Blogs, Syndicated

E.T.! It’s Working! #ConnectedCourses

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 I am thrilled about the upcoming launch of the Connected Course September 15. Our hope for the course is that we will be able to network and support each other as we imagine and take advantage of the potential of the open web. While I promise a longer (and more thoughtful) blog post soon addressing the reasons I will be participating, I wanted to quickly post the course link and share the resources available for those of you interested in joining us. Check out the great pre-course blogging support provided by Alan Levine, Jim Groom, and Howard Rheingold:

More soon! And thank you to the colleagues working on this endeavor!

Blogs, Syndicated

431 LPP yeah you know me…

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As many times as I have read this text I keep coming back to the same problem in my head. Ok, well, there are many, but the one that gets me seems to be the reality of teaching to teach...or to do the thing. How do we prep to do a thing, anything? I keep going back to my grad school and how we are eased into teaching like an old man into a hot bath...slow and painful. I feel in all the time I was teaching or being taught to teach,I always felt like I had my head up my ass.I never really knew what it was they were trying to convey. Maybe it was all the NCLB bullshit that irked me, or maybe it was that I was sacred, but as I read Lave and Wenger’s Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation I kept seeing how it was when I was going through school. Most notably the Butcher apprentice.

When being taught how to teach they say a lot of things that really mean nothing to you at first because you have yet to be in the classroom. You take tests and you pass the but the actual teaching doesn’t take place until later...or maybe I should say “too late”. When co-teaching (or interning, it really varied on the teacher you were observing) it was then that you wished someone was whispering in your ear all the things you wish you had learned in school months before. It was like walking back into the butcher room, them handing you a slab of raw beef and saying, “Have at it”. Have at what?! I could end up making a serious mistake...killing myself or others if I don’t lose a limb in the process.

That’s kind of how it feels when thrown into the pit of teaching. The savages will rip you alive. I have no idea how I survived my first year of subbing when I didn’t have an ounce of experience under my belt. Just tossed in the meat room and told to just do it. So I did and it was amazing. All the tests and exams in the world will never really prepare you for it...the feelings, the anxiety. None of it. I think before you can teach you should be given a few months of subbing hours first to really see what it is like in the classroom. Then when you have survived and found a new-found appreciation, then you can go towards getting your credentials and then all of a sudden everything will make sense and you will know what you know you will need to know, you know?

Maybe this isn’t fully an indepth analysis of what we read, I am not sure exactly what it is I am supposed to do other than apply what I have learned to what I have learned. I guess for me, this class is to help me understand more of why we are set up the way we are and maybe help me to see what I can do to help to make it better. I mean, what can I really do but I think, based on my experience as a learner and an educator, I think that there is a lot that can be done to prepare those who are to be in the classroom to be better in the classroom.

Also, my other blog was deleted, to my dismay, so my indepthness has been somewhat crushed. I do plan on having a much better follow up to this in my next blog...any maybe something more witty and worth reading

Blogs, Syndicated

431 LPP yeah you know me…

by  • 

As many times as I have read this text I keep coming back to the same problem in my head. Ok, well, there are many, but the one that gets me seems to be the reality of teaching to teach...or to do the thing. How do we prep to do a thing, anything? I keep going back to my grad school and how we are eased into teaching like an old man into a hot bath...slow and painful. I feel in all the time I was teaching or being taught to teach,I always felt like I had my head up my ass.I never really knew what it was they were trying to convey. Maybe it was all the NCLB bullshit that irked me, or maybe it was that I was sacred, but as I read Lave and Wenger’s Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation I kept seeing how it was when I was going through school. Most notably the Butcher apprentice.

When being taught how to teach they say a lot of things that really mean nothing to you at first because you have yet to be in the classroom. You take tests and you pass the but the actual teaching doesn’t take place until later...or maybe I should say “too late”. When co-teaching (or interning, it really varied on the teacher you were observing) it was then that you wished someone was whispering in your ear all the things you wish you had learned in school months before. It was like walking back into the butcher room, them handing you a slab of raw beef and saying, “Have at it”. Have at what?! I could end up making a serious mistake...killing myself or others if I don’t lose a limb in the process.

