Spinning Top In Mud

If you are from Trinidad and Tobago, you most certainly are familiar with the term "spinning top in mud." Basically it means that one can be doing a lot of stuff to achieve an end but the sad truth is that you are proceeding nowhere.
This idea comes to mind when one considers the literacy problem which exist in T&T. Let's just begin at 1990 which was designated to be International Literacy Year by United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO). During this period and beyond a number of literacy initiatives have been implemented as a panacea to our literacy problem, yet still it persists. One often wonders therefore on the seriousness of our society in addressing such issues. Are we spinning top in mud?
To answer this question let us consider the following: What were the end result of projects done by The Committee of International Literacy Year in TT (COMILYTT)in 1990? Did project R.E.A.D help us? Why were we ranked seventh among 31 countries that participated in a reading literacy study? This is according to a report issued by the International Organisation for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement Reading Literacy Study called "How literate are we?" and conducted in Trinidad & Tobago between 1989 to 1992 (Trinidad & Tobago Express, 1993).This list could have continued.
Furthermore, Laurel B. Ince, a then lecturer in English Literary Studies at Valsayn Teachers College responded to an article written on the front page of the Trinidad Express in 1993 by Fulton Wilson entitled "TT Fails Reading Test." She proposed seven concerns that she thought the national policy on education may need to hurriedly address. These included:
- All primary schools should have a library
- All schools must have several copies of the daily newspapers.
- There should be a stipulated period for silent reading each day to be followed by
a discussion/sharing on what was read.
- There should be a reading teacher to deal with reading disability on a one-on-one basis in all schools.

Seventeen years down the literacy road are we any better off? If not, where have we gone wrong? Are we just implementing programmes after programmes without a soild system to support and sustain them? Are we spinning top in mud?
It is my view that we really need to tackle this problem head on and relentlessly until it abates. Tell me what you think?

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RSS Pressure

Please tell me that there is no technology gap between my brain and technology because it certainly felt that something was not connecting. I watched the video 4 or more times before I really understood what they were trying to tell me. He was not teaching me how to share a document but just how to subscribe to a particular website and there I was trying to use the information to also figure out how to share a document with others.
PRESSURE!
Can you imagine how the man’s humming happily at the beginning of the video started to irritate me? Why was he so happy and I so frustrated? Obviously I began to fast forward that part. I sang my lecturer’s name in different keys. Hey, I still appreciate what was taught and their efforts, do not get me wrong.
It took me all of 2 hours before I succeeded, thankfully of course.
I became ambitious because I thought that this aspect of the course was not that clear to me. I therefore perceived that the best way to learn this was by doing it.
Since I already had a Google Account I chose to use Google Reader and experiment with this RSS Feed.
What must be understood though about the more mature (not old) generation like me and computers is that if in an illustration an icon is shown as orange, then for goodness sake keep the item orange in the real life example too! Here I am looking for an orange icon only to realise two hours afterward that it is blue like most of the page and thus harder to find.
What was the hidden curriculum? Persistence paid off and it is really quite simple in the end.

Flavour "Yuh Story" the Caribbean Way

If you like reading short stories that reflect on long ago or have an important lesson to be learnt, you would love this site called “Some Perfect Short Stories.” I did not read all of them but just two. The first talked about carrying water on one's head. Of course if you have grown up in the Caribbean especially in the 1970's this was a very common phenomenon. In my days it was said that it caused a person to have a very refined and dainty walk, but knowing how things go here, maybe someone else may have heard something else.
The second story was called “I had a Hero.” I absolutely loved this one because it teaches us and children that heroes are ordinary people among us who have desirable qualities that we can emulate. Anyone can be a hero to another, if you live by correct principles and values, which is so needed in our “less personable” world.
A link to this site is provided under “My Hyperlinks”
Another interesting site I found was “Coomacka Island” They tell interesting children stories based on a Caribbean theme. The one I watched and listened to was “The Story of Spider & Ant.” Children will thoroughly love hearing these stories. They remind me about using e-books and digital storytelling to get my students motivated to read and to help sustain that motivation. You can also check out the site and stories by clicking on “Coomacka Island” under “My Hyperlinks” on this page. Please ensure though that you approve of the stories before presenting them to your students.
If you find other interesting sites that relate to Caribbean “Flavour” Stories that are “Free” please let me know.

