Blackboard in Your Classroom

How do you use Blackboard software in your classroom?

Some schools are encouraging (or enforcing) the use of Blackboard software. I know teachers here at Duquesne University and several surrounding high schools get training on it. some use it well; some don't. I've been given the assignment of "webmaster" of my senior secondary English education methods class. I have to figure out how we can utilize Blackboard for this class. I've toyed around with ideas and come up with a few. I'm interested in how you all use it. Just a digital home for your syllabus? An effective out-of-class communication tool? A collaborative learning community? A necessary evil to get through your mandatory to-do list?

How do YOU use Blackboard software in your classroom?

Ophelia on Facebook

Drpezz's recent post reminded me of another way my classmates and I were able to use social networking to create a learning activity that promotes character analysis and creativity. We created a Facebook page for Ophelia.

First of all, this was attractive to the classmates we instructed because the novelty of giving a character of Elizabethan literature a new millennium identity struck them as a cool idea. It has even reached several people we don't know, as strangers have friended Ophelia. If you have a Facebook account or can use a friend's, search for Ophelia TheDane.

More importantly, this really forces the students to think about Ophelia's character. Think about music. Would she like Amy Winehouse or Jewel? No Doubt or The Carpenters? Why? This also allows an opportunity for humor. We decided that Ophelia's hobbies included gardening and swimming. I did this for another lesson plan for The Scarlet Letter and my roommate and I came up with a dozen ideas or jokes without much effort. (Hawthorne Heights, Bad Religion, "Lady in Red," "Son of a Preacher Man," "Tempted by the Fruit of Another," Sherlock Holmes, Raising Ophelia...) Try it out as a warm-up or review activity and see what you get.

P.S. Why does Ophelia love Scooby-Doo?

Because he's a Great Dane!

Improv Skills Help!

One of the reasons I love theater and wish to teach it is because so many of its skills are applicable outside of theater itself. Character analysis helps with English assignments. Lights and sound break into physics. Building a set helps hone industrial tech skills (I totally geeked out when Teaching Theater had an article called "Gardner in the Scene Shop"!). A recent Teacher Lingo post talked about Improv...teacher style. Shortly after I found a CNN article via LifeHacker about improvisation helping in any workplace.

The article reviews three of the most basic rules of improvisation: yes...and, going with your gut, and teamwork. These rules can apply when working with fellow teachers or pulling students' thought during a discussion. Sometimes even overplanning falls through. This quick article is a good resource.

A Wish Radio

Many interesting ideas and people came together in 1993 to make the animated movie We’re Back: A Dinosaur’s Story. In this movie a bubble-producing gizmo that Captain Neweyes dubbed a “wish radio” is capable of tuning in to the wishes of children across the globe. Some want a toy. Some want to stop fighting with someone. Some want a friend. Fast-forward fifteen years. Since We’re Back we humans have developed the public internet, blogging, Twitter, and finally We Feel Fine and Twistori. The short story is that now we can track what we humans love, hate, feel, and wish. Do you want to see?

We Feel Fine collected snippets of our lives first. This video from the TED conference describes how Jonathon Harris created it. WFF is a bubble-producing gizmo that trolls the blogosphere for entries containing the word “feel” and posts those sentences in several graphic interfaces, some including photos. As you sit and watch, you are able to see how the English-speaking world is feeling right now. I cannot do it justice; WFF is really something you have to see for yourself.

Twistori trolls Twitter posts for what we humans love, hate, think, believe, feel, and wish! Spend thirty seconds with this real world “wish radio” and you’ll be pulled in to the stories that unfold in front of you. Some want a toy. Some want to stop fighting with someone. Some want a friend.

Many interesting ideas and people come together to make We Feel Fine and Twistori, and few of use are sure what to do with this information. At the least it shows more of the internet’s fascinating possibilities. At the most it is a glimpse into the collective human psyche expressed through the cloud. What if we had a wish radio for our students? Their parents? What can we educators do with these online radios? I wish I had a crystal ball…

Neat Free Word Wall Idea

I found a while ago a website featuring a Java applet that creates "word clouds" of any series of words you input. This turns statements, quotes, or lists into computer-generated word art. It's very much worth checking out, even if it's just for the cool factor. Visit Wordle.net to check it out.

I put this one together from a Scarlet Letter vocabulary list.

Here are some more examples.

10 Reasons I Love Being an Education Major

In no particular order:

1. Nobody will ever ask me "What will you do with that degree?"
2. No labs.
3. Learning about learning helps in all other classes.
4. Anything I learn in any class could somehow be used in a lesson plan.
5. Our professors know how to teach well.
   
6. We're graduating during an exciting time in education.
   
7. We have to know a little bit of everything - psychology, history, sociology, biology...
   
8. We stick together. We help each other. We want each other to do well.
9. We're all a bit crazy, and we bring that out in each other.
10. Being proud to tell people my major.

Who else has some answers?

Say NO to Barnes and Noble

It's that time of year.
That time of year when Barnes and Noble takes unknowing college students and squeezes their tiny wallets black and blue.
When those students unknowingly perpetuate the system that steals more and more money from them each year.
When that system annoys good professors and students by keeping the savings for itself.
When good professors and students finally Say NO to Barnes and Noble.

Barnes and Noble runs hundreds of college bookstores across the country. They like to seem that they have the monopoly on college textbooks. Especially to freshmen, they seem like the best or only way to get the books needed for class. B&N withholds information from students on their college websites, such as ISBN numbers, a full publisher name, and whether or not the professor actually cares what edition you buy. We must do a little extra research to prove to B&N that we are not stupid.

B&N overcharges for books while pretending to offer money-saving deals. Students can save money buying B&N used because other students sold their books back for pocket change. We must stop buying from and selling to B&N in order to help ourselves and our friends.

An educational psychology professor of mine told us that she worked with publishers to reduce the price of a three-book packet needed for the class. When the price was finally listed at the bookstore it was much higher than what she had spent time negotiating. B&N kept the profits of the work she did to help her students. We must not give our money to this institution.

I am not buying a single book from Barnes and Noble this year, and I will save hundreds of dollars doing it! Here are my ways of not dealing with B&N and saving money on my textbooks:

• Buy from websites like Abebooks.com and others offer cheap textbooks. Very often the book price plus shipping is less than the used price listed by Barnes & Noble.
• Borrow from the library. Don't you dare buy a copy of anything written by Shakespeare when your college library has 12 versions of it.
• Search for open-source literature is available for most older works. Project Gutenberg is a great source for this. You can print out your copy of The Scarlet Letter for cheap, or read it off the computer screen and download the audiobook for free!
• Visit local bookstores will help you out with a little bit of luck.
  
• Share with friends in that class. I've had to do this several times and have never been severely inconvenienced.
  
• Encourage professors to bypass B&N. During a theater history course our professor told us to buy online a book published in the 1970s. This good thorough textbook cost us pennies apiece!

UPDATE: SmartMoney posted this article on saving money on college textbooks.
LifeHacker posted Best Places to Save Money on College Textbooks