Helping Students with Writing

As an English Teacher, I’ve come to find that there are not many technologies we could use in our classrooms, besides websites. I have stated in previous blog posts, that I would be wary about students using their laptops in my classroom. So the least I would be able to do for them is give them a good list of resources that my student would be able to use. I remember, back when I was a student in high school, every year, we would have that one creative writing paper.

The paper would be able to be about anything, but it had to be fiction. As a creative writing minor now, you could imagine I was always happy about said assignments, but my peers, not so much. They would always struggle with coming up with a simple idea. As a teacher, I want this process to be as enjoyable as possible. So what I would add to their sheet of resources is a website called the Fiction Generator.

It is exactly what the title says it is. Only this is one of the best ones I have seen. This gives the student a lengthy plot summary, without writing the story for them; it just gives the student information about a situation. Not only does this generator involve character quirks, but also interesting settings and titles for the paper (something I always had trouble with). What I liked most about this generator was that in the description, it used very large vocabulary words, so not only is it helping the student to write a very interesting fiction story, but it is also helping the student expand their vocabulary.

I personally believe this would be a great tool for a teacher to give students. It will allow them to not only explore different writing tools, but also help expand their vocabulary knowledge. 

Teaching English With Technology

While searching for different technologies that should be, would be, or have been used in the English classroom, I came across a fabulous website called Teaching English With Technology. This is a fantastic resource that all English Education Teachers should know, and also share with their students. While looking around on the website, not only did I find many resources, and links to go along with them, but above all the sources and link, it gives a description as to why you should use this type of technology. For example, there were citing help, lessons and activities, and multimedia help. It honestly is a fantastic website for a teacher or a student.

I remember when I was in high school, in the beginning of the year, the teachers would outline their syllabus and explain briefly about a research paper, and list some of the databases we should use. Then come the time of the research paper, they would throw us students to the sharks and we would be on our own for citing, databases, and research. This would always be extremely stressful because I would never know which database would be good or not. This website, Teaching English With Technology already has good databases listed, and good citing websites to help student do everything correctly.

As stated before, this is also a wonderful tool for teachers to use also. It gives different websites for English teachers to use that helps with lessons, interactive white boards, e books, and so much more. It really is a great resource to everyone in the English classroom. I am actually extremely happy that I stumbled upon such a wonderful and helpful website. Not only am I going to save it for future use as a teacher, but also I believe I will continue to use it during my college education. 

The Movie Taboo in the English Classroom

 During our high school careers, I’m sure plenty of us have read Shakespeare, and then have seen a clip from a movie that was made on the same story. Why aren’t more classrooms doing this? I always thought, and still think, it is a great way for students to see the action of the story played out by actors, instead of in their mind. Or even, when students are reading plays out loud, I don’t think I was ever in a class where a reading of a Shakespeare play was read enthusiastically.

It was always monotone, the fight scenes, if played out, were always boring and silly. That is because these high school students are becoming young adults, where popularity is the most important thing to them, and actually acting out an old play in front of the whole class would be embarrassing to them. So why no cut out the embarrassment and have students read the play and watch a scene or entire movie adaptation?  

Maybe, after the movie, the students could write a short paragraph or two about how they envisioned the characters, action, or setting to be different in their mind. Have them talk about the differences. Let them make connections. It always seemed as if showing the movie adaptation of a book that was read in the classroom was almost taboo.

I remember as a student, my class would be for a movie adaptation of Romeo and Juliet and my teacher would quickly dismiss the subject. Why should we be afraid of this? We shouldn’t at all! It gives students either a better understanding of the book (which I felt commonly happened to me) or it gives them a visual of what they just read. We should be afraid of movie adaptations, we, as teachers, should embrace them as another way of teaching our students. 

Collaborative Program for Group Papers

Have you ever had one of those group projects in High School that the entire group needs to write a paper? All of your group members would grumble, and procrastinate and then quickly meet up before the paper was due to finally type it and hand it in. Well there is an alternative program, quite like Google Documents, called Will You Type With Me. This program allows students (after making a login name) to share a document, work on it together, and be able to chat, almost like an instant message, within the document. This way, students will be able to share ideas, and comments about the document they are working on. This is extremely helpful because students are able to work on the document together, so all the ideas of the group are shared in one setting and in one document.

