(15) Final Project: Medieval Ballad

Medieval Ballad Matrix

“I think that ballads are always something where I can really become one with the audience,” Namie Amuro, Japanese musician and actress.

This lesson plan primarily focuses on increasing ninth to eleventh grade students’ understanding of medieval ballads. In the original lesson plan, it was a whole unit that spanned on for at least a week and incorporated modern interpretations of ballads, as well, but I decided the first half, centered on specifically medieval ballads, was cohesive enough to stand on its own, yet had just enough holes for me to modify with my own additions of technology, taken from my interactivity three group list. I think the end result is very interesting and something I would love to try in my own class. Surprisingly, some of the best technologies were subtle rather than bombastic and worked really well, despite that.

Row One (Access): Much of the introduction to this lesson requires direct teaching, lecturing, a general class discussion and individual work. I use SmartBoard, its overhead projector and/or PowerPoint to ameliorate my lecture, so there is visual, oral and auditory reinforcement for students. I can also write notes on my chalkboard to satisfy this same purpose. I open the discussion up by asking students what nursery rhymes they remember from their childhood and activate their prior knowledge. They are given examples of ballads through employment of the internet and/or use their physical anthology. Students start to compile a checklist of ballad characteristics that I use to informally, formatively assess them. They are required to find textual evidence as per the NJCCCS standard to select common characteristics. Technology is used in abundance, effectively and productively, throughout this section, in accordance with the NETS-S.

Row Two (Analyze): This section opens up with a quick review, for which the non-digital technology, the ballad checklist, is used. This helps students dissect and analyze facets of a ballad, like complexity of characters, connecting back to the NJCCCS reading standard listed. Students are then asked to scaffold off of the aforementioned section and research ballads on their own on a computer. They use websites like Early Child Ballad and No Fear Shakespeare to understand what ballads entail, as well as gleaning basic understanding from Wikipedia, all the while taking notes on Notetaker software. This meets the NETS-S requirement of using technology to locate and collect information from various sources. The NJCCCS speaking/listening are satisfied after research, whereupon students are placed into small groups and asked to collaborate and pick a ballad to create a skit out of. This will be their homework. Meanwhile, I assess them based on the notes they took in Notetaker.

Row Three (Communicate): The night before this class, students collaborate online with Class Jump, a web-based discussion board for classrooms, which works to reinforce a positive view of technology that can be used for education and collaboration, as the NETS-S standard desires. I can check their logs there for another assessment. Together, they write a script, perhaps using Microsoft Word to minimize surface errors, that imagines a detailed scenario to go along with their chosen ballads. They can refer back to their checklist for support. I collect these scripts and grade them; if all goes well, students will have satisfied the NJCCCS writing standard in this row.

Row Four and Five (Evaluate and Produce): I merged rows four and five because I felt they went hand in hand, with the students’ evaluation being a direct result of their production. In this part, students actually perform the skits they created. The whole class is given a group assessment sheet to gauge how this production occurs and students will know to revise their writing, according to the NJCCCS writing standard, based on the reaction. Their skits will also be recorded and played back on software like iMovie, so they can see for themselves how their presentation looks, through more objective eyes. If their organization in the script is cohesive enough to meet the NJCCCS writing standard in the produce part, they will likely perform perfectly fine. In regards to the speaking/listening NJCCCS standard in produce, seeing themselves perform ‘makes strategic use of digital media’ in order to self-assess. The class, meanwhile, uses the speaking/listening NJCSS standard in the evaluate section to see if they can adequately critique the performers’ use of rhetoric, strength argument and validity of evidence. A TV or computer monitor is used to replay the recorded skits for further assessment. A grade is assigned based on the final result, as well as participation prior.

Original Lesson

(14) A Creative Writing Website

One of the websites I linked for Interactivity #3 was fictionpress.com. This is an interactive fiction website where amateur writers create free accounts and share stories for other users to critique. This website is important to me for several reasons. I've noticed that I have a firmer grasp on grammar than even some fellow English majors. This isn't, unfortunately, because my teachers were so much better than theirs - though they were definitely amazing and one reason I decided to follow in their footsteps. Rather, appropriating the techniques of popular writers on websites like this and even published authors helped me improve my own skills.

