Blogging here brings me back to middle school and high school when I spent days of my life instant messaging and playing snood and solitaire in my basement. I would sneak downstairs after my parents went to bed to chat with my friends. Much of my social life revolved around instant messaging and hoping that some sort of weekend plans would evolve from chats (although they rarely did). When I realized that these activities bordered on obsession, I deleted my AOL IM and all of the games on my computer and never looked back. Five years later, I find myself living without TV or internet in some sort of black hole. Blogging will be a challenge, given my bloggless nature at home, but I am excited at the thought of writing about what I want to write about and relatively when I want to write it.
I recognize the importance of technology in kids' lives these days, and hope that I can actually relate to students. I don't see myself watching TV any time soon, and hope that I can relate without knowing about what is consuming a large portion of their time. I aniticipate being completely out of the populat culture loop most of the time, so I will have to develop other ways of idetifying with my students. I hope to do this through other forms of technology, and think that I will learn a lot in this course.
5 comments:
That's wonderful, Lisa. You'll come at all of this 504 stuff with a most interesting point-of-view, and I think that the personal choices you've made with regard to technology and popular culture will be central (and positive) to the ways in which you bond with your students. I appreciate your being as open as you are to the possibilities here.
Lisa, you ask whether or not you'll be able to find ways to stay in touch with your students and pop culture. Do you listen to a lot of music? One of my friends' mom is a chemistry teacher, and she would incorporate Jay Z songs into her lectures. For example, "you guys have 15 problems, but a b*tch ain't one." Apparently the kids LOVED it.
Lisa, I love that you have no TV. We haven't had cable for while now but I am not sure if I could cut the TV out entirely. Sorry to hear that the Physics was hard. I also had a few moments when I was thinking who wrote these tests? Are they just trying to get money from repeats?
Maybe we should start a group of former computer-aholoics. I was once very addicted to online gaming. Then I got a 60 hour a week job. Not such a good combination. It sounds like you went cold turkey though! How brave! I just backed away from email a bit and no more online games. I did keep one high end game on my last computer but now I am down to just chess on here.
I fail at chess. Which means I will probably get more homework done in comparison.
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I love your pictures by the way!
I don't think you need to worry about not watching TV. Although I own a TV, as a first and second year teacher I had no time to watch it, and this did not seem to matter to my relationships with my students. I think Kate had a great idea about using music and in a similar vein, I would suggest using movies to connect with kids. In my Physics class I have used Speed to teach about projectile motion and The Core (referred to as "the worst physics movie ever") to teach about magnetism, etc. Even though these are fairly old movies, it has inspired my students to look for physics in the current movies they see, and led to some interesting discussions. I use Mythbusters a lot, too, which many of my students watch. You don't need a TV, though, because most episodes are either on line or on DVDs.
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