I think this would be a fantastic tool for students to have because group projects are never an easy thing to do. Which member has extracurricular activities, which member cant get meet because their parents cant drive them, group projects always come with excuses.  This program, Will You Type With Me, allows students to meet virtually and accomplish the paper without having to cancel appointments, schedule meeting times, and such.

This is something that would be so beneficial to students. I think high school students should have access to other student’s emails, just as college students have. It would make group projects less daunting and much more easier. Plus with the program Will You Type With Me it would make group papers in the English classroom much more bearable. It is difficult for high school students, especially freshman, sophomores, and juniors to get parents to drive them to a destination to work on a paper. So this program would be very helpful for the non-driving student. 

E-Readers in the School System

With the holiday season upon us, and the commercials and advertisements bombarding viewers, I can’t help but think about E-readers for the classroom. I could remember, back in high school, in my class of 20 plus students, five students would always be with out a book. My teacher would have to scramble to get those five students a book before we were too deep within said book and the poor students would be lost. So why not have student’s get/be given e-readers?

With the tiny budgets school have, and the lack of funding we are getting, should we scrap the books and give our students e-readers instead? They e-readers would be packed with text books and language arts books that wont have missing pages or ripped covered that they will not be charged for, even though they weren’t the ones who ripped it. While this seems like a good idea, I can’t imagine it would ever work out, without some kind of system.

Students, especially in high school, are clumsy, careless, and forgetful. So if their e-reader breaks, they should then have to pay out of pocket to get another one. This would teach them to be responsible with their work, grades, and their technology. Having e-readers would allow students to always have the information at their finger tips, to not flip back and fourth between the pages of heavy text books. To be able to find that one quote that they need for an essay. While this would be extremely beneficial, it would be a drastic change in the school system—to go from text in every class, to a completely text less school. Also, the added benefit for students would be the reduced backpack weight. Suddenly with out five heavy textbooks and the two to three language arts books, the back pack would be extremely lightweight! 

Remixing Technology and Curriculum

For this canvas remix, I tried to mesh the lesson plan of “Bad Case of Bullying” with “The Changing Ideologies of Race, Culture and Demographics”. I felt these two meshed because they sometimes go together. It seemed that the lesson plan of race, culture and demographics, went well with bullying because sometimes in school student will face not only bullying but racial bullying. I felt these two would mesh well, so I decided to remix our canvases together. While I did take out some widgets from the previous canvas, not because I didn’t like them, it was strictly because the canvas kept warping and movie and it was very difficult to work with. So I eliminated two of the “more information” widgets and the video widget, because they were making it difficult to work with. I felt that the rest of the information would be able to stay to get the point of racial bullying across.

Here is the link to the remixed canvas

Social Media and Technology in English Education

Would involving technology in the English classroom make plagiarism easier? If a student is writing on their laptop, tablet, whatever they are using, would it be easier to just copy and paste something from the internet and use it as their own? Of course, in recent times, students would be able to copy and paste information and change some sentences and claim it as their own. But are we allowing that to happen? I would like to think that everyone is an honest writer, but what if you have other work to do, and an essay just slipped your mind. Now you have to do it at two o’clock in the morning. So wouldn’t it just be easier to copy and paste something? Do we have the technology to stop this from happening? Is the internet marring students from writing proper essays?

                I wrote in a previous post that one of my college professor was telling us how to write proper essays. Not you use “u” in place of “you” and such, so if the internet harming our writing and reading skills? Is it making it too easy to cut corners when writing and reading? Is the internet, social media, and our texting going to hurt the future generations? If so, how do we stop this? Do we even stop this or become accustomed to it? Is this what we have to look forward as English teachers of the new generation? It worries me that children are constantly on their phones, on the computers, shortening their writing just so they could type faster. But in reality it is going to harm them when they don’t know what proper “to” and “too” to use.

Sorry for so many questions, this has just been boggling my mind for a bit, and I wanted to see what you thought about this situation.