Alice's Restaurant: 2008-02-17

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Podcasting and Blogs: A Professor Responds

Dear Class,

I've been a lurker on your blog for some time, and first of all, I want to thank you. I love reading your writing, and I love viewing your podcasts. The blog and you, as a class and as writers, are amazing. I've even shown my own university classes your blog, and they are amazed at the work that you do. I created a link below to a page that includes much information and rationale for using New Literacies, such as blogs and podcasts, in classrooms. Here's a sampling of info:

Over 80 percent of kindergarteners use computers, and over 50 percent of children under age 9 use the Internet.
At least 61 virtual colleges/universities (VCUs) currently educate students in the U.S.
In 2006, 158.6 billion text messages were sent in the U. S.
Over 106 million individuals are registered on MySpace.
There are at least 91 million Google searches per day.
The European Institute for E-Learning aims to enhance Europe’s position in the knowledge economy by achieving the goal “e-Portfolio for all” by 2010.

Mr. Neuburger is absolutely preparing you for the future. The person who responded only discusses sentence-level concerns and grammar. As a researcher of writing and reading, and as a professor, I know, and my colleagues do to, that there is much more to communication and writing instruction than a few typos. Composition researchers look at higher order concerns like ideas and even student motivation to write. As many of you have suggested, your writing and your interest has improved. People who write on blogs increase their fluency (# of words they can generate). If you return to your blog posts, I'm sure you will see the same thing. I'm also sure that you've learned a lot about yourselves as writers through writing and through reading the writing of others.

To be prepared for the future, you need to know multimodal literacies. That includes being able to create media, which is what you do almost weekly in your podcasts. Podcasts and blogs are some of the ultimate communication tools. You don't just READ media. You CREATE it. I only wish I were lucky enough to have an English teacher like Mr. N.

Research supports the use of blogs and podcasts as part of an English class. Recently, a researcher named Applebee (2007) found that in 40% of twelfth grade classrooms students write less than three pages A YEAR. Can you believe that? You've accomplished so much more.

I'm sure your parents have told you this. There will be many people in this world who will try to bring you down in some way. This person attacked your writing, but I want you to know there are many more people in this world who respect Mr. Neuburger's work and your writing. Keep writing everyday! This reader loves it!

Kleeman Feed and Seed Video

We taped this video at Katy's Granpa's feed barn, where he produces feed and then sacks and loads the feed. We went over and helped him one day to sack and load the feed. We did not get the chance to watch or help him produce the feed, because all of his machines had froze up. We didn't really know exactually what we were doing but if we could do it again we would figure it out.

The only promblem I have with her is when she says she has grade school kids who can write better than this. If she thinks she can do better than let her come teach us if she is so smart. I know I am not that good at english but since we have been doing this blog my writting has improved a lot. She never read what we were writting was like before we did the blog so she has no idea whether this has help us or not. If she wants to come in and show us how to do this correctly then let her. I know were already suppossed to know most of this stuff already , but our school district is kind of behind, so it might not be our fault.

Derek Hohenfeldt

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In her comment I do not care for the way she put down Mr. N's methods of teaching. Although we do not need to know all this stuff about how to post podcasts and ect. we are still developing better communications skills through it. The main purpose of your applied communications class this year is to teach us more about technology and to be creative and think more. She did have a good point with writing her comment but could have left the part about elementary kids writing better out of it. The reason for me saying she could have left the comment about the kids out is because maybe she was looking at gifted kids work. To sum this comment up about the Ninya ladies comment about our blog, she has good points but should have used better words to sound less rude as I would call it. These are my thoughts of her critique of our blog.

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Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Dear Ninya B.

Podcasting mite not live on much longer but for now it is used for everything. If you get on the internet, you will be surprised to find how many web sites have podcasting. I mite go make a funny, sad, etc.. video of myself, and will have the ability to post it on the web. This skill may be a useless tool for you, but for us some mite use it and some will drop it like a rock after they get out of high school. I am happy that you at least commented something good on one of our podcast. If I may please ask to ever comment on our web site aka (Alice's Restaurant) in tell we seniors, and one lonely junior leave the graduate! Think you for your time to comment and let us hope this never happens again.

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I think that Mr. Neuberger is doing a good job because most of the people in the Applied Communications class don't take it serious. Even though we may never use pod casting after high school we are still learning communication. I know that after I have been pod castings for awhile it has improved my writing. I bet there are some elementary students that could do a better job, but they also have been taught different. If you think you can teach us better English than come show us how to do it. I think that in the long run this will make communication easier for us by pod casting instead of doing nothing. I think teaching us a little more grammar and stuff from the books would help our writing, but pod casting is still teaching us. I did not think that some of the things you said were very right especially towards teachers. I think if you had read our writing before the pod cast you would think we improved.