I also love fictionpress because, as well as being an English educator, I think of myself as a writer. I write short stories, novellas, poetry and have attempted (but have no patience for) longer stories. Along with teaching more formal writing, I am interesting in taking on creative writing classes, too. One thing I think would be fun to do for my creative writing students is to create a website like fictionpress for them, focused on only my students rather than anyone with access to the internet. Workshops are a major component of courses like this; students share their stories with classmates, everyone reads, everyone offers a like and a dislike in class, and everyone writes about a half a page of cohesive comments, along with margin comments throughout. If, instead of doing this in class, or as well as doing this in class, students posted to this website and received critique that way, they would leave a permanent (ish) imprint of their developing work online, for them to come back to and evolve from even upon losing hard-copies, but they'd also keep the feedback they need.

This would be an informal testing procedure for me, too. In my own creative writing classes, my professor is often clueless when students don't read their classmates' stories, but if that information is available online, I can see that every student has posted and weight what it is that they did comment.

(13) Cumulative Progress Indicators

Helpful resource!

In my assessment for learning class, our final assignment requires use of cumulative progress indicators. Our professor thought we had all already heard about it, but I could not recall having done so and I was very confused while doing my assignment. Although he tried, our professor only gave a basic explanation that I couldn't really understand, and it certainly didn't have all the CPIs. Thankfully, I found this great website that gives examples of CPIs in several subjects, so not only can I create an English-oriented lesson plan now, you can all create lesson plans in your subject areas with CPIs within reach. I hope you enjoy this tool I've found.

(12) Edutopia

Source: here.

There are many interesting resources available for teachers online. It's simply a matter of looking for them. Edutopia, a website published by The George Lucas Educational Foundation, is one of these. Lucas is, of course, a legend for his contribution to science fiction, the Star Wars franchise, and technology is one facet of science. The link above offers some tips for how technology can be incorporated into an English classroom. Of the many listed, I am particularly fond of the blog idea and that involving Sonic the Hedgehog, which is somewhat similar to the Halo Odyssey video I posted about - an innovative new look at an old epic. As for the blog, I created a fantasy class blog for one of my projects last semester. Although there were no students to actually test drive it, I set up what I thought were user-friendly tools for eventual students to employ, and it was very fun for me, so I imagined it would be for my students, as well.

(11) Halo Odyssey

Last semester, I took a class somewhat similar to this one, about digital rhetoric. It discussed remix culture and how people can use the web to create new things out of old. When researching for it, I found several intriguing 'Halo Odyssey' projects. An example of one is embed above. Many of these projects were created for English classrooms like the one I will someday have myself. I think what's beneficial about these, although it's evident students have a lot of leeway, is that it's a fun assignment. Students get to manipulate characters they'd probably be playing, anyway, in order to get into the scope of their reading. I would allow my students to create projects like this. Would you?

(10) WebQuest

I am sad to say that, until recently, I did not investigate the teaching tool WebQuest. I decided to now and found out some of its very wonderful benefits.

1. Teachers are the ones who create groups on WQ, although others can, so they provide the sources. There are a plethora of these, from simple documents to spreadsheets to links.
2. The work done is very group oriented and creates a safe space for even shy students, who do not typically involve themselves in class, to participate in group discussion.
3. There are also tasks/assignments to be done on WQ, which scaffold learning with whatever source provided as the brickwork.

In these ways, WQ can increase critical thinking, but does not help with rote memorization skills involving fact or definition recall. I can, however, imagine myself using it in my classroom.

(9) Robo-Readers

(link to study)

An interesting study by the University of Akron dissects the effectiveness of virtual essay graders and whether they are better or worse than human graders. This study is very integral to English education because it impacts English teachers' jobs. My father used to jokingly say, someday robots will fulfill all needs and humans will be out of work. This may be part of the issue. If a robot can grade students' essays with the same or better results than a human educator, then the skill sets of that educator will be taken for granted. However, that isn't the only cog in the machine. Robo-Readers are praised because they are said to be more objective. The problem with this is that there haven't been nearly enough comprehensive studies over a long period of time that assess the practicality of this. In fact, the supporters and supposed scientists of these RRs may even doctor results. On page nine of the document, it states that several online graders defied state mandated terms when analyzing essays. Although it may save me time to use RRs like this, some level of subjectivity can be appropriate when reading through students' work. There's a strength of content and aspects of their personality that their essays appropriate and these must be appreciated. Like Microsoft Word, it's probably that these robots check for certain key terms and basic grammar continuity. Students may quickly figure this out and, as explained in my last entry, learn to beat and cheat their tests. Further studies must be done on these RRs before they become more heavily used, if they ever do.

