Rethinking Education- Chapter 10

This final chapter did a good summary of everything that was discussed in the book.  The chapter really made me think about what I need to do as a teacher to keep kids in school and interested in learning.  There are so  many different ways for individuals to get the information that they do in school, if schools do not keep kids motivated and provide them with the learning they are looking for, they will turn to other places to learn what they want.  The learning that is taking place in schools needs to relate to what children will need to know as they become working citizens.  The learning needs to be meaningful and help our students succeed.  The book makes a good point on page 135 that "people need to develop new learning skills rather than acquiring more information."  I think this is very true.  It is not as important anymore to memorize facts and information because it is so easy to look these things up on the internet.  Today it is more important for our students to learn skills that will help them find the information.  Students need to learn where to look for information and how to evaluate its reliability. 

The book makes another good point that technology needs to be used in education to help those who are having trouble with the material.  There are not enough teachers per child or hours in the day to give every student the help they may need.  I have seen this, especially in math, that students struggle and don’t receive any help.  There are so many online math games that teachers could show their students and have students use during their study halls or at home to help them with their math or other areas that they may need help in.  Technology needs to be used to its fullest capabilities.  Instead of having students struggle and never receive the help they need, why not use what technology has to offer us.  We already know that students are using technology and seem to prefer technology learning over the traditional classroom learning, so why not incorporate that into and use it to help where teachers may not have time to help. 

As a future educator, this chapter really made me realize what I need to do as a teacher to make sure my students are interested in what they are learning and motivated to learn.  I think it’s going to be important to incorporate technology into my classroom to keep my students interested and motivate them with new ways of learning.  I also need to help my students learn what they are interested in while sticking to the curriculum.

New Thinking From Class

Today for discussion, we used the jigsaw strategy for discussions.  I really liked this because we were able to talk to more individuals and we really had to pay attention and contribute in each group.  But, when these strategies are used, we should make sure to call them the correct term and introduce the students to it.  This will create learning and increase students vocabulary.  Relevence, rigor, and relationships are the three r's we want in education.  Education is dealing with attitudes toward technology.  In 10 years, the amount of technoloy used in the classroom has not changed that much.  Media is huge in our lives and our students' lives.  After searching for the media online, it is amazing how much is out there.  There is so much technology we can use in the classroom and there is so much available material on the internet that we can use as future educators. 

Rethinking Education- Chapter 9

As chapter 9 talks about, video games and online gaming communities are becoming more and more popular.  The chapter talks about how students are reading less out of books and spending more time on the computer or playing video games.  I do believe that reading a book is very important, but if students do not read regularly because they do not enjoy it but they do enjoy playing online games, some games will require them to read or work other individuals to strategize.  I think this is also very important.  I think the book made a good point that if parents have a problem with their children playing a lot of video games and to ensure parents know what their children are doing; parents can play the video games with their children. This will not only allow the parent to see what their child is playing, but also it is time to spend with your child. 

As a future educator, I think it’s important to learn from your students what they know about technology since they usually know more than we do.  As we learn from them, we can teach them how to use technology safely.  Parents and teachers also need to monitor what their children/students are doing with the technology.  I also think as a teacher it’s important to model safe technology practices.  As a teacher, I could keep my students parents informed about the technology we are using and some internet resources that they could show their children which would benefit them in the classroom such as learning games.

New Thinking from Class

Today during class we discussed the positive and negatives to using technology and social communities.  It was good to bring the negatives in, because as the group said the book only brought up positives.  But as teachers we need to look at both the positives and negatives and weigh them out.  It is always important to have a back up plan when using technology.  The group had inteded to use a new tool which would have allowed us all to try the tool and meet the needs of different learner types.  As future teachers it is important to think about if we fill the mold of a typical teacher or if we will be an innovative teacher and bring new ideas and things into the classroom. 

Podcast

For my podcast, I used a newspaper article. You can find the article here.  For my lead in and lead out music, I used music found on incompetech.com by Kevin MacLeod.  I found my sound effect on the website A1 Free Sound Effects. 