That’s kind of how it feels when thrown into the pit of teaching. The savages will rip you alive. I have no idea how I survived my first year of subbing when I didn’t have an ounce of experience under my belt. Just tossed in the meat room and told to just do it. So I did and it was amazing. All the tests and exams in the world will never really prepare you for it...the feelings, the anxiety. None of it. I think before you can teach you should be given a few months of subbing hours first to really see what it is like in the classroom. Then when you have survived and found a new-found appreciation, then you can go towards getting your credentials and then all of a sudden everything will make sense and you will know what you know you will need to know, you know?

Maybe this isn’t fully an indepth analysis of what we read, I am not sure exactly what it is I am supposed to do other than apply what I have learned to what I have learned. I guess for me, this class is to help me understand more of why we are set up the way we are and maybe help me to see what I can do to help to make it better. I mean, what can I really do but I think, based on my experience as a learner and an educator, I think that there is a lot that can be done to prepare those who are to be in the classroom to be better in the classroom.

Also, my other blog was deleted, to my dismay, so my indepthness has been somewhat crushed. I do plan on having a much better follow up to this in my next blog...any maybe something more witty and worth reading

Blogs, Syndicated

431 LPP yeah you know me…

by  • 

As many times as I have read this text I keep coming back to the same problem in my head. Ok, well, there are many, but the one that gets me seems to be the reality of teaching to teach...or to do the thing. How do we prep to do a thing, anything? I keep going back to my grad school and how we are eased into teaching like an old man into a hot bath...slow and painful. I feel in all the time I was teaching or being taught to teach,I always felt like I had my head up my ass.I never really knew what it was they were trying to convey. Maybe it was all the NCLB bullshit that irked me, or maybe it was that I was sacred, but as I read Lave and Wenger’s Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation I kept seeing how it was when I was going through school. Most notably the Butcher apprentice.

When being taught how to teach they say a lot of things that really mean nothing to you at first because you have yet to be in the classroom. You take tests and you pass the but the actual teaching doesn’t take place until later...or maybe I should say “too late”. When co-teaching (or interning, it really varied on the teacher you were observing) it was then that you wished someone was whispering in your ear all the things you wish you had learned in school months before. It was like walking back into the butcher room, them handing you a slab of raw beef and saying, “Have at it”. Have at what?! I could end up making a serious mistake...killing myself or others if I don’t lose a limb in the process.

That’s kind of how it feels when thrown into the pit of teaching. The savages will rip you alive. I have no idea how I survived my first year of subbing when I didn’t have an ounce of experience under my belt. Just tossed in the meat room and told to just do it. So I did and it was amazing. All the tests and exams in the world will never really prepare you for it...the feelings, the anxiety. None of it. I think before you can teach you should be given a few months of subbing hours first to really see what it is like in the classroom. Then when you have survived and found a new-found appreciation, then you can go towards getting your credentials and then all of a sudden everything will make sense and you will know what you know you will need to know, you know?

Maybe this isn’t fully an indepth analysis of what we read, I am not sure exactly what it is I am supposed to do other than apply what I have learned to what I have learned. I guess for me, this class is to help me understand more of why we are set up the way we are and maybe help me to see what I can do to help to make it better. I mean, what can I really do but I think, based on my experience as a learner and an educator, I think that there is a lot that can be done to prepare those who are to be in the classroom to be better in the classroom.

Also, my other blog was deleted, to my dismay, so my indepthness has been somewhat crushed. I do plan on having a much better follow up to this in my next blog...any maybe something more witty and worth reading

Blogs, Syndicated

431 LPP yeah you know me…

by  • 

As many times as I have read this text I keep coming back to the same problem in my head. Ok, well, there are many, but the one that gets me seems to be the reality of teaching to teach...or to do the thing. How do we prep to do a thing, anything? I keep going back to my grad school and how we are eased into teaching like an old man into a hot bath...slow and painful. I feel in all the time I was teaching or being taught to teach,I always felt like I had my head up my ass.I never really knew what it was they were trying to convey. Maybe it was all the NCLB bullshit that irked me, or maybe it was that I was sacred, but as I read Lave and Wenger’s Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation I kept seeing how it was when I was going through school. Most notably the Butcher apprentice.

