Worlde your way through vocabulary building

(Image from Wordle.)

Last week my Theory of Knowledge students and I attempted to define the word art. Now while this seems perhaps somewhat straightforward, and all we really needed to do was to consult a dictionary, in reality, we found the dictionary definition rather lacking, and so we decided to embark on our own definition, including the connotation of the word as well as its simple denotation. We sent out the question via text message, email, Facebook, Twitter, and I let my freshmen and sophomores join in the discussion by writing down their definitions on a 3x5 card and dropping it in the box. We ended up with some pretty amazing answers, and I decided to put the answers on the class blog page and to see what might happen if we decided to make a word cloud out of it. The answer is above and can be seen on the TOK blog as well. As I looked at the cloud, I realized that this has some potential when it comes to exploring word meanings, especially in regards to connotation and the ideas that each of us brings to and puts behind the words we use.

This is a tool I definitely plan to use again, not only for this class, but in my other classes whenever the opportunity permits. There was high student engagement, and our discussion was strengthened by the inclusion of the definitions of others. Very valuable indeed!

The next step

I've figured out a way to take the class discussions to the next level. When we get back, I'm going to ask the students in my epistemology class to take out their phones at the beginning of the discussion and turn them on. At that point, I will ask them to text one person not in the building and ask them the question of the day; the responses will go on the live blog and be used as a discussion point. I can't wait!!

Better and better

Today's class discussion was amazing. The students and I are getting the hang of coveritlive, which helps for sure; in addition, we had two other teachers in the room with us, a third teacher joined us via coveritlive, and a student that was absent from school logged in and participated from home. (Prompting another student to ask: "Is he getting participation points for this?" Me: "Ummm.... yes, actually, why not? He's here, sort of." Student: "Sweet! I may never have to come to class again!" Me: "No, no... you still have to be here if you want full points!") :-)

I called the absent student and talked with him a bit about the experience of being "on the other end" as it were. He said he liked it, but also knew that he was missing out on what we were saying, knowing that we were only posting summaries of what was actually being discussed, which led us to an exploration of the idea of being able to add a live broadcast in which I would simultaneously record and broadcast class discussions in addition to the live blogging... the only thing missing would be the images (which I could actually take care of via my laptop's webcam, and post the video later). The possibilities and implications of this are just staggering. I would encourage reading today's discussion, posted here; the podcast is posted here. (Dec. 19)

Coveritlive reflections

Today was another enjoyable day using coveritlive.This site has some interesting implications to it for the classroom, not the least of which being the ability to capture class discussions as well as being able to engage others outside the classroom to be a part of the conversation. I am considering setting up another blog specifically for the block 2 class and running a coveritlive session for every class discussion. It's a class of (mostly) highly engaged juniors and seniors, and being able to connect outside the walls would be a highly purposeful and useful activity for them.

(Update) I've now created the blog for the Epistemology class. The link to it is right here.

So freaking cool!

Today was easily one of the coolest days to be a teacher, ever. In my 2nd block epistemology class, we had a conversation around the goal of education. I really wanted others involved in it, so I sent out an invitation to the rest of the staff inviting anyone that had that period free to join in. One of my colleagues couldn't make it, so asked me to use coveritlive.com, which I had totally forgotten about. I signed up and set up a conversation in less than two minutes, then we went live. I had one of the students transcribing things for us while I was recording for podcast, and two faculty members and one guest joined us online. It was so great and so much fun; yes, I totally and completely geeked out. The transcript of the coveritlive conversation is below; yeah, it looks like it's in Latin, but once you click on it, it goes to English. The only downside is that the right side of it doesn't show up, so you can't see the comments by the others who joined us... I'm going to see if I can fix that for tomorrow. If you want to hear the podcast, it's here (the December 17th podcast). Chances are I'm going to make this a decently regular part of the class now; it was a great way to involve others outside the room. In fact, we didn't finish the conversation, so we plan to continue it tomorrow. Join us here at 8:45 (Mountain Time) if you'd like to be a part.

Random collection of thoughts

Hard to believe that the second trimester has already started; one third of the year has already come and gone. Yeesh.

Tried out texthemob last week, with mixed results. Turns out quite a few of the kids have Cricket, and so weren't able to send a text to the site, so they had to go to the internet on their phones before they could register their vote. Good to know for future reference.

One of the great disadvantages of blogging is the guilt associated when one doesn't regularly update said blog. For some reason I've decided that I needed to update this blog on a weekly basis. Don't ask me why. I have no idea. At any rate, here I am again, wondering what I could possibly write about this time.

Really, though, setting aside a time to write on a regular basis is said to be a good thing, though sometimes it feels a bit like taking cod liver oil; not that I ever did, but from what I'm told, I'm lucky to have escaped that little fate.

So here we are towards the end of November with one marking period behind me and what have I learned? Well, getting students to embrace technology is a bit more difficult than I'd originally anticipated, for one. I figured I'd offer them the chance to blog and such and off they'd run. Not so. I had more students than I thought I would completely bypass blogging for the entire term, for a variety of reasons, and though I was given a wide range of whys and wherefores, I think part of it simply came down to a lack of confidence in their own writing ability combined with a self-consciousness that the world would see them and even see through them; a fear shared not only by many students, but many adults as well.

That's a lot of what writing is, really. The laying bare of the soul. Even the most mundane entry says something about the writer, and it is for this reason most people seem to fear putting their thoughts down anywhere, let alone on a public forum like a blog.

So how will I combat this with my students? I'm not sure, really. A few of my students read my blog, and so they get to see my writing, warts and all, but there must be another way to encourage them to step beyond their boundaries, their comfort zones, and step into the world of writing. I'm not sure what those strategies are yet, but I'm open to suggestions.