Multiple Literacies - Virtual Exploration "We're not in Kansas anymore"

I like to call these Virtual Field Trips. Sometimes I conduct a field trip by way of pictures, video, sound, and tactile exploration. This is what John Dewey would call creating an "experience" for the students. To read more about this in more understandable terms read this article by Kevin J. Pugh & Mark Girod.

I will mention also that for ESOL and ASD students visual support and scaffolding around linguistically or conceptually difficult subjects is essential. These virtual field trips offer that scaffolding and support.

There are multiple online resources for exploring challenging and abstract concepts. The digital world is a wondrous place, full of infinitely transecting and branching Yellow Brick Roads....

More Multiple Literacies resources... Rap, Baby!

One of the cohort in my bachelor's program used a graphing rap song to solidify graphing rules and concepts with her students as she worked with them on graphing. First she explicitly went through the lyrics with them and had them rap together once. Then, as they worked in groups or individually she has the song playing quietly in the background. There is a bit of rote memorization with this particular approach, but the brilliance is that students had a positive interaction with the material. The remembering was easy and therefore the reasons behind the concepts became the focus. She could say "remember when the song says ____? What they mean by that is ____________." The other approach to this could be to have students deconstruct the text (why does the song say that?). This last approach is inquiry based and is most successful.

Students who reside primarily in their right brain are governed by musicality (among other things artistic). Rap and rhythm tap into right-brain intelligence to strengthen comprehension. ESOL students often benefit from music and rhythm because it gives them a quickly retrieved association to attach learning to. below are some content rap resources to support classroom learning...

Multiple Literacies are So Cool! - Glogster and graphic novels.

Multiple Literacies = any way humans create and exchange meaning.

I have spent some significant time looking into various ways that students can interact with text online. The most exciting find is something called a Glog. It is an online interactive presentation poster (like the old tri-fold poster-board kind - only better). Go see a really nice example of this about astronomy. This is a fantastic way for students to present their learning for a research project, be it group or individual. Students can "gallery walk" other class presentations and get a personal "tour" of the site. This allows for presentation and talk around the learning, and we all know that the more we let ELL students talk the better they will be. On edu.glogster.com watch the video of Eileen Doherty's 4th grade class for an idea of how to use glogster in your classroom. Watch the video below for a how-to tutorial.

WEB Page, great for lesson suplimentation...

What a fun thing, a web page. I find it very time consuming, but I see how it can be a wonderful way to connect with students who live in a technologically advanced world. I can include links to relevant web sites that support our lessons. I can post homework documents for students who have missed class. I can link to my email so that communication is fast and easy. I can even highlight student work on my web page. I am creating a themed web page, tailored for a specific subject. This allows me to include only the relevant information and avoid students finding "misleading" overly-detailed information. I can direct them to my web page where they can have an interactive experience with the topic. This includes slide show demos (see below) and links to relevant info. Like Federal Parks pages and Videos and more...! WEB Page, great for lesson supplementation...

podcasting - the new classroom?

I will definitely use podcasting in my class room. What a great option for presenting a research project, for presenting instructions, for tutoring students from home if they miss a lesson. It would be a great way to assess the learning outcomes of a lesson, or series of lessons, when the students make a podcast at the end of the lesson, week, month, or quarter about what they have learned. I could just go on and on...


Lab safety tutorial... Look at my glaring spelling error!!! UGH.. can't correct in now.

Surfing The WEB...What is legit?

Wow! I can't believe wow much stuff there is on the Internet that is outdated, fictional, or just misleading. It is so easy to copy/plagiarize a web page and skew the information to reflect badly or align readers with your angle. I was amazed at how dooped I was by a page that looked like a real research paper presentation but was actually created by a professor to make the point that anything can be faked and people will fall for it.

In today's world of tabloids and political information-twisting I think is is so important to give students the tools to evaluate the authenticity and reliability of a website. Students want to, and do, believe what they read because they have an emotional response to what they read and fail to understand how to know if it is reasonable or truthful information (and then rumors begin). Giving students the tools to validate a website/source is one way to encourage students to think critically about the world and to be able to justify their actions with facts.

Important resources given in class literature:
http://www.register.com/
http://www.altavista.com/
http://http//www.snopes.com

Sample web pages that could easily mislead:
http://www.martinlutherking.org/

GOOGLE EARTH is Da Bomb!

Wow, I had no idea that Google Earth had so many options. I was so excited when I saw that there are virtual tours of the ocean contours and the diverging and converging plates for science/geology. When talking of historical people or places, like De Vinci for example, we can take virtual tours of where these historical events took place. When studying the westward migration of pioneers in America we can look at the terrain that covered wagons would have had to traverse and follow the trail of migration.

Even more exciting is the option of turning our perspective to the sky and looking at the stars, or even virtual tours of other planets! Students can use their deductive skills and go on an historical informational scavenger hunt. I can create a tour with factual information under a pop-up photo and sent students around the world with prompts like "fly to the location of the Gettysburg address".

When thinking about math, students can pick a location of their choice and measure the boundaries. We can bring Google Earth into literacy by visiting the neighborhood where the author grew up, the location of the setting in a story, like the town Esperanza left in the story Esperanza Rising. This gives students some background knowledge and a visual connection to their reading. There are so many things that can be done with Google Earth and I can't wait to use this teaching tool in my science classes!