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Update Your Teaching Technology

While reading an article written by Paulo Freire I saw these words “Reading the world precedes reading the word, and subsequent reading of the word is hinged to continually reading the world.” Needless to say I was very much intrigued though his discourse was a bit challenging at times. I gathered that he was speaking of how children learn things about their environment or world even before they can formally read, thus he reflected on the intertwined relationship of reading and the world.
In essence, the world provides context for our reading and thereby facilitates greater understanding.
If this is indeed so, then one can understand why the use of these modern day technologies need to be incorporated into the classroom. Many of our students were born in this digital age, thus their reading has been shaped in such. If we as educators do not move onto this new canvas by refusing to update our “teaching technology,” wouldn’t it affect our Digital Natives/Net Geners/ Millennials drastically?

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Important Tips for Wiki Work

If you are thinking about really delving into “Wiki Work” with students, a good book to get is “Using Wikis for Online Collaboration” by James & Margaret West. I had the privilege of reading portions of this book and it was really helpful. In this book they pinpointed several characteristics that students should possess,and which many researchers have suggested are key to wiki success. These they placed under two main headings namely:

Cognitive or Prerequisite Skills
1. Writing & Constructive Editing Skills because the exercise should encourage writing not criticism.
2. Web Skills therefore students’ confidence about using the web need to be known
3. Group Process Skills such as shared leadership and conflict resolution.

Affective Value-base Behaviours.
1. Openness which is deemed to be the most challenging characteristic.
2. Integrity in terms of each student doing their part to the best of their ability.
3. Self Organization refers to one's own behaviour and how one responds to this mode of teaching.


Please feel free to post additional tips.

Motivating the Reluctant Secondary School Reader

An article in the ERIC Digest written by Ms. Norma Decker Collins entitled Motivating Low Performing Adolescent Readers posits the view that these readers have negative experience with the task, and consequently view “reading as a process of getting the word right rather than an act of making sense of the material.” Ms. Collins also seems to infer that these adolescent readers are void of metacognitive skills which can greatly facilitate the reading process. Accordingly she insists that these readers need:
1) The opportunity to revalue themselves.
2) Relevant experience with text.
3) Strategies that would result in comprehension.

Ms. Collins thus proceeded to provide a number of ways in which these readers can be motivated. Among these were:
1) When using informational text, teachers should construct situations in which students find personal reasons for comprehending the text.
2) Use films or television to broaden students experiential background knowledge.

As Reading Specialist, we too must think in terms of how we can motivate the low performing adolescent reader. What other strategies do you think can assist them?

Don’t Throw Away The Baby With The Bath Water.

Recently I read an article written by Joanne Rooney entitled “Teaching two Literacies,” which was published in March, 2009 in the Educational Leadership. I found the article to be very interesting because she really made me consider the issue of “throwing away the baby with the bathwater.” The baby here refers to the mastery of traditional skills, while the bathwater refers to the acquirement of non-traditional ways of gathering information and communicating instruction such as blogs, wikis, text messaging, Facebook, chat rooms etc.
She centred her attention on teenagers, to whom the new digital age seems to have the greatest lure and expressed the hope that in addition to reading blogs, instant messaging, and other digital technologies, that teenagers would also “relish such experiences as reading a great book, writing a personal letter, or memorizing a poem.”

Such hope stemmed from her belief that although the ways in which we read and communicate may be changing, “the ability to understand, use, and appreciate the written word remains the core quality of an educated person.” She therefore surmised that schools should incorporate the new technologies but insist on mastery of traditional skills. This she refers to as the “Teaching of two Literacies”

Ms. Rooney did not leave the matter there but proceeded to enumerate 3 ways in which this could be done, namely:
1) Continue to encourage students to relish good books, cherish the beauty of expressive writing, and communicate through powerful (and correct) language. Hence “How r u feeln?” must be outlawed.
2) “Redefine” literacy and abandon some archaic teaching methods such as using textbooks as the primary source of information and others.
3) Principals and teachers alike must be adamant about teaching, reading, writing, and thinking in schools.

What do you think?

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