wonderstruck

"to live is so startling it leaves little room for anything else." -Emily Dickinson www.brightshadowphotography.com

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So thankful for this time to relax and enjoy time with the people i love the most. God is so good to us. #weesesinlbk #breathe #oceanview #longboatkey #florida

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Funds of Knowledge Revisted + Reflection

  My literate self was also challenged and enriched in this class. From graphic novels, to non-fiction, I experienced many different types of YA literature that I had not encountered before. The hauntingly beautiful Maggot Moon was such a contrast to the fun adventure that was Navigating Early. I found myself devouring each book and recommending them to anyone who would listen.

  My virtual self was probably the most challenged in this class and I’m pleasantly surprised by what I was able to accomplish. I created my first video and used many new tools in class and in my own creations. I looked forward to connecting the books I was reading to something visual that I could create. I love reading and the expressive aspect of this class allowed me take a piece of whatever I was reading and make it my own. My visual reflections are truly a part of me and they made the book even more personal to me. I feel confident in encouraging my students to push themselves in this same way. This class also enabled me personally interact with several different types of media and digital collaboration tools that I will be able to use confidently in my own classroom as well as recommend to my students.  This was one of my biggest goals for the course and though I am still learning, I know that I have made progress.

This week I read the book Wheels of Change by Sue Macy for our non-fiction CCI. While the subject matter was intriguing to me (gender equality), the content ended up being rather shallow. It seemed like it could have said so much more about female empowerment, but focused more on the invention of the bicycle and factual information about the bicycle itself. However, in creating the Scaffolded Reading Experience (SRE), I felt like I was able to choose an appropriate scaffolding question related to our overarching inquiry question this week.

I thought the theme of belonging was perfect for YA literature and an the young adult demographic in general. It allows teachers to choose books that are relevant to students and also connected to social justice issues as well. I loved incorporating the social justice theme into the SRE and initially had many different activities I wanted to include in the SRE. However, I think my struggle was to keep focused on the themes my book specifically addressed rather than the theme of belonging as a whole. The process of completing my SRE was daunting to me because of the short amount of time to do so. I created an SRE last semester, but had much much more time and peer feedback before turning it in. Since I'd created an SRE before I felt much more comfortable about what the product should look like, but I still struggled to narrow down which activities would be best suited for my specific SRE or which would fit better with the over all CCI unit. I ended up choosing Weebly to compile the SRE because I think it's a simple, easily accessible place for students to get all the information they need even when they aren't in class. I think the Intra-Act section is probably the weakest part of the SRE simply because I wasn't confident in the value statements I included on the score card. I'd like to spend a little more time revising this activity and maybe revisiting the activity again once the students have completed the book and considered some of the issues posed.

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Critical Reflection + Sequential Art Response

I would recommend this book to others because the story was gripping and I felt connected to the characters even though it was a fairly short book. I’ve harbored feelings of apprehension and uncertainty in seeing graphic novels as legitimate literature, but I do think that this book is proof that graphic novels can have a high literary quality. I would encourage my students to read graphic novels, but I would be careful in my recommendations as each book may have differing levels of mature content.

This week’s discussion on technology and literature was eye-opening and caused me to only have more questions. I felt like I learned a lot from my classmates, especially regarding device inequality and the BYOD situation. My professional self was probably the most enlightened and challenged since the technology discussion has many practical implications and the implementation of new literacies is something that simply cannot be ignored. After our CCI, I definitely find myself feeling more positively towards incorporating new literacies, including graphic novels, into my future classes.  I also appreciated the experience of leading an inquiry like this and can see many benefits of conducting further collaborative inquiries.

  My virtual self was also stretched and challenged, and I learned many new apps and online resources that could be used in the classroom. I also was able to incorporate some of these online resources into the discussion, such as titan pad and padlet. I want to be more comfortable in using these aids in a classroom setting and I want to have an arsenal of options for helping structure discussion. I thought the virtual Chalk Talk was a successful activity and it seemed to help us get ideas flowing, especially if we were not as comfortable voicing them out loud in the discussion. As I read each person typing in real time I kept revising my own comments and thoughts in my mind. Each person brought up a new idea or something profound that shaped what I wanted to say and how I wanted to say it. I would absolutely do this activity again, both with a physical chalkboard or in a virtual setting like titan pad or padlet.