(8) Coursera and Other Online Courses

(link to article)

Scientists Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller taught several web-based courses at Stanford University last year and were awed to find that they'd touched the educations of at least one hundred thousand students. This is one of the main appeals of online courses. Our Integrating Technology course is example enough of that; where the in class course meets one day a week and tends to about thirty students, our online counterpart reaches one hundred and fifty. This is a huge jump. Ng and Koller found that many other professors were enthralled by the idea of impact so many students' lives all at once. Thus, they created their company, Coursera.

These classes operate as follows: professors partnered with Coursera create interactive lectures. I found their assessment strategy for humanities and social science classes, like English, very interesting. Typically, in those cases, essays are required, but rather than having professors grade over one hundred thousand of these essays (which would be impossible), students are paired with their peers and grade via an established rubric. This way, they are part of the teaching process as makeshift teachers themselves.

The biggest issue with classes offered in programs like Coursera is that they operate on an 'honor code' and are easily cheated. An example of this comes to mind, sadly. My brother's friend, when doing MyAccess assignments from home, had his own older brother write his essays for him, so they could get a 5/5, and his teacher was none-the-wiser. I do like, however, having students play a more hands on role in their education. When I teach, I will try letting my students grade each other's papers in at least a very basic sense. Teaching will actually teach them, in this case.

(7) Interactivity #5

 Spreadsheet: Here.

The teacher I interviewed is an eleventh grade English teacher in the Wayne school district. Unfortunately, this teacher was completely unfamiliar with the National Education Technology Standards for both Students and Teachers. I made sure to link to these standards, in the above case, so she could read them. This teacher is older and has been teaching for a while. She hadn't even heard of the NETS. In her classes, she told me technology is used and encouraged, but is not made mandatory by higher authorities of the school. Rather, for her lesson plans, she does not even have a separate section for technology; it is instead interspersed throughout her lesson objectives. She said, for example, that they are currently reading Shakespeare's Julius Caesar in her class. She scaffolds her students' understanding of the text by having them watch snippets of the film sometime during the unit. Although there are always discrepancies between the text and the film, seeing characters come to life and hearing the way particular lines of the skit are related, can aid visual and auditory learners gain a stronger grasp of the lesson.

My teacher's school district has not yet begun to implement the NETS-S and NETS-T standards. Older teachers like her have likely never heard of these standards. I discussed, however, Interactivity 5 with someone in my class, who also interviewed a teacher from the Wayne school district. This teacher's a recent graduate of Rutgers University's teaching program and, while her school also hasn't implemented the NETS, she learned about them in her teaching courses. I think this is generally the case. From what I recall of high school, many of my older educators were daunted by technology because they didn't grow up with it the way new teachers are. The most done in English classes I experienced was screening of films for our reading texts. Newer teachers use technologies like smartboards or even iPads to further their students' understanding. Doing this helps them to relate to students. In a blog post I read, someone wrote about how cellphones are used in places without more advanced technology to help students. Even if teachers cannot give students access to computers, they can encourage them to use their phones, something most students have, to take pictures or make films for school. This is wiser than fighting against new technology – for example, taking phones away when students text in class. Technology that is 'questionable' can be used to ameliorate students' educations.

Although the NETS were originally created in 1998, it's apparent and not very surprising that many teachers don't yet know about them. Their importance is nonetheless observable and, as a future teacher, I'd encourage my peers to incorporate them. Standard #2 for the NETS-S highlights communication and collaboration. Students use digital technologies to make contact with one another. With how difficult it is for students' schedules to correlate, anyone can see the benefit of an online discussion group where students can sign in and share input.

