as if it were our arena–I am not “on stage.” They know that whether I am “coaching,” lecturing, or leading a discussion; sometime soon I’ll be standing next to them.
This method works brilliantly with laptops. My students realize that I know where to look on their screens to see what “pages” or “tabs” they have accessed. They know that I sidle around our room, and when it is necessary I simply smile at them, clear my throat a bit, and those superfluous pages and tabs disappear.
All of this said, sometimes I do have to actually tell them to get back on task.
Photo Courtesy of Stanford Ed Tech, Creative Commons License Deed
Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 Generic.
Certificate of Educational Technology and Information Literacy: How relevant are the NETs for Teachers and Administrators to being a “Good Educator” today?
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
We are in the midst of a revolution. It is a movement that makes the Industrial Revolution pale in comparison. This is a movement that challenges the way that humanity actually “thinks” about itself and its relationship to the universe. I know that sounds like such a histrionic thing to say. But this revolution really is taking place in the arena of human cognition. This is more than an Information Revolution; it is more than a Technolgical Revolution, and we need to find a new name for this exciting time in which we live. This is a revolution that is challenging what Teilhard de Chardin and Vladimir Vernadsky call the noösphere.
As a teacher, I feel that educators are at the epicenter of this Noöspheric Revolution.
In a presentation that had a dramatic impact upon me, Ken Robinson states that in educational systems throughout the world we have been guilty of “educating people out of their creative capacities” . . . Robinson declares, “. . . my contention is that creativity, now, is as important as literacy.”
The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) states on their home page that they seek to improve “learning and teaching by advancing the effective use of technology,” and they have developed standards for educators in the use of technology. The very first standard set for teachers by the ISTE is to Facilitate and Inspire Student Learning and Creativity.
These ISTE standards are essential for all teachers, administrators and students!
We are lucky to be living during this exciting revolution. In a song written by Mike Edwards, he states, “Right here, right now/There is no place I’d rather be” (Right Here, Right Now, 1990).
Certificate of Educational Technology and Information Literacy: How can teachers and schools ensure that their students are learning what they need when it comes to Technology and Information Literacy?
Quite truthfully, I am not able to discuss this issue in a better way than Sir Ken Robinson and David Warlick have.
In his address to the 2006 TED Conference, Sir Ken Robinson noted, “There is extraordinary evidence of human creativity in all of the presentations that we’ve had and in all of the people here–just the variety of it, the range of it. I have an interest in education. . . partly because it’s education that’s meant to take us into the future that we can’t grasp. If you think of it, children starting school this year will be retiring in 2065. Nobody has a clue, despite all the expertise that’s been on parade for the past four days, what the world will look like in five years time.”
On his blog, David Warlick notes, “I have to confess that the one thing that truly bothered me about the conversation became apparent to me when someone stated that their job was to help their students gain the technology skills they will need after they graduate. It occurred to me was that, “You can’t!” We do not know what skills they will need. We do not know what word processing will look like in ten years — in five years — or if it will still exist. We do not even know if there will be something new, a new killer app, something that we have no hope of “training” them for today.
So I’ve been thinking that instead of Computer Applications, our students should be learning Computer Application. Computer Applications implies (to me) a specific list of software tools that students will be taught to use — one tool for a few weeks, then another tool, and then another.
Instead, I would suggest that students simply learn to apply computers to solve problems or accomplish goals. It really doesn’t matter if they are covering all of the tools, or even if each student is mastering all of the same tools. Students would simply learn how computers can help them do interesting things, and then gain the skills and confidence required to teach themselves, with the guidance of their teachers, the applications to make it happen.”
Essentially, then, we need to develop ways in which we help students confidently express their creativity through their use of computers. It seems to me that this endeavor needs to be collaborative. As a starting point, I would suggest that every teacher here at International School Bangkok take this course, Certificate of Educational Technology and Information Literacy.
Photo courtesy Sean McGrath, Flickr/Creative Commons-licensed content requiring attribution.
CoETaIL assignment: Whosejob is it to teach the NETs and AASL standards to students?
Justabout a year ago, I know what my answer would have been if I were asked, “Whose job is it to teach the National Educational Technology Standards for Students?” I would have naively blurted out something like, “Well . . . the Educational Technology Specialist.” I would have just as glibly said, “Librarians,” if the question involved the AASL’s Learning Standards.
Today, my answer is radically different.
It’s everyone’s job: my job, the Ed Tech’s job, the Librarian’s job, the Administration’s job, the student’s job. Yes–I’d include students.
It’s my job to know what the ISTE & the AASL has identified as Learning Standards for Students. And taking the course work for our Certificate of Educational Technology and Information Literacy class has given me the chance to learn skills that, frankly, I’d never even dreamed about.
But when “the rubber hits the road,” when actual implementation of those standards “occur”– in my classroom students often teach other students.
This year I’ve had one of our Education Technology Gurus, Dennis Harter, come into all of my IB HL Junior English classes to help us set-up blogs. Since then, I’ve showed/taught my students a couple of skills needed for “web publishing.” My colleague in the English Department, Dana Watts, is a consistent collaborator. But what has been really wonderful to see is the way students teach/help each other learn technology. They also, quite literally, teach me!
I’m the necessary guide on this jouney of learning–I make sure that those ISTE & AASL Standards remain the sign-posts on our road–but I am not the only one “behind the wheel.”
Photo courtesy Creative Commons, by Wes Siler:http://jalopnik.com/5390063/steering-wheel-laptop-desk
Final Project: Course 3 : Visual Literacy: Effective Communicators and Creators
(SUNY: EDC 6054 Authoring for Educators)
My colleague Dana Watts and I are committed to establishing E-Portfolios as an essential element of our learning community here at International School Bangkok.