When being taught how to teach they say a lot of things that really mean nothing to you at first because you have yet to be in the classroom. You take tests and you pass the but the actual teaching doesn’t take place until later...or maybe I should say “too late”. When co-teaching (or interning, it really varied on the teacher you were observing) it was then that you wished someone was whispering in your ear all the things you wish you had learned in school months before. It was like walking back into the butcher room, them handing you a slab of raw beef and saying, “Have at it”. Have at what?! I could end up making a serious mistake...killing myself or others if I don’t lose a limb in the process.

That’s kind of how it feels when thrown into the pit of teaching. The savages will rip you alive. I have no idea how I survived my first year of subbing when I didn’t have an ounce of experience under my belt. Just tossed in the meat room and told to just do it. So I did and it was amazing. All the tests and exams in the world will never really prepare you for it...the feelings, the anxiety. None of it. I think before you can teach you should be given a few months of subbing hours first to really see what it is like in the classroom. Then when you have survived and found a new-found appreciation, then you can go towards getting your credentials and then all of a sudden everything will make sense and you will know what you know you will need to know, you know?

Maybe this isn’t fully an indepth analysis of what we read, I am not sure exactly what it is I am supposed to do other than apply what I have learned to what I have learned. I guess for me, this class is to help me understand more of why we are set up the way we are and maybe help me to see what I can do to help to make it better. I mean, what can I really do but I think, based on my experience as a learner and an educator, I think that there is a lot that can be done to prepare those who are to be in the classroom to be better in the classroom.

Also, my other blog was deleted, to my dismay, so my indepthness has been somewhat crushed. I do plan on having a much better follow up to this in my next blog...any maybe something more witty and worth reading

Uncategorized

Support Materials & Next Steps

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Here’s the link to create a WordPress blog: https://wordpress.com 

Here’s a great FAQ on Connected Learning (you should read this).

Here’s a link to my main site with a bunch of digital resources you could poke around in.

A book some of you might like by Henry Jenkins about literature and participatory culture

I would also look through the readings on this course site (Readings tab) AND in the Connected Courses weekly lists

If you’ve never seen Mike Wesch’s Anthropological Introduction to YouTube, I would watch it this week as well. Lots of issues related to digital culture in his talk/video.

Next steps:

Write a few paragraphs about your interests in relation to this course. What questions do you have? Try to make a reading plan for the next few weeks for yourself…what paths might you follow? Or if you’re ready, what’s your calendar/plan for the semester? What help do you need from me and each other? This will be the “artifact” you bring for next week.

Thanks again Nathan for the concept map from The Internet’s Own Boy!

692phtot

 

 

Uncategorized

Hello nice grad students!

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Welcome to our fall 2014 website for English 692. I am so excited to work together this semester, as our class will be a part of the larger Connected Courses network. We will be working with faculty from all over the world.

We’ll spend the first class session designing your plans for how you would like to move through the course. I’ll bring a variety of artifacts for us to consider as a way to support your plan development. We’ll also discuss the documentary The Internet’s Own Boy: The Aaron Swartz Story (2014) as a way to pull out threads that may be interesting for us to pursue. The readings and resources you use will emerge from your pursuits.

We will also think about what we’d like to produce and make this semester. I’m thinking that every week we will start with a “gallery walk” where we share the ideas we’ve wrestled with that week. You can blog, create films or other visuals, curate resources, or sketch or map out ideas for others in the class to consider. We’ll share these mini creations in a gallery walk format: we can move about our virtual and physical spaces and consider each other’s creations.

I’d also like us to think about a way to share what we learn with a broader audience toward the end of the semester: maybe we will want to produce our own documentary, or a curated website, or a single issue journal with a series of blogs and articles. We’ll decide together and then divide the labor and roles.

Eat your wheaties! I have a million ideas for our class! And I look forward to your input too!

Kim