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Dear: Ninya Biznez

I believe that we can't write the best but all of it is not our fault. We might have tried to learn stuff but it might have not been taught to us. Even if it was taught to us it was not taught to us very good. It would not be Mr. Neuburger fault because he has not been here our entire school time. The teachers that we have had leading up to this point just did not do there job. Even though this was not supposed to be a class to learn about how to pod cast. You are talking about how bad our writing is when we were not working on our writing. Although you do have a point most of us can't write and or spell very well. With that being said I have not been able to write or spell very well since I was younger. Well I guess since you want to talk about how bad we write maybe you should just come on down and teach our school for a while.

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I think that Mr. Neuburger is doing a great job teaching us. Some people don't take the class serious and slack off and write nonsense. Others try and we do a great job, so we have been told. Some things we don't need to know but we are getting taught, but in away it's helping us learn good writing and communication skills for the future. We learn how to use the computer and how to express our opinion though bloging. We also write in a journal at the beginning of each class. I think there are some elementary kids who can write better but they have been taught better. Each year of kids get a better education than the last. No disrespect but there is probably an elementary kid who can write better than you. I think if you are so good at writing than maybe you need to come and teach the class. Also I think you need to come forward and tell who you are, say what you want to our faces not just write it on the blog. Oh look your using the blog, and you thought no one would in the future.

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None of your Business

To begin with I have an issue with anyone attempting to question my academic abilities via a website comment board. This writer, or more appropriately "Internet Flamer" (to quote a title used by many online forum users) has no facts other than a half finished learning process to base her allegations. Ninya Bizniz has proven her self ignorant with the developing age of internet media possibilities. A number of Corporations across the world have begun financing advertising campaigns on sites such as YouTube and Myspace. In fact just recently I looked up a Dynamatt tutorial on Youtube. Furthermore for the past several years the internet has been the breeding site for entrepreneurs and the recent upheaval of entrepreneurship has been in the area of internet media. Like talk show hosts on radio and television new forms of mass communication have risen from the internet and this class has taken the liberty of teaching its students the aspects and abilities of this new playing field of modern communication.

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Dear Ninya Biznez,

Thank you very much for the compliment on the "Coach Stoke's Interview." My partner and I worked hard to entertain viewers in an educational way. As we have all found out, you must be very smart in the field of English. I have already been taught by you that communication is spelled in all capital letters. As you may not know, our school is not blessed with necessary equipment needed to help us learn better writing skills. If you would like to help us out I am sure that Mr. Neuburger would not mind you donating money to go towards things that will help us out. Another big reason of our bad writing skills is our attention span. It is not our teachers fault or our schools fault, but ours. We really do not think that we will need to apply the things we learn, so we pay attention until we are tired of paying attention. Sounds bad, but it is true. I am sure that you were in high school at one point in your life. Surely you did what every typical high school student would do and not pay full attention. Maybe you did, but most likely you did not. Well thank you for your comments and complaints.

Sincerely, Kal Johnson

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Ninya Biznez,

To be quite frank on the subject of your comment is was completely unnecessary. The comment she made on us being taught useless stuff is rather wrong. How does she know what will be needed in the near future. For all possibilities this could be a very important skill for jobs. Besides how do you know that the grammar in our sketches isn't good? I mean you didn't know are grammar skills before this and you don't know how much we have learned. Anyways what gives you the authority to criticize us? Are you a parent of a child in this class? Plus if you are then isn't your child in this class which means your child was one of the kids with this "bad" grammar. So why don't you teach your own child and maybe then he or she can enlighten us on the matter. From now on why not try taking into consideration on whom you are criticizing and the possibilities that could be at hand.

Chance Sullivan

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Dear Ninya Biznez,

First of all I would like to thank you for your complement of the Coach Stokes Interview my co-conspirator and I worked very hard on that piece and we are happy to hear that someone outside of the classroom has enjoyed our work. But I also do not like your criticism of our teacher's skills it is very hard to work with a group of teenagers such as ourselves, especially with the materials provided to us. Also I agree with your opinion that learning how to pod cast is not one of the most impressive skills to learn but it will help us in our future career choices what ever they might be not only because it does teach us communication skills but it also familiarizes us with many different uses of the internet and the Macintosh operating system. In conclusion I believe that you should take a night class at a local college or a continuing education class offered by many local colleges, because truly you have also made some grammatical errors, thus you are a hypocrite.

Sincerely, Ben Logan

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Assighnment

I think that he/she was right about students not needing to know how to post podcast and things on the blog, but if he/she hasn't realized that everything is pretty much done on computers. So it is a good thing to know how to use a computer better and things like that. Mr. Neuburger has taught us a lot about computers and grammar and she doesn't have any idea about what he does in the classroom when we do not use the blog, but what really makes me mad about this person is that that don't have the guts to tell their real name. If they are not going to reveal themselves than I think that he/she can keep their mouth's shut!!

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