Anne Doelman
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#121wrdsb: What is A Chromebook?

8/31/2015

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Waterloo Region District School Board running a testing out giving a netbook to every grade 9 student in 3 local high schools. One purpose, of many, is to help give access to resources of the internet to every classroom for every student and teacher to benefit learning.  This ratio of devices to student is called1:1 learning environment.

 I teach in one of these schools and I am super excited to help document and support this learning initiative.   You can follow the hashtag #121wrdsb on twitter to see a documentation of our learning throughout the board.
The netbooks we are giving out this year are Chromebooks.  Chromebooks used the Google browser.  

Here are two videos that help explain what Chromebooks are.

The first one is a RAW unedited CBC clip that provides a simple introduction to devices.

The second one is a glossy,  info commercial produced by Google Chrome.  Incidentally, the Google Chrome YouTube channel has several videos that help explain Google concepts
Given the scope of this project, there are lots of things to discuss and debate as we learn how we might use these tools to enhance, evolve and expand learning in 2015.

More posts to follow...

Resources:

"RAW: What Is a Chromebook." CBCnews. CBC/Radio Canada, 20 Oct. 2014. Web. 31 Aug. 2015.

"Introducing the Chromebook." YouTube. YouTube, n.d. Web. 31 Aug. 2015.

"How to BEST Define the 1:1 Classroom." InCare 11 Technologies. InCare Technologies, 09 Feb. 2014. Web. 31 Aug. 2015.
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VMA Awards: Why Watch?

8/31/2015

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For the past couple years as September looms, I find myself awake in the middle of the night thinking about school and designing course structures. But there is always one night, that rather than get up and do some work, I watch the MTV Video Music Awards (VMA)  and live performance.  It started a couple years ago when my Twitter feed started jumping to references of Robin Thicke and Miley Cyrus. And this year, when a former student tweeted her vote, I realized it was time to watch.

In the next couple posts, I want to explain why I think its important for me to watch these awards to become an informed educator.  I also want to make a call out to parents to be aware of these awards and discuss the complexity of how to take apart the images in these awards.




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VMA Reflection # 3: Favourite Moment With Taylor Swift and Joseph Kahn

8/31/2015

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As a Communications Technology teacher, I also like the VMA awards for what it can teach us about the industry.

My favourite moment was when Taylor Swift invited the director of Blank Spaces to the stage to help accept the award.

He goes on to thank the producers and crew that made it possible. What I love about this moment is that it reveals that work of the invisible people behind the Hollywood machinery.

Very sweet moment....

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VMA: Media Literacy Primer brought to you by Jean Kibourne & Ashton Kutcher

8/31/2015

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Before I talk about more of the VMA awards, I want to share Jean Kilborne's media literacy work. I came across it when I was working in residence life at university.  

In this Tedx talk, she quickly covers  her core argument that  commercial media, through its construction of the "ideal human body", is leading to the "trivialization" and "pornification" of  sex.

It also "normalizes dangerous attitudes" that impact people.

This talk is a great background to why the images in the VMA awards needs to be deconstructed. The VMA awards (just like the music videos it celebrates) are ads for mainstream music.
Of course, the VMA isn't all bad.  Just like commercial media isn't all bad. There are values and voices that can inform, educate, challenge, grow who we are as humans.  Media is. as always, too complex to treat  as either black or white. 

For example, a week ago on my Facebook feed I came across this acceptance speech by Ashton Kutcher. I knew he was married to Demi Moore and was on a TV show once but what he says in this speech makes me a fan.  I need to figure out a way to help bring it my students.

Core Message:
1. Opportunity looks like hard work and it is.
2. Being smart, thoughtful generous is sexy.
3. Build a life. Don't live one.

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Procrastinate No More: Back to Blogging

8/30/2015

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Planning for September feels like hitting the 'reset button', in life -- a new beginning, a moment to pause and consider next actions.


To accomplish some of my long terms goals as a teacher, writer and parent, I want to become a consistent blogger.


 Here my goals for this blog:

1. Practice my quick, reflective writing without getting bogged down in perfection. As Jillian Michaels says in one of her fitness DVD's, "Perfect is Boring." This relates to the work I need to do on my writing process as a new part-time MFA student.

2. Reflect on my role as a teacher in the Ontario Secondary school classroom in 2015. I hope that my posts can become a point of conversation for other educators, parents and students. I am especially excited by the new initiatives at WRDSB and I am very proud to be an educator in the Ontario public system.

3. Articulate ideas and reflections I have stored in my mind about all things that so that I canget them out into the world so that I might sharpen my thinking through conversation and dialogue.

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With Some Uncertain Notice

8/26/2015

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or fragile the With some uncertain notice, as might seem
Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods,
Or of some Hermit's cave, where by his fire
The Hermit sits alone.



This next section comes right after Wordsworth mentions wreaths of smoke that come up from amongst the trees.  So it it is the wreaths of smoke he is comparing to the "uncertain notice, as might seem vagrant dwellers" or "of hermit's.  But because of the older style of English I am unsure of whether the uncertain notice is that of the vagrant dweller and the hermit to the intruder who found them or to the person who has stumbled upon them.  Or maybe it is both?  What is interesting is that Wordsworth is not directly describing that meeting but using it to describe the wreaths of smoke. But such a specific description of the wreaths of smoke expands the description of the landscape and in a sideways way, populates the poem with secondary characters - the vagrants and the hermit. I find this interesting as a literary tool or trick.  That I'm might make a comparison to one thing that helps describe something specific but also further expands the meaning or resonances of the text. Is there a name for that trick?



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    About This Blog


    This blog began when I asked my Grade 10 students to blog for an English class in 2011.  I chose to focus on an exploration of Wordworth's poem "Lines above Tintern Abbey". 

     Why? I wrote a very bad essay about this poem in first year university and in my own way, I am trying to make amends with that failed attempt.

    Its evolving into a reflection on my adventures in education, motherhood, life and most recently as a student in  UBC's Optional- Residency MFA Creative Writing program and WRDSB's 1:1 Chromebook Pilot Project.

    Currently, I am teaching with the Waterloo Region District School Board in Ontario, Canada. Opinions are my own.

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