Digital Writing Reflection

1. What did you learn about yourself as a writer?

• While I am not sure that I necessarily learned anything new about myself as a writer, I certainly remembered many aspects of writing that I had not explored in a long time. For instance, I used to write for fun more frequently in past years, but now primarily write for the purpose of academic papers or other required writing. Even though students write as a requirement, they should have opportunities within their requirements to write freely and about personal topics that they are invested in. 

2. What did you learn about digital writing or being a member of a digital writing community?

• I learned that digital writing is a great way to explore a variety of writing opportunities that one cannot always experience when writing with pen and paper. I also learned that digital writing is not nearly as much of a daunting task as I was anticipating. I enjoyed being a part of a digital writing community with my peers because I was able to see multiple perspectives of the same assignment and the various creative spins that were used. 

3. What lessons can you take to your classroom or share with future teachers about integrating blogging into instruction?

• I like the idea of using a blog in conjunction with literature through activities such as book reviews or creating a character blog. I also think blogs would be a good substitute for journals in a classroom and can act as a platform for quickwrites or collaborative writing exercises. 

4. Challenges/Successes?

• Interestingly enough, my primary challenge and success with digital writing are one in the same. The "Tech Creation" blog was one that I was understandably nervous about. I have considered myself to be decent with technology, but not adept in a way that I could use technology to better improve my teaching. After having the time to explore some of the technology-based activities that students engage in both inside and outside of their classrooms, I see technology - particularly digital writing - as a tool that can be used to better inform students in a practical and approachable way as opposed to simply an addition to use for no real applicable purpose. 

As this semester draws to an end, I find that I have learned a great deal in this class not only about digital writing, but about a variety of ways to teach and improve most forms of students' writing. Teaching literature is the easy part; I have never been really concerned with teaching the reading aspect of English Language Arts. Prior to this semester, I was apprehensive of teaching writing skills of any kind - especially the essential argument writing necessary in secondary schools. However, now I feel much more confident in my ability to teach all forms of English in a format that is personal, meaningful, and effective. 

I have decided to leave you all with some of the things which I hope to place in my future classroom. This first one is for all of us though, from my favorite television teacher: 

• "Believe in yourselves. Dream. Try. Do good." - Mr. Feeney
  "Don't you mean 'do well'?" - Topanga
  "No. Do good". - Mr. Feeney

https://knightwriting.wordpress.com/2017/04/20/digital-writing-reflection/

Book Review: Teaching Argument Writing

Book Review: 
Teaching Argument Writing: Grades 6-12
George Hillocks, Jr. 

In reading Teaching Argument Writing I have decided to separate the main points of the book into most prominent quotes and most effective strategies/activities. As a brief overview, I found this book an incredibly useful instructional tool that takes one through the stages of teaching argument writing as well as adopting an inquiry-based approach to teaching argument. I find that this book would be especially effective for middle school students because it introduces argument writing in a rather basic, approachable format and moves progressively to more complex, subjective material. While some of the activities are not quite my style, the approach taken and the strategies used in many of them are quite profitable to anyone wishing to educate students on becoming competent argument writers.



Top Quotes: 

• "Aristotle divides substantive arguments into three kinds: forensic, epideictic, and deliberative. I have found it useful to designate these as arguments of fact, judgment, and policy and approach them in that order, moving students from the simpler to the more complex" (xvi).
• Kinneavy and Warriner tell us that 'In a persuasive essay, you can select the most favorable evidence, appeal to emotions, and use style to persuade your readers. Your single purpose is to be convincing'. The same might be said of propaganda and advertising. Argument, on the other hand, is mainly about logical appeals and involves claims, evidence, warrants, backing, and rebuttals" (xvii). 
• The authors conclude that 'schools are essentially machines for providing negative feedback. They are supposed to reduce deviance, to constrain the behavior and the minds of adolescents withing straight and narrow channels'. For the most part schools, especially in academic areas, do not provide flow experience, the kind that results in high levels of pleasure, confidence, and absorption in the tasks at hand. These results are confirmed by the many other studies that show schools to be places in which students are surrounded by deserts of ennui" (4).
• More seriously, people take to heart and act on judgments based on prejudice and intolerance. Socrates and the Stoic philosophers believed that all people have the capacity for practical reason but tend to lead somnolent lives, accepting traditions, norms, and beliefs learned from infancy without question, without taking charge of their own thinking. This is as true today as it was in the time of Socrates" (103).
• "Words cannot have whatever meanings our whims propose, as Humpty Dumpty suggests in Through the Looking Glass. Further, when the reasons for calling someone a hero are challenged, they must be defended...If one sets out to demonstrate that a character is heroic, that an act is courageous, that a story is mythic, that an act is one of terrorism, that a play is tragic, or that a poem is satiric, a warrant is almost mandatory, and a warrant nearly always must be defined and defended" (109).
• "These extended definitions amount to the backing that may be used to argue whether or not a character's actions are courageous. In other words, the thinking strategies involved in developing argument are very much the same as those in drawing and defending inferences about literature" (149).
• "The interpretation of literature is all about the reader making judgments. The writer of any literature provides images, detail, narration, portraits of characters, but we, the readers, must construct the meanings for ourselves, making inferences and judgments in order to comprehend the work and determine its import" (178).
• "The key question, therefore, becomes how will a work interpreted today make students more astute interpreters of works to be read tomorrow? (180)
• "If schools were to adopt a policy of teaching through inquiry, making arguments would be taking place every day in every subject matter from language arts to mathematics. This would make learning more exciting - and much more meaningful" (200).

