Final Post!!!

From the moment this final project was mentioned, the wheels in my head began to spin. The best way for me to benefit from this course was to create a project that I could use as a tool in my own classroom, both for my students and parents/guardians as well as myself. For the past few years I have begun to increase technology in my classroom from once having plain old whiteboards to having a document reader and projector, to now having an interactive whiteboard that is included in my daily lesson plans. These tools have been wonderful assets but I realize that I need to go beyond what is comfortable and stretch my knowledge in the arena of technology becoming more knowledge-able as Mike Wesch calls it (1). While I have not been resistant to using technology tools in my room, I have been frustrated with the obstacles of not being able to use the lessons I have planned at home in the classroom. With firewalls and blocked websites, I have often thrown my hands up in the air with disdain. Luckily, I think quickly on my feet and have my students complete alternative assignments or activities while I figure out how I can outsmart these technology roadblocks, showing my students that I am not technologically inept, which they often think! 

A perfect example of my frustrations occurred with this project. While I am extremely pleased with my work in progress of a web page, I was not able to immediately begin the creative process on the page. I was to have access to the site at the end of the school year, but it never appeared and access was still unavailable at the beginning of the week. As I became frustrated, a huge lesson landed in my lap. For me to be successful with this project I had to advocate for myself and the needs of my students. I had been waiting for a colleague, who was acting as the middle person, to gain my access to the site. However, I should have realized that was my duty and not hers. Throughout this project, I have become more comfortable with being more vocal pertaining to my needs in the classroom as well as the needs of my students. The students deserve and need to have more hands on experiences with technology in and out of the classroom and I must provide them with some of the tools. Through this website they will be able to have links and resources at their fingertips when they are at home and I am not an available source of information. This website is a practical tool for my kids as well as myself. I will be required to constantly update the page to keep the students and parents/guardians informed, showing that I believe it is a useful tool. However, it will ultimately keep me focused on learning new ways to navigate the various app pages and seek out additional tools and resources for all of us. I will be pushing myself to stay on top of interactive and engaging activities and sites for my students to utilize inside and outside of my classroom. Most importantly, I will be creating an interactive and informative classroom community that is not limited to the physical classroom, but that extends beyond those four walls.

Throughout this course, I have been pushing myself to become more accustomed to new tools that can be utilized in my classroom. As I have attempted to incorporate web cam videos, videos uploaded on Youtube, and more intense PowerPoint presentations, I feel as though there is always to be more accomplished by my students. Even when I do have the students try out new projects, there is a resistance to use unfamiliar tools and stick to what they know. With my project I am not only modeling how to successfully use new skills, but also showing students the value in the process. Wesch states, “The new media environment provides new opportunities for us to create a community of learners with our students seeking important and meaningful questions. Questions of the very best kind abound, and we become students again, pursuing questions we might never imagined, joyfully learning right along with others” (7). Together my students and I will learn new skills and stretch our understandings of literature through technology, becoming knowledge-able, and establishing a new discourse within the classroom that balances digital media analysis and print text analysis. For this to truly work, I will be incorporating more technology based assignments and including various links and resources we are finding and using in class on the website. I hope to have the website more polished by September and begin to utilize it the first day of school so the students become accustomed to it.

A unit I am interested in revamping is on Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. Set in the 1930s, the text showcases racism African Americans were undergoing and the popular views of the South during that time period. Lee calls for the readers to question why it was the norm to treat people who were different from you in certain ways as well as show the power of the social ladder in society. My students critically analyze and examine the relationships between characters, the time period, values and connections that can still be made to today’s world, but I want to challenge myself to show my students how the dominant ideology truly played a role in the novel. I want to incorporate more images from the time period and look at how Atticus shows Jem and Scout that it is okay to challenge the dominant ideology and how hegemony guides decisions in society. Croteau writes, “Hegemony operate at the level of common sense in the assumptions we make about social life and on the terrain of things that we accept as ‘natural’ or ‘the way things are’” (166). The citizens in Maycomb settled into what they thought was to be the way of life and did not want go against the norm but I believe it will be powerful for my students to learn to step away from what has always been “normal” and begin to tap on the glass right alongside of Jem and Scout. A possible assignment could be a critical analysis of commercials, advertisements or political debates and compare them to the issues that were being faced in Maycomb County. It will be interesting to see what my students and I can develop with this unit this fall and compare the methods of framing in the discourse used in the 30s through the 60s to keep people from going against the grain and how it is embedded in today’s media. These changes in this unit will take me beyond the instructional techniques I have come to rely on and push me to enhance my methods to be more critical of the digital world my students deal with on a daily basis as well as the classic literature we are reading.

Throughout this short intensive course, I have been required to challenge myself to look at every day images, ideas and claims that are seen throughout education and the media and look at them with a more critical eye. I need to bring back these ideas to my classroom to have my students challenge the dominant societal ideologies and become more critical thinkers. I am beginning to look forward to this upcoming school year to see what I can put together for my students and create a more community and technology-based classroom. I will be stepping back from the more dominant teacher role and giving the reigns to my students to have them delve into the topics deeper, lending them a hand when needed. I hope my students and I can successfully utilize the new website and we can create sections for web-based discussions and use more digital literacy sources within our class to create authentic and meaningful learning experiences.