"The number of students who are not engaged with or motivated by school learning grows at every grade level, reaching epidemic proportions in high school."
That quote seized my attention as I picked up this publication of the National Council of Teachers of English. I thought, this is exactly backwards: the number of students engaged in school should INCREASE at every grade level. But it does not.
Ms. Kajder's concern is to engage students and teachers in learning new ways of using technology, together. She aims to "see" who students "really are"--to discove their existing digital skills, to learn how they use them, and alongside them to evaluate diverse websites and online apps as tools to accomplish their group aims.
Fascinating case studies and anecdotes illustrate her points. Consider, for example, her description of the (real) student "Jassar". According to Kajder:
"He is a student in fifth period, tenth-grade English. At the start of the semester, his name appeared on the initial class roster coated in yellow highlighter and annotated with words he carried like baggage from the previous term-non-reader, below-level, at-risk. He sits in the right rear corner of the classroom, behind more vocal and active students who provide a bit of a shield from the teacher's questions and eyes. Assessments tell us that he is reading on a sixth-grade level (but it has been a year since he's been willing to fill out a Scantron sheet), and he struggles to write by hand. By all of the measures that we use in school, Jassar is underperforming and lacking in literacy skills.
"And outside of school? Jassar is active in service learning, organizing and leading projects for middle and high school youth through his church. To anchor this work, he has developed an annotated Google Map of the comunity, placing a "pin" and a written description noting the site, work, and participants in a specific project. So, cursoring over the community center will reveal a description of a project completed in September in which three high school students built a new walkway to support handicapped access to the building, and cursoring over the high school will reveal the ongoing hours for the student-run food bank. Some of the annotations include images of students and community members working together at the corresponding site. The site is open for community access and is "publicized" by flyers Jassar has posted in high-traffic areas (like the teen rec center, the community library, and the local post office) and distributed for peers to hand out within the town. To share the link with digital youth, he has created a Facebook group and a page on MySpace, and is beginning to develop a Ning to support collaboration and community among those who have worked on local community projects. Fueled by his interests in community service, Jassar is now working to build/design a group for American teens that accomplishes the same goals/outcomes as kiva.org, a website which helps to support the work of international entrepreneurs who are working to lift themselves out of poverty.
"... Jassar is vibrantly literate in ways that are purposeful and important, and in ways that have a place in a classroom that values bringing together his digital literacy skills; his passion for doing work that 'matters' outside of school walls; his need to interact with expert, authentic audiences; and the diverse texts, skills, and experiences that make up our English curricula. This book is about the work of imagining and building the English classroom where Jassar (and his peers) might come alive as engaged readers and writers...."
Pretty neat stuff, if you ask this teacher. Hamilton has a copy of this book in our library; and it is also available from Amazon for about $30.
Wow! Jassar is similar to a lot of students. Outside of school some students spend a lot of time with technology and it isn't always negative. There are a lot of resources on the internet that can help teachers create a mash up of curriculum and technology and show studetns how they can use social media for more than just socializing.
That quote seized my attention as I picked up this publication of the National Council of Teachers of English. I thought, this is exactly backwards: the number of students engaged in school should INCREASE at every grade level. But it does not.
Ms. Kajder's concern is to engage students and teachers in learning new ways of using technology, together. She aims to "see" who students "really are"--to discove their existing digital skills, to learn how they use them, and alongside them to evaluate diverse websites and online apps as tools to accomplish their group aims.
Fascinating case studies and anecdotes illustrate her points. Consider, for example, her description of the (real) student "Jassar". According to Kajder:
"He is a student in fifth period, tenth-grade English. At the start of the semester, his name appeared on the initial class roster coated in yellow highlighter and annotated with words he carried like baggage from the previous term-non-reader, below-level, at-risk. He sits in the right rear corner of the classroom, behind more vocal and active students who provide a bit of a shield from the teacher's questions and eyes. Assessments tell us that he is reading on a sixth-grade level (but it has been a year since he's been willing to fill out a Scantron sheet), and he struggles to write by hand. By all of the measures that we use in school, Jassar is underperforming and lacking in literacy skills.
"And outside of school? Jassar is active in service learning, organizing and leading projects for middle and high school youth through his church. To anchor this work, he has developed an annotated Google Map of the comunity, placing a "pin" and a written description noting the site, work, and participants in a specific project. So, cursoring over the community center will reveal a description of a project completed in September in which three high school students built a new walkway to support handicapped access to the building, and cursoring over the high school will reveal the ongoing hours for the student-run food bank. Some of the annotations include images of students and community members working together at the corresponding site. The site is open for community access and is "publicized" by flyers Jassar has posted in high-traffic areas (like the teen rec center, the community library, and the local post office) and distributed for peers to hand out within the town. To share the link with digital youth, he has created a Facebook group and a page on MySpace, and is beginning to develop a Ning to support collaboration and community among those who have worked on local community projects. Fueled by his interests in community service, Jassar is now working to build/design a group for American teens that accomplishes the same goals/outcomes as kiva.org, a website which helps to support the work of international entrepreneurs who are working to lift themselves out of poverty.
"... Jassar is vibrantly literate in ways that are purposeful and important, and in ways that have a place in a classroom that values bringing together his digital literacy skills; his passion for doing work that 'matters' outside of school walls; his need to interact with expert, authentic audiences; and the diverse texts, skills, and experiences that make up our English curricula. This book is about the work of imagining and building the English classroom where Jassar (and his peers) might come alive as engaged readers and writers...."
Pretty neat stuff, if you ask this teacher. Hamilton has a copy of this book in our library; and it is also available from Amazon for about $30.