Reflections from class 10/28

Today's discussions did not go well.  It was hard to understand what our questions were getting at.  Using "gains" vs "losses" terminology made it confusing.  Our group didn't know the goal was to come up with + or - for the question, and the two questions didn't seem to hint at that.  Our groups, For technology or Against technology did not seem to necessarily match up.  For example, just because I was For technology doesn't mean I was coming up with gains for the question.  It was mostly opinion questions and the discussion questions were not clear.  Also, just having us summarize the key ideas of our own discussion did not at all match up with what would have been an appropriate summary of the chapter.  I feel like the group discussion did not build on the chapter of help me understand the the Gains and Losses of the educational revolution.  Professor Boyer had more positives and negatives and didn't really ask for our feedback (just told us to build on his topics.  I definitely had more negatives than positives. 
I was also surprised that when Professor Boyer shared the results of his mid course evaluation and was pleased that his workload was considered high.  Especially because I thought that was a very generous answer (I answered Much Too High.)  He said that ten hours is reasonable.  And I know that's what to expect with a three credit course.  But I think professors sometimes forget that we have other class with similar heavy work loads, a job, and other responsibilities.  This week I plan to count to see if I am really doing only ten hours of homework, because I feel like it is very high.  If I do have more than ten hours, I plan to talk to Professor Boyer.  One of the things he does better than any other professor is making himslef available in a wide variety of ways (skype, email, office hours, etc.)  By keeping track of my hours spent I can see what activites are taking up the most of my time.

Chapter 7 Rethinking Education

This chapter covers the costs and benefits of a revolution in the current education system.  At first glance, I thought it was interesting that the "What May Be Lost" section was considerably longer than the "What May Be Gained."  But, after reading the chapter, I found that for much of the costs the book counters by saying the negatives are not that important to a current society.  For example, one cost of changing the current system is a loss of cultural assimilation.  This was a major component of pubilc education because the waves of immigrants moving the US at the time our current education system was designed all needed to be "Americanized."  However, this is not such a common concern now that Americans are connected through Internet, media, and other advanced technologies.  This downplays the importance of the cost.  And now as future educators, oppositely, we are taught to avoid assimilation and instead accomodate for differnt cultures and teach are studnets to be respectful of differences. 
One majory cost I do see in the education revolution is losing access to an equal quality experience.  Low income areas and families will not have the same opportunity to educationally support their children.  They will have less supplemental material like hired tutors or learning software because they will not have the means to obtain them.  Also, having access to technology, or even a warm lunch and adult supervision during the work week may not be as readily accessable to poorer areas. 
In the "What May Be Gained" section, the text brings up an interesting problem: students' attitudes towards learning.  "The goal becomes to get grades that are good enough... with a minimum of effort" (pg110.)  This is interesting be this implies the real revolution must come from the students, not the structure of teaching or method of instruction.  As teachers we are each responsible for motivating and inspiring our students to WANT to learn and discover new material. 

Chapter 8 Podcasting

In this chapter, I thought there were very two important points the chapter raised about using podcasts for educational use.  First, I think it's important for teachers try out and become very familiar with podcasting before they have the students create their own, as the chapter suggests on page 117.  There are a few different ways for teachers to get familiar with this technology.  First, using iTunes, there are many educational podcasts to subscribe to.  For me, having never listen to, let alone created a podcast before, this is a good starting point.  I do have iTunes, and am interested in finding one informational educational podcast to subscribe to.  I already have an idea where I want to live and teach, and it is about 20minutes to the school.  On the to and from school I can listen to these educational ideas via my ipod and get some creative idea and suggestions from other teachers and professionals.  After I get the idea of the type of content, length, and quality of podcasts, the next step would be to create my own.  I would love to start by picking a favorite lesson, or a time when a handful of students are missing class to document the classroom lesson.  This way my class can catch up on the work they missed or review an interesting lesson at a later time.  I was very surprised to find that listeners do not need an MP3 player to take part of the podcasting movment.  All listeners need is access to Internet.  I thought that an ipod was necessary because of the "Podcasts" tab in iTunes, assuming it was a unique feature to ipods.  But, now that I know how accessible podacsts are, it's definitely something to look into as an educational learning tool.
The second point I found interesting was using podcasting as a medium for "kids [to] make their learning transparent for others" (pg 116) This idea fits with Dr. Buchanan's model of how teachers should not be the only source for infomation for students.  In this form, students can be learning directly from students.  I probably won't have my students create podcast in my first year teaching, but it definitely seems manageable to have my students listen to other schools'/students' podcasts.  Once I get familar with using them in class, I can have my students create infomational podcasts as a source of infomation to other students, including studnets in my class the next year, and as it will be available on the Web, in any other school. 

