I thought I'd say more...

I didn't realize that there were some questions that I should have included in my initial post on role play so here are my responses for those:

1. What were some things that you did to create your role through use of language, information in/images used for your bio?

I played the role of a private school administrator. For me, I made language choices that would be things that I could imagine our principal saying (the principal at my daughter's Catholic school). Because private schools do cost money I felt like I was always have to "sell" my viewpoint so I used persuasive words and looked for research that supported the work that private schools are able to do, that public schools can't always accomplish.

2. What arguments were you making to convince other roles to support your position?

I made arguments that private schools are able to tailor their curriculum to have higher standards and focus on core curricular values without getting distracted by the "fluff" of schools. I sited studies that shared statistics that private schools score better on standardized tests as well and that parents have a choice in picking a school that supports their beliefs/views about what education should/should not be.

3. What evidence or reasons were your employing to support your positions? Do you think that this evidence or reasons were effective in convincing others to adopt your positions?

I highlighted many of my reasons for choosing private schools over public in the previous question. The evidence was okay, but I feel like it wouldn't necessarily convince someone that public schools need to be disbanded. Additionally, because I was trying to convince people to PAY for private education, that is simply not something that everyone can do, even though I did share a lot of situations in which people can get scholarships, that still takes work and cultural and social capital to which not everyone has access.

4. Which roles had the most versus least power in this role-play? What are some reasons that these roles did or did not have power? What were some strategies that the roles with power employed?

There was an individual that often made jokes rather than stated facts and though I really loved that from a humor standpoint, in a real debate I would be irritated by someone who wasn't taking a serious matter seriously. I was most impressed by those who included data in their responses but also comments packed with a lot of emotion are, to me, effective.

5. Were there differences between your personal beliefs and those of your role? Did your own personal beliefs on this issue change at all due to the role-play?

Well, this is complicated. I feel like I, as a parent, utilize my role as a white, educated individual, especially being a past K-12 educator when thinking about education. I send my kindergartener to parochial school and will most likely send my other 3 kids to parochial school as well. I will do this because I know what is involved in being a teacher in public education, and how sometimes instruction suffers under the pressure of administrators concerned only with test scores and not with students' well being, moral and social development as well so playing the role of a private school administrator was okay for me. It was hard though to not slip into the role of parent. Right now our kids' school is possibly going to close because of budget cuts so I have been playing the role of very active parent lately in trying to save our school so my emotions are running high right now. It was easy therefore to support a private school option because I do feel that my kids, in classes which are right around 15 kids, with teachers who are invested deeply in their religious development as well as their academic development will meet my child's needs better than, let's say, the public school down the road that has not met AYP in 3 years, where the kindergarten classroom has 27 kids in it. The role play didn't really change my opinion much. When I used to teach 7th grade, I worked on a team with 5 other teachers and all but one of us sent our kids to private school because we all were frustrated with the state of public education, even as public educators. And we weren't alone. In the school where I taught, more than half of the teachers who had kids sent them to public school. Our administrator actually called us together at a point and questioned why this was? She said we were setting a bad example by not supporting public school. I felt like saying to her that she was setting a bad example by not caring about kids... but I thought better of it!

Online Role Play

After our role play activity in class I have a lot of thoughts on using this in the classroom. I think there is a lot of potential, especially for students who may not speak up in a face-to-face debate, students like me. It is quite a bit easier (in some ways) to take on a role that you may not necessarily agree with and push an agenda associated with that role because everyone knows everyone is just playing a role and therefore hopefully no one would take anything that was said too seriously and wouldn't be out to judge what students are saying. In our debate in class I know I said things that I wouldn't have ever said in my true self role. I was much more verbal. It was also exciting to take on a role that was vastly different from my own perspective. I've been asked to do this for a number of classes and I always enjoy the experience. As a teacher I used to teach a debate unit and wish I would have considered using the online format to carry out that unit. It opens up a lot more possibilities for students who are naturally more passive in class. I also feel like it could be used to debate issues that come up within novels as well. So many possibilities.

Wiki-ing

A few years ago I tried using a wiki in my classroom with my students related to the Holocaust. It didn't work, not because the kids weren't capable of adding content, but because the limited access to computers required that all of the students were posting at the same time in our school's computer lab. Because of the synchronous posting, many posts didn't show up and it became a frustrating process for all of us. I never tried again with my students.

For this class, when asked to think up a blog topic, because I couldn't exactly find a place where it would neatly fit into the course I am teaching, I thought I'd make a wiki that would fulfill another interest of mine, and help others with whom I'm connected-parents. The wiki is a resource for parents on ideas and activities to do with kids. I am hoping that, after I share the wiki site with my friends and family, they will add to it and we can all learn from one another. I have some things to figure out yet and so it is a work in progress and pretty basic, but I'd like to spice it up as I become more familiar with the workings of wikis.

http://havingamommyday.pbworks.com/

I hope you enjoy!

