Cell Phones as Teaching Tools

I came across this article today as I turned my computer on. It's something I've been interested in trying to incorporate into my teaching as a tool but I'm not sure how my principal would feel about it since we have a quasi-strict "no cell phones in class" rule. I can definitely see the positive and negative aspects to using cell phones to teach, but the author also make a good point about the technology today and who has access. I wonder if school district firewalls are a consideration for any of this as well.

New Words

One day last year my friends and I were sitting around talking about the new verbs we seemed to be using all of a sudden, "friend" being the most common. (as in "so-and-so friended me on facebook") It go me thinking about how new words are made and who makes them. The first time I heard "fantabulous" on TV recently I was a little surprised thinking, "Wait, that's my word! I made that one up! How did they know about that?" Or did I hear it from somewhere else? Maybe I made it up, maybe I didn't. It is logical to think thought that out of the millions of people in the world (and the U.S. in particular), someone else would come up with the same shortcuts and/or morphings of the language that I and my friends do. This article in USA Today online gives the "word of the year" according to the New Oxford Dictionary. And it started me thinking again, who makes language? The people or the media?

Moviemaker Practice

My practice movie from November 14, 2009.

Remixes

I was reading the article about remixes this afternoon and immediately thought of this video that my friend sent me today. The possibilities are endless.

Total Eclipse of the Heart

And I'm not sure...but I think my friend Sarah's art also counts as remixing a popular toy with a sinister purpose: www.sarahhaney.com

Moviemaker Experiment

This is my very rudimentary experiment in moviemaker to see if I can upload a big file to the blog before I try to work on our final project.

My experiment

Continuation of Hair talk

I had the opportunity to go to the Dominican Republic over the weekend to see "family" and friends. While there, I happened to film my friend's 3 year old daughter doing her hair (her mother was feeding her baby sister). Over the two days I was in my community near the Haitian border, girls kept asking me if I knew how to do their hair so they wouldn't have to wait for their moms to help. Sadly, it's one of those things that I never learned how to do even though I've watched it many times. It's a fascinating thing to watch someone do a little girl's hair. It made me think about our conversation about hair and the "Girl Like Me" video. Coincidentally, on my flight home, in the Delta magazine there was an interview with Chris Rock about his movie, Good Hair. How can something so routine spark such a big debate?

Students as Collaborators

After reading Leif Gustavson's piece about working with youth, it made me think about how I use technology in my own classroom. While I've tried to broaden my own and my students' knowledge and use of technology in Spanish class, I also limit it because I'm afraid of the possibilities of what could happen. The majority of students will start with an idea, run with it and produce something creative, but there is a small percentage that will push the dividing line of appropriateness in school. It is for this reason that I use my wiki as a website to share class information. I'm afraid that if I open it up to student users, they will abuse that privilege and add things that are inappropriate or demeaning to others. I don't do this out of an irrational fear, for I have had this experience in the past. Every year we do an interdisciplinary project and each year it involves students using technology to post information about themselves. And every year I have 3-4 students behaving inappropriately. But, I see how well we all are able to communicate our thoughts about the movies, for example, and I want to believe that high school students can do the same. I guess it just means that I need to take a risk, trust, and have a policy in place for those who test the limits.