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Critical Reflection: Week 3

Critical Reflection:

  This week I was intrigued by our conversation concerning inclusive classrooms and all that encompasses. I thought Jill asked a lot of great questions which enabled us to discuss many different aspects of inclusive classrooms, such as banned books and mutli-culturalism. My favorite resource she shared was the interview with the various writers of different ethnicities and their definition of what multi-culturalism is and why it’s important, especially in relation to literature.

  Practically speaking (professional self!), I appreciated the conversation about how to engage in difficult or controversial texts appropriately. I wish we could have talked about this even more, but I felt like the conversation was definitely productive. I thought the do’s/don’ts’ list that Jill had us fill out together was also quite helpful and practical. I liked seeing others’ comments and considerations, especially since some of them were things I had never thought about (i.e. don’t assume one person is a representative of their entire race/people group). I know that I will probably say and do things that are not the most helpful  in my pursuit of an inclusive classroom, but I feel much more equipped to tackle these issues and much more confident in using literature that encourages a diverse perspective.

  Personally, I want to be more intentional about reading authors of different perspectives and ethnicities so that my own experience is widened and so I can recommend more than just one style of writing or one dominant perspective. I want to interact with as many different types of stories and authors as I can, within the YA genre and in general. I think it’s important for my students to connect with literature, and that most likely will not happen if they never read books with characters like them, living in worlds like theirs, wrestling with the issues that they are. I really appreciated hearing Oliver’s poem and listening to Laia talk about what books resonate with her and why. It impressed upon me the need to engage students where they are and it encouraged me that there are students who are passionate about literature and writing.

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My Navigating Early photo adventures… Couldn't quite decide what I liked best :)

This week I had the pleasure of reading, or rather hearing, Navigating Early by Claire Vanderpool. My husband and I were en route to Jacksonville, Florida since I was shooting a dear friend’s wedding there and this novel turned out to be quite a life-saver and time-passer. I was able to download the audio book for free from the Overdrive library app, which is something I plan to make lots of use of in the future J Navigating Early turned out to be the perfect choice for our travels with its easy narrative and quest themes. I love the way Vanderpool weaves the story of Pi into the story of Early and Jackie. Just brilliant. In the audio version, the narrator for the Pi story had a much deeper, older voice and it really contributed to the tone of the story and my response to it. It gave the story a mythic, ancient feel, which was apropos. 

Though I finished reading this book a week before the response was due, I had a hard time deciding how to express my feelings and thoughts about the book. I finally settled on the mind of Early as my inspiration. I love the way Early saw numbers as a story and how he felt so confident in his quest. Jackie often belittled him in his mind or treated him like a small child because his ideas seemed so outlandish or off color. However, Early turned about to be shockingly right about most everything and despite his childlike confidence and optimism, he was actually quite shrewd and overall knowledgeable, about nature and people. I wanted to capture that “out of the box,” non-traditional, yet beautiful mind of his and the way his mind was different but still wonderful. So, I ran around my house grabbing colorful objects and any quirky thing that either reminded me of Early or of something in my own life journey. In the photography you see the empty box with all of the things outside of it. These things are made up of postcards, markers, colors, words, numbers (only 3’s, 4’s, and 1’s of course), letters, and other abstract things. I also included the card with the word “peace” on it because I felt like at the end of the novel all of the characters have found some measure or peace.

While brainstorming, I ended up shooting multiple different styles of this set up, one with Early’s name in the center, which I also really liked. But in the end, I decided that I wanted to include text and the image in my response, so the box turned out to be the best option, symbolically and aesthetically. In light of this upcoming week’s focus on technology and literacy, I decided to use my phone to create this image. I used my iphone camera and two editing apps: Afterlight and Typesetter. I am absolutely blown away by both of these apps and I love the simplicity of both. They are so user friendly and encourage me to truly play with images and text. I think they would be perfect for a BYOD classroom where students could created their own responses to the novel they are reading.

