Visit to Oatley Public School is On!!

I am so excited! make sure that you keep 2.00-3.30 free for our visit to year 6P at Oatley PS on June 21. Please get out of work that afternoon, Natasha! We are teaching the unit: Getting the Message. Mmmm, I can sense that online communication might figure in this lesson somehow!

Online database available from DET computers

It seems that DET students DO have access to online databases: http://www.epnet.com/thisTopic.php?marketID=12&topicID=13

Journal article on Wikipedia

This article is by Marc Prensky, he of digital native/ digital immigrant fame.Prensky-Search_vs_Research-01.pdf

Another paper on MI if you are interested

This paper examines the application (ontology) of MI written by an Australian academic: Noble MI tool.pdf

Updated rubric for assignment

holisticrubric.doc

Referencing Guide

apa 5th guide1.pdf

What do you need to know?

Please tell me what you need to know in order to complete the assessment task.

State Library

The State Library, that we will be visiting on May 31, has some interesting online materials. There is one page for HSC English students, http://www.atmitchell.com/navigator/, that hopefully might be useful.

Why the Looking Glass Self?

As this is a scholarly appraisal of the constructions of learning in our society, I better explain where the title comes from. This quote from Reichert and Kuriloff (2004 p. 545-546) says it better than I ever could:

"The looking glass self, a model of self-concept development, first offered by Cooley (1902) a century ago, is still useful. This model holds that children’s ‘‘self-concepts are largely derived from what they do with the images they find gazing into the looking glass of external social appraisals’’ (Ryan, 1991, p. 259). How a boy approaches books and numbers, the arts and sports, how he forms friendships and mentoring relationships in school, how he interprets the results of his effortsFthese and other responses are mediated by an emerging self-theory which is ‘‘essentially a social phenomenon that arises out of social experiences’’ (Mischel & Morf, 2003, p. 17)."

I am using the Looking Glass Self here as a metaphor to describe how we might understand learning, not as an innocent victims of the meritocratic looking glass of the HSC, but as experienced players who understand the rules of the games. These rules are the different discourses of learning that we can understand, deconstruct and ultimately transcend.

Reference

Reichart, M.C. & Kuriloff, P. (2004). Boys' Selves: Identity and Anxiety in the Looking Glass of School Life. Teachers College Record 103 (3) pp. 544-573

Take a good look at learning!

This blog will examine the learning journey of a senior high class enrolled in a course examining knowledge and learning as well as the academic partner (me) teaching the course. So we are all looking into the looking glass self of learning, trying to understand the social constructions of learning so that we may take charge of our own destinies.