Books

I made a goal at the beginning of the summer to read at least one hundred young adult books. I am teaching older students now And I really want to be able to match kids with books. You can't do that unless you know both the student and the books. So, I created the goal of one hundred books.

Right now, I'm on track for meeting that goal which is more than I can say for my eat healthy goal or exercise daily goal. I think I have 28 books to go. But even though I am nearing goal completion, I find myself panicking. The more books I read the more I find that I want to read.

Last night I moved my reading list from the app I had been keeping it on to Goodreads. I won't delete the other app right now but I think Goodreads will offer a bit more functionality? I need to explore it to find how I can allow my students to recommend books for me even if they do not have a Goodreads account. Last year I just gave them my iPhone and asked them to write their recommendation in the app I was using. I like getting recommendations from the students and I like discussing books with them.

Twenty eight books to go. I'm reading Nerds right now because Wyatt recommended it. Time to get back to the book!

Blogging in School

I recently attended a conference that included a lot of sessions about using technology in the classroom. Several controversial issues came up. Many of the speakers felt very strongly that teachers should be using YouTube, Facebook and blogs as apart of everyday instruction. Yet, many of these sight are not only not used but actually blocked in schools.

Should students use blogs in school? What are the benefits and what difficulties may arise? What is the purpose? Do the benefits outweigh the negative aspects?

Our students have kept journals for writing instruction since kindergarten. Those journals have always been paper and pencil and have had the express purpose of helping the student to learn to read and write. However, how many adults keep paper and pencil journals as compared to the number of adults who use blogs to record the events of their lives as well as their thoughts and feelings? Of all the students presently in our seventh grade, only a very few will ever regularly write in a paper journal for either professional or personal reasons. However, many may keep blogs. In order to prepare them for their future, teaching about blogs may have many benefits.

The writing process (pre-write, draft revise, edit and publish) may be taught through blogs, though pre-write would be difficult. Certainly the whole process is faster with blogs. Many people do read over their work and revise and edit before pushing that publish button.

The purposes of past journals have not been to include the entire writing process but instead to just give kids a chance to express themselves and practice writing. Certainly a blog could duplicate this process with the added benefit of easy publication and feedback through comments.

The ease of publication may be a big benefit to blogging. Kids may be more likely to do their best work if they know that it will be published and their classmates can read it and comment. Writing is for reading and communicating but past journals have often been shared sporadically with little feedback.

The main difficulty, as I see it, would be the matter of privacy. A student blog would need to be set up so that the student's right to privacy is not compromised. Posts would need to be available to other students but not the world in general. Students should also have some way to keep a post completely private if it contains information they do not want to share even with their teacher or classmate.

The teacher also needs a way to have control over the blogs so that she has control over any issues that arise and can deal with them in an expedient manner. This would mean that many blogging sites on the Internet would not be useful for this purpose.

Overall, I believe that the benefits of blogging outweigh the difficulties and that is why I am beginning to try some blogging with my summer students. Starting with only a few students seems like a good idea to me. We'll see what they think about it.

Sushi Lessons

How does someone who is iffy about sushi end up taking sushi lessons? They have a daughter who loves sushi and doesn't want to go alone.

Jessi and I went to a sushi making class on Monday in Salt Lake City.  With the help of Chef Joe, we made three different kinds of sushi. We made california rolls, spicy tuna hand rolls and salmon nigiri (I kept calling it nigini but that's Voldemort's snake from Harry Potter and who would want to eat him?).

The chef, though his name was Joe, was very much a Japanese native and we had to listen carefully to understand him. Fortunately, he also demonstrated what to do so we kept looking at his work and at what the others in the class were doing and we got it. After each roll, he went around the group to tell everyone how they were doing. One man had a really hard time so the chef joked with him about how poorly he was doing at this and he fixed it up for him.

To make a California roll, you put your seaweed on your mat with the shiny side down. Then you cover all but the bottom half inch of the seaweed with sticky rice. After you turn it over, you put crab,avocado and cucumber down the middle of the roll. You have to try to get the ingredients spread out equally so that the you can roll it tightly. You roll from the bottom and if you roll it right, you don't see any seaweed, just rice with sesame seed sprinkled on. Ten you use the mat to make it round and then put a flat bottom on it. When you cut it you should cut through the top seaweed and then chop down fast. If youi cut too slowly, you may squish it.

Rolling the tuna roll was harder than the california roll. You had to hold it in your hand and roll it so it looked like an ice cream cone. I think i put too much rice in mine with the spicy tuna and the cucumber. The salmon was easier but mine didn't look as polished as many others.

Making sushi is pretty fun and I think I'll try to make more at home. But, since it's not my favorite food, I'll have to find someone else to eat it.