Individualized Education Plan

For my individualized education plan, I learned how to maintain a blog that could be used for my seventh grade language arts classroom. The blog is named Extremely Luminous because our team name is Supernova. The blog was designed to help create a student forum for various curriculum-related topics and help students improve their Web skills.

Click here to view Extremely Luminous and read student responses from our science fiction unit. One problem with using Edublogs is its limited capacity for keeping large amounts of images and videos. Unfortunately, I was forced to delete forum topics, pictures and video clips from past units, such as our Old Man and the Sea, Theme: What the story is really about, and Compare/Contrast Essay units.

* Click here to view the classroom application component.

* Click here to read my IEP reflection.

Social Web: NCTE Ning

For the past several months, I've been regularly reading and periodically posting to Ning for the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE). Ning is very similar to Facebook and MySpace only because the main focus is social networking. Ning's appearance and professional conversations are characteristics that set itself apart from mainstream social networking sites.

When I first visited NCTE's Ning page, my first impression was its slick professional look. It's not loaded with advertisements, nor does it fill my inbox with unwanted spam. Instead, the page brims with useful articles, videos, links to lesson plan ideas, and conversations for English teachers.

The value of NCTE's Ning is collaborating ideas with teachers from around the world, many of whom can be very supportive. It's nice to visit a social networking site where I can bounce ideas off other professionals in my field who have more experience and know where to direct my ideas in a positive manner. In a discussion of an article called "Does reading literature prepare students for the real world?," I commented on it and received a response from the author within 24 hours.

The problems I see with NCTE's Ning is its organization, or lack thereof. If I'm searching specifically for a particular activity to use for a lesson, and I'm pressed for time, Ning is not my go-to site. Ning is more useful for English educators who are searching for long term ideas.

The Green Apple

My digital story is a ridiculously true tale that happened to me years ago. I plan to use it to introduce a personal narrative unit to my seventh grade language arts class. At first, I found this project slightly overwhelming because creating a good digital story takes lots of time. Finding time and energy to complete projects that require editing can be very difficult. But thanks to a week of SBA testing, I found extra time in the evenings to finally finish it.

Other than finding time, choosing the best personal narrative to turn into a digital story was the most challenging part. The Green Apple was originally published in the Anchorage Daily News in 2004 when I wrote a weekly outdoors column called "Head Out." The events that transpired while mountain biking in the Chugach Mountain fit perfectly into the story mapping scheme.

Finally, here is the rubric I would use to assess students on a digital project. This rubric emphasizes choice for the student, creates a connection with their audience, and uses planning and understanding of media guidelines and digital tools to help them achieve their goals.