Evaluation/Response
1. I think you guys are both great. I appreciate your patience and unflagging help, and i appreciate how you punted your way through all the technical difficulties.
2. I'm glad that you kept us writing and not just concentrating on the technical stuff.
3. about this tool: I'm not sure. Do you all know Daedalus? It seems to me that it allows the same kind of chatting without being public to the whole world--which I am somehow reluctant to be. Ie., for a netowrked classroom. It doesn't, of course, allow all of the use of graphics and Internet sites, but I think I may like to keep those separate--for the reasons i wrote about above. (Acvtually before and below.) Plagiarism from the net is a big problem at my school.
4. what you said, Patrick, about writing about your journey with pictures sounds like a great use of this tool. I guess I have to think aobut how much time I want to spend on grpahics. right now I spend none.
5. I am coming to this, of course, as a teacher of college writing, and I can imagine that the needs for people in elementary and middle school and high school could be more visual. For my needs, I wonder what my classes and I would get from this that wouldn't get from being on an email list (which has no learning curve.)
So . . . those are some of my thoughts. I think you all did a great job, and I'm willilng to keep logging in for awhile to see what develops here. I wish Laury Fischer had been able to come because it would be more fun to play with if there were someone else there to play off of and get help from.
Part of what this workshop showed me is how stressful it is for me to take a whole Saturday off from grading papers and lesson planning. I'm feeling very worried about how I'm going to get all my work done this week end, and I acknowledge that that is influencing my responses. I'd be interested in hearing more about what interactiveu is and your thoughts about applications for this in classrooms.
That's all for now.
Lynn Hammond
Okay, so I'm feeling frustrated because I already wrote something, and it disappreared, and I don't feel like writing it all again. The short version is that I am glad that this is a two-day workshop becasue, as Crhis correctly guessed yesterday, I was getting bleary eyed by the end of the day and couldn't have absorbed more.
also, yesterday I kept having to tell myself not to get discouraged when I couldn't learn things aas quickly as other people. i will try to remember this with more compassion in my classes when some students aren't catchng on to something at the rate my lesson plan counts on.
I'm realizing that one of the things that makes my teaching stressful for me is that I am always feeling rushed; there are always more things I want to do than I have time for. I try to instill that sense of urgency in my students about staarting on time and staryiing focused until the end of the period.
Sometimes, it feels as if they create fuzzy focus on purpose so they won't ahve to learn as much in that period. I don't know how much of that is deliberate and how much is just spacing out, but Marc and Gia especially seem to latch so quickly onto tangents. I suppose I could learn to channel those tangents more creatively, but sometimes i get frustrated that it so hard to keep them moving along toward what i want them to learn by the end of that class. what I also try to convince them of is that if they will let me get to the end of my lesson, their homework will be easier because they will understanad the concept that it is helping them practice. Oh well. Enough.
Yesterday Carol wrote:
I traveled by myself for much of the time and could, of course, blend right in until I opened my mouth to talk. What I found amazing is that in Japan I could behave exactly in ways that were totally natural to me and I not only fit right in but everyone else was following the same rules, so to speak.
I was struck by this because I have been thinking about places where I fit and feel at home and places that i don't. Recently, I was up in Yosemeite, where I lived from 1974-76, and I imediately felt at home. I stayed in the Ranger Club, where I had lived 25 years ago, and people commented on how it felt as if I was right at home again. and I was. Of course, I missed all the people who weren't there any more--only one friend was still there--but I made new friends and watched the sunset on Sentinel and felt very relaxed and happy. It was also to see the way I related to people I hadn't known before. Somehow, there were short cuts; we had things in common or people in common, and we went to some deep places together. the question is, "Why there more than at other places?"
Lynn Hammond