There are many utilitarian reasons to sponsor the use of E-Portfolios–not the least of which is that more universities are using them as part of their admissions policy.
Our proposition is the following: E-Portfolios are an alternative means of learning and assessment that helps develop a student’s intrinsic interest.
Carol S. Dweck, the Lewis and Virginia Eaton Professor of Psychology at Stanford University, says, “It matters greatly what students believe about their intelligence” (Dweck 2007; http://www.isacs.org/misc_files/EducationCanada.pdf).
Traditional grading practices (A, B ,C, D, F) are based on extrinsic motivation, a system that seeks to motivate as a function of reward and punishment. Developing students into self-directed, independent, lifelong learners “will not happen if educators rely on extrinsic motivation” (Principal’s Research Review January 2009).
Many student’s view their intelligence as it is tethered to this traditional and seriously flawed system.
E-Portfolios help foster a student’s intrinsic motivation. “The ePortfolio project team shows how we believe the portfolio can stimulate learning and a move away from extrinsic towards intrinsic motivation through a cycle of goal-setting, action and reflection” (INTERACT, INTEGRATE, IMPACT; Proceedings of the 20th Annual Conference of the Australasian Society for Computers in Learning in Tertiary Education (ASCILITE) Adelaide, Australia 7–10 December 2003; Editors: Geoffrey Crisp, Di Thiele, Ingrid Scholten, Sandra Barker, Judi Baron (http://74.125.153.132/search?q=cache:9RrtzfXG5-EJ:www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/adelaide03/docs/pdf/601.pdf+%28INTERACT,+INTEGRATE,+IMPACT&cd=1&hl=th&ct=clnk).
As Manitoba Education (2006) stated, “According to current cognitive research, people are motivated to learn by success and competence. Assessment can be a motivator, not through reward and punishment, but by stimulating student’s intrinsic interest.” Student motivation can be intrinsically enhanced by “Reinforcing the idea that students have control over, and responsibility for, their own learning” (Manitoba 2006).
Teachers will provide appropriate lessons for the skills needed for Web publishing; however, many if not most students already possess internet based technological skills and a certain comfort level in utilizing those skills.
All students would benefit from a scaffolding approach to mastering these skills.
“Scaffolding instruction as a teaching strategy originates from Lev Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory and his concept of the zone of proximal development (ZPD). “The zone of proximal development is the distance between what children can do by themselves and the next learning that they can be helped to achieve with competent assistance.” The scaffolding teaching strategy provides individualized support based on the learner’s ZPD. In scaffolding instruction a more knowledgeable other provides scaffolds or supports to facilitate the learner’s development. The scaffolds facilitate a student’s ability to build on prior knowledge and internalize new information. The activities provided in scaffolding instruction are just beyond the level of what the learner can do alone. The more capable other provides the scaffolds so that the learner can accomplish (with assistance) the tasks that he or she could otherwise not complete, thus helping the learner through the ZPD”
Student e-portfolios that exhibit “a purposeful collection of artifacts that characterize learning experiences of the portfolio owner” will become a vehicle for intrinsic student motivation.
Self-directed, intrinsically motivated students become life-long learners.
CoETaIL assignment: Upload your group’s completed digital story & embed into your blog post. Reflect on the process of creating the digital story. How could digital storytelling be used in your classroom/subject area?
In a recent Face2Face Certificate of Educational Technology and Information Literacy class we were having this on-going discussion about learning the skills of educational technology “just in case” or “just in time.” The question that seemed to me to go a’begging is, “Does learning these skills have any intrinsic value?”
So I made a little video about Marshall McLuhan.
The study of literature on a very basic level is the study of communication. A place to begin this study might be the question, “Why does this composition exist? What made the author break her or his silence, as it were?” A subsequent question could be, “How, in what way(s) is this author communicating?” A third question insinuates itself, “To whom is this act of communication intended?”
“Semiotics differs from linguistics in that it generalizes the definition of a sign to encompass signs in any medium or sensory modality. Thus it broadens the range of sign systems and sign relations, and extends the definition of language in what amounts to its widest analogical or metaphorical sense” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiotics).
The use of digital story telling, communicating, in a literature class is only limited by the imagination of the instructor.
The above video “tells” as much about me ( “the storyteller, sender”) as it does the content ( “the signs” ). At least, that’s what Marshall McLuhan might say.
CoETaIL Assignment: How has the explosion of web based video changed the teaching and learning landscape?
This semester I am teaching Hamlet. Because of the treasure-trove of video on You Tube, I was able to show my students four different performances of Hamlet’s famous “To be or not to be” soliloquy (Act 3, Scene 1). The actors we viewed/studied were Richard Burton, Kevin Kline, Mel Gibson and Kenneth Branaugh.
By viewing this variety of interpretations my students were able to see/judge for themselves the choices made by these actors (and their directors) concerning pace, blocking and intonation.
The world (context) of The Melancholy Dane became alive:
CoETaIL Assignment: How could screencasts be used in your classroom/department?
On the evening of Sunday, November 1–between the hours of 18:00 and 19:00 my students and I will be engaged in a “chat.” My students have a formal essay due on Monday, November 2, and I’ve asked them to join me on Sunday evening to discuss any issues they might have before they turn in their compositions.
I’ve told them (and they already know) that once the last person leaves our chat room there will be no “record” of what we’ve said. I’ve asked them to make screen casts of any part of our chat that they think they would like to “keep.” With the push of a button our temporal act becomes artifact.
