Ch. 6; Rethinking............

In this chapter, we were exposed to the 3 eras of education.  For me, this seemed to go hand-in-hand with chapter 4 that included the main reasons that we have a universal schooling sytstem.  This chapter was pretty dry but very helpful.  As we know, technology is becoming a bigger part in our schooling everyday.  With this, it seems like we lose a human touch but at the same time, the whole idea of schooling is changing.  No longer are parents the teachers, we teach to "learn how to learn", we set students up with what they need to know in the future, our culture effects what we teach and how we teach, people of all ages can continue to attend school, and we can attend school almost everywhere at any time.  This seems to be a lot to handle and take in, but this is what is happening to "schooling".  As we see today, we are shifting more towards parents holding the responsibility of their child's learning.  This is because we are moving towards making the learning "individualized" and teaching what they want to learn.  If a child want's to learn something that just isn't covered at the moment in school, they can do distance learning or even teach themselves with all the resources they now have.  We also see now that teens tend to stray from what is taught in schools to learn what they specifically want to learn.  If someone wants to know more about a trade such as carpentary, they will go out and learn on their own and almost ditch the school curriculum.  Beyond that, we don't have enough time to even teach young adults what they may need to know later on in life.  This is because everything is moving so fast.  With this in mind, I will have to do things differently as a teacher.  I will have to find out what they really need to know.  To do this, I may have to talk to someone in my district and find out what is truly important and what should be focused on.  With that, I will try to incorporate ways to keep their attention on what is going on in school and use tools that they will need to know how to use.  All of this just makes the push for more technology in the classroom even greater.  We need technology to stay up to date with what is going on and to accurately teach our students what they really need to know.

Ch. 9, Blogs..........

In this chapter, social networks were discussed.  When I think of social networks, I instantly think of Facebook and pretty much nothing else.  For me and for almost every other college student, Facebook is primarly used to talk to friends, post whats on your mind, and pretty much "stalk" anyone and everyone while learning more about them.  In the chapter though, social networks were discussed including Facebook and Ming.  I will discuss Facebook primarly since that is the hottest and most relevant one right now.  With Facebook, teachers and schools run into many problems.  Students may be sharing too much with everyone and it eliminates any area of privacy.  Also, this tool opens up avenues for bullying and too much "gossip".  Truly, Facebook is used in a non-school and social role.  Yet, students use it in school to stay away from school.  This is a large problem in schools and it is mostly prohibited in most schools.  But what if we could use Facebook to our advantage?  I like the idea of creating a private Facebook "site" or page for your classroom.  As discussed, almost all students have an account and what is a better way to get them better in-tune with school than to take over their main social outlet?  With this, you can probe their thinking outside of class, keep them involved in what is going on in school, and you can even lead discussions online.  A great advantage of this is that kids that usually are shy, can becoem out-spoken and open us on an online discussion.  This allows the sharing of ideas with everyone and really helps focus them back onto school instead of "who friended me".  I love the idea of using their main social outlet as a schooling device.  I look to teach 7th grade and I for sure will make a page for my classroom.  This way, I can post discussion topics, challenge their thinking outside of school, and keep them up to date on what is going on or whats due (they can't tell you they didn't know since all they do is sit on Facebook!).  I will use Facebook for sure.  Also, I will never befriend a student because that is extremely wrong.

Ch. 8: Blogs, Wikis........

I really liked reading this chapter because it was on a technology that I've been curious about for a while and that would be podcasting.  It was interesting to learn about how it started and mostly, how easy it is to do.  I never really realized it was that easy to construct a podcast.  With this, it is even easier to see now that you can easily use it in your classroom.  In earlier posts, I discussed using this as a way to keep parents caught up on what their kids are doing in class but with it's simplicity, I can have students use it to share their ideas with each other and even other children from all over the country.  I feel like you could make this into a great assesment tool or even an ongoing project.  In a middle school classroom, you could assign students to lead a podcast every week for the class or even start a partnership with another school and have "dueling podcasts" on a picked topic.  Along with this, I was interested in the video publishing section of the reading.  When I was in school, we did some of this but it was mainly just making videos and sharing them.  Now, kids are able to make videos with very little effort and can publish it to the whole world.  For some schools, this is a problem as it was discussed in the book.  Even if you do not have students produce their own videos for class, I liked the tools that were given for teachers to use in the classroom to show safe videos (teachertube).  If we could find a way for students to use the video tools they have, that would be great.  As for screencasting, I was a bit lost by it even after watching the video.  I understand the point of putting narration to photos, but it seemed like a slideshow.  Overall though, these are all great tools that can and should be used in classrooms.  For my classroom, I would love to use podcasts for my students and have them use them also.  I want my students to use all the tools at their disposal but use them safely.  With doing this, they still will be learning but they will be using the tools that they will see in their future.

