Read Across America Day

As many you you know, today is Read Across America Day, or Dr. Suess' birthday, and many schools (mostly elementary schools) take the day and focus on reading.

I didn't go to a school that did this, but I don't think it was as popular when I was in elementary school. I wish I did, though. It would have been fun to listen to others read when I was younger, and then read on my own as I got older just because it was a reading day.

So I would probably use March 2nd as an SSR day if I were to end up in a school that doesn't participate in Read Across America Day, even though all schools should just so students can gain independence and learn to tolerate reading if students aren't apt to pick up a book on their own.

Zotero

In one of the readings so far this semester, Zotero, an online way to keep track of the sources one uses on a paper, was introduced.

I had honestly never heard of this, so I was a little interested, but I didn't think much of checking the thing out until I was assigned to in class.

When I got to the website, I wasn't so sold on the idea of it.

• It requires a download.
• The website looked a bit much like Mediafire, an online piracy site.
• It requires an account.

So those are just the first three cons that I could think of when I visited the site. I probably wouldn't mind using it if it didn't require a download, but seeing as my laptop is getting pretty old, I am very cautious with what I do with it. I still have half of this semester, the summer, and student teaching to get through with it, and I don't want anything I won't use regularly on it.

I also thought that I already have a pretty easy way to organize my sources for papers and research assignments; I just use EasyBib. I usually make a preliminary bibliography if my first draft is not my final draft, and I save them on the sire. It's easy, and it seems pretty much the same as Zotero.

Would I give Zotero a try? Probably, but not today.

Photo Essays

In class, one of the presentations dealt with photo essays.

I just read Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer, and he intertwines pictures to tell Oskar's story. It was interesting to see that words and images can be combined to tell the same story.

It really made me want to create a photo essay, but if I am being honest, I wasn't going to go through old work just to make one just because. Time is precious for me, but that doesn't mean that I am still not interested. I would still love to make one to tell a story.

I think that these would be especially helpful in a middle school setting where the five paragraph essay is stressed. It would be a more creative way for students to express themselves, and most students in middle school are drawn to images more than words.

Creating a photo essay would make audiences, or students, use higher level thinking skills to decipher meaning. They would have to think about how an image relates to a book, short story, poem, or even a peer. I think it would really benefit students, and I would be more than willing to use a lesson involving them in a classroom.

Time Management

When I was in high school, I had a teacher who stressed that we better manage our time? Well sometimes, websites just pull you in, and you waste time.

Well, I was wasting time, and I stumbled upon a blog that had apps for Google Chrome listed and one was about time management. Well, I closed out of the tab, and then I remembered I still needed one more post, and then I couldn't remember the name of the blog. Oops.

I did a simple Google search, and there are many apps that track your time on certain websites like Facebook and Tumblr so you can get your work finished without too much procrastination. Sounds too good to be true, right?

I think tools like these could help students at home.

I can't find the link, but now that I am looking for it, I am wasting time, and I have a paper to write, so maybe someone knows of the app? I don't even use Google Chrome, so I am really wasting time.

Cinnamon and Synonyms

When I think back on my days in high school, I always wanted to be the smartest person in the class by saying the least. I depended on my writing abilities to get me there. I never used the thesaurus tool, but I knew many people who did because they wanted to "spice up" their papers.

A friend and I were discussing this at lunch the other day. She needed to write a paper, and she wanted to use different words than what she normally uses. I warned her that it could be a bad idea to use the thesaurus tool because sometimes the words are synonyms, but they do not make sense in the context of the sentence or paragraph.

Then I failed at being funny by trying to make a joke that she did not get.

Anyways, with more and more schools buying more kinds of technologies, how appropriate would it be for students to use a thesaurus app on an iPad or similar device in school? Would they benefit from expanding their vocabulary in a new way, or would the words be learned and forgotten?

Books with a Target

After reading Jennie's post, I remembered an image that I found on another blog awhile ago that was about banned books.

I just wanted to share it with everyone because I thought it was interesting enough to save.

Two of the books are books that are certainly read in high schools because they are a part of the literary canon, but there is even a children's book that made the list.

Even though books are a type of printed medium, the image is not. Students can be shown an image like this, and they might even share if they have read any of the books. I have read only three of these books, and I know that the three I have read do contain certain elements that not all students would be able to handle. Just looking at this picture shows how conservative we are as humans, especially in the classroom.

Presentation Software

As I was sitting at the front desk at one of the residence halls on campus, I started to study for a quiz for an education class that should prepare us for using technology in the classroom.

I was going through a PowerPoint presentation about presentation software, and I realized how sick of PowerPoint I can get sometimes. I know that I rarely use it, and if I have to, I hate it. Then I started to remember the previous versions, and I can honestly say that Microsoft PowerPoint 2003 was my favorite. I have had 2007 on my laptop since I was a freshman, and I still get confused. I feel like I can't personalize my slides the way I want to, and that annoys me.

So, my question is how can teachers try to eliminate the use of PowerPoint seeing as so many students (and even teachers) depend on it? There are other options out there, but would students be willing to try them and forget about the most popular and comfortable presentation software that is available?