Top Strategies:

• A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words: This activity is based on making judgments of visuals in order to infer characteristics of the person depicted. The activity goes as follows:
  (1) Distribute copies of "The Voluptuary" and ask students what they think of the man.
  (2) Ask students to define voluptuary and write why the man in this picture might be labeled one.
  (3) Ask students, "What makes a good king?" and encourage them to justify their responses. Record their thinking. At the end of your class's discussion, you should have a list of criteria in response to this question.
  (4) Work with the class to apply one of the criteria to the prince pictured in "The Voluptuary". Record their thinking on a chard under the headings Claim, Evidence, and Warrant.
  (5) Put students into groups and have them work with the remaining criteria.
  (6) Students write an argument of judgment.    
• Warrants and Backing Through Invention: The author notes that providing extended definitions are a primary way that students can provide backing for their warrants in the sense that the definitions often offer a number of criteria to determine if something fits that definition. For example, the text uses a number of criteria to further clarify the definition of terrorism:
  1. The targets of terrorism are governments and civilian populations. Terrorism involves and official, deliberate policy of hurting civilians.
  2. Terrorism involves the deliberate attempt to create intense fear in order to coerce the wider target (including the public at large) into giving in to what the terrorist wants.
  3. The goal of terrorism is ideological (or political) rather than personal.
  4. Terrorism involves an audience. Common crime usually involves only two parties (the criminal and the victim), whereas terrorism, which seeks to amplify and spread fear, has three: the victim, the criminal, and the audience, reached through the news media. 
• The Giraffe Award Activity: "When students are first learning to use a number of criteria to make judgments, they often focus on a single criterion and ignore the others that are perhaps more important. I begin criteria work by giving students a definition and several criteria, along with cases to which to apply them" (113). Hillocks goes on to explain the Giraffe Award Activity, wherein he applies several criteria to an award given annually in Washington State to individuals or groups of individuals who "stick their necks out for the common good". He provides students with the criteria and several candidates for the award, tasking the students with judging whether or not each candidate fulfills the criteria. 
• Teaching Students to Make Inferences: "Making inferences requires knowledge not presented in the text - knowledge about constructs or ideas the can be brought to bear on the text...In short, if we want to help students become strong inferential readers, we must provide the knowledge, experience, and practice that will allow them to do so. And that knowledge and experience must be developed incrementally, one unit at a time, concentrating on onr or perhaps two or three related concepts" (179). Teaching thematic units as opposed to standard units is a main way that Hillocks advocates for providing students adequate knowledge and experience necessary to be inferential readers. 
• Steps in Planning Instructional Units:
  (1) Select a concept to Examine - use the following questions to determine if a concept is appropriate to do an instructional unit on:
  - Does it have generative power?
  - Can youngsters apply the concept to many reading and life experiences?
  - Will students find the concept interesting?
  (2) Define the concept in such a way that it can be differentiated from Noninstances and Seeming Instances 
  (3) Select works that involve the concept or quality - this step is ongoing and should involve a wide range of works
  (4) Build a unit that moves from simple to more complex texts and that provides for a gradual release of teacher responsibility - the work should initially be guided largely by the teacher and whole-class discussions, progressing to small groups and finally to independent work.

https://knightwriting.wordpress.com/2017/04/14/what-ive-read/

Wordless Wednesday

https://knightwriting.wordpress.com/2017/04/01/wordless-or-open-post/

Magazine display at the Publix on University/Dean
Taken on a recent grocery shopping trip, seems appropriate

Tech Creation

http://www.livebinders.com/play/play?id=2179516






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Tech Exploration...Bring it on

How I feel about teaching technology:




1. Looking at the Wordle provided, it is increasingly obvious that I am a visitor to digital media. I literally only recognize one word provided - Weebly - and I only learned of it this semester. My tech life primarily exists on social media, though not a huge variety of social media. Once upon a time, I, like many of my fellow classmates I'm sure, was the proud owner of a MySpace account. I abandoned MySpace for Facebook and other more contemporary social media sites, though I still do not branch out much on the social media spectrum. I primarily use technology for research, conversing with friends near and far, and most especially, posting hilarious and stupid memes.

2. Many of these tools shown are especially useful for teachers and parents. My favorite of these sites, however, was Kahoot. I have seen this app used before and I think it is an effective teaching tool that I could actually use in my classroom on a regular basis. This app can be used on most devices, but it is most readily compatible with a smartphone. While students are often exposed to technology in their classes, their phones are rarely utilized as teaching tools in ways that laptops or ipads are. Additionally, I like the competitive aspect of this app and I think it would keep students engaged. I would use it as an informal assessment tool throughout teaching to check comprehension. Offering extra credit points or some reward to whoever wins the Kahoot quizzes can also serve as extrinsic motivation if the sheer joy of annihilating their classmates does not satisfy them.