Exit Slip

At the start of class we were introduced to the iPad that Mr. Boyer had recently purchased.  The iPad looked to be really cool and that it could do quite a bit.  It seemed like a pretty good tool and that it seemed to be versatile.  After that, we had our chapter 5 discussion leaders.  We broke into groups and discussed an area in the book and evaluated it with pros and cons (we had workplace learning).  The discussion in our small group was very good but I felt that the large group discussion was slow and almost absent.  I really would have liked to talk about all of the topics rather than just one.  I'm sure this had more to do with the amount of time we had.  After this, we evaluated their presentation and we were shown the notes that were taken on the iPad.  The note idea seems like a good idea on there since you can carry it anywhere but it would be even cooler if you were able to actually write on the screen and have it turned into text.  One thing I learned right away is that you should also write out your directions in addition to saying them so your peers/students can see the directions and expectations in case they forget.  We went over scratch again today and learned a bit more about how to create our iRLO with it.  It seems like a very interesting program but I'm feeling a bit lost with my IWB.

Ch. 5 Rethinking

I thought out of all of our readings so far that this was the most interesting.  I liked how the book gave us an overview of almost every alternative schooling outlet and gave us information that we didn't know (at least that I didn't know).  I was very surprised to hear that homeschooled kids did better on standardized testing even if they had a parent with a low educational background.  The section on workplace learning made sense to me and I agree with it.  I feel like if you need additional learning in your career that it should be provided at your workplace (if they expect it from you, expect it from them).  I liked the idea of distance education especially if its a program that you cannot get at your school.  I find this to be really good because you can share your ideas with people from all over the place and get additional views on the content you are learning.  This is benefitial in many ways other than schooling but I like the idea of being able to learn anything you want from anywhere you want, even if it is from someone all the way across the country.  Adult education sounds interesting for seasoned learners who want to continue their education and gives them an outlet that fits them a little better.  Learning Centers are benefitial but I think they should only be used for additional help or additional learning, not as a primary source.  The technological ways (videos, tv, computer, etc.) also seem like an advantage for additional learning or for people who just can't make it to a classroom.  It seems like something good for distance learning or for summer classes, but I don't think it could work for me as a full time thing.  If that's what works for others, thats fine but I could never use those ideas as my sole source of teaching or learning.  At the end of all of this, I feel that a lot of these ideas are good, for additional learning.  If someone chooses one of these alternative ways, thats great.  To me though, I feel like you need the school community that is real like a building with real classrooms and real people that are face-to-face.  To me, you just get more out of a traditional school especially the social aspect of school.  I still think technology is important in the school environment though.  I think I would like to introduce something with the distance learning into my classroom such as having a pen-pal via the internet or even encourage learning centers for children to go to for extra help if they need it.  Also, I would like learning in the workplace because if I need to learn something new as a teacher, I want it to be done by my school.  One thing that I will do differently with this is encourage something like a distance learning project or incorporate possible summer activities online for future students or past students to stay on top of schooling.

Chapter 7 Blogs

I think Flickr sounds like a really cool program to use in a classroom whether its used in a lesson or if the students are using it for an assignment or for a project.  I really liked the fact that you are able to bring out more detail into the pictures and discuss it more in-depth.  Also, I like the idea that the 4th grade teacher used of having virtual guest speakers.  I think it sounds like a cool program to bring pictures almost to life and make lessons more interesting.  It's a way to have virtual fieldtrips and bring more creativity, technology, and fun into the classroom.  I really like the reading and all of the ideas that were in the chapter and how to use Flickr.  The reading really gets the wheels turning in my head and opens up a lot of oppurtunities to use the program.  I think this just makes me want to use the program in a classroom and find ways to get the kids to use it too.  I really liked the idea of the virtual fieldtrips and the guest speakers to liven up the classroom and to bring pictures to life.  I think it would be great to show kids how to use Flickr and have them be able to create projects with the program and critique the photos more in-depth.  With this new idea, I will do more "fun" things in my lessons.  I will do more mini-field trips to link the lesson to something they may already know.  I could bring in a guest speaker for a small amount of time.  The program is exciting to me and I can't wait to use it.

Exit Slip, Oct. 7th

Today we discussed our IRLO assignment and what our expectations were for this assignment.  We discussed ways of making lessons more interactive and how to get and give better feedback.  With this, we were introduced to the program, "Scratch".  The program is meant to allow us to create an interactive way of teaching a lesson while giving instant feedback to the student.  What was really cool about the program is that we can create a lesson and the child may use it anywhere as long as they had an internet connection at home (there is a scratch community that we can save our lessons to).  This is not only a free program but allows us to make an activity that can target on exactly the student needs to work on.  I thought all of this was really cool since it gives them instant feedback and helps the learning feel more like a game.  This could expand the classroom quite a bit and you could use this as an activity for children who get done with classwork early and need something to focus on that is still constructive.  Also, my group presented chapter 4 today.  It went alright.  I learned that the SMART board is a lot easier to use than I thought earlier and that it's fun to talk in front of people no matter what the age.