Edmodo Lesson Plan...sort of

This lesson plan is coming a bit late, but here is the way that I think Edmodo could be useful in the classroom. I think it would be a bit of a stretch to call this a lesson plan, but it could certainly be used throughout the year to sort of mitigate difficult themes and help the students stay organized.

I just used Edmodo as a way to make material that was WAY too difficult for my kids a bit more palatable, but I would use this similarly as a way to provide supplemental learning opportunities for my kids based on themes we discuss in class. This does two things in that it provides information for me by providing me with test scores, and also I would be able to see which themes students are struggling with. Second, it would provide either review for kids who understand the material well, or clarification for students who don’t.

To provide incentive, teachers can make this into a competition while also helping students learn about complicated themes in a book. Here is what I did:

First, I had all of my students download Edmodo on their phones, and had them make an account. This is also a good ice-breaker, because you can have your kids make their profile pictures, show them how to use their backpack, etc.

****make them write down their names and passwords on flashcards and submit them to you! The first time I did this, most students forgot by the next class.

Next, I created lessons based around themes in each chapter of the book “Outliers” by Malcom Gladwell. After teaching the theme in class, I would provide my students with study guides as to where they could find important information in the book in a doc. And post it in the library. I also had them relate the theme we discussed to the chapter of the book. (Note that this particular class was EFL, so one objective of this style of teaching is to teach your students how to skim and annotate. This would probably need to be re-structured if you were planning to teach this class with the intent of critical analysis).

Then, I would post quizzes with deadlines for the students. Each question was worth one point, and the points for all of the quizzes would be accumulated and posted on a board in the room. This way, the kids could see how they were doing in comparison to the other kids around them. I also used this as a means to offer extra points and extra credit in the class. 2 weeks before midterms and finals, I would post review quizzes, which would review the content and themes in the book. But I also posted question type study guides, practice IBT reading passages, videos that could be summarized, etc. This way, even if a student felt that they didn’t want to engage in the competition, they could still find supplementary material that would benefit them. All in all, this is a pretty effective tool for promoting supplementary learning material and review.

One thing I would have incorporated is the use of the calendar. This would be a good opportunity to get in touch with all of the teachers at the school that teach a particular grade, ask them for their syllabi, and upload all the due dates. This way you are less likely to overcrowd them and you could even collaborate with the other teachers. 

Final Technology - Rich Likes Crack

I am beginning to think that this project might be an awesome idea for students…if you spend an entire semester on it.

In an attempt to illustrate this story quickly and professionally, I had hoped to forego my usual style for the sake of saving time. The above image is the type of work with which I am most commonly associated: figurative work, relatively 3 dimensional renderings, done in ball point pen. The reason I did not want to do this particular project in this style is because it takes me forever to create the images; it is a very time consuming and laborious process. Thus, I have explored with varying levels of success the following programs. Hopefully they can be of some sort of use to others in their educational ventures:

1 – Bitstrips – This vile program littered my Facebook wall for months with pointless cartoon memes of people I knew. But it seemed to have all of the qualities I needed in that you can easily generate highly customized characters and, to an extent, manipulate them and their surroundings. Unfortunately, it is still not customizable enough to where you can do a complete narrative. The situations are all very bizarre and specific; I saw my illustrated self attempting to rob a bank in a “Mission Impossible” fashion. Once placed in these situations, you can really only make subtle adjustments such as the movement of your hands and the direction of your eyes. Overall, Bitstrips is as not-awesome as I always knew it was.

2 – Strip Generator – While this program is pretty intuitive, it is also fairly limited. You can create extremely basic black and white characters, or you can choose from a catalog of pre-made characters. For backgrounds, your characters are just sort of left floating in a white void. Your only means of incorporating spatial elements is by choosing from a limited selection. Depth can be created only by forced perspective, shrinking and enlarging the objects. However, this website could be really useful for storyboards. You can save it as a PDF and print it, and you can incorporate a number of customizable frames. You are, however, limited to one page.