3. Virtual writing is one of the most important things technology can be utilized for in classrooms because students will realistically compose quite a bit of digital writing both inside and outside of the classroom. Some sites, such as MemeGenerator, takes something that students already do regularly with interest - look at and/or create memes - and allows for an academic application as well as a social one. The prewriting websites can give students easily accessible templates and organizers for planning their writing in a virtual frame. However, some of the prewriting tools may cause students to rely too heavily on them and not wish to deviate from their format. The publishing tools are useful to students because they allow them to put their writing out to be read by various audiences, bringing their scope of writing beyond that of having just a teacher audience. My favorite website in this section - despite the fact that I couldn't properly open the site - was ComicMaster. Graphic novels have become increasingly popular among students in recent years, so giving students an outlet to create their own graphic novels can be useful in a variety of ways. It also allows students to look at text from a variety of different mediums as well as take printed novels and stories and transform them into graphic novels.

4. When first looking at the "Top 100 Tools for Education", I first noticed that many of these sites  are ones that students are likely to be familiar with already in a social context. Using Twitter and Youtube as teaching tools helps to show students that they can engage in a social and interactive platform while attaining necessary knowledge and skills to make them successful both academically and professionally. Additionally, using technology that students are likely to be familiar or comfortable with can make the teaching process easier because it frees teachers up to actually teach the content instead of spending a lot of time teaching the processes of using the technology itself.
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5. Teachers should focus on getting students to the "Creating" level of Bloom's taxonomy. In order to do so, they must become proficient in the other taxonomic levels first. The way this pyramid is set up illustrates how different sites and apps can be used to help students gain proficiency in different levels of taxonomy, while some (like Google) are beneficial at nearly every step of the pyramid.

6. I definitely want to use some social media sites to incorporate into my curriculum. I also like the sites that allow you to transform literature into various forms - graphic novel, movie, newspaper articles, etc. Google has a lot of applications that I have found useful and that I have seen used in my internship that I would like to use as well. This exploration has made me more receptive to using a variety of technological tools in my classroom and has helped me find ways to incorporate technology that is less intimidating to myself as well as my future students.

knightwriting.wordpress.com

That time "The Walking Dead" made me have a baby

Valentine's Day. Most people associate it with love or flowers or those stupid candy hearts that ought to be used as torture devices instead of gifts. As for me, I generally associate the Hallmark holiday with working and making epic amounts of tips. It's a good day to be a server. Last year was no different, with two exceptions: (1) the mid-season premiere of "The Walking Dead" happened to occur on February 14th, and (2) I was thirty-four weeks pregnant with my second future minion. These two factors meant that I had to be home and done with everything by 9:00 p.m., and that I anticipated making even more tips cause its common courtesy to tip the pregnant girl well on holidays.

Everything went as planned. Work, homework, shower. Then the producers of "The Walking Dead" decided to put together one of the best episodes I have yet to witness on that show. The opening scene was particularly satisfying, so after my brother and I finished watching the entire episode, we went back and watched some of our favorite scenes. This one:

 

And then my water broke. 

Seriously. I suppose that Violet thought that scene was as satisfying as I did. Long story short, I was rushed to the hospital, had to have an emergency C-section, and Violet was born at about 4:20  a.m.

And here we are, one year later. 

Violet at about 1 month

Violet's 1st birthday 

knightwriting.wordpress.com

When a stranger calls

Write about anything? Okay, you asked for it.

I would like to share with you all an issue that I never had prior to having children but has become an integral part of my public life now. Strangers. Specifically old strangers. You know how our parents all told us not to talk to strangers when we were kids? Why doesn't that translate to adulthood also?Allow me to disclose some background information to my newly attained social enigma. 

My babies have pretty much made their first transformation from baby to toddler (one's fully transformed into toddler mode, while the other has a few more months in baby form). This makes going anywhere in public a logistical nightmare. Taking monsters into public places is difficult enough on its own, but then you get the looks. From everybody. Approving looks and random calls of "aw how cute" whenever they're behaving; looks of disdain and exasperation when they're not. Looks I expect. What I don't need are the random comments of "looks like you've got your hands full", or giving unnecessary commentary like "aw he looks hungry", "poor grumpy little guy. do you want ___". (Side note: one or both of my daughters gets called a boy literally every single time we go anywhere. That doesn't bother me really, but I find it weird how people genderize everything, even as infants). 

Since this whole going out in public thing doesn't work out well a good deal of the time, my partner and I rarely go out to eat anymore unless it's fast food or take out.So I snack at home. I snack at school. I hide food in my room so I don't have to share my good snacks. On the bright side, I've gotten really good at eating with one hand.

Bobby Singer, Supernatural 

Sorry for the baby rant, guys. It's been a long week and I didn't want to write about school. Or politics. Or the Super Bowl. See you guys on Wednesday. I'll bring the snacks! 

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