Thing 13-Subscription Databases

Last week, I started trying to find reliable resources on genocide as it relates to Native Americans. I also wanted to compare that with the Holocaust. This search is to find materials for the classroom assignments Jim & Eric are using this spring. I tried both Proquest & EBSCO, and was disappointed in the lack of easy hits. I will be experimenting with different search terms. Most of the articles I found were too academic or only on the WWII Holocaust. It is a great concept for the students, and should make for interesting research. This is the tip of the iceberg in terms of research, I hope. It would be great to be able to create a webquest for this assigment.

Thing 6 and 7

In early December, my student teacher & I introduced the RPC to Laura Lanik's Humanities classes as they began an assignment to complete an iMovie on a social issues topic. At the first session, I had the students register with their email. As they ended the semester, Mrs. Lanik had them write responses on their use of RPC for me. Out of 47 responses, only 14 students had actually used the RPC and about half of them seemed to appreciate the help. Most students already use a daily planner & felt that RPC just was a duplication of effort. In our school, all 9th & 10th graders are given a daily planner and many teachers use it a way of giving students passes, so I think in a school where that doesn't happen, I can see RPC used more.
My own impressions of RPC are somewhat lukewarm. One of the problems with it is that there is no way for a student to actually look at RPC without registering first. It would be nice if they could look at the system first to see if it could be useful to them. I really like the links attached to the reminder emails, but these students didn't seem to use them. The visuals in RPC could be updated as well. In the future, I think I would use it only for really long-term projects, like History Day. I can see it used more effectively for middle school students.

MILI meeting

Today's meeting left me feeling that I am over my head in this online world. I will be checking out Atomic Learning to get some of my skills up to par. Jim's information on the music his students are using was really great to hear. It is really great to work with such tech-savvy & dedicated teachers as Jim & Eric. A long time ago, I was on several committees dealing with copyright issues. Problems with copied videos were the main problem then; this was over 10 yrs. ago & before Internet changed the world. I remember that one school district was sued because their classroom/library video collection consisted mainly of pirated copies. We were warned to not keep off-the-air copies longer than 1 year, which was the limit of copyright permissions. It seems to me that a district in the Twin Cities area was one of those sued over copyright infringement. Obviously, things have changed. United Streaming is something that many of our teachers use in the classroom now. It's great, because the quality of projection is so much better, and there is no problem with availability.
It's really sad that motivation of our students continues to be a challenge; students' lives are so complicated by poverty, over-stimulation, and the proliferation of negative influences (sex, drugs, gangs) on all media sources. Last night I watched an episode of "Law & Order" which concluded with the decision that a 14 yr. old boy was not responsible for raping 4 younger students (boys & girls) because he had been watching pornography on cable TV & thought it was OK for his victims to cry & scream in pain. It is so disheartening to me; we can't protect our students from this; how do we educate them when their parents are probably not paying attention?!!

Why can't I post an exclamation point? Are all special punctuation marks banned, or just in the titles. What a strange new world this is.

Well, I finally got back into this blog... It's been a long time, but meanwhile, I've taught the RPC to 5 classes with my student teacher, and am about to wrap it up with Mrs. Lanik's students. I have also finally met my volunteer from St. Cate's library media program, and she will begin working with me next Friday. It will be great to actually have some time off from supervising our very busy media center to meet with Jim & Eric, and to spend more time exploring our 23 things.

RSS

Well, I just went to the bloglines site to create a feed. We'll see if it all turns out. I subscribed to Salon, as well as my classmates' sites. I'm really not sure if it will all work tomorrow. If it does, I'll be really excited. On to creating an avatar; loved Ann's, so I want to do something just as glamorous. Meanwhile, I have a media student teacher, so I'm really excited about helping him have a good experience in our high school, and having more administrative time to do my own work & to work on this project!

United Streaming

I was really impressed with all the teacher resources embedded in this program. Today, I have already talked it up with 2 teachers and a couple of students, although we have a problem with our student login code. Having the time set aside to explore these options in class was very productive for me. The calendar links are something I'd like to be using daily or at least weekly as just interesting stuff to put up in the media center.