I couldn't help but post again. I was thinking, after my last post, about teaching. And I got excited. I hate to say it but a big part of me wishes I could find ways to engage kids with writing that has nothing to do with technology. This is the absolute opposite of my favorite teacher and mentor, but I can't help it. I'm one of the Millennials that grew up with technology inundating my life, but I don't know how to use 90% of it. I finally just figured out Twitter, for god's sake. The only reason why I'm on Twitter now is because I rediscovered my favorite college professor (who now works as a journalist in Bemidji) tweets regularly. Plus, I realized that I can avoid the stupidity of the world (mostly) by following 'people' like CopyBlogger and the New York Times and Simon Pegg.
This probably isn't the way to go (and is similar thinking of way too many bad teachers), that I shouldn't use the tech just because I don't understand it. After all, without technology, I wouldn't have found the Lizzy Bennet Diaries on Youtube, which I'm determined to use if I ever have to teach Pride and Prejudice to my students. Mostly, because it's the funniest and most entertaining thing I've ever seen come from youtube.com.
I just want to be in, and create, an atmosphere where people want to write fearlessly. If that means I'm going to have to figure out...well, anything on Reynolds' blog, then I guess I'm going to have to get with the program. Wish more of my professors felt the same way.
This is interesting. Now that I've pretty much exclusively graded my students' papers this year via Google Drive, I actually kind of miss students turning in hard copies and scrawling all over them.
ReplyDeleteI'm actually thinking about making all drafts for our first two or three papers all hand written (except for final drafts, of course).
But I will admit that it is something to behold when I share an entire document on Google Drive and students access it and start adding to it and making it into something interesting.