Transcription Tools and Interview Tips

As you prepare to conduct an interview, here are some tools that might be useful:

Free tools for Transcribing

Transcribe software with a free trial week

5 apps for recording

Recorder app for iphone

Recording and transcribing advice



For your INTERVIEW...

• Tell me about a time when...
• Tell me a story about...
• Say more.
• Can you explain that in a different way?
• (Author's name) would say ______.  What do you think about that?
• Have several quotes from the text(s) printed out or highlighted so that you can use them as a conversation starter if your interview lags.
• Don't be afraid to tell stories of your own, or explain what YOU think about a point.

Off Track documentary about detracking World Lit class

Off Track

“Tracking” in schools, or the practice of segregating students by “ability”, has long been an issue of debate among educators and researchers alike. As shown in Off-Track, the practice of tracking raises fundamental educational questions about how we define intelligence and who we deem to be intelligent. The setting of the video is an untracked World Literature course in suburban Montclair High School in New Jersey. Michelle Fine, professor of psychology at the CUNY Graduate Center, points out, “We don’t need public education to reproduce social, class and race discrepancies. We’ve got a larger society that’s more than happy to do that. The task of public education is to interrupt those discrepancies and create a broader set of opportunities for everybody.”

Resources for The Problem We All Live With

Discussion of School Vouchers: Alfie Kohn, Only for My Kid

Response to the parents of Francis Howell Opposing Integration:  11 Ways...

Elite schools and the College Application process -- Boston Globe

How Integration Helps Everyone

Nikole Hannah-jones

I think it's important to point out that it is not that something magical happens when black kids sit in a classroom next to white kids. It's not that suddenly a switch turns on and they get intelligence, or wanting the desire to learn when they're with white kids. What integration does is it gets black kids in the same facilities as white kids. And therefore, it gets them access to the same things that those kids get-- quality teachers and quality instruction.

Ira Glass

The US Department of Education put out data last year showing that black and Latino kids in segregated schools have the least qualified teachers, the least experienced teachers. They also get the worst course offerings, the least access to AP and upper level courses, the worst facilities. The other thing about most segregated black schools, Nikole says, is that they have high concentrations of children who grew up in poverty.

Those kids have greater educational needs. They're more stressed out. They have a bunch of disadvantages. And when you put a lot of kids like that together in one classroom, studies show, it doesn't go well.

Nikole Hannah-jones

If you're surrounded by a bunch of kids who are all behind, you stay behind. But if you're in a classroom that has some kids behind and some kids advance, the kids who are behind tend to catch up. These kids in these classes in schools with concentrated poverty don't have that.

They don't have that effect of kids who can help boost them. Everyone's behind.

Media to go with our conversation last week...

There is a short film (4 min) at the top of this article that speaks to many of the issues we talked about in class last week.  Thought you might like to watch it and read the controversy that ensued after a school used it as a teaching tool.

Stay warm over the weekend!!

Class Today

I sent out a text earlier, but in case you didn't get it and are searching for us...

We are meeting in Craig Lee room 102.

See you at 4:00!

LB :)

Accepting Invitations for Private Blogs

You should have invitations waiting in your gmail from CHRISTINE and LINDSAY to become readers of their private blogs.  For some reason the system generated TWO invitations for each so when you go in your email, select the message on the bottom to find the first invitation...  it is truncated with three dots but if you click on those dots you can accept the invitation and it will go through.

Welcome to FNED 502

Welcome to this FNED 502 blogging adventure!

Sometime during or after our first night of class, you will set up your own blog to use this semester for all of your Talking Points assignments, and to keep track of your thoughts about any of the issues we cover.

A blog is your very own, personal online journal. It is public, in that I and your classmates can read it and comment on it, but it is your space and you can control most everything about it. (If you want to make it private so that *only* members of this class can read it, you can follow the instructions here).

In the context of this course, your blog has two purposes:

1) Your blog will provide a space for you to keep all of your Talking Points assignments over the course of our semester together. You will not hand in written assignments to me each week; rather you will post them on your blog. In this sense, your blog is like an assignment notebook that you will use as you read and prepare for class each week. You will also be posting any additional thoughts you have: responses to class discussion, after thoughts, things you forgot to say in class, relevant experiences you have, etc.

But importantly, your blog is a public space and as you post (and comment on others'), you will gain a much richer understanding of everything we read and discuss in class. I want you to think of it as interactive and intertextual in that way.

2) Creating your own blog will also introduce you to the blogisphere if you don't know this place already. I hope that you will discover creative educational uses for this online medium. You will see how easy it is to use blogger.com, and perhaps it will inspire you to bring blogs into your own classroom.

To start your own blog, you will go to:

www.blogger.com

 

If you do not already have a Google account, you will need to create one.  If you do have a Google account, sign in in the box at the right.  This will allow you to create your own blog on a site called blogger.com.   

Click the button that says NEW BLOG (you will see this even if you have blogged before) and follow the instructions to get started.  Don't forget your Username and Password!! You will need them to login everytime. Please write them down on the top of your syllabus so you don't forget!  

As you fill in the info, you will be asked to give your blog a TITLE. This title will appear at the top of your blog. (Mine is called "FNED 502: Contexts of Schooling")

Then, you need to choose an address: http://_______.blogspot.com  This will be the web address associated with your site. You can call it anything you like. Be clever or simple (or both) -- it is up to you. Write it down so you don't forget it! (You can also find it later on in your Dashboard where all of your future blogs will be listed.)  

You will also need to choose a design template for your blog. Look through the options listed and see what appeals to you. You can change this later so don't worry too much about it initially... Once you have the account set up, you can start posting. A “posting” is an entry on your blog. (For clarification, you have one blog, but many postings). Give the post a title and then compose as you would any journal entry. When you are finished, hit the button at the bottom that says Publish. It will not appear on your blog until you publish it. You can always go back and edit old posts and create new ones.

Your First Post:

Your first post should be a short introduction to you: who are you, where you teach, what graduate program you are in, what you do in your spare time, etc. (Just a short paragraph — no big deal). You will post the rest of the entries as they are due (see course syllabus for dates), or whenever you have something to say.
 

When you are done creating your site and posting your first entry, please come back to this blog and post a comment at the end of my first posting (scroll down) that includes your blog address so that I can post it in the link list to the right.

Some Tips and Helpful Hints:

• Once you are in your blog, look at the top right corner of the screen. If you click on the word DESIGN, you will be able to make design changes, create new posts, edit old posts, etc. (You can only do this if you are logged in to your blog.)
• Once you are in the DESIGN screen, you can do all kinds of things to make your blog a bit more interesting. Change your fonts and colors, edit a post, change your settings. See the tabs at the top of the screen for all kinds of options.
• Poke around online and make a list of websites related to education, media literacy, social justice or anything else relevant and post them on your blog. You can add all kinds of things by ADDING A GADGET from your LAYOUT screen.
• Just do the best you can with this. If you get stuck, don't fret... I am happy to help you anytime as you work on getting this started. And remember: you can't break it. It is just a blog. Everything can be changed if need be!

Good luck!! 

 LB :)