2/14/08 Blog

After taking the digital quiz, I realize that I know a lot about technology, however, there is still so much that I don’t know. I feel that I am in between a digital native and an immigrant. I wouldn’t consider myself an immigrant, because I grew up with technology and am very good at using the things that I know how to do. I wouldn’t consider myself completely native though, because there are still so many things that I don’t know how to do. According to Tompkins (p.84) emergent literacy is the perspective on how children become literate. I feel like this connects to my digital literacy, because you become more and more literate the more and more exposed you are to that particular thing.

I really enjoyed the Marcus: Gifted and Challenging article. I found many similarities between Marcus and my younger brother, who was also diagnosed with ADD and ADHD while in elementary school. I thought that this article gave me an insight into something I never could understand with my younger brother- his frustration about school. I couldn’t understand it, because he was so smart, genius on IQ charts. The article taught me that it was frustrating because his motor skills aren’t developed enough and fast enough to produce all of the information that is going on in his head during writing. This makes so much sense to me now, seeing how frustrated my brother was in school. I think it is so important as future teachers that we read and learn about things like this and ways to help students like this, otherwise they just fall through the cracks. I believe that is what happened with my brother- he could never sit still, had a hard time focusing, pretty standard ADHD characteristics- however instead of helping him, his teachers just yelled at him for always moving around and never completing his word on time. This of course made him instantly hate school and this attitude carried with him throughout his entire schooling. I’m happy to say that he just graduated high school (one semester early), but it certainly wasn’t easy and if his teachers would have even done anything similar to Marcus’ teachers, it would have made a big difference.

After looking at my GLCE’s, I feel that they do guide instructional choices to an extent- I feel that teachers feel that they need to accomplish the expectations, however, it’s hard to do because your actual classroom can never really be that scheduled- I mean that some activities take longer than others, sometimes you want to spend more or less time on certain things, etc. I think that all instruction needs to be differentiated to an extent. I feel that students are so different now (from each other- ESL, learning disabilities, different levels of reading, writing, etc), that lesson plans have to be modified to accompany all students’ learning styles. I don’t necessary even think that they need to be modified that much, however, a little modification is usually necessary.

~Sorry this is late~ I'm still catching up from being sick!

-Nicki Lendo