This being my first time working with Audacity and creating a podcast, I spent quite a bit of time working with Audacity to get my music and sound effect lined up with my audio.  I also spent quite a bit of time looking for my article. I wanted to find one that I was interested in.  After finding my article, I spent some time writing my script.  I recorded myself twice and was happy with my second recording.  I had a hard time moving the music to where I wanted it, but once I figured out how to move it, it did not take me long to adjust the fade in and fade outs and finish the podcast. 

As a future teacher, this project helped me learn how to create a simple podcast.  Since I know the basics, as a teacher I can create more podcasts and maybe even a video podcast to help my students with math concepts.  By creating this podcast, it has also given me the confidence that I can use technology and it may seem hard, but once you start doing it, it is fairly easy and fun.

iRLO

I will admit, I put the most time into this project!!  I really enjoyed creating this iRLO.  I started by looking at some examples to see what could be done with Scratch.  I came up with my idea and then just started  playing around with what I could do in Scratch and seeing how you pieced things together to get something to happen.  I came up with an iRLO that I was pretty happy with, but still wanted to add more.  After my peers gave me feedback, I decided to change and add a few things.  I did not take all their suggestions.  One suggestion was that I have the students pick either addition, multiplication or subtraction, but I wanted this to be more of a review where they had to do all different types of problems.  This also made it so a student didn't pick what they were best at and never get practice with what they may need most.  I learned that with Scratch, you can just keep adding to the iRLO, so I decided that enough was enough and it was time to submit! 

After designing this iRLO, I now have a better idea about how I could use this in my classroom.  I could create so many more iRLO's for my students.  I also learned how much time can be put into these and how much you can do with Scratch.  As with the IWB, after having my peers review, I learned that you need to consider their input but it may not be what you had in mind for your lesson.  Also, by having peers give you feedback you can find out what problems may occur that you did not realize or just that getting another opinion is very helpful. 

Overall, I really enjoyed this assignment and am very happy with my end result.  At the time when I started this, I was dreading having to do it, but now I am so happy and proud of what I have done and knowing what I potentially can do in the future.

Interactive Whiteboard Lesson

Before creating this lesson, I spent some time looking at the pictures and templates that were available for the Smartboard. I also played with some of the capabilities Smartboard has to offer.  I enjoyed coming up with the different pages and just kept adding more pages with different things the students have to do that use the SmartBoard's Capabilities.  After getting feedback from my peers, I made some changes and added a few word problems.  This lesson is one that you could keep adding to and making more changes.  I feel I spent a significant amount of time on preparing this interactive lesson.  A lot of the time I spent was trying different things to see what I could do with them and working on getting things grouped together. Once I figured out the basics and a few tricks, creating the lesson went pretty quickly.

By designing and sharing my IWB lesson, I learned a lot about how to design a lesson using the Smart technology and the capabilities the SmartBoard has to offer.  I learned how easy and fast  you can design a lesson once you know what you are doing, but also how time consuming it can be if you let it.  A few times I started working on it and lost track of time because of everything you are able to do with this.   By having my peers look at and provide feedback on my lesson, I have learned how much it can help to have someone review something for you because they will catch mistakes, may interpret something differently than me and may come up with new ideas that I did not think of that would add to my lesson.  I also think that by having my peers review my lesson, I am learning how to take constructive feedback better and also evaluate their ideas and if that is something that I really want to do  or if I did not do that on purpose for a specific reason.

Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts: Wikis (Chapt 10 & Epilogue)

Chapter 10 did a good job of discussing what the role of teachers will be as technology becomes a more widely used resource in the classroom.  The Big Skills the author mentioned really tied everything we learned in previous chapters to what it means for our students and using the resources in our classrooms.  By incorporating technology into the classroom, students will have a purpose for writing and will have a larger audience than just their teacher.  Instead of writing their research paper for their teacher to read and grade, they could put their research paper on their wiki and have a very large audience who could potentially read it and give the student feedback.  Students today have so much more "knowledge" available to them then even I had 15 years ago!  I remember using Encyclopedias in elementary school to write my research paper and physically having to go to the library to find books on my topic.  Today, if you ask students what an encyclopedia is, most probably would not know.  They know the internet is the place to go to find information. 

