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Innovative Uses for a Computer Classroom?
flard asks: "I will be teaching a Freshman English class at a medium sized public university, in a computer classroom for next semester. Every student has their own machine with an internet connection. I am thinking about using a weblog for them to post their work and critique each other. Do you guys have any other cool ideas on what to do and what NOT to do?" How can the computers best be applied to assist in teaching a non-technical class? Use of a weblog is a start, but are there other pieces of software that can be deployed in such a setting?
...and it degenerated into the teacher saying "stop touching the keyboard" every five minutes. No matter what concept for curriculum one comes up with, as long as the students can get onto the Internet, they will. I even was more creative than most, since I SSHed to the university solaris server, which was an arguably legitimate use, only to then launch a black and white console IRC session. I didn't get caught, but several other students with IM clients or GUI-based IRC clients did. Nothing punitive came of it though, because there were no real enforcement policies.
The class could have been much more efficiently run without computers, or at least without a live Internet connection. Some (like my case) will always find a way though the campus network, but if it can be minimized, that's the only way it will work.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Google for wiki. It's a website that anyone can change, keeping a changelog of course. You could have a lot of fun with one (or a few) of those, especially if any type of creative writing is to be going on.
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
Post an essay topic, let the kids review the submissions with mod points given to your favorite students. Just like Slashdot.
My wife taught an English writing course for several years (to non-native speakers) and used some Perl scripts I wrote for her to do things like forums (where the students were required to participate in online discussions about topics of interest to them) and a "random topic generator" (where a topic like what would appear on the TOEFL would pop up, and they had 30 minutes to write an essay on it). My wife also did the old-fashioned thing and had the students turn in papers, but she would type them up and post them online so that the students could see how each other did. She must have done something right, 'cause the students always loved her class.
I suppose what I'm recommending are forums. Never really used weblogs, so I can't comment on that.
He has been playing for about 7 years now. I asked him about the character he plays... and he could have gone on for hours. Read some of the "Role Play Logs". Amazing. And amazing that they're ephemeral - imagine if every action were logged! We could spend years just as spectators, watching wars and communities from hundreds of different perspectives.
--Just the place for a snark!
In that context, they're going to be using a lot of AIM slang, announce on the first day that it's an English class, and you expect English spelling and English grammar. In general I don't like computer classrooms, especially not for English. They get in the way of actual discussion. The best environment for a literature class is a big table where everyone looks everyone else in the face. Don't just ask your students to memorize the plot, ask them to think critically about the books. Why is this an important thing to read? What does it say about society? Literature is more than a fancy way of telling stories, don't let them discuss books on the level that they'd discuss an action movie, they're definitely capable of deeper analysis than "it was cool when..." Also, for high school English, don't underestimate short stories. You should definitely be assigning a lot of novels as well, but frequently young students are much better at thinking about short works critically. On the first day, have them read Hemingway's "A Clean Well Lighted Place" to get the ball rolling. You can read it in 10 minutes and the story obviously exists for a reason other than to tell about some event that happened to some characters. Also, I'd suggest The Bell Jar, Lord of the Flies, Huck Finn, and Catcher in the Rye as great books for ninth graders. If you're going to do any Shakespeare, Othello is probably the most accessible of the 4 tragedies. As far as the computers, I wouldn't use them for anything beyond in-class typewriters. Certainly don't make them do powerpoint presentations or webpages. What on earth does that have to do with English. Some sort of continuing reading response diary is a good idea, but make sure out-loud discussion and debate outweighs typing. Oh and they should be writing an essay a week, at least. It's a shame how poor the writing of most high schoolers is. Anyway, good luck.
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One thing to investigate when you are setting this up is your school's policies on student privacy. At my university, at least, we have to be a little careful about letting students see other students' work. I often do (low-tech) peer review sessions; I will have students read drafts of each others' papers and give comments. It is all anonymous, because in my classes I never have students put their names on any assignment or exam; I do it all my grading by the last 4 digits of their ID numbers. And it is voluntary; I do this on the day papers are due, and those who choose to participate in the peer review get an extension to make corrections. If you choose not to participate, you simply turn in your final draft that day (and leave class early!). Still, my dean told me last term that I need to start having students sign a sheet in which they formally waive their right to privacy and agree to participate in the review.
This post is dedicated to all of those
I adhere to the other extreme: school computers should not be in "computer labs". Students should be using them all the time: taking notes, looking up references on the internet, IMing relevent data to classmates without disturbing the class as a whole, etc. Yeah, this can be abused. But if students are not motivated and involved in the classwork, they'll find ways to goof off, period.
Don't take my word for it. Look at schools that have followed this philosophy. Higher test scores, increased attendance, increased interest in writing...
Giving an elite few the ability to moderate posts on the basis of favoritism barely works on Slashdot, let alone a high school classroom.
Imagine the resentment that could be generated towards the class mods for weighted moderation.
Imagine the abuse of power that a mod could use against a classmate they didn't like.
Teachers have favored students, no question. But giving mod points on that basis would undermine at least the illusion of fairness.
I think the only reason Slashdot works at all is the relative anonymity of the posters. Most moderation here seems to be on the basis of the posts alone.
If you use Slashcode in the classroom , give everyone a mod point per topic. I think it will save you a lot of headache later.
If anyone thinks this is some sort of commentary about our beloved Slashdot , you might be right. I'm only a little bitter about never getting any mod points myself.