A new way of telling a story

For my next trick... no, just kidding. This class does make me feel like a magician of sorts realizing all of the cool things that can be done with all of the free technology tools that are out there on the web. This week's endeavor, the voice thread story. I struggled to choose a topic. I was just going to talk about how awesome my kids are, and though to me that would be a completely fulfilling assignment, I chose otherwise to tell a story about one of my children, but to have a point to the story. So here goes, this was an emotional one for me, and I can see some glitches in it but for my first shot at putting speech to pictures, I think it is okay.
http://voicethread.com/share/1369684/

I hope you enjoy!!

A girl Like Me Vlog

Whom do you think is the audience for this vlog and, in terms of “visual rhetoric,” what aspects of the vlog are designed to appeal to this audience? What video/editing techniques are employed in this vlog post and how effective are they?

I had an opportunity to view the vlog "A Girl Like Me" which featured female teens talking about race and identity. I chose this video because I am extremely interested in both race and identity of minority children. I feel that the audience that this vlog targets could be educators, teens or individuals interested in race issues. I think that this video blog could be used effectively to initiate conversation about issues of race and self-confidence. The study conducted during the video where children were asked to look at dolls (white and black) and choose which was the nice doll, the beautiful doll, and even black children chose white dolls... this is SO sad. I recently watched a similar study that was done and highlighted on Anderson Cooper 360 and the results are so disheartening. Society is damaging the souls of our children by negatively portraying race so that even children can't/don't love their own color of skin. The video techniques that I found especially good about this video was that variety was used. It was not just focused on the individuals that were talking. Multiple people were used and images related to the topic were used along with voice over techniques for variety. I wish I would have/could have had time to try these techniques out when I made my own vlog but with practice perhaps I can incorporate variety, still and motion shots and voice over techniques in vlogs of my own in the future.

From Blog to Vlog

Today I took the next big step in digital media exploration. I created a vlog. This experience for me became a family affair because, to be fair to my children, I can't do much of anything without them being far from my mind... or in this case, the screen. So, sit back, relax, and get ready to meet me and the real stars of my Vlog.



And, while we're in the mood of sharing videos, here's a video that I think better captures my roller coaster of a life. Though I didn't "make" the video myself, I was, I guess, the star. This video says what I couldn't in my 3-4 minute vlog.

So many choices

Scarcely three weeks into this course on the myriad of options available for the teaching of digital writing and my head is already spinning. It is hard to fathom what the teaching of English will look like in ten years, especially when most of what we are learning in this class wasn't even on the radar of my professor for two Educational Media and Technology courses eight years ago. While all of these advances are well and good, for my final project I was thinking of approaching the use of these exciting tools in the classroom with students with exceptional learning needs. For most users it is not too difficult to create an account on, let's say Diigo, for example, and start to use the product. Picking up a camera or camcorder and shooting some footage isn't too daunting of a task, but what about for those students who don't have full use of their vision, hearing or extremities. In this case do these amazing technologies become more of a hindrance than a help? Are there other things out there that are equally as exciting AND accessible? For my final project I'd like to delve into that, for both personal and professional reasons.

I was born completely blind and went through my entire K-12 education, and part of college, with no residual vision. I used Braille, human readers and audio books to accomplish my school work. Sometimes I'd use a scribe in class. I learned to type when I was six because even back in the eighties, the computer was the thing to do if one was blind, to "level the playing field". As technology evolved I was introduced to numerous assistive technology devices and programs developed to help students like me. AT has truly been a lifesaver for me and I can most certainly attribute at least part of my being in a PhD program now to their use. That doesn't mean the road to accessibility was or is easy. Even after regaining some sight in college after a cornea transplant I continued to be faced with computer programs and websites, designed to help most of the population, that would be completely inaccessible to me. My frustrations are not isolated. Individuals with hearing and mobility impairments as well as those with learning disabilities experience their own set of challenges. Even in college I was excused from nearly a semester's worth of technology requirements because the technology professor couldn't figure out how to make JAWS (my screen reader) work in tandem with many of the programs and sites we were using.

I don't mean to sound cynical because I can be lulled by all awesome things that are out there just as easily as the next person, but before jumping into ,and embracing anything full force, I like to be sure that the product/service is usable to all students, so that I don't have to make any of my students feel like a burden if I were to introduce and require the use of some program in one of my classes. The premise of my final project then is to examine and critique the usability of many of the tools we are exploring in this class and hopefully come up with some sort of project that could be helpful for all of us and we leave this course, something that we can all refer to in order to determine the usability of these cool tools. In order to find information on this, I plan to use texts that I will locate in the Education Full text database, speak with AT specialists in the U of Disability Support Services Office and explore some of the AT tools that I have heard about available on the web, but haven't had a chance to explore fully. What will result is a mystery to me at this point. Hopefully this is a suitable idea for a final project.