Chapter 5 - Role-Playing

I started reading this chapter with a fairly strong bias toward not using role playing activities in school. The only experience I have had was that of sitting around the lunch table playing Dungeons and Dragons with a group of my classmates. That was well before Web 2.0 (let alone the Internet) had ever been heard of. I had almost never heard of a positive school use for role-playing games, although I admit, I based this on bits and pieces of information heard/read here and there. I have never taken the time to do any research on my own so was looking forward to reading a positive discussion regarding role-playing.
Parker presents an argument for using role-playing in the classroom to construct narratives, to give students the ability to "consider and empathize with different perspectives", story-writing, vocabulary, and map reading (to name a few). Her main argument for using role-playing in the classroom is because it is "essential to understand and reflect on how one's sense of identity is constantly adjusting to how one appears to others. Using role-playing activities in classrooms can make this process, which is often naturalized and left unquestioned, highly visible." She goes on to say that because of this it may help students with their interactions in the "real" world.  Color me a skeptic but I just can't make that same connection. The more that I read, the more I am feeling as though role-playing is not a tool that I will understand unless I give it a try myself. Has anyone out there ever used role-playing in the classroom? I would love to hear about your experiences. I am still skeptical!

Chapter 4 - Wikipedia

In this chapter, Parker analyzes the usefulness of Wikipedia in schools. Personally, I use wikipedia quite a bit - mostly when I am looking for quick info on a topic. I guess I can be classified as a "Wikipedian" (really, that is what they call faithful Wikipedia users). I haven't used it for research purposes (i.e. college papers) but find the information on Wikipedia a great jumping point to the other resources I am about to delve into.  One of the resources that Parker provides is a link to "Ten Things You May Not Know About Wikipedia"; I strongly recommend checking it out, the information is valuable. She also talks about the "discussion" and "history" tabs that are found on each page (I had never really noticed that they existed!). You can go to these tabs and find the history of a page (and even view previous versions of the page), or go to the discussion page and read the discussion around certain posts on the page in question. I found this to be very interesting, viewing why something was added or deleted. It also indicates to me that there is serious thought as to the content on these pages.
Parker provides some great activities to get teachers prepared for/accustomed to using Wikipedia. She also discusses pedagogical implications and classroom practices. The main point in all of these activities being that one needs to be able to analyze the information presented and decide if it can be used as a valuable (read - quotable) resource. Having a discussion with your class regarding Wikipedia and coming up with a checklist to evaluate the wikipedia entry are all great ways to engage your students in a dialogue regarding the reliability of sources. Something very important for our students to learn, regardless of the site.

Webquest

I did a Web 2.0 Professional Development Webquest. I plan to use this webquest with teachers in an after school or Teacher workshop day. This webquest introduces many web 2.0 tools, for some teachers this will be the first time that they have explored these tools. I am planning to use this as a starting point for my final project which will be an extension of the presentations the teachers make at our second class.

Final Project

I have been giving this a lot of thought and have finally decided to springboard from the webquest that I created for class. I plan to use this webquest in a professional development class that I offer to our teachers. I will use the webquest in the initial class to introduce a variety of Web 2.0 tools. At the next meeting the teachers will give an overview of the Web 2.0 tools that they researched and class participants will then decide the specific classes that they would like to attend. My final project will be two or three lesson plans for future professional development offerings. I will cover blogs, wikis, and podcasts.

Chapter 3 - YouTube

This chapter was very interesting for me as we block YouTube in our school district. We have given out passwords so that teachers may unblock the site for a period of time to show videos such as Martin Luther King's speech, Challenger disaster, newscasts, and so on. Personally, I find this annoying! I understand the implications of students having access to inappropriate videos, downloading illegal or inappropriate content, putting unnecessary strain on our network and laptops but it seems that these are all issues that we should be talking about with the students. As with other web tools, we should be discussing these issues and implications rather than blocking the site and forcing our students (and teachers) to look for other avenues or proxies. We recently made the national news with a freak basketball shot from one of our students....do you think students could access the video at school? You guessed it, no!

Parker advocates using YouTube in school for a variety of reasons. She discusses uploading class projects, personal media presentations, the feedback aspects of YouTube, to name a few. There is also a section of the chapter dedicated to potential approaches to convincing administrators and IT staff to allow YouTube use at school. She makes very valid points and arguments here.

Web App

Larry and I presenting Storybird. We have all of the work done, just no time to catch up with each other!

Really?

I am trying to finish up our handouts for this weekend and can't seem to make the site that Larry and I chose work...Rut roh! He and I chose to do a presentation on www.storybird.com. Right now, I can't get past logging in...this is not a good sign!