I had never heard of cell-phone novels until I had read "I (Heart) Novels". I definitely like the idea of writing freely for yourself and allowing others to read it for free. The material is "unfiltered and unedited" so it is basically exactly how the writer intended it, which is extremely rare in any form of media at this time. I think the article acts as a way to inform the public of the ever-changing world of literature and how technology is a bug part of those changes. This makes me think of the different ways I could allow my students to express themselves in and out of the classroom. Who knows maybe someday we won't even have text books any more and we'll read everything from our cell phones or I-pads. There will no longer be formal writing assignments instead all assignments will be completed through some sort of mobile device. I like the creativity that is shown of this new medium in the article, but at the same time I would hate to see books and hard copies completely disappear. I prefer to do all of my reading with the actually book in front of me and some of my writing with pen and paper, and I really don't see that changing for me anytime soon.
Students using Kindles in the classroom
This brings us to the article "Publish or Perish". The future of reading is apparently electronic, which I am all right with as long as that means the world of literature will live on. Now I may be on of the people at fault for the decline of sales in the book world. When I was younger I would buy new books all the time, whether it was at my elementary school book fair or out of one of the take home book order forms, but these both stopped as I got older. So instead I turned to the library and used that for my reading needs for most of high school and some of college only recently (actually a couple of weeks ago) did I decide to start buying books again. I don't have an I-pad or a kindle so I won't be buying any e-books, strictly old fashioned for me. I'll still use the library, which I will also encourage my students to do as frequently as possible, but I simply plan on buying more books for my personal library. The world of literature is changing, but as long as I can still read whatever and whenever I want I'm o.k. with that.
"Video Games in the Classroom" describes something that I can only call awesome. Now before you jump on me and say video games have no place in the classroom, let me just say that I agree. But with this new generation of students video games are a way of life for a lot of them and with the class being only three times a week, I can begin to see the positive side of it. So what can a student learn from playing video games, how about accepting defeat, problem solving, and teamwork. Video games have nothing on real life situations but if that what we need to use to get kids motivated and ready to perform, why not give them a break three times a week and teach them something along the way. The article also deals with school budgets which I've seen get a little sketchy when I was in high school, so maybe this isn't for everyone, or at least the hands on activity or a stand alone class. But why not just present the students with the idea to look at their video games or other after school activities in a different way and challenge them to gain lessons and values from them instead of just zoning out. We as teachers must adapt to the students way of life, mostly for motivation and to gain some level of connectedness and I see no harm in doing this through video games.
Video of a teacher using video games in the classroom
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