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Maggot Moon Reflection

Creating this bookcast was certainly a challenge for me; however, for my first video-making experience, I thought it was quite enjoyable and the process of thinking through what I wanted to communicate and what images would reflect that was really fun. The images and video clips that I chose for the bookcast are an attempt at embodying my favorite part of Maggot Moon: the idea that the underdog can win. I loved the vague reference to David and Goliath and the one stone that killed the giant. Standish clung to this story as he attempted to gather his courage to take on the army of the Motherland. The idea that one underestimated boy could go up against an entire corrupt government really stuck with me and left me with hope, despite the heaviness of the novel.  I wanted to capture this idea, rather than the dark, bleakness of the novel. I also wanted to connect this idea to here and now and as the viewers to consider the “What if” of a better world and the possible effect of one person choosing to do what’s right, to have courage, to stand against evil. The video begins in black in white because I wanted to connect to the black and white images that Standish watched on television and contrast them to the color images he associated with freedom and happiness. 

I found the writing style of Maggot Moon to be easily relatable. The character of Standish’s dyslexia and constant tendency to daydream was both endearing and empathy-inducing and made me think of him as much younger than his actual age, 15. From the first chapter, I was hooked. Gardner’s style of storytelling had me instantly wondering who Standish was, why he only lived with his grandpa, and what was on the other side of the infamous wall. The succinctness of the book contributed to the abruptness and intensity of the plot, and the narrator’s brutally honest descriptions certainly created a jarring experience in many scenes. However, the biggest impact the book had on me was the hope that Standish relied on to fuel his courage and stand up to the seemingly undefeatable enemy. 

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Critical Reflection (Week 1 and 2)

  Week 1 and 2 were eye-openers for me. I was apprehensive about the Google Hangout format of discussion, but I’ve gotten a lot more comfortable with it and absolutely agree that these kind of conservations need to be had in real time, whether in person or virtually. The questions we’ve discussed each week has caused me to ask even more questions, especially in relation to defining literacy and literature. In connection with my “virtual” and “professional” selves I am especially interested in what literacy means in relation to the growing presence of technology in culture and the classroom. I tend to be wary of redefining “literacies” to include visual or multi-media formats; however, I strongly believe that these are indeed modes of communication and that students should both be able to understand the meaning in these formats and create meaning with these different modes.

  Concerning my literate (and also professional) self, I am interested in thinking through the title of “young adult literature” and what that can mean and when it is appropriate, though I’m learning that it’s more of a book-by-book decision. I believe that students absolutely have the “right” to read most any book, with parental consent of course. However, I think the right to read and censorship have to be balanced when dealing with a classroom setting. Not each child is able to mentally and emotional handle some of the more mature novels, such as Maggot Moon or Kingdom of Little Wounds.

  The conversation about fan fiction was especially interesting to me and I found the emphasis on “just having fun” to be refreshing in an typically academic and rigid field. Most students do not write “for fun,” but rather because they are required to do a writing assignment. It’s so encouraging to know that there are students who are using their free time to consume novels and then create fan fiction based on them. I think I would agree with Oliver, though, that it would take away part of the charm of fan fiction to bring it into a classroom setting. I think it could work as an “extension” writing assignment and as a way to encourage students to engage their imagination even with more academic novels. It might also be a way to think about focused revision of a creative piece. In another class I took, Teaching Composition, the professor had us revise our pieces by either changing the perspective of the piece to another character or by choosing an inanimate object to be the narrator. It brought so much more life to what I was writing and helped my once stagnant creative juice get flowing again. 

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Maggot Moon <3

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Overlapping Lines: Eleanor and Park

As I reflected over Eleanor and Park and the many emotions it evoked from me, I couldn’t help thinking about how much I felt I could connect with the characters and their young, passionate love affair. Rainbow Rowell captures the reader by describing the littlest details of Eleanor and Park as they fall in love. I truly felt each feeling, emotion, and sensation as I read each word. The quote above was one of my favorites of hers that I felt truly expressed Eleanor and Park’s process of falling in love. But even beyond the book and Eleanor and Park’s experiences, this metaphor of overlapping lines captures the essence of sharing your life so closely with someone that the lines between your separate lives become increasingly blurry as you begin to forget what life was like before them.

  As a newlywed, I have been experiencing this phenomenon of melding two lives into one. However, it was not something that simply occurred because we were suddenly living under the same roof or sharing a bank account. It actually happened in the smaller, less monumental moments, almost subconsciously, much before we decided to get married. But it is these often-overlooked moments that intertwine our lives together. Rowell has a way of magnifying these simple moments in a relationship, like holding hands, that are seemingly insignificant in the grand scheme of things. But she uses descriptions like the gravitational pull to demonstrate the intensity of the moment and imprint the beauty of these moments into our mind.