3 – ToonDoo – This program is actually pretty amazing, and is one I would actually consider purchasing for my students’ use. You can create your own Characters and customize them even more than you can in Bitstrip. Also, you can make as many characters as you want, and you have a wide range of things that you can either choose from a catalog, or just create something if it isn’t available. You can save your projects, download them, edit them later. All in all, this one gets a 10 out of 10 from me. The only thing I don’t like is that you can’t have the characters turn their heads to interact with each other. In other words, all of the characters have to be staring face forward, which makes creating a narrative a bit difficult. Below I have included an image of a potential layout for my book.

Technology #4 - Book Making Technology

As an art major, I have had lots of experience making paper and practicing print making techniques. In fact, one time I even tried to make paper out of meat simply because a print maker said that you need fibers from plant matter in order to make paper.

I learned that he is correct…for now.

In an effort to try and actually incorporate some of these multimodal literacies into my own curriculum, I have decided to see if I can incorporate some traditional book-making techniques with new modes of book making.

Bookemon:

This website started with lots of promise, and ultimately ended up breaking my heart. It does have some cool features, like you can convert PDF and DOC files into books with relative ease. The price is fairly reasonable, depending on what you want, and the templates are fairly customizable. The downside is that you can only purchase bound books, which means that it could be cool if you already have all of your book finished, images scanned, and completely formatted. However, my efforts are focused on trying to find a program that will do all of this for me, as I would like to print them and bind them myself. So, while this program would be cool for having your kids make a high-quality end product, it does little in the realm of teaching them about how to make a book.

Sigh…back to the drawing board.

Native American Stereotypes

I haven’t always been so sensitive to racism. As a white, heterosexual, Christian-raised male, I wasn’t really exposed to it very often. It wasn’t until I lived abroad that I experienced first-hand what it is like to be discriminated against.

The first time it happened, it actually was like a novelty to me. I was with a real estate agent in Korea. I had lived there for a year, so I knew enough of the language to get the gist of what the landlord was yelling to her. She tried to put it to me nicely:

“He says that he cannot show you the property because…well…it’s for Korean people.”

“A Bigot! A real life bigot”, I thought to myself.

After four years, though, the novelty wore off in a big way. I could now understand a good deal of what was being said about me when I was in public. Holding my girlfriend’s hand on the subway was enough to generate whispers and stares. I would say something simple in Korean, maybe I would ask about a price in a store, or tell a cab driver where to turn. Some would respond with a smile, happy that I had made the effort. Most would giggle and say how cute it was.

“Cute” is not what I was going for.

A few weeks before I left, things got pretty bad. I heard a group of twenty-somethings behind me having a conversation. One stopped and said to his friend, “OH! Look, foreigner!”

I stopped dead in my tracks, turned around, and screamed “OH! Look, it’s a Korean person; A real Korean person! Woooooooooooah!!!!” It was completely ridiculous, but indicative of just how far I had been pushed. After I screamed out this phrase in presumably the worst and most aggressive broken Korean possible, I read the man’s eyes. He was drunk and simply curious. I was in a part of the city where it was not commonly inhabited by foreigners. He apologized and walked off.

I never realized how much my experiences abroad had influenced by opinion of racism until I heard the word “nigger” used in front of me recently. It used to bother me. Now, it enrages me. And my experience has made me realize that I can never really sympathize with any hyphenated minority American for one simple reason: No matter how bothered I was by being stereotyped, there was always a country on the other side of the pond that would accept me with open arms. My home would never treat me that way. For black people and for Native Americans, their home was their source of bigotry.

I expected this lecture to be something that I would only half sympathize with, and I have to say that the speaker, Dr. L. Marie Anselmi, did not hit too many of the typical land dispute oriented topics I had anticipated. I was happy about that. She instead discussed the different types of Native American stereotypes, and the way that they functioned.

The two most incredible things that she brought up were: 1- Native Americans carry a card that identifies their Native blood ratio. They are the only minority group asked to do this. That’s bonkers. 2 – There are certain Native American tribes that are not recognized as Native American tribes. This is also bonkers.