Teacher+Notes

Reflections

About a month ago I started thinking about what I was going to teach 4th quarter. I decided that I would teach American Government. It was about that time when I noticed lots of congressmen were starting to use Twitter and some ideas started brewing in my head. What if I followed some members of Congress and aggregated the tweets for the students to read? Why not put a current events spin on the class? I started thinking about all of the ways students could actually participate using different tools. Over a period of several days (and after some people from my PLN made some great suggestions) I had the class planned out in my head. If you know me you know that I am fearless in the classroom. I am a risk taker. I am constantly trying new things and I will not abandon an idea unless I am convinced it was flawed. I am convinced this class is going to ROCK!
 * March 5, 2009**

I hope this class does not turn into a three-ring circus, although with everything they will be working on it might get a little crazy at times! Students will work on sections out of the textbook. They will follow members of Congress to get a feel for what a typical day is like. Students will also pick a current/social issue and subscribe to news alerts (using Google Alerts) to help them keep up on breaking news on their topic.

We will study each branch for approximately 3 1/2 weeks. During that time students will find news articles that pertain to that branch and share them on the wiki. We (or I) will pick a few each week for students to discuss in class. They will continue those discussions across sections on the class Ning. My classes have 7-10 students which can sometimes limit dialog. This way everyone will have to talk! I will post the story on my blog in the Ning and students will have to respond. (That reminds me--- I need to make a rubric for that!)

I will spend the rest of this weekend making sure everything is ready to go for Monday.

__April 16, 2009__ Students have been using Twitter for about a month now. I had them "unfollow" the news stations because the number of updates were overwhelming. I wanted them to focus on the updates from the Congressmen. We still have another week or so before we move on to the section on the legislative branch. I am not too sure how I will have them look at those updates. I think I will have different students focus on different members of Congress. The students will report their findings to the class.