  I have little experience in responding to literature in a creative way, though I have been challenged to do so more recently. I tend to think more linearly and analytically, but I want to be able to think outside of the box and allow myself the freedom to respond creatively to literature because literature itself is a creative expression. I actually really enjoyed creating this image and reflecting over the novel and I look forward to engaging this way more in the future. I hope that as I begin to interact more creatively and visually with what I  am reading, I will be able to encourage my students to do the same. 

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Inspiration

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Funds of Knowledge Inventory

Professional Self

Though I do not have any experience in the classroom yet, I have been able to tutor many teenaged students, which I think will aid me as I embark on this course. Also, I was able to take a literacy course in the spring semester that was an invaluable learning experience. Beyond just a compilation of literacy theories, the course exposed me to various strategies and practical methods of engaging this demographic in an effective and interesting way. Though I am an avid proponent for teaching classic literature, I have recently been challenged to think of Young Adult literature

Some of my professional goals in this course are to train myself think about Young Adult literature as more than just something to recommend my students read in their spare time. I hope to learn how to effectively incorporate YA into my future classes and tap into the important and relevant themes so often seen in this genre.

Literate Self:

Over the last couple of years, I have been enamored with the YA genre, especially the riveting and fast paced plots. Admittedly, I would usually rather read YA literature, then Shakespeare, though I thoroughly enjoy his work, as well. However, as someone aspiring to be a high school English teacher, I would like to interact with many more YA novels, especially some of the more “classic” ones that I never had a chance to read when I was younger. I am looking forward to reading my first graphic novel, especially, and learning ways to leverage this particular genre in my classroom.

Virtual Self:

This is probably my weakest area of the three. I am still trying to wrap my mind around what it means to incorporate technology into the classroom, though I am certainly on board with the idea. After taking a mobile learning class, I feel like I have a much stronger understanding of the many resources and ways of implementing technology and mobile learning into an ELA classroom. However, I am still intimidated by my lack of skill in this area. In this class, I hope to interact with even more literacies and media to aid in helping both myself and my students express themselves creatively.

  After thinking through all of these categories, I realized that I struggled to keep them within their categories. My goals for my virtual self overlap with my professional self, as do my literate and virtual self. The main pattern I noticed was that though I already have some experiences and skills in all of these areas, there are still many areas that I hope to improve on. 

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Iterative Design + Collaboration

“If you don’t get the design right, it doesn’t matter how you implement it” (Quinn).

  The concept of iterative design, especially as it relates to education, seems to be an effective and practical method. For educators, it is difficult to anticipate the specific needs and benefits that they look for when incorporating m-learning into their classroom. Iterative design allows for a product that is tailored to educational contexts and promotes best practices. For example, in “Key Instructional Design Issues in a Cellular Phone Based Mobile Learning Project” (Gudik, et al., 2011) the designers tested their products in the classroom and realized specific areas that needed to be improved or modified in order to be most effective for the teachers and students. Both the interactive and collaborative elements of iterative design bridge the gap between technology and education and allow for the organic creation of apps for the classroom.

As we’ve been working towards our capstone project, I think that my group has worked really well together thus far. We’ve been in continuous contact via email, discussing our ideas, problems, and scheduling Google Hang Out meetings. We’ve met a few times on GHO to map out a timeline and set goals for the group, and we’ve shared our drafts so that we can give formative feedback on each group member’s work. The main challenges that we’ve faced are probably just trying to get four people’s schedules to align so that GHO meetings are possible for every group member. However, one team member set up a Doodle to help us coordinate the best times to meet, which was super helpful. We’ve been able to find various times to meet at each stage in our process thus far, even with everyone’s busy schedule.

My capstone integrated lesson was originally quite amorphous and hazy to me, as I was trying to wrap my head around what it would look like. Originally I did not understand the lesson to be one integrated lesson for all the apps reviewed, so my planning was geared towards just my app. However, since then I have been able to review the other three apps through my group’s app modules, and I have been brainstorming about effective ways to synthesize all four apps into one lesson. At first, this task seemed to be impossible or at least cumbersome, but I believe that the apps that we have chosen will be complementary to each other and truly aid in student learning. 

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