Plan of Action

Classroom Applications
I am excited to bring lots of what I've learned from my peers this summer into the class of undergraduates I'll teach this Fall. I think that my research project will be the most useful to me throughout the semester. I created a Ning for my class, and I'm looking forward to sharing it with my students. I am eager to discover how they'll react. I know that Blackboard is what they're used to, but it has an expiration date. I want my pre-service teachers to have access to the information we'll post long after our class has ended. I'm also excited to share the PowerPoint about blogs and wikis I created. I am confident that my students will have used one of both of these Web 2.0 applications in their personal lives, but I wonder how many of them know what's out there for educators. Hopefully what I'll present will be new, and they'll be fired up to start blogs and wikis in their future classrooms.
Although the methods course I teach focuses on literacy, there are several things from the Institute this summer I plan to share with my students. I envision many of the writing prompts working their way into the mini and full lessons my students will write, and I'm looking forward to sharing many of the books I was introduced to this summer. Many of our roundtables incorporated literacy activities, so I'll certainly pull those as I find time and pass along that information to my students as well. I read aloud many picture books, but we could play an entire class period with the various titles I learned about just in the past four weeks!
Professional Development
Heather Hadley and I have already discussed taking our critical literacy lesson “on the road.” We plan to submit a proposal for Write to Learn and possibly the Whole Language Umbrella and the national National Council of Teachers of English conference. We want to share what we've learned in Steve Barrett's Critical Literacy class with other teachers, and the feedback we received from our MWP peers encourages us! So, look for two friendly presenters at a conference near you!
Personal and Professional Writing
I'd like to submit the article I wrote in Amy Lannin's Foundational Readings class last semester sometime soon. I think it's a pretty good piece; I just need to find the place for it. Writing this plan of action encourages me to put that task back on my “to do” list.
I did submit a personal piece to the NWP E-Anthology. A big step for me. It's been very gratifying to receive comments from women in Texas and Pennsylvania. I think I'll try submitting another piece! I have been published in Missouri Teachers Write before, and if that publication ever gets off the ground again, I'll definitely submit one of my pieces again. I suppose it's not of great importance to me that my personal writing gets published, but I'll continue to entertain the possibilities as they come my way.
Hurray for the Missouri Writing Project! Now it's time to put my Plan of Action into action!

Epiphany

Chronologically: daughter, sister, friend, teacher, wife
Today: wife, sister, daughter, friend, teacher
Later: mother, wife, sister, daughter, friend

Tucson!

Hello All!
I'm so sorry to have missed your writing marathon last Thursday, so I'll tell you a bit about what I learned in Tucson. Well first, I should tell you that I learned lots. Please, please go to the WLU conference whenever you can (next year: Columbia, SC--let's go together!). It's simply fantastic! So, here are some things to remember said by today's forward thinkers in reading and writing education:

• The whole child can be defined as an historical being, comprised of his or her "fluid identities." In other words, the history that affects a child is sometimes out of his or her control, and we need to recognize all of what makes a person whole. Then, our job as teacher is to help the child recognize his or her full self, and celebrate it! (Carol Edelsky)
  
• Teachers should be wary of including action when implementing critical literacy into their curriculum. Action is huge...is key! But there are some things to remember when we think about the social action activities we use with our students. For example, social action is NOT charity work. Children have to know the reasons behind why they're doing what they're doing. They need to understand the root causes and have mutual exchanges with the people they're helping. So, start thinking about your general food drives and clothing drives a bit differently from now on. Do your students really know why they're acting? Are they aware of the root causes? Have they reflected on their actions? Are they building collaborative relationships? Does the action meet a genuine need? Are the kids passionate? (Kathy Short)
  

I could write so much more...if there's anything you're curious about, please find me. I can tell you what Brian Cambourne is up to now, a bit more into the key theories of Piaget and Vygotsky, what young kids are doing with podcasts, what I presented (lit. circles and high school kids) and more!

Research Continued...

Hi All,
I've found some good articles about my research topic, and thanks to Juanita's help, I have even more! I'm eager to think more about how I'll use blogs, wikis, and nings, in the undergraduate classes I teach. I'm also interested to learn more about how these technologies affect student writing. So, I think I have a clearer direction for my project now. I'd like to write up my research and then actually apply what I've learned. No time like the present!

My Research Project

Hey team!
I know that I'm definitely not well versed in new literacies, and I think that I need to know lots more about them before I teach some pre-service teachers in the Fall. So, I'm going to be looking into blogs, wikis, etc. and writing. If you come across anything you think I'd like, please let me know!

Blogs, Wikis, and Podcasts

So far, I've mostly been reading Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms. Although I have played around with blogs before, I never created my own. How fun! I definitely see myself spending way too much time on this! :)
I like Richardson's suggestion of posting to links to other cool sites on your own blog. There are so many good sites out there for teachers, and I know that there must be several I don't know about. So, I look forward to sharing my finds, and I hope to see some of the treasures you've uncovered.
I certainly am concerned about the equity issues we've discussed thus far. I know that several of my students' parents did not have access to a computer, and I do feel that sometimes I neglected them when I was sending emails to parents. They simply weren't getting the information. I tried to remember to call or send snail mail, but as we all know, sometimes we forget and sometimes we don't find the time. I definitely think we should keep thinking about equity and ethical issues when it comes to how we use technology in the classroom.

Who am I?

Hmmm....that's a good question. Who am I? Too deep for today's post, but I hope that all of you will continue to learn more about me as our four week journey continues!

Now to some information you just might find interesting. I have been married to my husband Peter for five years. We're waiting for me to finish my Ph.D. before starting a family, but we do have a spoiled 11 pound cat named Sydney. My favorite things to do are read; write; spend time with my family; cycle; and visit, tour, and drink at microbreweries and wineries (notice how I didn't list that one first!).

I am excited to be a part of this summer's institute. I'm having lots of fun already and am looking forward to learning from all of you.

Happy Writing!