The Arts of Teaching

     With this being my second semester in the Education field, you can bet that I have heard tons about common core, and standards, and how frustrating they can be to make sure you seem what you need to over the school year as an educator. And I am here to say that no, standards, you don't scare me!      This semester has been largely focused on digital media and literacy in classrooms, in all of my courses. And at the beginning I thought that it would be so easy to just add some fun online stuff to my lessons and call it a day. However, I now know that is no longer a reasonable option, this requires much more than that.      On a blog for education, Edutopia, Monica Burns highlights some of the things that we need to keep in mind when using digital technology and combining that with the Common Core Standards.  You can read the full article here.  Some of the things that she discusses are about embracing the idea of multimedia ...

     Let me start this week by saying that I absolutely loved the ideas that were offered in the "Digital Literacy Can't Wait" because it was so insightful! I want to take every one of the ideas and use them in my classroom, all the time.            I know that personally my high school was just like the first fictional school mentioned in the article, Access Academy. We had tons of technology available to us, and yet it seemed as though we never had opportunities to use it. My classrooms had Smart Boards, laptop carts, projectors, and probably plenty of other things I can't think of right now. Why wasn't the technology given to us on a daily basis? Usually the teacher was in complete control of how we used it, if we ever did.      I never learned about digital sources for research papers, or other ways to make presentations other than Microsoft office. Now, here at RIC, and in some of the articles we  have read, I...

      Let me start this post out by saying that I absolutely love listening to TEDTALKS, because when they are finished I find myself utterly inspired to go out and make a difference in some lives.       That being said, I found this weeks reading and video to be extremely important. These are absolutely things that I want to incorporate into my everyday routine with my students when I am a teacher. And no, I'm not just saying that at all.       Growing up in HS I can count maybe one or two books that had any culturally diverse characters. African American literature? Never experienced it. Not until the college level anyways, which is pretty sad when I think about it. All the beautiful writing that I was denied, just because of the need to teach the "dead white guys" who were prevalent to the times.       I absolutely love the idea of comparing literature, especially poetry, to hip-hop and rap. Growing...