Jaxonenglish

In the book, In Mind in Society, Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky, a Soviet psychologist in the beginning of the 20th century, talks about the role of play in child development.

written by Terry Miller just recently this past August. The first part of the article talks about how well students performed on the test and the huge improvement they are making over the years. The results of the test rose at least eight percent over this last year. California's top executive educator, California State Superintendent of Schools Jack O'Connell, visited Cleveland Elementary School in northwest Pasadena. O'Connell said, "The growth in achievement is evident among every subgroup of students. However, we must continue to pay close attention to the achievement gap that shows students of color and poverty are trailing behind their peers. He is concern for those students of the lower class and those of the African American race. O'Connell is trying to figure out a way to help this proficiency and narrow this academic chasm.

I found an extremely interesting blog about my topic: Facebook and Identity and the way a social networking site really does affect one's identity. I like that I was able to find a blog on my topic because it shows good insight of my topic that shows that my topic really does affect real people.

This article explores the influence of teacher's assumptions and attitudes about boys and their learning practices. The introduction of this article begins explaining "overwhelming evidence that boys are falling behind in our education system"(74). It further explains that this problem is crucial to boys everywhere because boys with low literacy skills are less likely to engage, complete and advance their education. Henderson argues that there are multiple factors that are contributing to boy's low level or underachievement in learning. Teachers, students, parents, siblings and friends play a vital role in shaping children's literacy practices outside of school that are then instilled inside of school. Henderson asks an interesting question, why do the literacy practices at school, home and in the community have to be different? Why can't all of these practices be viewed equally important and valuable? Henderson questions whether boy's bad behavior in school is a result of underachievement or is it the cause of it? Do teacher's play the most important role in shaping children, especially boys, learning identity in school?

In this video Yi talks about the increase usage of google and how it has improve over the years and had been made easier for everyone to use. But he states a problem about how frequently everyone uses it without evaluating to see if the informations are actually accurate.

In the article; "Digital Literacies" a 12th grade project about digital literacy is described. Elizabeth Boeser decided to develop an online role-play scenario for her students. The role-play was centered on the sites that were blocked by the school. Students made online avatars and discussed the pros and cons of blocking certain sites from students. Posts were being discussed after and before school and showed that the use of Ning (the website) showed students a positive way to use the Internet for school. It allowed for instant sharing of ideas. The author then goes into the importance of online identity where students can work with students by replicating, adding, and engaging in information. The four important digital literacy's are also mentioned; multimodality, connectivity, hyper linking, and collaboration.

This article shows us what this new thing "race to the top" is all about. In this article you will read about how much money the government is putting into this program for "incentive" to help schools be reformed and gain better test scores. It is a great article to read to get you started on knowing what is race to the top, but it makes you also question, why are we spending all this money just to make test scores higher? is the problem deeper than this? This is what i will be looking more into and hopefully getting some answer to post of here relating to this topic.

The relationship of social networking sites with teens and friendship.

I found a short outline from presentation slides on The National Writing Project and it talks about the importance of using participatory media in schools. It has a lot of information about what teachers can do with the media along with some positive input from teachers themselves. It gives a few standards that need to be met by the teachers and then the response they are getting from incorporating those results.

This whole websites contains great articles on how boys are in literacy and the dynamis they have with or without literacy!! Very interesting website that deals with linguistic, literacy, writting and electronic literacy!

It talks about how our generation is different and why teachers need to change. It also discus ways to use video games in school to help students learn.

In an article co-authored by Starr Roxanne Hiltz and Murray Turoff, distance learning is viewed as a revolution in education where if you do not adapt, you will become extinct. Universities nationwide must substitute "face-to-face interaction and teacher-centered pedagogy" with "hybrid courses using student-centered pedagogy"(2) Emphasizing the fact that a good percentage of students prefer distance learning, the authors call for new and innovative developments for the online course systems offered today. Hiltz and Turoff end with a very appropriate quote from Charles Darwin about the importance of flexibility and ability to adjust to changing times, ""It's not the strongest of the species that survives, not the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change."

