Daniel+Ludvigson

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 * Second Mind Meister**

Jing
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media type="custom" key="9999357" For this wiki I quick pulled the information from my blog and made it into a mind map. The reason I chose this subject was that one of the standards of art education is getting students to understand the connection between the context in which art is made and what is made (the world war had a huge impact on expressionism, as well as other factors). This mind map allowed me easily to connect different information and group it. I was also able to link the artist information to resources on the web for reference. Again I can embed, so I wouldn't need to send students other places to view this page. = = =**Daniel Ludvigson - LANG 6150: Literacy in the Content Area**= http://lang6150.wikispaces.com/Main+Page

Context of Lesson
This year I was lucky enough to organize a co-sponsored course for our staff development at LqPV called LANG 6150: Reading in the Content Area (to be renamed Literacy in the Content Area). This course focused on teaching reading in non-reading courses and as part of that course participants were required to use a blog. Originally I did actually want to use a wiki but the final numbers for the course dipped off as summer conflicts arose and I changed to blogs because I was familiar with that medium. The material they were presented was on reading, its relation to thinking and memory, and the building of comprehension through reading. You can see my blog at [|lang6150.edublogs.org] to see a full listing of the content available.

Summary of Content
At the top of the page you will see a link to the wiki I made. I created a main page that serves as a sort of hello to the course and page. I also created a "Getting Started Page" where I embedded a tutorial and gave some simple instructions for what I want. The other pages you see are various reading strategies I included in the course. I provide a description and resources for each reading strategy.

What I want participants to do is take a reading strategy from a list I complied or from one they research and create a similar page. However I also want them to include a document for use in a classroom; such as a K-W-L grid or worksheet. They post this to the wiki for consideration by their classmates. As my getting started page states students are then ask to add content to either the existing pages or their classmates. From the research I did for this lesson and blogs, this is a vital aspect of developing a construction of knowledge from a learning community. Wikis and blogs are powerful tools for this but it requires the building of a learning environment that encourages and welcomes feedback.

In the discussion tab of the Main Page I placed three questions related to the material presented during the course. These questions are suppose to encourage discussion and reflection. Each question is geared toward thinking about how you use literacy in your content area and how you could implement a strategy to facilitate that literacy in relation to the content of the course.

All of this is for one purpose, reflection. From my experience doing this course, I learned that many people do not realize what they are indeed teaching literacy. I myself went through the same realization process as an art instructor. By thinking about how to use various popular reading strategies within the structure of your own classroom. I however precede this with how the brain works and how reading strategies capitalize on the nature of the brain. I encourage participants to question the feasibility of the strategies and think about how to modify them to fit the nature of their content areas, often using this prior knowledge as a means to do this modification.

Reflection on Prior Lesson
I was somewhat hampered in my attempts to use blogs in the above mentioned way by the small number of participants that took the college credit part of the training I offered. I had plenty attend for the reading relicensure credit the first day, but much lesson attended both days for the credit. Regardless, I learned a few things. First I need to specifically state that I want participants to respond to one another. You can actually see the old forum I used for this on my blog. Their was little interaction on this forum and many answers were clip and unrelated to one another. I take blame for this because I really didn't spell out what I wanted them to do.

The second thing I learned was that these tools can be very hard to understand for some instructors, let alone students in a high school classroom. I ran a test assignment with my art class and it failed miserably. I learned that I needed more throughout directions and made several PowerPoints using the screen print function on the keyboard for my staff development class. I have since learned to embed videos and found a link to several videos offered by the hosting website. The biggest consideration I neglected was that many participants did not even know what a blog was or how it could be used in an educational setting. I actually stopped during the lesson to pull up my own blogs and just had the participants look around for a while before continuing again. They needed a concept of what it was they were trying to use, before learning how to use it. I also need to go step by step, I lost several people during the presentation by simply forgetting to mention what screen they were sent to after logging in! (P.S. the lesson was very successful but things could improve)

Lesson Plans
Day 1 - Note these items do not significant use the wiki material but contains the material of discussion/writign Day 2 - Note: This day is when wikis are covered.