This semester

I can't believe this semester is already winding down. I always feel a little frantic right before Thanksgiving break, because I know that right after Thanksgiving break, I have very little time before I'm taking finals/ turning in final projects. Especially because this year's biggest final for me is a 15-20 page paper for my ENGL 660 class. Yikes. At least my other classes seem fairly easy. A final project for educational technology, a non-comprehensive final exam for educational research and a normal 5-7 page paper of what I learned in educational philosophy.

All of this just makes me even more excited for next semester. After doing a quick intercession class, I just have two more classes (one is online) and the portfolio. Then I get a master's degree! :)

Now, I'm going to go back to work on my first four pages of that final paper for English, due next Monday. I have ... not very much so far. I'm just not sure where I want to go with the paper. My topic is alcoholism and the Drunken Indian stereotype within Sherman Alexie's novel Reservation Blues. Tricky, tricky. I think I will re-read the book and take careful notes now. Thank goodness it was a quick read!

When I imagine...

I have decided, while I sit here broiling in the RP office, that I should blog. It is nearing the middle of my third year on staff, and after being immersed in the world that surrounds the most award-winning college yearbook in the country, you would think I have some reflections. 

Guess what! I do.

Many of them center around how I would like to run my staff when I advise for a high school. Some general ideas, in the order that I think of them:

• Take my kids to conventions. And pre-covention etiquette dinners so I can teach them good manners for the trip.

• It is important to lie to the kids about deadlines. It is important to build in a little leeway for yourself, because things will happen, and high schoolers won't handle it nearly as well as the RP staff has.

• Have as extensive of an editing chain as possible. 

• Reward kids with dinners or movie nights or something at my house. It's important they see me out of school and they take time to relax and enjoy a job well done.

• Encourage positive peer pressure and student responsibility within the staff, so that kids feel they can and should speak up when something is not right.

• Goals.... and keeping them in focus and bringing them up constantly. Otherwise they're pointless.

• Deadline charts are awesome. Update them daily.

• Because the book will have a video and Web element, I want three people to go to every story. One photographer, and one team of a writer and videographer. Each "staff writer" (non-editor) on my staff will be a writer and videographer. Each video story will go through the same chain a written story would have to, except instead of a copy editor I will have a video editor.

• Recycle all that paper!

I know Anna and I have talked about more, but that's all I've got right now. :)

Clickers

I have been interested in “clickers,” or student response systems, for a while but have never read about them much or had the opportunity to see them in use. So for this assignment, I read an article on the NEA Web site, “Clickers and Classroom Dynamics” by Derek Bruff. The purpose of clickers is for students to engage in in-class polls or quizzes. A teacher presents a multiple-choice question, and students all submit their responses via the clicker. Then, software on the teacher’s computer will analyze the students’ answers and produce a chart. This is an easy, pressure-free way to do checks for understanding, and based on students’ answers, a teacher knows whether to move on or cover certain material again. The article discussed other, more advanced uses for the clickers. For instance, a professor at Harvard made famous “peer instruction.” If students were asked a question, like mentioned previously, and a significant number answered incorrectly, they would take a few minutes to discuss the question in small groups and then resubmit their answers. Often, the second answer was correct. I like the fact that students submit their answer semi-anonymously (other students don’t know what they answered), and that it gives all students a chance to participate easily. The article also gives suggestions on ways to use the clickers to ask more high-level thinking skills questions, such as giving an example of an ethical dilemma, then asking students to identify the classical ethical philosophy that went with it. This would be easy in a science class, as you could give an example of something happening due to one of Newton’s laws and then ask which one it is.

There are several systems for clickers, but the one I looked up was the iClicker, but you had to get a quote for the price for them. I did some Google searching, however, and found that several universities offered a FAQ section for courses that used clickers, and most quoted the price as $45-$50 per remote, and Amazon had some for around $30 used. That price does not include the teacher’s receiver or the software, however, so it seems to me this basic piece of technology may cost more than it’s worth for small, K-12 classrooms where a teacher could simply take a closed-eyes vote and count them herself.

Bruff, D. (n.d.). Clickers and classroom dynamics. Retrieved from http://www.nea.org/home/34690.htm.