My Podcast

For my podcast, I decided to record a news show highlighting the third grade presidential election at the International School of Zug. My daughter Coretta is running and thought this would be a neat reminder. In the classroom I think that podcasts could be great for students to interview people, fictitious characters from novels, talk show about literature, etc.

Same Sex Classrooms

PRO Expert: Being a teacher for the past eight years has given me a little insight into the way in which students learn, particularly how boys and girls differ in learning styles. This lead me to look at the possibility of real differences within the brain that might attribute to this. According to the Medical Education Online article "the frontal and the temporal lobes are significantly larger in women." These two lobes are responsible for language and communication skills. It is clear that in the classroom setting girls are much more verbal and have an advantage in being able to express themselves. Another difference discussed in the Medical Education Online was that the parietal lobe is bigger in men. This area targets logic and mathematical abilities including spacial relations. Moreover, women have a large, deep limbic system (compared to males) which is the area of the brain that controls emotions. this then explains why women are more in touch with their feelings and feel more connected to others. Overall, men tend to be more left brained and women tend to have greater access to both sides. In knowing this, it is evident that the biological makeup of both males and females are different, therefore require different learning styles.

According to Leonard Sax, the founder of the National Association for Single Sex Public Education, "general expectations in most classrooms, that students raise their hands, work cooperatively, ask for help, and refrain from disruption, are easier for girls than for boys to meet. This is why he feels so may male students are falling behind." I know for me, I noticed this change a lot in the classroom. Girls tend to be prepared, organized, quiet, and attentive. Girls tend to raise their hands more and share ideas. Boys on the other hand tend to be inattentive, have trouble sitting still, are less apt to volunteer or share their ideas, and disrupt class more frequently. As a mother of both a girl and a boy, these fundamental characteristics are clear. My girl and boy are definitely programmed differently. My daughter's strengths are more verbal and written language, and emotional whereas my son is more physically active, into everything and anything he is not supposed to be in, and has trouble sitting still. In knowing this, I would be more than willing to at least try same sex classrooms.

Furthermore, if same sex classes are to work, it will take more than just segregating the sexes. It will also take teachers to change their mind set and teaching style as well. For girls, a teacher may look at the emotional connections, cooperative learning, and for boys there would need to be a louder more hands-on approach to learning. Sax further states that "teachers will need new training and need to have natural empathy for one gender style over the other for this to work." Based on my findings and where our students are in the world from a global perspective what do we really have to lose?

Digital Story Writing

For my assignment this week I chose to experiment with creating a comic strip.  I believe that this technology would be very useful when reading a novel where students could base their comic off of important scenes from the novel, re-create the scenes to fit modern day, rewriting the ending...the possibilities are endless. If you were teaching a unit on short stories, instead of writing a short story, you could have them experiment with writing a comic strip including the elements of a short story.  I chose to do my comic strip using scene selections from The Giver by Lois Lowry.  Here it is:

Wikis in the Classroom

I have never used a wiki in the classroom before, partly because I didn't really understand the significance of them or how they could be used in the classroom. Being uneducated in the wiki's many uses, I looked at it as something similar to a blog or a website. Upon further examination, I realize the one function that makes the wiki especially different is it's ability to have students edit and revise whatever they are working on and it does not require them to necessarily be in the same place.

I see it working well with an independent reading project where they could have people who read the same book share the things they liked or disliked about the novel. I think it would also be beneficial if students were working on a group project or group paper because they could edit, delete, or add comments as they collaboratively work together.

I see wikis being useful when students are doing literature circles with a specific group. They could assign roles in the wiki, write down what each person will be responsible for, share their insights or ask questions to the group where they might need more clarification. Because of this, I decided to create my wiki around the theme of literature circles and how students could use this site for collaboration and discussion. Each page could be about the following: roles and list the specific roles they can choose from, character analysis, plot summaries, and likes/dislikes about the novel. Here is the link to my wiki: Literature Circles Forum