Journal Entry Week 3

Courtney Blake
ENG 697 Reflective Journal
Week 3 Readings

Observations/Quotations
Response/Reflection
Email

“While rushing to send an email…we don’t always take the time to consider tone, grammar, and conventions such as capitalization and punctuation” (99).
This is definitely a problem that my students have— whenever they email me an essay, or have a question about an assignment that they ask over email, there is absolutely no attention paid to writing in complete sentences, or using proper grammar whatsoever. I think Kajder’s idea about having the students compose in Word or whatever first would help in school, but you can’t guarantee that they will do that at home. While I agree that it allows introverted students a safe space to communicate with their peers and I, I am not sure if I can require emailing in my classroom, at least not as a homework assignment, since many of my students don’t have computers, or the internet. I would have to come up with an alternate use. I did check out Epals a little bit, and since it isn’t blocked, that might be a good place to start.

Discussion boards
I like the idea of a discussion board, because as Kajder writes, it “allows for learning to occur as students’ questions arise, rather than having them retain the question for discussion six or even twelve hours later” (102). One of the biggest issues in my classroom is that often times I will have 20+ students all wanting to share a story or experience, answer a question etc., and I can’t call on all of them. A discussion board would allow them to post their thoughts without having to wait their turn, miss a turn etc. And it would save a ton of time— I could hear what they all have to say without using valuable class time to hear it!

Listservs
This might be a good way to keep in touch with parents. I need to look into it a little bit more, but it sounds like it would be a lot easier than creating a newsletter and having to mail it home.

Virtual Field Trips
I browsed around www.globalschoolnet.org and www.field-guides.com to see what those were all about. Global School seems like it could be more interactive and like it has more possibilities than Field Guides. Also, some of the web pages on the field trip I took on the Field Guide website were blocked on our server, so that could create some issues. But they are definitely worth looking into a bit more.