Jungle Rumble

Dennis Carter, Assistant Editor, of eCampus News recently wrote an article entitled, College Students Use Social Media to Cheat.  My first reaction to the title was DUH!  I was so surprised that this was deemed current news that I even double checked the publication date.  Sure enough is was posted May 13^th, 2011.  Carter claims that social media sites “account for one-third of plagiarism among college students, and paper mills are far less popular than once thought”.  Really?  Did this surprise anyone?  My experience working with high school students is that a third of them use various means to plagiarize work including Facebook, wikis, blogs, etc.  I knew paper mill sites are not popular because when I do my Turn It In lesson, no one recognizes those sites.

What Carter failed to address was how students use camera phone and texting to cheat not on papers, but on tests.  Frequently, students snap a picture, text it to a friend and by the time the teacher collects the test, the rest of his/her students know what is on it.

A theory that has been percolating in my mind about cheating is: A 21^st century skill is collaboration.  Educators have been encouraged to get students collaborating.  Couldn’t the students argue that they are not cheating but collaborating?   Does the increase of collaborative lessons and assignments promote cheating?  Something to think about….

I believe I am beginning to get the hang of this concept mapping business!  My concept map illustrates the web 2.0 tools that can be utilized for students to communicate and work collaboratively.   Quite a few of the web 2.0 tools are repeated since they fill various communication and collaboration needs.

http://www.webspirationclassroom.com/view/943292a2c1bd

32 Ways to Use Google Apps by Julia Stiglitz, Google Apps for Education Team

https://docs.google.com/present/view?id=0AV_Pgq_ZxwvSZGR3d3FxNnRfMjJnN3Jtc2pnaw&hl=en&ndplr=1

Less of an article and more of an idea smorgasbord, Julia Stiglitz does what most articles on technology in education neglect to do.  Stiglitz gives you concrete examples of how to incorporate Google Apps into your teaching and professional communications.  Although I have been using Google Apps to share a calendar with my husband or collaborate with a teacher on a lesson, I had no clue Google Apps could do this much.  My brain is humming with ideas on how to incorporate sign up sheets (#8) and online reading records (#14).  Or how I will let teachers know about Reading Response Journals (#5) and Formative and Summative Assessment (#11).  I was surprised that creating your own Google Maps (http://maps.google.com/help/maps/mymaps/create.html) was not listed.  Mapping definitely has educational purposes for history, geography and science to name a few.  It was a big oversight Stiglitz’s part.

All these apps are wonderful, but they also make me wonder…Is Google striving for world domination?  And if they are, what does that mean for us?  I mean who doesn’t love Google; excellent search interface, vast scholarly library, free email, applications, video and voice.  Their motto is “Do No Evil”, so I should feel all warm and fuzzy. Right?

Where We Go From Here – Combine Education and technology for creativity
By Larry Kilham

http://www.exchangemagazine.com/morningpost/2010/week40/Monday/100412.htm

Most people would agree that Americans are known for their creativity and innovation; Space race, desktop computers, and the atomic bomb.  We did it first and in a lot of cases did it best.  According to Kyung Hee Kim, in “The Creativity Crisis”, creativity scores have been on the decline since 1990.  Larry Kilham, author of MegaMinds: How to Create and Invent in the Age of Google, believes “it is time to turn American into a nation of inventors again” in his essay “Where We Go From Here – Combine Education and technology for creativity”.  Kilham believes the best way to accomplish this is through education.  He writes, “education is the basic force for insuring productive change from generation to generation”.  I happen to agree with Kilham.  Educators need to encourage and foster creativity and imagination.  So how does Kilham propose we go about this?  He advocates for teachers to “inculcate the value and methods of good research in our student population”.  As a librarian, I completely agree.  Having the ability to critically look at information is higher order thinking and leads to creative brainstorming and innovative problem solving.

Author’s Note: Let me start off by saying that visual organizers and concept maps are like a foreign language to me.   No hablo de mapas conceptuales! I just don’t understand them.  I am a very linear, concrete thinker and concept maps are too abstract for me.  They make my brain and eyes hurts. Taking all of that into account, please view my map with kind eyes.

View 21st Century Learner & Web 2.0 Tools Concept Map:

http://www.webspirationclassroom.com/publish.php?i=934735a224cc

My concept map is based off  the American Association of School Librarians’ (AASL) Standards for the 21st Century Learner, which are applicable not only to pretty much any lesson I do as a library media specialist, but to all subject areas.   My map illustrates the four core standards for 21st century learning and the web 2.0 tools that can be utilized at each step.

 Anderson, Laurie Halse.  Twisted.  New York, NY:  Viking, 2007. 

Anderson, Laurie Halse.  Speak.  New York, NY: Farrar, Straus Giroux, 1999.

I’ve just came off a Laurie Halse Anderson book binge.  I read Speak and Twisted back to back and loved both of them.  She ability to capture the angst and longing for belong is stunning.  I’m years (and years) out of high school, but her writing (for better or worse) took me right back.

Speak is the story of Melinda’s freshman year of high school.  The summer before she starts school she experiences a traumatic event which polarizes her from her friends and family.  She literally cannot “speak” of the event and flounders her way through high school.  Melinda’s only bright spot is art class.  Her assignment for the year is to create a tree.  The tree can be drawn, painted, sculpted, etc.  Melinda and her tree are intertwined.  Both cast off layers during the fall (tree=leaves and Melinda=friends and family), hibernate during winter and grow stronger and blossom in the spring as Melinda finds her voice.

Twisted is in the same vein as Speak.  Tyler Miller spent his summer manual labor in order to complete his court ordered community service for vandalizing the school.  He has gone from nerdy, whimp to tall, dark and “dangerous”.  As he starts school, Tyler settles into his new persona and catches to eye of a popular girl.  Swirling all around him are those who don’t accept the more confident Tyler including his father.  When Tyler’s life begins to go downhill, he must decide between continuing his transformation or his self-destructive thoughts.

