How will our students develop the habit of research? Not the work behind the dreaded research paper that sends them to the library in droves every six weeks for an assigned term paper, but research that is spontaneous, ongoing and comes out of an authentic desire to know. Research that is timely and relevant to the learner.

When I am curious about something that has caught my attention, I usually know where to go and I love the journey. I thumb through books, magazines, and newspapers and search the Net. Wikipedia is usually my first stop when seeking information on a concept I don’t get.

How does social networking fit into this scheme? Sometimes I bring up my ideas to my husband, who is a scholar and avid news wonk. Sometimes I share my questions with professional colleagues I know and distant fellow travelers on the Net. Lately I turn to Twitter. Tweets that crawl along the side of my browser often arouse my curiosity to follow up and research more. A few times I have tweeted a query and received guidance from the kindness of strangers and those I know in the face-to-face world.

When do students have the luxury of following their own curiosities? They are shoved from assignment to assignment. My students are in a program of study that requires a portfolio of three “research” papers based on ethical and social issues that arise from IT news. I love reading IT news. Well, it scared me that after two months of teaching the class few had a habit of reading the news. What to do?

I set up a blog and asked them, in their first post to write about what IT issues were bugging them. Their topics ranged from “RFID: Scary Advancements” to “Spoofing” to “Swiping our Info Away” and to questions around encryption security. Next they were asked to go back to their RSS feed readers that they had set up as instructed. It was time to start building the habit of reading the IT news and making connections to it. I told them to find IT news that caught their attention and share their point of view about it in the blog. They did that, and added snippits from the article along with a link back to the original. Blogging the news is a standing weekly assignment that is not formally assessed. There is no grade assigned for the blogs, no mark on their report card. It’s simply a habit that I would like to see them develop. It is sort of taking root. There are hundreds of posts on a myriad of topics.

My next challenge is to twofold: turning them on to how to follow through on further research around their passion in IT developments and how to craft their writing for the readership they desire to attract. You see, like their teacher, they are quite new to the blogisphere. They have not yet fully participated in regularly commenting on other’s blogs. They have not yet developed a following of active readers who participate in their ideas. That’s the next step. But it starts with personal research. I listened to a podcast on Teachers Teaching Teachers, “A Few Sides of the Research Elephant“. Paul Allison of the NYCWP hosts the show and has long been an inspiration to my teaching. He has the luxury of allowing his students to follow their passions through their freewrites. That leads to a course of personal research and rewrites that end up posted in student blogs. It’s a wonderful model. I guess my goal is to spark the place inside my students that allows them to find their passion within the constraints of the content I am obliged to guide them through this year and next. Then, to share with them how to start that journey through books, magazines, newspapers, the Web and making contact with humans who are in the worlds of their research. The Internet has brought all of that to my lap wherever I am–as long as there’s broadband to hook up to. What a wonderful world!

Tags: NYCWP,research,education,writing,k12,ITGS,

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When I heard Linda Christensen will be the keynote address speaker at the upcoming NYCWP Teacher-to-Teacher conference, I ordered her book Reading, Writing, and Rising Up: Teaching About Social Justice and the Power of the Written Word on Amazon (http://tinyurl.com/yo7xmt). Hoping I’ll get some ideas on how to get my 7th Graders involved in taking a position on a cause. Since I teach technology, I want them to understand the collateral effects of all our new technologies on the environment. Ideally, they will be in communication with their peers around the world (perhaps through iEARN forums) and collaborate on gathering data about what is happening. Together, the students can organize and start to do something about raising awareness of the issues and taking steps towards solving the problems .

Tags: NYCWP, reading, education, writing, k12, iEARN

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(http://flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=232051253&size=l)
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/

As one semester comes to a close and I prepare to meet a new group of students I am filled with anticipation of how to improve my teaching methods and allow the students to develop their own personal learning networks vis a vis the Internet. I’ve been paying much more attention to teachers in Twitter and edubloggers lately–especially (Chris Lehman, Clay Burell, Jo McLeay, and David Jakes). I even revisited Facebook to see what all the buzz was about and friended a number of folks well worth following. I’ve participated in a spontaneous Quick-in, Quick-out international podcast while grabbing a bite to eat in the teachers room this week, made numerous Trailfire marks, been meeting face-to-face and tweeting with my fellow NYC Writing Project colleagues (follow NYCWP on Twitter), and intant messaging with Thalysia Knoppel, a teacher at our twin school in The Netherlands to get up to date on our twinning project, The Richness Within. What will it all add up to? How will my teaching change this term? What are realistic goals? I could go on and on. What’s the short list?

• My 11th grade bloggers (Information Technology in a Global Society) will learn to write compelling posts that attract commentaries rather than hit-and-run traffic.
• My 8th graders will adopt blogging and commenting in the elgg as a preferred mode of expression over MySpace banter.
• My 7th graders (have yet to meet them) will engage in an authentic collaboration with their age-mates in Australia (Students of Jo McLeay).
• My mixed-grade after-school YouthCaN group’s wiki will transform into an international collaboration.

As I learn to use the tools to their best advantage, my students will follow. First I need to bring shape to my PLN. Any advice on aggregating everything I read into one easy to reach place?