Academic Musings & Tech for Learning

AMERICAN MASTERS: JOAN BAEZ: HOW SWEET THE SOUND Thirteen.org’s EdOnline is still highlighting Joan Baez which premiered on television in October. For learning about the 1960’s, there are some excellent resources here. Lessons plans, that tie-in with the Joan Baez video include:
The 1960s: Youthful Optimism, Activism, and Joan Baez
Vietnam Passage Journeys from War to Peace

Stumbling around the Internet earlier this year I came upon a class blog, Write Out Loud, where students discussed what they learned about this tumultuous decade in a 7th grade English Class. It’s truly interesting reading the comments from today’s students. Being a teenager in school at that time, it’s humbling and fascinating to look back and realize that you, too, have an historic voice, small though it might be. Through the technological miracles of the, television,  and a free press, you were there. Some of my friends who are a bit older were videotaped; and my mother actually attended SUNY Stony Brook NY which also erupted in violence.

Blogging is used by many teachers… duh.. here we are at Edublogs. One very constructive collaboration that’s developed is between Prof. Lewis at the University of Regina and Kathy Cassidy, a first grade teacher in Moose Jaw SK. In the winter of 2008, Professor Lewis’s class of pre-serviceteachers became blogging mentors for Kathy Cassidy’s grade one students.

In their presentation available at http://k12onlineconference.org/?p=319, Lewis & Cassidy talk about their project and report on the results of research that was conducted about the effect this mentoring has had on the students and their writing.

Ms. Cassidy’s class blogs at http://classblogmeister.com/blog.php?blogger_id=1337&l=1237330856, and she has her own blog at http://primarypreoccupation.wordpress.com/.

Another research study centered around this blog and how parents viewed it. You can read about it here: http://primarypreoccupation.wordpress.com/2008/10/02/proving-it/