Jlcross19's Blog

According to Richardson memes are basically defined as “contagious patterns of cultural information that are passed from mind to mind.”  In the article it says the sociological definitions of memes pay attention to the effects on social organizations on meme success;  social structures like family, religions, schools, and their defining values, mindsets, and ways of doing. One important part in the text I thought was very interesting is said by Susan Blackmore that memes will continue to be successful because they are memorable,not necessarily important or useful. I found this website presented by Cheezburger called Up Next in Sports that displays pictures of professional athletes in their most awkward moments or during very achieveable moments with captions added by people to make jokes. This is considered a meme because the site involves professional sports and athletes that are popular and people will continue to comment about their performance or life in general.

Memes are like mutationin a sense. Memes are a theoretical unit of cultural information. They are the building blocks of cultural diffusion. Memes become popular over night and can spread within minutes. The most popular tool for memes is the interent. Some ideas propagate less successfully and become extinct, while others will survive, spread, and, for better or for worse, mutate.

Socail bookmarking is a great tool. You no longer need to page through thousands of results to find one simple piece of information. When you are trying to search for something, for example cooking, you type ‘cooking’ in a search engine (e.g Google) you get all kinds of results, most that you could care less about, and all you want are the ones that are going to help you. That’s where bookmarking comes in-now you have access to save links, annotate them with key words to organize them, and then share. When you book mark a site you can tag it with key words such as “recipes,” top 10 cooks,” desserts,” main coarses,” mexican food,” and so on, then that links you to other websites that are relevent to what your looking for. This tool brings a whole new meaning to organization.

Twof of the top bookmarking sites used are del.icio.us and Diigo. These sources are a place that you can control what you want and where it goes and who sees it. This is like you own search engine. There is even  a bookmark for all of the social bookmarking sites so it would be quicker to choose one!! technologies such as this one is being brought into the classroom every day. It just seems like the smart thing to do when you have information located everywhere.

Little Borther by Cory Doctorow’s was interesting but not my favorite book. I could not get into the high school gaming hobby but till this day I’ve always had a lot of respect for techno geeks, and after reading this book, I have even more. It takes one smart and patient person to break a system.This book just seemed too fictional/fantasy-like. I thought it would be a good book to pick a passage from to read to a class for connections to technology in the classroom or technology in general.

I do think this book is meant to pose the question about what an information society means: does it mean total control, or unheard-of liberty? The story definitely takes place in the future. One of the things the story shows is that exchanging privacy for security doesn’t even necessarily guarantee security.  The book is very information in the story telling.I learned about cryptography, spam filters, and  what a Paranoid Linux operating system  but then again I did get lost in some of the language and terms.

What do you see?

I see a beautiful red barn surrounded by tress and hills, it most likely  belongs to a farmer, and it looks like it might havebeen taken in the summer or spring time. This photo is so detailed that you feel like you actually there. When you look at an image you can analyze anything: content, framing, focus, lightning, and texture just to name a few. Analiyzing images would be a good exercise for students to become more critical thinkers and be more observant. To understand a photo you need to learn the visual elements the author is using. Basic Strategies in Reading Photographs is a website that goes in grat detail on how to read an image.

I think that using surveys can be useful in the classroom because it is a good way to learn about your students. If a student it not comfortable talking in front of a bunch of people then it would be better to have them fill out something like a survey rather than forcing them to do something out of their comfort zone. The survey offers the choice of a description box for more than a short answer. This allows to the students to write anything they want. It is also a good icebreaker when introducing a new topic. This will draw their attention because it will probably be the first time they have done a survey in class involving curriculum. It is a new tool and adolescents are most likely eager to play around with new technology. It can develop an interest in the material and have students give their opinion as well, because it might be a subject that they are not comfortable with or have never heard of but are afraid to tell you in front of the whole class. Monkey Survey is a great free online resource. I have used it in other classes and it was easy to put in my information and access different way to see the results.

GPS standards . The GPS standards basically tell a teacher what their students are expected to know and expected to master after a lesson or unit. They provide clear expectations for instruction and assessment. There are standards for every subject and grade. GPS even provide suggested tasks and sample student work. If you need to now what goal to reach within your content just click here.

Galileo. Galileo is like a virtual library. It allows you access to databases, journals, and library catalogs to help you find reliable articles and information on any topic. It provides you to search through a variety of professional databases. So, if you need a reliable resource your just a click away!

Read Write Think. RWT is a site for educators, parents, and any other education specialist. It provides high quality practices in reading and language arts instruction.  All of the content is reviewed and approved by literacy experts, plus all the material is free.

Bridge. The BRIDGE is a way for educators in Georgia to share ideas and materials. Educators can not only connect to each other through those shared resources. You can create a library to store ideas that you find. Online chat is also available for teachers to connect.

This project was very new to me. I had to mess around with it a lot to get the hang of things. The process of making the video was long and some difficult at first. The part that I had the most problems with was the slides transitioning to a new topic and it not being too fast. I finally figured out that when I added an effect that it cut time from the original slide, therefore I had to make the slide even longer for the effect to take place the way I wanted it.  In the end I was pretty proud of my first movie.

