Day Two at NCTE

Friday was another great day at NCTE. I’m not sure how many colleagues are here at the convention, but I’ve seen figures ranging from 6,000 to 10,000. With a crowd this size, you can meet people and run into them throughout the day…and that really builds community. First session: Marc Prensky! He was not only a motivating techie speaker, but he was funny, too! He reminisced about his own high school English teachers and opined about the canon. Actually, his thoughts parallel many of my own–we may be from the same generation. Like Marc, I don’t remember much of my high school literature, except here and there for some titles…oh, I did enjoy a couple of pieces of literature, like Thornton Wilder’s By the Skin of Our Teeth, but too many of the novels we read were canonical and without the cannon bang, at least for a teenager of the 1970’s. My best memories of literature are connected to texts from my drama class. I probably remember that one because we were engaged in dramatic representations of the text–my drama teacher did remark on my report card that, “Dea has a flair for the dramatic!”

After that, I was off to a presentation by the Grammar Goddesses–they have several books and are NCTE presenting queens. They used to give out tiaras to those attending their presentations, but have recently gone to golden stickers. Coincidentally enough, while there, I met Carla Beard, Web English Teacher. Everyone at the table was in absolute jaw dropping awe! Even after she left, teachers around the table continued to rave about herextensive web page. If you haven’t been there, take a look. She has compiled a repository of materials and links arranged by text title, content area and thematic approach. Several of the teachers at the table confessed to visiting the site daily.

The highlight of my day, if not Marc Prensky (and I’m not sure it wasn’t) was the session with Ellin Keene. The room wasn’t full so I had the pleasure of being front and center. Ellin has more energy than any presenter, with the exception of myself, I have ever seen. She talks a mile-a-minute sharing family anecdotes connected to school traumas and successes. She is confessional (we have a lot in common) and openly challenges the audience to broaden their view of the educational landscapes and horizons our profession.

Ended my day with a writing workshop presented by a group from Northern Illinois University. One aspect of the presentation addressed getting kids to move from the generalities of writing to specific detail using images. I love that! I believe all teaching begins with images. Another part of the presentation introduced a method to collaborate with engaging data that becomes a decision making process and culminates in a written text. Visit their site for more: talkinginclass.org

gotta run…I’ll add more links later.

Wikipedia: a teaching resource

I am enhancing a workshop that I share with teachers on the classroom use of Wikipedia. Now, you may be surprised at this, but I still encounter teachers who don’t even know what Wikipedia is!! That is shocking, but I value these teachers because anyone who takes the time to attend a workshop on a topic they know nothing about clearly is a learner! I will also note that more and more, when I ask who allows Wikipedia to be used by students for early stage research, more and more teachers are raising their hands.

Anyway, the point is, I found a blog entitled Traffic Statistics for Wikipedia Articles that links to a site, Wikipedia Traffic Statistics, showing the top 500 Wikipedia articles and the number of visits to each of those site by year. From that site, you can visit the actual site…then I suggest you go to the discussion tab and click on that tab to see how reputable the site itself is. Of course, you will see sites that a teacher would never take a student to…however, there are some excellent sites on the list…like Speed of Light which is rated as a “featured” article in Wikipedia which means it has been “peer reviewed” by an editorial board and found to be reputable and even valuable to the field of physics in the accuracy and importance of the information offered.

There is much to learn about Wikipedia and there are many ways that all content areas could be using it to engage their students and increase learning!!! I have been giving a two-hour workshop on using Wikipedia to teach the skills of Critical Literacy. There is so much there, that my workshop will be expanding to a full day to incorporate reading comprehension, Critical Literacy and writing….mulitple literacies using emerging technology!!! I almost put this baby to bed before further investigation. If you are interested in Wikipedia, check this blog out, right here on WordPress: The Way Things Work. And then go to Larry Sanger’s (founder of Wikipedia) new online encyclopedia, Citizendium. The plot thickens and my curiousity is peaked!!