As a future teacher, I think it's important to know what our role is to help our students use technology that is available to them.  As technology changes, so does education.  If education doesn't progress with technology, people will look to other places (internet and online schools) to get their education.  I think by using technology in the classroom, you are benefiting your students and yourself.  Your students will hopefully be more excited in learning since they have grown up with technology and it has become a large part of their life. 

After reading the Epilogue, it is amazing all that Tom did in such a short amount of time.  Technology is a great tool and when you take advantage of all it has to offer, it can be a great timesaver and a great resource.  But the first step is to get started.  After reading this book I know so much more about the technology available and am interested in trying what is out there and by the time I'm ready to teach, I will be familiar with some of the technology resources and can incorporate them into my classroom.

New Thinking From Class

The new curriculum design is using technology to help students focus on their goals and interests and is skill based.  From the presentation it's important to give directions before getting into groups.  Once we are in groups, people start chatting and are not paying attention to what is being said to us. 
The article that we looked at during class really made this chapter come alive.  The article made me realize that this is something real and can be done.  Click here to see article.
It was very helpful to go through some tips with using Scratch and what we need to double check on our Technology Wiki page. 

Rethinking Education- Chapter 8

The topic of this chapter and having specific certifications is very interesting.  I think this could cause problems, because as they mentioned in the book, if someone doesn't really know what they want to do, they would go to a high school type of school to take general courses and find what they may want to do.  But, by having some students going to a school type of place, would these students feel like underachievers and feel that they are behind.  I know some of my high school friends who did not go to college feel like they missed out and I think there is some negative stereotypes for these individuals.  Would those students who do not know what they want to do also have negative stereotypes and be referred to as underachievers? 
Also, students would not have the same experiences as we do now in the classroom.  There would probably be online interactions, but I think the in person interactions are very important.  The chapter also talked about different curriculum designs.  They mentioned how students along with their parents would choose their curriculum and would be encouraged to stick with it.  Well what happens if the parents want a child to do something but really the child would like to do something else.  Would the child end up doing the curriculum the parents wanted and what happens when the child decides to change their curriculum.  Can they switch and would that put them behind?  The chapter also discussed technology and using that more in schools to help student's learning.  I think we are on the path to doing that.  People are realizing more than ever now how important technology is to students and how it can aid their learning. 

As a future educator, I want to make sure I am using technology to help my students learn.  I also want my students to have access to technology so they can use it if it is not available at home.  As for the specialized curriculum, I think it's important to teach all students the basics.  I don't think it's wise to have young children picking out their curriculum or having their parents choose it for them.  I can't see that working very well at all.  So as a teacher, I will make sure my students are learning the basics and being introduced to relevant subjects.  Instead of having specialized curriculum, I will make sure my students have choices so they can learn about things that interest them which will also help keep them interested in learning. 

Cool Tools Screencast- BrainPop

To watch my screencast, click here!

I did my screencast on BrainPop.  Overall I put quite a bit of effort into my screencast.  There is so much on BrainPop that I spent a couple hours just exploring the site and ended up watching quite a few of the videos!  They are very informative videos and I learned quite a bit from them.  But, after I explored the site and signed up for a free trial, I started working on my S.W.O.T. analysis.  Once I completed the analysis, I went through what I wanted to say during my screencast, made notes and decided what I wanted to click on and through to show.  Once I felt prepared, I made my first screencast.  The first one I had a few mistakes I wasn't happy with and I also ran out of time.  So, I redid it two more times and was finally satisfied with my third attempt. 

At first when we were told about what we had to do for the screencast, I was not liking what I was going to have to do and wasn't looking forward to doing it, but now that I have done it, it wasn't bad at all!!  I didn't think I would be able to fill up 5 minutes, but actually, I could have used more time! 
By making this screencast, I now know how to do it and could create more for my students or others.  I also think this helped me get over the nerves of "talking into a microphone to myself" and then having to share it with peers.  Now that I have done it once, the next time won't be so bad.  Creating this screencast also made me familiar with a resource I could use with my class (both BrainPop and Jing).  By sharing with ppers, I also get to see a lot of other great resources that I can use in the future.