I would incorporate this video in my classroom by showing it towards the end of reading Looking For Alaska. This way the students are able to identify the different kinds of conflict involving the characters and/or the plot as a whole.  This would be a fun way to introduce literary terms. The song that I used through the video is catchy and creates a theme for the content. The examples and information used is very simple and easy to understand for one literary term. The information leads into other content such as other literary terms,  plot, character analysis, reflection, and relation to outside sources. Also, the video is available for the students to access any time and at any computer.

I became a bigger fan of youtube and movie maker after this project. I didn’t realize how easy it was to download a video to youtube. I thought it was going to be this long drawn-out process but it really wasn’t. I learned a lot about format and details in movie maker. I felt like I accomplished a great deal by editing and re-editing. I was able to see in different places where I could have made better or missed the first time.  I would definitely continue to use this program for other class projects and for my future classroom.

Who’s Who in Shakespeare and Society

Gender Roles in society and Shakepeare

This is a study of Shakespeare’s play Twelfth Night. You will be introduced to the play by watching a short clip from the movie She’s The Man. As you will see William Shakespeare is quite the comedian, in this play the main character Viola has disguised herself as her own brother hoping to prove a point about how men are clueless when it comes to understanding women. She’s the Man is a modern day version of Twelfth Night. In the real world people pretend to be other people every day…why? During this unit you will make connections to from the text to our culture today; you will find that gender roles play a major role in our society in a variety of ways. As we study this play we will be looking at the gender roles and whether pretending to be someone your not has a positive or negative affect.

For this assignment you will be pretending to be someone different, it can be whomever you want it to be (e.g. celebrity, cartoon character, older siblings, sports star, movie character, etc.). You will be working individually. For your alter-ago you will create a glog that represents that person. Similar to projects you have created before using glogs this type of glog is more like a visual biography or a colorful, digital profile. You will be using multiple sources to do research on your person to be able to make a complete glog. You be graded on participation and by a rubric that I will provide. Your glog must be classroom appropriate and complete with the following criteria:

Your blog will include:

• images/pictures of your person
• Description of who and what your person does
• Description of why you choose that person
• Text describing what the positive (or negative) advantages are of being this person
• Somewhere on your glog should state your connections to the play Twelfth Night: why did Viola decide disguising as a male would be better for her? Did pretending to be a male give her authority over others?

Sources

-Glogster http://www.glogster.com/

- This does not mean you do not have to read the play! This is for you benefit of better understanding the text and the characters.

http://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/twelfthnight/characters.html

-Gender Roles http://www.faqs.org/health/topics/8/Gender-roles.html

You will have 2 weeks to complete this assignment. After you glog if complete, you will send me the link of your glog to my e-mail. You MUST put your name and the person your chose in the subject box.

Behind-the-scenes thinking/rationale

The Hunger Games was a great book in opinion. I really enjoyed reading the suspense and futuristic technology ideals.  One of the main reasons I like this book is because of the strong independence the author gives the character Katniss. She took it upon herself after her father died to go beyond the  District’s rules to help her family survive. I thought the whole time that she was going to fall in love with Gale until midway in the Games when the Capitol changed the rules. I think it was a good idea to add that part in the book to evolve a love story between Katniss and Peeta. I thought the author did a really good job keeping the reader interested and wanting to read more.

When I think of the technology used by the Capitol I think of the technology in the movie Avatar: the big screens, elevators, and medicines. I thought the medicince Haymitch sent katniss for her tracker jacker stings was really neat. the capitol’s lab apparently has many medicines and things that heal people inthe matter of minutes. I think that is an impression on our society and technology today; we are inventing new treatments hat work within hours. I really liked the idea of the glasses that let you see in the dark, like nighttime vision. I see those kind of gagets in movies all the time but I have never read about them in the book.

The information on social networking is very broad. The uses are unlimited and now is starting to be brought inside the classroom for curriculum purposes.  A positive example of the use of social networking in the classroom is the idea of students willing to work collaboratively. Technology gives a certain motivation to students because it is a way for them to go beyond the classroom walls. This gives students the iniative to take charge and lead the discussion. I like how it also allows them to not be afraid to explore outside the box and it teaches them to form their own opinions and give their classmmates input. The  English Companion Ning website offers teachers stratgies and ideas to use for their own classroom. Educators use this site as a form of blogging share resources, solutions, questions, and concerns about teaching English using the variety of technological tools available. It also gives teachers the right-a-way to collaborate on ways to intergrate technology in the classroom.

I think the biggest concern about bringing social networking into the classroom is the fear of students no being able to access it outside of school. On the U.S. Today website an English teacher says this is the very reason why teachers should be focusing on bringing those technologies into school (Burke, Jim). A student shouldn’t miss out on learning how to use these technologies just because they don’t have  the resources to make an acount on these services.