Thursday, October 4, 2012

Webinar Watching

Topics for Today
1. Welcome back
2. Grammar Webinar
3. NoRedInk.com


I last time we had to blog, was almost 2 months ago.  I was looking forward to a mini vacation then, and I am wishing for one now.  That said, I am loving this adventure so far.  I am in a classroom that I love, but I am still trying to balance the many strands of my life.  I hope my fellow bloggers are finding fun and excitement in their classrooms and university classes.  Welcome back!

For todays blog, I watched the Webinar entitled "Got Good Grammar? — Using NoRedInk.com to help students improve their grammar/writing skills while saving red ink!" I like that our classes  use past MACers' work to show us what is possible.  Jeff Scheur created a Webinar, where he discussed how his manual and website noredink.com helped his students learn how to use grammar.  This is relevant to me as a future English teacher, but also immediately because my mentor teacher asked me if I had any ideas about teaching better grammar to our AP students.  

Mr. Scheur suggested creating a Grammar Manual and then instead of writing feedback on a student's paper, he just wrote a number that correlated to a section in the Grammar Manual.  I think this idea would be helpful for the motivated students that want to really learn and understand the grammar.  On the other hand, I wonder if the less motivated students would still see red ink and still be discouraged.  A written manual would be a cool classroom tool, and maybe the students could help create it as an assignment. I think this would be considered an authentic task and a useful one as well.

The second and main portion of this Webinar was about the website noredink.com. This is a really cool website that inputs "relevant" names and activities into grammar practice.  The student logs into the website and chooses which categories he or she is interested in, and then practices grammar while seeing names of people he or she knows.  The categories cover sports, music, tv, celebrities. cartoons, and presidents.  The other way students can practice grammar is by connecting this website with Facebook and then the student practices grammar using his or her Facebook friends. I think this is again, a great tool for motivated students that want their work to be relevant and engaging, but I still wonder if the mere mention of a celebrity really engages them. I would definitely be willing to try this and provide this website as a resource for my students.  I agree that students should be engaged if we want them to learn grammar, but I am not sure this "Mad-Lib" style of practice is the way to go.  My first conflict is the fact that the scenarios don't seem to make sense. One practice problem had something to do with Kanye West buying a donkey in Egypt.  This may sound silly to the student and keep him or her engaged for a moment, but it doesn't seem authentic.  My other conflict is that while it seems individualized because the student chooses the category and practice, it is ultimately a website, not a real person.  I know that it would be many hours of work if a teacher were to create these type of "relevant" practice problems, but if it is used for extra help or as a differentiation tool, meaning not used for everyone, then I think it could be done.  I love the idea of using examples that the kids might be excited about, but as we have talked about in our Education Psych class, engagement from a hook is not always the best engagement.  If the student reads the Kanye West example and then starts daydreaming about Mr. West, grammar is still not be learned.

I don't mean to disregard this tool because I think it is great for certain uses. I already bookmarked, diigo'd, and evernoted the web page (I have a problem), but I have reservations.  It is often hard for me to evaluate tools like these because I have not really been doing the heavy lifting of grading, but I appreciate that this works for many teachers and while it might not fit my personality, I can see some merit. And I do like that it is free!

Has anyone investigated the website or watched the Webinar? I would like to hear what my fellow MACers have to say. English teachers are you sold on this website?