voice thread test

Online Tutorials

I've put up two tutorials that have been popular in workshops and classes--Using Audacity and Using Photo Story.

Updates and New Material - New Material and Projects in Educational Technology - NJCU :: Faculty :: Chris Shamburg

Copyright Wiki

An experiment I started a few semesters ago with my Intro to Ed Tech course has really blossomed.  I began to do more with Fair Use in education and asked students to create and edit cases on a Copyright in Education Wiki 

Each student has to write a case in which they feel that a teacher stays within or violated fair use and then they have to comment on it.   They also have to edit/revise two other cases and commentaries.  My only growing reservation regards the focus of the whole project.  I am beginning to believe that I should focus our time on what and how they can use media, i.e. focus on creative commons materials in teaching. 

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NCTE in Nashville

Here are my handouts for iBard--using audio and performance to work with soliloquies. I'll be presenting with several others in a demonstration called There's Magic in the Web.

Here's the beginning of my activity's description.

When many students turn the page of a Shakespeare play and come to a soliloquy, they hit the invisible wall of reading—a frustratingly full page of uninterrupted text in dense and unfamiliar language, usually during an already challenging reading process. Understanding the soliloquies can be a turnkey experience for students in the comprehension of plot, character, and Shakespeare’s language.

This activity uses audio technology to build on performance-based approaches to teach the soliloquies. Students begin by slowing down the language and exploring its meaning and nuance through selected dramatic and choral reading techniques. Many movies and some live performances enhance the dramatic effects of a soliloquy or speech with a voiceover or a disembodied voice. These spoken interpretations are further enhanced with music, sound effects, and audio techniques such as reverberation and echo. Film productions of Branaugh’s Hamlet and Polanski’s Macbeth offer examples of this technique...

Fanfiction

The chapter in the book that I've become the most excited about is the one on fanfiction.  I posted a overview of the idea to fanfictrants and got some great advice and overwhelming support from the fanfiction community, including teachers and students.

I also posted a draft of the beginning of the chapter to my livejournal account--LiveJournal is great for working in communities, especially the fanfic community.

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The Mary Sue Project

I've been doing some work with the Internet, teaching writing and fanfiction. I came across this fantastic article on using a technique of fanfiction in the language arts class.


The Mary Sue Project: "The students quickly discover that fitting a new character into the story means dismantling the original prose to see how it works."

The introductory techniques and the thoughtfulness of the teacher, Lelac Almagor, make this a model of innovation.

PreK Education, Technology, and Habits of Class

I found this article very interesting (as my wife and I begin payments for our kids' preschool for next year).

"The study reports that preschool programs will result in net gains of $2 to $4 for each dollar invested. The effect of positive pre-kindergarten education on students increases their chances of becoming economic and social contributors to society, the report states."


Pre-k education linked to economic benefits - Memphis Business Journal:

It reminded me of to other related readings. I just finished James Paul Gee's Situated Language and Learning: A Critique of Traditional Schooling

The section "Shape Shifting Portfolio People: The New Capitalism" discusses the habits of education and of living digitally that Gee predicts will divide the have's (have more's) and have not's.


This week I plan to begin Annette Lareau's Unequal Childhoods-- Inspired by a David Brooks Op-Ed and this description from Amazon

She also shows kids of all classes just goofing around. Parenting methods, Lareau argues, vary by class more than by race. In working class and poor households, she says, parents don't bother to reason with whiny offspring and children are expected to find their own recreation rather than relying upon their families to chauffeur them around to lessons and activities. According to Lareau, working class and poor children accept financial limits, seldom talk back, experience far less sibling rivalry and are noticeably free of a sense of entitlement. Middle class children, on the other hand, become adept at ensuring that their selfish needs are met by others and are conversant in social mores such as shaking hands, looking people in the eye and cooperating with others.