Reading Response 3/3

Leu 6

The advantages of using the Internet for Social Studies are many. By looking at primary source documents critical analysis is fostered. Students can experience different cultures by communicating with them via the Internet. There is more information for social studies education than any other subject area.
Two different kinds of directories for social studies are social studies resources, and directories for social studies teachers. Different directories were listed for each type of social studies resource.
The authors encouraged teachers to use Internet Workshop first because it is the simplest activity to begin with. You choose a site that is related to the standards and develop an activity that uses information on the site, and each student explains what they have learned to the workshop.
Internet Project websites that other teachers have created were listed and websites where teachers can place their own Internet Projects were cited.
Internet Inquiry has students develop a research question, search and evaluate information, compose, and share their answer.
Student-to-student activities have students choose a website that is related to their topic and they develop a learning activity for others using that website. Examples of these activities were given.
Favorite webquests were explored in one section of the chapter.
Directions on making individual student folders, favorite folders, and individual bookmarks were explained.
Copyright laws and citation rules on other websites were reviewed.
The new literacies in Social Studies requires students to evaluate and analyze information critically. Five questions were listed as a guideline to teach students how to evaluate information on the Internet.
Additional sources on the Internet for Social Studies were addressed at the end of the chapter.
I love these chapters because they give step by step directions on Internet procedures no matter how simple the functions might be. I learned how to make student folders and use favorite folders to store information in.
I plan on checking out the copyright and citation websites listed on page 241.
In the additional resources section I highlighted six websites I would like to visit for myself or my Kindergarten class. Ben's guide, contacting the congress, cybrary of the holocaust, first gov for kids, my hero, and the white house for kids.
The hardest thing about looking up things on the Internet is the time it takes to find appropriate materials for what we are doing in the classroom. These directories and websites have taken the guess work out of the navigation process.
This chapter was a little complex for my younger students, but I did get some computer function knowledge and received great website resources.

Xu 5

To learn about experiences with varied text teaachers need to document the ways they use them and have their students document their experiences with the same varied text as well.
Teachers and students can list different popular texts they are familiar with and discuss the literacy skills they need to be able to be more successful with each particular text.
In another activity teachers look at unfamiliar popular culture texts that students use and the teacher and student share their point of view with each other. Teachers learn more about the motivation that each student has to engage in popular culture texts.
The differences between televisual and film text were mentioned. A TV show may not have a full story in one episode. Film shows a whole story. TV shows don't have the technology movie theaters do. Viewers can manipulate sound and screen functions on a TV. Viewers can't do any of these things in a movie theater. TV viewers can discuss what is going on where film patrons are required to be quiet during the film.
TV shows can enhance abstract learning.
A DVD can have information that may cause people to explore that movie further
Other genres explored were hypermedia text, musical text, comic book text, trading card text, game text, zine and e-zine text.
I thought it was interesting to know that games are not a waste of time since it takes skill to control and determine the feedback the game player gets based on his/her performance.
The "probe, hypothesize, reprobe, and rethink cycle" (page 112) during game playing is similar to the metacognitive process used for literacy learning. This was a novel idea for me. I didn't realize all those processes were going on during a video game!
The Zine and E-Zine text was very informative. I didn't know what these texts were until I read this chapter. I definitely had quite a few aha! moments while I was reading this chapter.