Professionalism Session 2

Compared to my other blog posts, this one was not as personal. I didn’t really state my own experiences. Instead, I used information directly from the text and found media compositions (pictures and videos) that were straightforward. This blog post was more academic than the other ones I have done. It seems like it would fit in a textbook.

Design Writing Process

The design of this blog post was to mix academic writing with humor. For the most part, I give simple steps to my writing process  in a straight-forward way, then included a video for helpful tips for beginning writers. Then, I went into more detail about why novice writers struggles when they first start writing, and included a funny cartoon that gives an ironic twist on the seemingly hard task of writing in college.

Creativity Appropriation

With this blog, I wanted to be really creative in the details. As far as the text goes, I gave the reader a lot of examples about appropriation, from how I used Nine Inch Nails’ combination of musical styles to explain teachers combining information to teach their students and included an infographic. When it comes to choosing an important topic, I chose a song I wrote about getting bullied in high school, “Tangled Up In You,” or including the video “Knowing” to express the topic of why I want to be a teacher.

 

People’s Choice Student Writers

This blog is definitely my favorite. In retrospect, it’s like a combination of the best elements from all my other blogs. Like “Session 2”, it was highly professional, as it demonstrated my knowledge of the material. Like Design, I went into detail about helping students be better writers. Like “Appropriation,” I used my personal experiences to emphasize my feelings on why positive feedback is important.

People’s Choice Awards PLAYING AROUND WITH MULTIMODAL COMPOSTION

From its effective use of colors to its professional approach to a difficult subject, Emily’s post is a perfect example of how multimodal compositions should be made, and how it allows students to be creative while doing assignments.

From its effective use of colors to its professional approach to a difficult subject, Emily’s post is a perfect example of how multimodal compositions should be made, and how it allows students to be creative while doing assignments.
Tweeting was similar to blogging because it allowed me to use technology to communicate with others in the class about what we learned in discussion and what we wrote our blog posts. Tweeting is different from blogging because my posts were much more condensed and not nearly as detailed. Advice I would give to teachers about tweeting is to consider doing it to interact with students who are either quiet or shy in class to share their ideas.

In Jenkins’ paper, “Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century,” he states how important technology and media are to students and young people of the future. I obviously related to his claims because so many children are falling behind in school because they do not have the resource,s whether at their schools or at home. He stated three gaps that i see far too often. The Participation Gap is when students fall behind not only academically but also in the workplace later in life. Students who do have these resources early on are better prepared for the real world, which causes the gap to widen. The Transparency Problem is when schools disregard the importance of media as resources to help them, as they do not consider them relevant or useful tools. Teachers are close-minded that textbooks are the only logical way for students to learn information, which can harm them as they enter the workforce. The Ethic Challenge is students being educated on the effect the information they post through media can have on others. The more they are taught in this way, the more schools will see the positive impact media can have on education.

Jenkins also explains the ways teachers can use negotiation to help their students be open-minded about the world around them. Society has caused young people to turn away from those that are different from them, based on race, sexual orientation, geographical location, or language. Teachers have to find ways to make their students see that what classifies others as different can be a good thing, as they can learn something from them. I like how Jenkins mentioned Japanese Manga and how Western audiences, like Americans, have embraced it when they initially thought of it as weird. I watched anime in elementary school, such as Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh!, without knowing it was anime, or even from Japan. However, when I was in high school, people would say how weird it was and it was hard to relate to, but now that I am in college, I have accepted its differences and found something new and different to enjoy about it.

Hobbs’ “Fair Use and Digital Learning” describes the safe ways students can use copyrighted materials and how it is violated. She explains how the availability of the documentary “Eyes on the Prize” was limited due to its licenses expiring and the For Foundation estimating it would cost $5 million to renew the license. EMI had unreasonable rates, and Warner Chappell owned the rights to the song, “Happy Birthday,” and earned $2 Million a year. Hobbs also states that for teachers to allow students to use copyrighted material, they need to form communities so that they can convince large companies that using their licensed material will benefit the students.

