Literacy for the iGeneration

    On Tuesdays class 10/30/07 we went to one of the Frankenstein Lives! presentations.  Stephanie Brown Clark, an MD at UofR spoke of Congenital Malformations in 19th Century England and France.  During the presentation she made reference to how we judge by outside appearance and how it connects to the story of Frankenstein. Clark also mentioned 3 case studies,  one of which had to do with Elephant Man. She explained what the disease would now be called and how this man was judged solely by his appearance and not by his intellectual capabilities.  I thought it was interesting because we still continue to judge people and this presentation really had a great connection to the story of Frankenstein by Mary Shelley.

During Thursdays class (11/1/07) we discussed what could have been better about Doctor Clark’s presentation on Tuesday.  Some examples were mentioning the three case studies sooner and possibly focusing Elephant Man more because that is something we  were familiar with already.  We then followed this discussion with another one on how people can focus during lectures.  As a class we brainstormed that you could eat, take notes, visualize the events occurring, and more.  In general the strategies used while listening to a lecture were very similar to those strategies that we use while reading.

Towards the end of the class period we created T-Charts with the pros and cons listed of individual readings vs. book clubs, from are class reading from D&Z chapters 8 & 9, and thought of what would be better for us in a classroom teaching a certain lesson.  Some pros of individual readings that we all came up with are that: the reader can go at their own pace and the reader can pick a book they are really interested in, while some cons were that reading wouldn’t be enforced and that a support system would not be there for the reader.

For the pros of book clubs we came up with: social interaction is introduced into the learning environment and support is given to each reader, and the cons were: that the reader couldn’t keep their own pace and that it would be very time consuming!  I enjoyed creating the T-Charts because you could find out what you liked more as a future teacher from the help of your peers in creating all the pros and cons of both strategies.