(6) NJ/PA CRLA Conference

As a future English teacher, I've been given a very amazing opportunity to tutor English writing (100, 105 and 106) by the Center for Academic Development and Assessment, here at MSU. By comprehensively dissecting essays with members of our campus community, I've gained confidence in my own abilities as an educator. I'm also afforded other advantages, such as frequent tutor training.

I had one such experience of this on March 16th, during spring break, when I helped to represent our university at the New Jersey/Pennsylvania College Reading and Learning Association (a sponsor of my employer, CADA). For free, I attended many seminars pertaining to tutoring that could just as easily be employed in a larger classroom; the particular seminars I chose were, as expected of an English major, related to literature. One seminar honed specifically on technology.

It's common knowledge that text and chat lingo contribute to the distillation of students' output in writing classes. Although it's hard to believe, many students, even in college, do not know how to alternate between the informal lexicon they use with their friends and that reserved for authority figures. The job market is such that being able to express oneself in written and oral speech is pertinent to acquiring a respectable position. If graduated students reply to an extension of an interview opportunity with, "C u there," they are guaranteed not to get the job.

This is something every English teacher should learn to work around. We cannot simply tell our students to do something; we have to show them. The CRLA conference technology seminar gave great examples of what struggling teachers could do. At the very start of the class, as an introduction, students could be required to compose an email to their teacher about a pseudo-issue (an absence, request for tutoring, etc.). The teacher could then analyze with the class what about these emails was done right and wrong.

Another example dictated that English teachers (and perhaps teachers in general) should explicate to students the severity of social networks being abused by employers to pick and choose who gets what position. A volunteer's facebook status (not necessarily a student's, but perhaps a fake account's or a teacher's friend's account) could be dissected by the class. The teacher would pose the question, would you hire this person if you were an employer? In the example given during the seminar, it was the presenter's fiance's status. He wrote something along the lines of, "gotz a b in sceince. cn't bleive i passed yo," with gratuitous grammatical errors. In this situation, even if students write this way themselves, it's put into a different perspective for them and they acknowledge they would not hire this person, given the opportunity. It's not completely fair for them to have to censor themselves, but with the internet as public as it is, some wariness could be beneficial. The assignment students had to do as homework after this required them to copy/paste one of their own statuses and revamp it for a more formal setting.

I think using technology this way, rather than fighting is, is the only way to decrease its occasional negative impact on students.

(5) Social Networking as a Way of Understanding Perspective in an English Classroom

Last semester, in my CURR 312-03 (Teaching English Language Learners) class, the lesson plan in my content area given to me to modify was based on understanding perspective. The main text for this lesson was The True Story of the Three Little Pigs, which retold the popular three pig fairy tale in the big bad wolf's point of view. I found it very intriguing because it defied the conventional idea of a protagonist and forced students to look through the eyes of a character they might otherwise be unsympathetic to.

I recently started tutoring a student for my READ 411 class's fieldwork. N is eleven and very good at math. Just Wednesday, she was telling me about how she was chosen to take a special math placement test. English, however, is very difficult for her to grasp sometimes. Like me, she is American born, but the child of Bengali immigrants who can't always help her in English the way they can in math, which has a more universal language.

I asked N this weekend if she was familiar with facebook, to which she replied, "Well, duh, don't you have one?" This is a response I feel may be common to children and young adults nowadays, but I think it's possible to use it to our advantage, particularly in an English classroom. With that in mind, and tasked to create a multimedia lesson plan for READ 411, N and I read the introduction of D'Aulaires Book of Greek Myths. This is a text I recommend to any teacher introducing Greek mythology, which can be very dark, to very young students. The intro outlined the disparities between titans and gods and how the balance of power between them continually shifted.