In this article it states some facts that about who bullies, what cyber bullying is and if there is a way to stop it. Attacking someone on the internet is a lot easier to do because it can be from someone anonymous. It states in the article that most of the time the victim is someone that goes to the bully's school. The parents so be involved in the children's lives and ask question. Do not assume they are doing something bad on the internet. "All school children in the UK are taught to "zip it, block it and flag it" -- don't share information, block contacts and tell an adult."

"How Standardized Testing Damages Education," posted on, http://www.fairtest.org/facts/howharm.htm, the author talks about how standardized testing in schools today is damaging to students. The article talks about how the tests are biased but schools are still using it as a measurement of whether the student is ready for school or if they can go to the next grade. They also talk about how the tests have an emotional affect on the students. If a student is not able to go to the next grade, because of a bad test score, it's going to have a negative emotional affect and not necessarily improve their knowledge capabilities.

The National Center for Fair and Open Testing in regards to how they believe that standardized testing has damaged our education system. They begin by discussing how school use the tests the determine if students are ready for school, track them once they are in school, and help to develop and guide our schools curriculum, even though they are incredibly biased and are limited in their ability to measure achievement or ability in the students whom they are testing. They continue by arguing that these tests are very inaccurate when it comes to determining if a student is ready for school because they are 'overly academic and developmentally inappropriate in primary schooling.'

COOOOOL article--loved it.

Boys, masculinities and literacy: Addressing the issues This article is from the Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, written by Wayne Martino. Through interviews, gathering data and reading over 30 books on boys, masculinity and literacy, he discusses these problems while offering solutions for the "underachievement and lack of engagement" with literacy for boys. (9). Right away Martino explains that not all boys are underachieving but overall test scores have shown a general pattern of boys struggling in literacy practices. He offers many reasons that may be causing this literacy crisis for males, as well as solutions that need to being in schooling.

The article was about a study done by an Irish doctor that noticed that children would do better in math and reading if they made the same movemnts they made while they were in the womb.Children who were having issues in learning and understanding subjects in school were now doing much better after attending several Primary Movement classes. This article is very much related to the subject for my research memo in that I want to investigate about the impacts that children have while they are in the womb and whether children who are read to have a later advantage in their reading, writing and math skills while they grow up opposed to those who arent.

Sharon Pitcher's "The Literacy Needs of Adolescents in Their Own Words" discusses the problems that youth in today's classrooms face regarding reading comprehension. She examines these problems and seven case studies of students and their particular situations. Throughout her article, Pitcher argues that without classrooms' recognitions of when they need to modify their teaching techniques to its students' needs, the students will not fully develop the reading techniques that they need.

In "Learning Through Play" by Bob Mackey, Mackey argues that video games have been in classrooms for years but have never been used to their full capacity. In this article he explores ways in which video games made for fun (not for educational purposes) can be applied in the classroom.

In "Classroom Technology and Teacher-Student Interaction" by Geneva Logic, they discuss how teachers can use the system called Vision on computers within the classroom and it will benefit the interaction of teachers and students. For in the article, it points out how the "ratio to public school students to instructional computers with internet access had shrunk to 3.8 to 1 in 2005" (14 percent improvement in availability over 2003). Today, in the year 2010 less than 10 percent of students do not have access to a computer. However, researchers have found it is the teachers who are intimidated by bringing in technology within the classroom. Researchers stated that "technology brings about changes in classroom organization and the role the teacher plays; providing teachers with the tools they need to negotiate these changes is crucial to their success". (Muir-Herzic, 2004) This shows that if we were to provide teachers with these tools then teachers would see how technology within the classroom "leads to qualitative and quantitative improvements in teacher-student interaction.

The article, How to Use Social-Networking Technology for Learning, tries to get teachers to understand how to get students to interact with others by being "effective collaborators." It also goes into how to keep students engaged since many students can become easily distracted. By having open discussions about why students are using or abusing their social network, students can hopefully find a better way to portray themselves online.

The author is discussing this new classroom idea that will actually promote Social networking sites helping students create accounts, organize and share interest with others. The author shares a valid point, "Schools should reflect the world we live in today". The evolving world of Internet communication -- blogs, podcasts, tags, file swapping -- offers students radically new ways to research, create, and learn.