Introduction to Tom

Tom lives in Grand Haven Minnesota. (We're kind of neighbors. I'm just over the border in Ontario.) He's an elementary library media specialist and computer teacher. As a child, he loved to read, so his future profession was understandable.

Tom grew up near a lake. He says that he spent untold hours swimming, fishing and turtle and frog hunting. He rode his bike, skiied, played baseball and basketball and something called "homerun derby". I'm not sure what that last activity is. He describes himself as a combination bookworm-outdoorsman.

He has read almost all the P. G. Wodehouse books. If you haven't read them, you may have heard of Bertie Wooster and Jeeves from the BBC comedy series. He also enjoys reading Jasper Fforde who writes a series of books in the fantasy/ satirical humor/detective genre. I haven't read the Big Over Easy. But I have read The Eyre Affair in his Thursday Next' series, hilarious.

He's got a great favorite quote from Ray Bradbury-"You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them" RayBradbury wrote Farenheit 451 which is the temperature at which paper ignites. In the story, firemen don't put out fires, they start them. They burn books for the totalitarian government.

He's taking this course because he believes that good evaluation tools will allow students to be better online learners.

Welcome, Tom!

Have you taken any other online courses from UWStout or is this your first one? Does your school offer online classes?

Jennifer@Lititz, PA

Thanks for the welcome, Jennifer.

This is my second class in the E-Learning program and my second overall online class. As far as I know, my district does not offer online learning opportunities at this time. Of course, being an elementary teacher, except for video/distance learning field trips, there is little that I am aware of going on.

Tom

Grand Haven, MI

Larry, I hope you glad to have landed in Canada once more - I am assuming you were vacationing in Dubai? Thank you for introducing Tom.

Tom, ah yes, I remember the book, Fahrenheit 451 - my youngest needed to read it in high school and I reread it with her - good points made. I would like to add a bit from Noam Chomsky (2003), who writes extensively about the capacity of a democratic system – it may not control what the people do, but instead
what they think – created by the propaganda that exists.

Welcome to both of you! I look forward to hearing lots more from you! ~ Datta Kaur

Hi Datta Kaur,

Actually my wife and I have lived in Dubai for 6 years. We teach at the American School of Dubai. I love taking online courses because it doesn't matter where you live in the world you have access to the best learning. Larry Dubai/Thunder Bay

P.S. In the last e-learning course it was recommended that you add the location to your name to help identify who you are.

To blog or not to blog?

Now that's a question.

I think that the most important requirement in having students use blogging successfully, is to have clear objectives of what you want them to use it for.

In the past, I had students in a 4 class period enrichment opportunity set up blogs and begin posting to them. Because I had a total of almost 2 hours to work with them, Mot of them simply set up a blog about something they were interested in. Of the 20 kids who I worked with throughout the year, I had 4 of them who continued posting after the enrichment class was over.

The interactivity that makes blogs a really effective learning tool was not present. Even when I asked them to view the others' blogs and respond to something on it, I still was not pleased with it as an educator.

I'm not sure, at this time, just how effective a tool blogging would be as an elementary teacher. Access to computers is limited in our schools. Typing skills are almost nonexistent. The kids are often still overly concerned about "how do you spell...." instead of putting their ideas down. Then when the ideas are on the screen, they will spell-check, but almost always will take the first suggested spelling, whether it is correct or not. My middle school students, on the other hand, could make valuable use of blogging. While some still have rudimentary touch-typing skills, they are much quicker and can usually get their ideas typed out.

Is blogging an age-appropriate learning tool for elementary students? Maybe.