After we'd read the intro, I asked N to recap it for me as briefly as she could. Once that was complete, I inquired whether she had a favorite character; she chose, quite obviously, Zeus, who is outlined as the hero who brought the tyrannical titans to their knees. D'Aulaires is especially wonderful because it helped N understand the complex family dynamic of the Olympians, the upper echelon of the gods. I urged her to take this understanding and, to assess it, create a facebook for Zeus that incorporated statuses and relationships to properly portray his perspective and his interaction with the other gods. This was a really fun task for her. She seemed to instantly know based on Zeus' dialogue in the myths that he might not speak to his peers the way she does hers. I noted down specific things she wrote as statuses (hiding from Hera again, getting advice from Athena, keeping Aphrodite away from flirty gods, etc), as well as the image she took from Google to use as Zeus' profile picture.

I think having students do something like this in a greater quantity, in my future classroom, would not only cater to their interests, but also help them get into the head-space of a character they might not otherwise care for. N told me she liked doing what we did, that it was fun, and there are vast differences between an ageless male god and an eleven year old girl, but she closed this gap almost effortlessly during the assignment.

(4) Interactivity #4

Lesson Plan: Twelfth Night.
Spreadsheet: Breakdown of TN lesson.

The lesson plan I chose is an introduction to Shakespeare's Twelfth Night that incorporates auditory and visual technologies. The lesson is also beneficial to my students in other ways; it employs multiple modalities (ex. a cluster map, group discussion, recordings, written skit, etc.), several NJ Core Curriculum Content Standards and other aspects that ameliorate the educational process.



I went to the NJCCCS website and chose Standard 3.3 out of the other English standards. It reads: Standard 3.3 (speaking): all students will speak in clear, concise, organized language that varies in content and form for different audiences and purposes. This blended with the curriculum goal of my lesson plan, which introduces Shakespeare's Twelfth Night to students by allowing them to first brainstorm, then apply specific vocabulary. It aids in building a larger lexicon for students.



It was a strong lesson, even without modification. Standards met were 3.3.12.C.1, which dealt with application of specific key words; these, in the lesson, were love/rejection, hope/loss, sloppy/foolish and quarreling/pleading. Students dissected these concepts using cluster maps. These served to activate prior knowledge. This was a student centered task. Cluster maps are an organizational technology, as per standard 3.3.12.D.2. Upon this individual organization, students were placed in small groups to satisfy standards 3.3.12.B.2 and 3.3.12.B.3: extend peer contributions through elaboration and illustration (as students did by elaborating their written understanding with a created skit); analyze, evaluate and modify the group process (the whole class watched/heard skits and offered constructive criticism in a discussion).



I added several facets to this lesson plan, despite finding it quite potent. I thought more technology could be used to better strengthen students' understanding. After our last interactivity, I realized how resourceful the internet. I discovered an open source cluster map technology that my class could use to compose a more thorough map. If provided with computers, my small groups could also employ this. It's not mentioned in procedural goals, but having the students grouped made a great teacher-centered task. The week before spring break, in my assessment class, my professor discussed how educators can gauge student knowledge/participation by shadowing each group to see who contributes what. This is something I've heard since beginning to learn how to teach. I took the final step as a chance to self-evaluate my lesson. By viewing every one of my students' digital compositions, I could understand if/where students met difficulty.


Technologies suggested were iMovie and Audacity, among others. They help me make value judgments and can aid my students in self-diagnosing their errors, too. This is why they're so integral to the lesson plan. Hearing and seeing their skits gives students an objective perspective. Having to edit them for viewing by the entire class ensures they have to think critically about their own strengths/weaknesses. I'd modify and use this lesson plan in my classroom. Hopefully, I get the chance to do this soon, during my professional semesters. I can even attempt it earlier with the student I tutor for READ 411. In that class, too, multiple modes and multimedia are lauded as being efficient.

(3) Interactivity #3

Spreadsheet: HERE.

Despite being very large, my interactivity group authentically collaborated as much as possible. Girard and Lizz set up a Google spreadsheet and contacted the rest of us with it promptly. We replied back to their emails with the address we employed when first creating our blogs. From then on, it was a matter of adding appropriate info to the spreadsheet. What I especially enjoyed about the process was, I could see changes my group members made as they were making them, meaning I had that much more insight into their thought processes without being face to face with them. Meeting in that way was troublesome because we had so many members with so many varying schedules, which made the group spreadsheet's features that much better. I believe everyone worked in a timely manner and put thought into their technologies. I operated by arranging my technologies according to the stages of pedagogical development and it seems everyone else did, too. For each stage, about two to three technologies were added (i.e. EBSCO Host + JSTOR for content management, Google docs for collaboration).

