Just A Tease

Alright, I admit it… that was a bad idea. I was just feeling bad for not posting, so I figured that re-introducing old posts would suffice. My bad.

Anyway, it’s the end of the semester now. These are not fun times, I assure you. I have two 15-20 page papers, one with an annotated bibliography, two seven pagers, one project on the program Comic Life, one book project (which includes making a poster, duh), two seven page (single-spaced) responses, two books of literary criticism to read and teach, and one Lit. Circle book left to read and discuss all of which are due in two weeks. Additionally, I have to do all of this while upholding my responsibilities to my Assistantship and ENG 307. I don’t like to think about it.

A while back I wrote a post about Bruce Coville’s visit to my 619 class. It was a well-developed and inspirational post; however, I couldn’t post it the day I wrote it (because Blogger was being Lame) and is now officially M.I.A. If I come across it again, I’ll post it.

I also want to write about my new-fangled experiences with pedagogical classes, such as Issues in the Foundations of Education. It seems like those education majors are a different type of breed than that of what I am used to. I would love to explain more but doing so now would only postpone my work on the aforementioned list; it would also be detrimental to my G.P.A. I won’t allow it.

Plus, I’m already assuring myself to have most of this done by next Friday in order to attend the Brand New concert here at good ol’ Cortland.

For those who missed me… this post is for you.

Cheers

Cell Phones and MY Class

My original plan was to use this blog solely for personal pleasure outside of the classroom; therefore, I was trying to omit issues concerning my education from this specific blog. However, I have become quite passionate about the subject of technology and pedagogy, and I feel that the idea of the “flat world” could be intriguing for everyone.

I’ll let YouTube start this discussion…



As you can all probably see from this video, it’s hard to justify the usage of cell phones in a classroom. I, as an upcoming teacher who is pro-cell phones in class (I don’t think I’m crazy… there’s more to come to rationalize this), would have had a similar reaction if a student had the audacity to not only keep his/her phone’s ringer on but also talk on it during the middle of class.

I guess, before I go on, it would be necessary for me to explain the “type” of classroom that I would like to create. I envision a total learning environment. I want to teach the students, and I want to learn from the students. The first day of classes I will queue up my classroom website which will have links to the class blog, the class wiki, an iMovie of what we will be creating with iMovie, and the some of the hundreds of titles that will be available for the students to read for book club (as well as other things, obviously). I can see a cell phone, which 99.9% of students have these days, being helpful rather than hurtful. Let’s help the students by teaching them how to utilize the aspects of their lives that aren’t going to disappear (cell phones, social networking, etc.).

From the video below we can see that students are aware of when and when not to use their cell phones. A video like this could also be helpful in teaching a sensitive area such as cell phone use, MySpace, and so on.



I guess my primary point is this: instead of pushing away from things that make teaching difficult we, as educators, should embrace them. No matter what happens, students will use their cell phones, they will go on MySpace and Facebook, and they will use ALL of the sites on the internet.

Driving a car can be very dangerous especially when you’re just learning… that doesn’t mean that we don’t let students learn how to drive, right?

Let me know what you folks think about this. Cheers.