Hi!  My name is Madeline Chisholm and my summer has started off with beautiful weather and a new class.  On the weekend I have been able to enjoy the weather, read a book in my hammock, and enjoy a wonderful period piece from Masterpiece theater on PBS entitled "Poldark."  Poldark was about as captivating as Downton Abby, which I also enjoyed and made my evenings rather entertaining.  The rest of my summer time for the next two weeks, I plan to be in class learning digital media literacy.  When I am not in class I love taking long walks in my neighborhood in the mornings followed by an early morning trip to the beach to swim our boogie board with my 10 and 13 year old.  My kids are huge soccer fans so this Saturday we will be going to Connecticut to watch the Men's US soccer team play against Ghana.  I have three ESL robotics students from Ghana so they have asked me to try to get something signed from on the of Ghana players.  My kids are huge US fans and want to do the same with US players.  Below are my three children visiting Nana and Papa at Joshua National Park just outside of Palms Springs California


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Madeline's Can Wesch and Turkle be friends?

Welsch believes that students are struggling to find meaning and significance in their education.  He claims that when students, like my own, ask questions such as “What do we need to know to pass the test?” education then becomes more about grades, than an opportunity to understand the world around them in a meaningful way.  He believes that when students are given ownership in how they learn, and are given the freedom to find and present information that is meaningful to them, it changes their perspective on what it means to be educated.  I agree with Wesch’s approach to creating meaningful learning opportunities, where students are more interested in the learning than what they need to know in order to get a good grade. However, in our k-12 world of education, we as educators are often tied to our district’s curriculum, which is designed to align with the district’s desired testing outcomes.  I’m not saying that creating global learning experiences is not possi...
Read more

Boyd verses Presky

Boyd suggests in her book "It's Complicated," that the term “Digital Native” does not give us a clear picture of the depth to which students can truly understand and process the accuracy of the content they are finding through technology. Thus, to use the term “digital native” so broadly, Prensky fails to take into account whether or not all students have the necessary help to develop broad digital competency.  As a result, according to Boyd, “educators and the public end up reproducing digital inequality because more privileged youth often have more opportunities to develop these skills outside the classroom. When we assume that youth will just absorb all things digital through exposure, we absolve ourselves of our responsibility to help teenagers develop necessary skills.” I agree with Boyd because not only do students have different technical skills, they also have different backgrounds and experience so the way in which they process these technical skills will be dif...
Read more

Madeline's Pretty as a Princess blog

As per our class conversations and walk about regarding dominant Ideology S.C.W.A.A.M.P (straightness, Christianity, whiteness, able-bodied, American ness, maleness, property ownership), it is clear that Disney did not invent gender roles and biases that pervade our society. Whether or not entertainment companies should be held accountable to accurately present history and culture to children, or if it is enough that they outline basic moral principles is perhaps a topic for another time.  In my experience growing up with Disney films I never personally experienced any real cultural or commercial attachment to these films.  It has been a very long time since I watched many of these films as a child, and the only thing I can remember is that I most identified with the hero.  Since I grew up in the 60’s and 70’s, pre-Mulan era, the hero was usually a boy, but that didn’t matter.  It didn’t change my perspective in life.  It didn’t give me a hero to worship or loo...
Read more