Food for thought.

HEARTS AND MINDS AND
LITERACY: LESSONS FROM
OURSELVES
MEM FOX

I don't look like a soldier. I carry no guns and I'm not dressed in battle fatigues, but I'm fighting. I'm fighting a battle on behalf of the development of liter­acy. As a peace‑child of the 1960s I'm unhappy about using the metaphor of war, but in my current state of passion I see no purpose in making peace with groups of people whose idleness or financial self‑in­terest is killing literacy, or at least causing its stunted growth. Politeness has hitherto proven to be ineffec­tive so I have decided, from now on, not to water down my remarks. I intend to write from the heart and with feeling.

My adversaries in the trenches across the barbed wire are education professors and reading specialists who haven't kept up‑to‑date, and educational pub­lishers who produce basal readers designed specifi­cally to teach reading and writing. I'll begin by setting my sights on the publishers.

Wikis

Do you know there are over fifty way you can use wiki? Wikis can be used for any imaginable concept you would want to teach. Here are a few of the suggestions:
Virtual field trips
Create presentations
Write a Wikibook
Study guides
Readers' guides
Solving wiki
Glossary Class encyclopedia
Create exploratory projects
And the list goes on. You can even create a wikileak.

eBook and Photobook

Designing a eBook or PhotoBooks takes some planning on the part of the teacher. For the students to produce interesting and motivating books. Cherisse's class was truly interactive bursting with excitement. Everyone were busy trying to type in story lines, add background music, audio of the story that related to the sequential photo-shot that related to a specific theme. Imagine we were in the process of creating a book but we needed to stage a dramatic sequence of events to build our story. Isn't this exercise multi-disciplinary using multiple intelligences? Do this activity was enjoyable yet very productive and rewarding. This is certainly one of the technology I will be using to enhance writing skills.

Webspiration

"Webspiration is the new online visual thinking tool that's ideal for studying, planning and organizing projects and documents, when you work individually or collaboratively with others."
When Cherisse introduced Webspiration to her group, we were eager to develop our semantic map with foot notes, pictures, different background. 'We were like the children with a new toy'. I was amazed with some presentation that Dr. James did some time ago in his lectures in Theoretical Foundation, I said to myself what a marvellous programme. 'It is probably an expensive programme', little did I know it was Webspiration, a truly remarkable programme.

Wikis

Do you know that Wiki is really Wikipedia? Yes, as the name suggest 'pedia' and "Wiki -quick". I was reading an article and it referenced the unfortunate event of the Indian Ocean earthquake that triggered the tsunami in 2004. Within nine hours of the event 76 word post was created and within twenty four hours over 400 edits were made posting of photographs, graphic descriptions and chart documents were added.
Isn't this tool just GREAT! I think so. What do you think?

Photobooks and eBooks

I can see the motivational potential of photobooks and eBooks being used with my students. Teaching cause and effect, What happens next? and other creative writing activities can be taught in a novel and fun way. I know that students like to see themselves and would be enthused and amused to share their experiences. It's a strategy that uses the know to the unknown in a fun and excited way. My group had fun staging a sequence of events to be used in our photobook exercise for next week.
We were required to work in a group, share ideas, dramatise, edit the photos to be used (collaborate) and come to a consensus. I can go on and on because I was impressed with this fairly cheap and feasible way to arouse my students curiosity.

Wikis

After reading 50 ways to use Wikis for a more Collaborative classroom. I realized the versatility of Wikis across the curriculum. With Wiki you can create presentation, graphical or concept map, glossary and the list goes on. What I have finally realized is that you can track the progress of the students' work both as a collaborative group or individually. Confidentiality of how each child participation is under the watchful eyes of the teacher.

Reading Rationale