Feb 1, 2009

On learning from my aspirations:

None of which I write below is meant for any of my readers to feel one bit of sympathy or pity. They are just comments on a dilemma I have always faced but, much more so this year. You see, I try to see the potential in everything thrown my way and as such I end with way more to do than I could ever possibly complete. This year I have taken on so many "initiatives" (as mentioned above these are all of my own choosing with no one forcing me to take them on so... ) that I cannot keep a full count of them in my head at any one time. So, for anyone who has not yet moved on to another reading here is my list, more for my own documentation than anything else:

MILI (goes without listing)
the Unfolding Vee (a really neat graphic organizer for anyone doing inquiry)
a new 4 teacher team
a Smartboard
a few more animals for my Biology class
a AAA grant incorporating art into a new unit
a new unit on comparative anatomy using live animals (no dissection of them)
incorporation of Digital Media into curriculum
district level Discipline Literacy training
cognitive dissonance "probes" from DL trainings
and finally 3 very different science preps

A few of them I am doing okay on, to a greater or lesser extent. The rest, well.......other than self-induced anxiety over not doing much with them.......

All of them really intersect and support each other well. I need to just stop whining about the ones that I am not doing much with, start doing one of the things I am doing some with really well? and move on. Ah, best laid plans and all that....

On Copyrights:

All this discussion about how to create plagiaristic-proof assignments is great! But, without a teaching of the ethics claiming originality, without our whole society enforcing this ethic we are but tilting at windmills. Just as we the teachers always do though, no? We look toward the future possible world and not the one we encounter today.

As a science teacher pushing students to complete classroom labs that are not cookbook and more their own, I haven't thought too much about plagiarism other than students copying their classmates work. My rule their is that both students involved fail that assignment, unless it can been shown that it was copied from the originator unwillingly.

Creating curriculum that is not cookbook, that is authentic is always a hard job. The reason I took on all of the digital stuff described above is because I believe that, once I get past my huge learning curve on all of it, it will open many new possibilities for students to experience authentic learning. That said I better sign off for tonight and learn some more "digital stuff", get lunch for the week ready, some clothes together, some grading done, some planning done, .........