The list we've created will, I have no doubt whatsoever, be a wonderful tool for my future student teaching, fieldwork and classroom experiences. Not only did I list technologies that helped me shape my life, I have concurrent additions by peers, so I can see what they consider important when teaching in an English classroom. For example, a technology I listed that I don't think anyone else would have added is the website Fictionpress. It's a gathering of amateur writers and poets who give one another feedback and glean from that feedback ameliorated skills. This interaction could be an innovative way to increase students' love of writing; it certainly had that effect on me. On the other hand, many of my group-mates had technologies I didn't think of. Mike Cadmus mentioned digital storytelling. Where Fictionpress is a traditional means of narrating and expressing ideas, digital storytelling creatively endorses multiple-modalities, something which was discussed in a digital rhetoric class I took last semester. Students are more likely to be riveted if they are allowed to write a story, make a movie, create an online presentation, or anything along those lines, rather than simply composing an essay. I will definitely be saving a copy of our list for further use in future lessons.

(2) Interactivity #2

Instructional films in the 1900s were used by educators to propagate specific social agendas, just as certain texts in literature classrooms and schools today are employed to, for example, promote democratic values, as Montclair State's Portrait of a Teacher dictates.

Sources: Image is from Google. Portrait of a Teacher is paraphrased.

(1) Interactivity #1

1. Microsoft Word
2. Mozilla Firefox or Internet Explorer
3. Facebook

It may seem strange that, of these three, I picked Word to go first. It's because I have always loved to read. Novels of all kinds provided for me escapes and adventures, insights into people and places I'd never seen. Writing went hand in hand with that and teaching. I want to share my passion with future generations employing those two mediums. In my classroom, I will impart the knowledge I gather and the same in any books I write, too.These are the technologies that have impacted me most in my life. It may seem odd to label Word as the very first. It and Firefox are probably almost equal, but there is a reason I chose Word. In Montclair now, I am an English major with a creative writing minor. Reading and writing have always been very important to me. In books, I could see explore new worlds, experience new people, and this has shaped me into who I am today. That is why Word is important to me. It's grammar and spell check taught me very basic lessons in writing early on. Now, I use it not only to compose my academic essays, but short stories for my creative writing classes, as well. Trusting merely in Word can be problematic. It is not human, but also not perfect. Sometimes, I must exercise my better judgment to decide whether what Word tells me is actually logical and it often isn't.

I listed Firefox as my second most influential technology. The internet in general has been highly beneficial for me. I am an avid reader, as mentioned above, but I don't always have the time to visit bookstores or libraries. When I'm in need of a quick fix, I can find both professional and amateur literature online, which helps me to bolster my own abilities. Not only that, the internet provides so many other services. I have found many reputable research websites on it that have aided me in constructing papers to earn nice grades. Whenever I need to stop thinking, I can visit silly websites or even watch movies online. This can cause problems, however, as proven by recent propositions like SOPA, PIPA and ACTA. People misuse the internet so they don't have to go to stores or purchase anything. I haven't illegally downloaded myself, but I'm aware piracy is an issue, and it's not the sole issue, either. I find scholarly sources online to ameliorate my writing, but this isn't always the case for others. They abuse the internet as a means to procrastinate.

Some of the most pertinent subsets if the internet are social networking sites, like Facebook. These are beneficial because they help people stay connected. I consider them influences for keeping me in touch with friends I might have otherwise grown apart from. On the other hand, I can honestly admit that it does the opposite sometimes. With more tools to communicate without being face to face, people are likely to become less personable. I myself have forgone meeting a friend because I could just as easily message them online.

My future students may be like Olivia in that they do not always have access to the technologies I need them to use. They may, on the flip side of the coin, use certain technologies too much as a crutch. Olivia's story and her quest to better herself via technology was inspiring. Other students may not be as driven. I think I should try to balance my curriculum so those who cannot access technology or do not care to are not at a disadvantage, but also so I can highlight the benefits of technology. Olivia uses it to express herself the same way I did and this touches me.