New Literacies in Action

I really like Dr. Kist's book and his experiences in different school settings. It is amazing how technology has been advanced and humorous how Kist explains what he grew up with. I'm eager to see how technology advances when I am a teacher and to tell my students what I grew up with--I'm sure they will get a laugh out of this just as I did with Dr. Kist's technological experiences.

In chapter 2, I liked reading about "The Monument Project." The first thing about this project was that students were in groups and were given time in class to work on it. I am FOR group work as long as time is given in class. I've always hated teachers & professors who assign group work allotting no time to develop ideas or creations in class. It seemed like students had an easy time with the monument project, but those who struggled seemed to get no attention or help from the teacher. The Walt Disney Group were struggling and were lacking motivation in their completion of the assignment. I wish that the teacher would have done something to motivate them! They were taking their anger out on the class a whole, saying, "I hate this class." And this is probably because they were struggling.

As a teacher, I think it is important to be supportive of each and every individual student. Yes, you will have students who don't like the content area or who struggle, but I think our job is to try to maintain some interest and avoid the students from saying "I hate this class." I think a student can dislike a subject area, but still like the class & its structure, its variety & of course, its teacher!