What do we bring to the table?

Steph’s Morning Pages Prompt (tweaked and rebuilt by Renee)

How does your investment in your research question and the students’ background knowledge about your topic affect the research?


As I try to establish a confident, comfortable online community for my students, I need to consider this question…

1. What do I bring?

I know what I “bring to the table” as my TOK students like to point out. I realize that my investment in blogging and how I believe it can contribute to my students experience in TOK is strong. Does this make it easier or more difficult for my kids? I initially say that it is easier. I’m motivated and comfortable in that world and I would like to believe that this would rub off on my kids as I slowly nudge them towards being part of that community. My wonder though is, on some level, does this make it more difficult? Is it intimidating for some of them that I am pushing them in while I may not be aware of their own fears and trepidations of diving in? My hope is that I can just be more aware of this specific issue.

2. What about them?

What may be of greater importance is what they are walking in with. One assumption that I know I get caught with is that I assume that all students of this generation are computer-savvy. I assume they all text, blog, mySpace, eBay, IM, game, and surf the web with regularity. I know that this is a terrible assumption to make, which takes me back to the issue mentioned above about intimidation. What if they aren’t comfortable or confident? Worse… what if they have no interest or even a desire to stay out of that world? Where do I go from here? How do I motivate those students to try something new, build their skills and participate freely in a community that I believe can have a great impact on their overall understanding of the TOK class and curriculum? Or is this just another assumption that I’m missing?

Blogs in my classroom

So as I've ranted before, it is important for me (very important) to utilize technology and blogs in particular to assist my students in refining their critical thinking and TOK skills.

Now that AI has begun, I get to focus on that. As I listened to E. Jason talk about his plan for his AI research, I found my kindred spirit. We are interested in exploring the same issue. What is cool is that we are starting our explorations from completely opposite ends of the spectrum. To see what Jason is looking at in detail, check out the "CSUWP Advanced Institute" link under Other Posts to Check Out.

Both Jason and I are interested in getting kids to utilize blogs to increase their critical thinking but Jason presently approaches blogging from a limited perspective. He has kids only blog during specific units on focused topics. He wants to push them farther. I presently use my TOK blog as a holistic exercise to generate discussion during the year about a variety of topics, very rarely concentrated on specific issues in class. I wish to use it in a more focused manner. Both Jason and I have had success but it sounds like we need to meet in the middle.

So my teacher research just got better. Hopefully, I've found someone who can push me in a direction I need to go and along the way I will do the same for him.

The summer has begun...

I always say that good teachers don't have their summers off... so I'm trying to be a good teacher. As I have for the past 4 years, I'm involved with the CSU Writing Project. We are beginning this week and I'm already inspired to begin teaching again... though my "time off" right now is amazing and needed. The Summer Institute is getting me back to blogging, writing, and researching, all needs and desires I have right now. So the summer has begun... time off (kind of) but time involved in what I need and want.

Advanced Institute begins soon... another challenge on the way.