Internet Resources

I joined the National Council for Teachers of English back in the first semester of school and I like it. It is filled with all types of information that is useful for a language arts teacher. It is a fairly easy to use web site that offers access to books, research, lesson plans and useful ideas. NCTE has research-based resources for English teachers that can be very helpful for teachers of Language Arts. This makes it a fruitful web site that helps me with student learning and achievement. The site offers an option where you can fill out information online and request consultation. I’m not sure exactly how this works, but I know it’s available and I’m sure to use it at some point in my career. I think that these kind of online resources are especially important for all of us in Alaska because of our physical separation from the rest of the country, good sites like this one offer access to issues and new ideas that affect the Language Arts world in education. And of course this site has easy access to very usable lesson plans. This is a very high quality resource.

I have also been using the Teacher Vision web site. This is a nice general site that has something for all teachers. Since I have been teaching a block History/ English class, I can go to Teacher Vision and find lesson plan ideas as well as strategies and general teaching plan ideas. I have found a lot of good lesson plan ideas. Many web sites that deal with teachers and teaching have a lot of unusable plans and ideas, at least for me, but this one has things that are useful and workable in the class room. I know because I have used some of them. Of course I usually just pick out what I think I can use, and leave the rest, like right now I am looking at some sections of a blues lesson plan that I can use as part of my to Kill A Mockingbird unit. I haven’t joined Teacher Vision yet, but I have been able to access a lot of information without joining. With a membership fee of about forty dollars a year, I might wait until I get a job.

Since History is the larger section of what I have been teaching, I have also been using the Digital History website. I like this site because it has loads of links. There are links to PBS as well the National Archives. The links are substantial and worthwhile; this site is mostly links, which I like because it takes you to what you are specifically looking for instead of having to search a specific item on a website. It also has a myriad of primary source documents which is invaluable for teaching History. There is a problem though; many of the links do not link to anything, which can be quite disappointing. But I really enjoy browsing around on this site. It’s fun to read Red Horse’s version of the Battle of Little Bighorn, or look at Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address. The site also has time lines to all different periods in history. I find these very helpful for students to get an idea of place in time, as well as historical chronology. I have used these by accessing them on my classroom computer, which is connected to an overhead projector, and then I just put it up on the big screen and go over with students. I usually have them copy it and keep it for a reference.

Assistive Technologies

This could be the first article in the Educational Leadership magazine where I only have good things to say. The idea of being able to use technology that is very specific to helping students with learning disabilities is a fantastic one. I am enthusiastically for anything that can help students develop grade level reading and writing skills.

• The ultimate beauty of this technology is that many students can read grade level text without a teacher
• It gives students the wonderful feeling of independent accomplishment

Read & Write Gold sounds like some good software with the text to speech that students can listen to at their own pace. The writing software that instantaneously gives students a choice of words that they may be trying to use, can only be positive because the student still has to figure out what the correct word would be. The software does not do all of the thinking for the student.

Believe it or not Sitka High has some type of related technology. I have several students who use it, but I don’t know exactly what it is, and I would guess that there are a lot of teachers that don’t know about it. I am now feeling rather ridiculous not having experienced it with one of my students. I will do this soon.

The Over Dominance of Computers

I have a small problem with the analogies at the beginning of this article that are not analogous to the author’s argument. Comparing youthful computer use to alcohol use or driving a car as a youth is too much of a stretch. This sort of thing makes me leery as to how much hyperbole I’m going to have to swallow, and it makes me mentally discount any statement that is vague or is not backed up by reasonable studies or statistics.

His suggestion that since we are teaching computer literacy to students we are not teaching certain values like, “commitment, loyalty and tradition” is an argument that could be made for just about any subject.

However, just because his argument process is weak, it doesn’t mean that the essence of what he is saying is wrong. The article has a solid core of truth; we don’t need to be pushing major computer literacy on young children and there are more important things to be teaching.

The main ideas that can be lost in this rambling article are:

• Students still need to be prepared for the world of technology
• The authentic world, and worldly values, are critical parts of student growth
• Parents and teachers need to recognize and secure a balance between both worlds