 

In Jenkins’ chapter on “Appropriation,” he states how important it is for students to combine information in ways that work for them because such a method is used very commonly in popular culture and literature. He explains how fanficiton is work created by many fans of  a source of fiction, whether television, movies books or video games, and how Homer remixed and sampled Greek myths when he wrote The Iliad and The Odyssey. Another example Jenkins uses is a collage because it is composed of several images and pieces of art to create something truly unique and substantial. Since I love music, I started to think about artists who combine different music genres to create their own style. For example, the band Nine Inch Nails fuses hard rock and metal sounds with elements of electronic music, including Industrial, Techno, New Wave, and Synth-pop. As far as teachers are concerned, we always have to consider methods to give our students information. I have included this anatomy of an infographic to show how useful it is for students to have many different sources of information at once. It would not be as useful if it only included a chart or a map instead of several other sources as well.

In Chapter two, “The Right to Choose a Personally Important Topic,” Spandel wrote about the importance of students writing about issues or situations that are important to them. When Spandel was a student, she wrote about her horse and expressed great pride of writing about something that was meaningful to her. What struck me about the chapter was Spandel’s best friend, Deidre, writing about her father. Her clever ruse of imagery to describe her father- comparing her to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde- was interesting but also a little disturbing. I obviously was fascinated by Sam because he wrote poetry and songs, as I did in high school. I would write about anything I was feeling, as Sam did. I wrote one of my favorite songs, “Tangled Up In You,” about being bullied in school because i was so different. Just like Spendel, Deidre and Sam, I felt proud that I was able to express myself. This example of digital media is “Knowing” by Mai Vang. Vang’s story of what her want to be a teacher is one that i can definitely relate to. That is why choosing an important topic; it lets the author’s personal experiences shine.

From experience as an education major and working as an assistant teacher, I have noticed that kids react strongly to the kind of criticism (constructive or otherwise) that they receive. For instance, telling them, “At least you’re trying” would be better than “Why aren’t you getting this? It shouldn’t have to be so hard” because they might think there’s no point in trying. If you encourage them by say how they improve their skills every, they will begin to believe that they can do even better next time. In “The Right to Write Badly,” Vicki Spandel emphasizes the importance of not expecting children to know something right away or that they’re not allowed to make mistakes. They need to be reminded that it’s okay to not get something right the first time. That way, they will feel  even more proud when they finally understand the material. The responsibility of writing coaches, I have learned, is to guide students to where they can be comfortable with their writing. They can help them before going to their teachers as a last resort if they are still struggling. Obviously, a student’s peers are not obligated to help their classmate, but since they often have the same assignment, it can be good to get advice from someone who possibly has the same writing process.

http://www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com/10-tips-for-beginning-writers/

 

 

 

 

My writing process tends to be very organized. I always feel that if I don’t think about how my writing will look right before I publish it, I won’t know what I need to do to make it the best it can be. I start with the information in front of me (book, article, website), look at the criteria to get the best grade, and outline where I need to b with my writing at each step in the process. One time I had a lo book report to do and didn’t know where to start. Instead of creating a plan, I just worked on it as I went along and did not get the best grade. Reading Flowers and Hayes’ article made me think about all the techniques I used like pre-writing and revising, but unlike what the article stated, I do usually write in order of the process just because I am more used to it than writing in a free-spirited way.

