The first place on mine and Jenny's list to visit, like Shannon is our cities public library. Novi just built a multi-million dollar public library and according to my teacher and many kids in my class it is absolutely amazing. I am really excited to check it out, especially since it is obviously such a huge part of our communities literacy identity. I think that getting a better feel for the library will give us a better feel for how our children view and are exposed to literacy, because pretty much every kid in the district was all over it this summer. Because it is apparently so state of the art, I expect to see a lot of cool stuff, including some technology that I probably won't know how to navigate and these children that have been exposed to it can. Apparently there is a SMARTtable which is like a SMARTboard but on a table and more interactive. I anticipate that I will be far behind the learning curve of how to accurately navigate its features. I also expect to see a lot of learning happening without any force whatsoever. From the vibe that I have been getting from my students, the kids love to go there, and it seems like this place is doing just an absolutely wonderful job of getting kids hooked on reading, which to me is super cool.
The next place we are planning on going is to the mall. Novi is home to Twelve Oaks Mall, and it is a huge part of the community as a whole. I am sure that every single kid in my class has not only been there but is very familiar with it. We chose to head to Twelve Oaks mostly due to the magnitude of literacy that is under one room that our students interact with every time they go there and probably most of the time don't even realize it. All of the store signs, the price tags, the displays, the restaurants, you can read almost EVERYTHING at the mall. I think that we will see and hear a lot of children interacting subconsciously with literacy and that will be interesting to see.
Novi has a ton of great restaurants also, and we are planning on checking out some of those as well to get a flavor for the kind of literacy experiences and interactions our students might have on a typical night out as a way to get to know them better as learners and as people in general with the hopes that it will positively affect our relationships with them and our ability to relate to them on a more personal level.
Dean-
ReplyDeleteI live close to the Novi Library and I have visited it myself, it's pretty sweet. Probably the most high-tech library I have ever seen. However, I think that says a lot about the Novi community though. They are a community that is blooming during this recession. Novi has a lot of great resources for their students which is awesome. The SMARTboard is a great tool to have. I took using technology in the classroom at MSU and learned a lot of great things for it. Especially in fifth grade with graphs, it is a easy way to collect class data and create graphs. Also, instead of by class sets of books my CT from 401 would put certain pages on the SMARTboard for the students to see to save money that way as well. It's also great when you are showing them how to do something on the computer as an entire class.
I would love to see more schools going towards these new technologies. I know they are expensive however I believe there are may benefits for the students to have them in their classrooms. I am lucky to be in a school with a lot of technology available (no SMARTboards yet), so we have to make sure to take advantage while we have the opportunity to learn the technologies.
Thanks for the post, sounds like you are enjoying Novi!
Megan