New Blog

Here is the link to my new blog.

The View from Room 125

The time has come...

This particular blog has run its course. I am going to abandon it for a time. But, it has hooked me on wanting to blog more frequently, so I am going to start a new one. If anyone is reading this and is interested in following me to a new place, I'd welcome the company. I will post once more after this to give the new address(es) of my new blog(s).

Last Chance Before Deadline

Teachers' Tools for the 21st Century


A Nation Online


The online writing classroom / edited by Susanmarie Harrington, Rebecca Rickly, Michael Day.
Location: Auburn RBD Library (3rd Floor)
Call Number: PE 1404 .O45 2000

My latest links

Technot article


Internet Ed Resources


National Commission on Writing

Possible Source

A Marriage Waiting to Happen: Computers and Process Writing

Tech Columns

Teacher Mag Tech Columns

EdWeek Tech Columns

More blogs

How (not) to Create a CyberEnglish Class



I Love CyberEnglish!

For citations

Son of citation machine

Questionnaire

I finally got the questionnaire I wanted for CE teachers written and posted to about 12 people I know who teach a web-based class. Here it is:

Hi,

I am asking for your help. I am taking a graduate English course on technology and writing. As I have recently entered into a web-based, cyberEnglish model of teaching writing in my classroom, I thought I'd do a case study on that and on the ce movement in general. As you are a ce teacher, I was hoping you might be able to take a few minutes and answer some questions. I would really appreciate it as I need all teh first hand information I can get.

How do you define ce?
Why did you decide to implement this strategy in your classroom?
What difficulties did you encounter in setting up and running a ce classroom?
What are the advantages of ce?
What are the disadvantages of ce?
Any other comments on ce that you would like to make.
What is your website URL?

I know this is a very busy time of year. If you are not able to answer these questions, I totally understand.

Thank you.

I have already gotten a partial response from one of the people I emailed. I am hopeful that I can get some more responses before the end of the weekend. The hard part about that is that it is the end of the school year in much of the country. Sure, I am out of school, but in some places this is the last week. Or next week is--or any week through the end of June apparently. I feel bad about asking these people to give up some of their time to help me out. In fact, that is part of the reason it took me so long to make myself write the darn thing. I am also considering posting it to the engteach-talk listserv. That could potentially catch people whose email addresses I couldn't find. There is a list (a little out of date, but a list) of teachers who have a web presence on Ted's site. I know a lot of the teachers there from the listserv. I am pretty sure that Ted has been as big an inspiration to them as he has to me. He seems to be the father of the movement.

Quote from Ted

Why CyberEnglish

Cyber English addresses how we change our classroom practices as teachers to make education more effective and better for all. It is constructivism. It is a response to demands by society to engage in the educational paradigm shifts and to get beyond the status quo. Cyber English is "out of the box" thinking and practice. Cyber English is the blend of technology and humanities, a paradox, oxymoron. It taps into the future work and lving environment of technology with old world humanities. Cyber English allows me to practice my pedagogical theories which will emerge as I present my practice via student work, my own published writings, observations by others, and from my presentations. Perhaps the most important reason for Cyber English is that it puts the process of learning in the hands of the learner and allows the teacher to teach and guide them and watch them learn how to learn and have fun doing it. And of course the greatest reward is reading their webpages which bear out my correct assumptions about why Cyber English is so important. One final note about its importance is that during the years I taught this course in a NYC public high school of 3200 students, I consistently had the highest attendance rate in the school and more 100% attendance days than other classes each of those years. That helps me understand why Cyber English was so important.

from from CyberEnglish: The Practice :Introduction

Another possible resource

Another site to keep track of:

Technology and Learning

From Ted Nellen's web

from CyberEnglish: The Practice :Introduction

Many things started to happen that would become major buiding blocks for CyberEnglish. First, division of labor and breaking from the "everyone works at same pace and on same project industrial style of education" as I had the students in two groups working on two different tasks. Second was the beginning of digitizing everything. Thirdly was the beginnings of peer review as students began viewing other student's work as it was being devleoped rather than upon completion. Finally, we were publishing the students' work.

This is a concise way to look at the beginnings of the basic concepts. It is essentially constructivist in viewpoint. As a longtime NWP fellow (as well as a graduate in English Ed at AU), I am essentially a constuctivist type of guy. This folds in neatly with my view of education and what it should be.

Working the Web for Education

Working the Web for Education

Books entitled such things as "Explore the Unleashed World Wide Web in 7 Days for Dummies/Educators" list tens of thousands of "Killer Web sites," implicitly suggesting that once you get a handle on these you'll have "done" the Web. But this is akin to getting access to the Library of Congress and being handed a piece of paper listing someone's Top Ten Favorite Books. Oh yes, and the library's collection doubles in size every three months. So, it's not the titles that are needed, it's the structure, the organization, the forest for the trees.

I like this quote. It strikes me that this is an issue with using the web in the class as a foundation for the curriculum. Too many teachers I know are only interested in the web for the "neat stuff" they can find and use out there. And this is a valid use of the web for teachers. But if that is all it is, if they only use it with students as a resource to send them to specific sites, then the use of the web in the class loses much of its power, I think. The real power with a web-based class is that it allows the students to have a voice.

I also think it is important to teach the students ways to navigate on the web and make it work for them. I need to do more of that. But if they can't learn how to organize their own little webworlds, they are going to be at a disadvantage.