There are many characteristics of novice writers that I used to possess in high school because I simply did not want to write long essays and research papers. However, since I have had to do even longer writing in college, I have learned how to take a more professional approach. Novice writers lose basic skills, like noticing simple grammar errors, using correct punctuation or syntax. Fortunately, I was always able  to point out these errors, so by the time I was in college, it was never a problem. Novice writers fail to elaborate points that make their writing seem professional and instead come out incomplete and lazy. This, however, was very hard for me in hard school because I did not know what I needed to add or how to incorporate it into my writing. In college, I learned that references can make your writing more believable if you have evidence that you understood what you were reading. Most high school students, who are usually novice writers, feel tyrannized by their assignments. They follow the instructions almost exactly, only wording it differently so it sounds like their own writing. I often would do this because I did not know how to answer the prompt in the way the teacher wanted. In my college English classers, I learned about why the teacher would assign the prompt, especially since I want to be a teacher myself. Thinking about what the teacher wanted me to learn from the assignment gave a different perspective of what I needed to do to in order to be a better writer.There are many characteristics of novice writers that I used to possess in high school because I simply did not want to write long essays and research papers. However, since I have had to do even longer writing in college, I have learned how to take a more professional approach. Novice writers lose basic skills, like noticing simple grammar errors, using correct punctuation or syntax. Fortunately, I was always able  to point out these errors, so by the time I was in college, it was never a problem. Novice writers fail to elaborate points that make their writing seem professional and instead come out incomplete and lazy. This, however, was very hard for me in hard school because I did not know what I needed to add or how to incorporate it into my writing. In college, I learned that references can make your writing more believable if you have evidence that you understood what you were reading. Most high school students, who are usually novice writers, feel tyrannized by their assignments. They follow the instructions almost exactly, only wording it differently so it sounds like their own writing. I often would do this because I did not know how to answer the prompt int he way the teacher wanted. In my college English classers, I learned about why the teacher would assign the prompt, especially since I want to be a teacher myself. Thinking about what the teacher wanted me to learn from the assignment gave a different perspective of what I needed to do to in order to be a better writer.There are many characteristics of novice writers that I used to possess in high school because I simply did not want to write long essays and research papers. However, since I have had to do even longer writing in college, I have learned how to take a more professional approach. Novice writers lose basic skills, like noticing simple grammar errors, using correct punctuation or syntax. Fortunately, I was always able to point out these errors, so by the time I was in college, it was never a problem. Novice writers fail to elaborate points that make their writing seem professional and instead come out incomplete and lazy. This, however, was very hard for me in hard school because I did not know what I needed to add or how to incorporate it into my writing. In college, I learned that references can make your writing more believable if you have evidence that you understood what you were reading. Most high school students, who are usually novice writers, feel tyrannized by their assignments. They follow the instructions almost exactly, only wording it differently so it sounds like their own writing. I often would do this because I did not know how to answer the prompt int he way the teacher wanted. In my college English classers, I learned about why the teacher would assign the prompt, especially since I want to be a teacher myself. Thinking about what the teacher wanted me to learn from the assignment gave a different perspective of what I needed to do to in order to be a better writer.

Hi! My name is Jordan Taper. I’m a Junior (third year student) at UW-Milwaukee as an Education major. I want to teach Middle School English. Since High School, I have loved writing. During that time, as well as my first two years in college, I wrote songs in a lot of different music genres: Pop, Rock, and Country. I consider myself obsessed with music, and when I become a teacher, I want to incorporate it as much as I can into my lessons. Also in my second year of college, I took a Creative Writing class and wrote my own short story. Last year, I took a Teaching class and had field experience at Maryland Avenue Montessori School. It was a fantastic school with a friendly community and strong relationship between teachers and students, as well as a focus on independent work. I would recommend anyone to go and visit there. I look forward to working with all of you and I know this will give me practice on how to be a great teacher. Thanks!

http://www5.milwaukee.k12.wi.us/school/maryland/

 

 

Like many young people, I frequently go to social media websites like twitter and Facebook to connect and communicate with my friends. Just as this is a different way to communicate with people than in the past, the different forms of digital media can help teachers educate students in new cutting edge ways. Unfortunately, not all children have access to such technology and miss out on new teaching methods.

The article “Cultivating Digital and Popular Literacies as Empowering and Emancipatory Acts among Urban Youth” reflects on how students’ identities impact writing instruction and how the Internet and digital media  promote English Language Arts (ELA) learning and culturally relevant pedagogy.  For example, the majority of children living in impoverished areas are of the African-American and Latino communities and have less resources than Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz and Marcelle Haddix discuss the importance of emancipatory pedagogies. The key method of such a practice is the use of digital tools and popular culture, and social applies to both, to make up for the lack of advanced technology. While they do criticize the lack of economic and social equality regarding urban schools compared to urban schools, I appreciate how they plan to empower their students by teaching them with the few resources they have and showing them how to make the best of a bad situation. The following link shows how technology and digital media can benefit students in the classroom.

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