The books’ undertones of being an outsider and finding one’s own place in society will resonate with anyone who attends or surived high school.

Meyer, Stephanie.  Breaking Dawn.  Little & Brown, 2008.

For years I had refused to read the Twilight books.  Students returning copies to the library would gush about Edward and tell me I just HAD to read them.  So knowing the final book in the Twilight series was being released this summer, I finally gave in.  All I can say is….I cannot believe I waited so long.  I devoured Twilight, New Moon, and Eclipse within 10 days.  And waited not so patiently for Breaking Dawn to be published.  Now one of the best things about being a librarian is being able to get your hands on books BEFORE they are released to the general public.  Well…I was able to secure a copy of Breaking Dawn on the Tuesday before it came out.  I read all 756 pages within a 45 hour period.  Part of me wanted to savor it knowing that this was it; there would be no more.  However, how can you put it down when the story is so mesmerizing?  You CANNOT!

I love the series.  It is a timeless story of young love, sacrifice, and finding your place in society.  And although Breaking Dawn was a thrilling final chapter, I have to say I was disappointed.  For three books we learned and accepted that you must sacrifice for love, but it turns out in the Bella’s case she didn’t have to sacrifice anything.  She gets it all!  I hate tidy little endings.  They are not realistic and they don’t leave you hungry for more.  You’ll have to read the series to see my point.  I refuse to give anything else away.

An aside: I have mixed feelings on the movie.  All too often the world the book so vividly creates is lost in translation to the screen.  My fingers are crossed that it is an accurate portrayal.

Sedaris, David.  When you are engulfed in flames.  New York, NY: Little, Brown and Company, 2008.

Author of Me Talk Pretty Someday and Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, David Sedaris, is back with a new book of essays.   And I believe this might be his best collection yet.  When You are Engulfed in Flamescovers such topics as David’s parents art collection, his maddening, spiteful (yet sympathic) neighbor, his purchasing a skeleton as a gift and his successful (thus far) attempt to quit smoking.  As always with Sedaris you have to read it to believe it.  My favorite passages that made me bust a gut are:

“When it came to decorating her home, my mother was nothing if not practical. She learned early on that children will destroy whatever you put in front of them, so for most of my youth our furniture was chosen for its durability rather than for its beauty. The one exception was the dining-room set, which my parents bought shortly after they were married. Should a guest eye the buffet for longer than a second, my mother would notice and jump in to prompt a compliment. “You like it?” she’d ask. “It’s Scandinavian!” This, we learned, was the name of a region—a cold and forsaken place where people stayed indoors and plotted the death of knobs.”

AND, this one from the essay where he talks of working with a medical examiner:

“…after lunch I accompanied a female pathologist to a murder trial.  She had performed the victim’s autopsy and was testifying on behalf of the prosecution.  There were plenty of things that should have concerned me -the blood-spatter evidence, the trajectory of the bullets- but all I could concentrate on was the defendant’s mother, who’d come to court earing cutoff jeans and a Ghostbusters T-shirt.  It couldn’t have been easy for her, but still you had to wonder: what would she consider a dress-up occasion?”

Whenever I finish reading a Sedaris book, I am always left with the desire to have him as my uncle who would make Thanksgiving dinner all the more special.  Look for When You are Engulfed in Flames on our shelves in September when we return to school.  Happy reading this summer!

Acito, Marc.  Attack of the theater people.  New York, NY:  Broadway Books, 2008.

I’ve never tried to hide my love for Acito’s first novel, How I Paid for College.  Many students have had me thrust it upon them saying, “You HAVE to read this!”  A story, as the title implies, of how a Julliard bound New Jerseyan Edward and his band of zany pranksters funds his college aspiration after his father says no.

I anxiously awaited his second book for something close to 4 years.  And now I wait no longer.   Or actually I teased, savored the reading of the sequel to How I Paid for College, Attack of the Theater People, knowing it would probably be 4 more years till Acito’s next novel.  But the wait was well worth it.

Without ruining too much plot…the story picks up 2 years later with Edward and gang living in Manhattan.  Edward has just been kicked out of college for being “too jazz hands for Julliard”.  Feeling lonely and ashamed, Edward tries to find a place for himself with stops along the way as a “party motivator” and unwitting insider trader.  As with the first, this sequel is a roller coaster of a ride with laugh out loud funny passages.

Murdock, Catherin Gilbert.  Dairy Queen.  Boston, MA:  Houghton Mifflin, 2006.

Think you have it bad this summer?  DJ has it worse.  She is spending the summer single-handedly trying to save her family’s dairy farm after her father injures himself.  Up at 5am to milk, then clean the stalls, then bail hay, milk again and do it all over the next day.

Football is in the family’s blood.  Both DJ’s older brothers had historic high school careers and now play college ball.  Her father used to coach and names all the farm’s cows after famous players and coaches. 

Her summer looks like it might get even worse when a family friend and rival coach asks DJ to train his starting quarterback, Brian.   As DJ and Brian train together, they begin to question themselves and what they want out of life.  DJ discovers that she doesn’t want to be a “cow” following the herd. 

” ‘You’d probably jump off the roof if they told you to.’
” ‘What are you talking about?’
” ‘Don’t you see how you live? You do all the work they expect you to do and you don’t even mind. It’s like you’re a cow. And one day in about fifty years they’re going to put you on a truck and take you away to die and you’re not even going to mind that either.’ Brian shook his head like he was truly sorry.”

In fact, she wants to follow her own beat and play high school football in the fall.  Her decision will strain her budding relationship with Brian and her family.