FOOT - Final Reflection

     Looking back on my past blog posts, I can see that I have come up with a variety of ways to increase the use of technology and multi-modalities in the classroom. In most of my entries, I seem inspired by something that sparks a future teaching idea in my head. I plan on using this blog to look back on in the future. Some of the main ideas that we did in this class that I plan to take with me in my teaching career are the multi-genre autobiography, blogs, film and the use of facebook. Here is how I plan to implement these strategies, as well as what I thought about the way we did them:

Multi-Genre autobiography - I plan to use as almost an icebreaker in the beginning of the year. I would model the idea, like Miss Foot did, and have my students jot down their ideas of their own personal texts from the past and the present as they are inspired. One thing I would include that we did not do would be a "wish list". Their wish list would be at the end of the presentation, and it would be texts that they have not but wish to see/read/utilize. They would show these texts, and we could see what they see in their possible future. I would encourage my students after all of the presentations to get their hands on these items and write about them in their blogs over the course of the year. I would also include a segment on what they would like to read and learn about this year. I would review their presentations at the end of the year and see if they achieved what they wanted to.

Blogs - I like the idea of using blogs in the future, but probably not as aggressively as we did in this class. I would encourage them to write about their pleasure texts as well as their thoughts on the course.  I might also include a few longer assignments like we had the compare and contrast essay as well as the Firestone responses that were fairly lengthy. I would not punish my students for blogging in the same week, because sometimes life and work get in the way and it is hard to do that. All assignment would have due dates, most certainly, but as long as they did them by that date, I wouldn't care. For example, I work about 30 hours a week and I am taking a full course load consisting of six classes. I only have two nights off a week, and when I come home from work at one o'clock in the morning, it is unrealistic for me to blog then, or in the thirty minutes I have between school and work during the day. I tend to do an entire weeks worth of homework in one night because that is really the only time I have. Therefore, I would not punish my students for doing more than one entry in a day/week.
     I do like what Dr. Kist said about students and blogs in his text. He writes "But they haven't seen blogs used a platform for learning, as a way to reflect about what they're learning in a public way, and in a way that allows for feedback not only from the teacher but from their classroom peers" (Kist, pg. 61). I couldn't agree more. Being the teacher, I think I would have a blog and have all of the students follow me on it. I would post reflections about class and assignments coming up/being due. This way, if a student is absent, they will be able to contact me or see what we did that day.

Film - I plan to use a variety of films in my class, such as movies, perhaps tv segments or clips from YouTube. I want my class to be exciting, but at the same time, I will be focusing more on the literature versus the films. I plan to show the movie (like I stated in a past blog entry) almost as a reward for my students. I will not tell them we are viewing it, because I know sometimes students will skip the book and refer to the movie instead. If they watch the film after their major assessment for the text, such as a paper or test, they can enjoy it and they will not be able to use it as a method to skip reading. At the same time though I am conflicted, I might do a compare and contrast of the book and the movie, so I would have to show it before the assessment in that case.
     The film studying we did in class was not something I would use in the future. Maybe if I taught an elective, such as literature in film or something, I would use these techniques, but they seem too far fetched to use with high school students. I mean this because they focus too much on how the film was made, and it just doesn't fit to me. I suppose it helped me understand film better to teach it, and that is nice, but I don't think I will use these methods in the future unless they apply to the text I was teaching.

Facebook - I am really enjoying the facebook project. I actually think that some of the high school students have grown in their responses. They used to write very basic responses without much thought, but now, after reading ours, they seem to respond more in depth and it is really nice to see. I love literature circles, and I believe that facebook is a pretty neat way to do it, because kids are used to it. I like my idea that I posted earlier in my blog about using it for kids in your various classes. For example, kids in period one might do a literature circle with some students from period six, and so on. I like this because they might feel more inclined to be honest while typing. Also, they might get to work with some of their friends. 

     In conclusion, I learned a lot this semester. I learned a lot of new ways to incorporate technology, and I will use some in the future. I still believe that the main idea about teaching language arts through books, novels, antholgies etc. is the most important part, but I am not opposed to using technology to aid myself and my students through it. I plan on keeping Dr. Kist's text, and using some of his ideas in it when I teach. I believe that this class paired with Dr. Pytash's class made for an interesting semester. It was almost like The Classics vs. Technology, which my group and I sort of address in our video. I think that the two classes were both insightful and I learned a lot, but I did not like how barely anything was due in the first half of the semester, and then it was all due later in the semester at once. It was kind of hard because I felt like I was rushed in the end. I understand that part of this was because of the Firestone project, but still, there was a lot of work at the end of the semester. I would rather have had the amount of work spread out more than it was. Regardless, I learned a lot and will take a lot of what I learned with me when I student teach as well as when I teach my own class.