Chpt 6 Rethinking Education

I understand the transition from apprenticeship-based education to a more universal schooling took place.  Instead of learning specific skills and duties from a child's parent to take over a job position, education revolutionized into giving all Americans an equal education.  School began to teach and transmit American values onto students, which in some cases conflicted with the students' parents values.  I agree that all students need the same basic foundation in key subjects like math, language, social studies, science.  But, I also think that education needs more of an individual learning aspect as well.  Students should have more opportunities to discover information interesting to them.  Many more students would have a more clear idea of what to declare as their college major if they had these learning opportunities in high school to explore different subjects they find interesting.  For example, as a student I could have had the opportunity to study more psychology, the way students learn and teaching strategies which would have really prepared me for my college studies.  It's not important that students pick ONE area to focus on, but that they have the freedom to study in depth any information that would appeal to them.  America would have much more passionate professional is students had time to develop interests and strengths in these area instead of having to suddenly declare their majors in college with, in some cases, little background information in those majors.  A common curriculum is good for younger ages, as that information can benefit them throughout life, despite what career they choose.  But, somehow I feel like I won't be using all my advance chemistry or anatomy and physiology knowledge I had to study in high school.
I found it interesting that the chapter says it is a goal of education to have students "learn how to learn" (pg 94.)  I don't feel like i had enough information on how I can learn in the future.  In my experience, the teacher was the source of information.  If I had a teacher with me for the rest of my life, I know I could be learning.  But since they were the source of information, and it is not realistic to have a teacher follow me around, I am not so confident learning on my own.  One great benefit to technology is students can learn on their own.  They can learn in their own style and in subjects that interest them.  I don't think schools are fully taking advantage of this individualised learning yet, but they should be.  

Reflection from iRLO

This assignment was especially frustrating.  It was hard to complete in a week.  While the daily homework of other classes to complete kept me busy during the week, and on the weekend I tried to get caught up on homework, and only found a little time to experiment in Scratch (and watch some online tutorials) I ended up having to work on this project from 8pm-2am Wednesday night.  I know professors usually don't understand how busy students are and they always justify their heavy load of homework by saying that we probably procrastinate or spend too much free time with friends or on other activities.  But this is not the case for me.  I am overwhelmed with school work and between class, work, hall government obligations and Latchkey duties, its hard to balance all of those obligations with homework and study time.  If we had two weeks for this assignment instead I could have spent a week exploring Scratch, then I would have had a better knowledge of it capabilities.
I found myself constantly revising my lesson.  I knew what I wanted the students to do, but couldn't find a way for Scratch to accomplish that.  For example, I wanted many different sprites with prefix or suffix words on them.  Then, the students could click and drag them to the Prefix Monster or the Suffix Monster and the Monster would give feedback like "Good Job!" or "Try Again."  However clicking and dragging would have been too difficult to elicit a response, so I changed my idea to pressing "p" for prefix or "s" for suffix.  This was also problematic because if the first word was "Pigs" and the students presses "s" for suffix, then all the responses from all the other sprites would go off too (so the Suffix Monster would say "Good Job!" 5 times, "Try Again" 5 times and same with the Prefix Monster) because Scratch did not know which sprite the student was referring to.
Eventually my program works now, but not as smoothly as I would like.  I'm interested to get my peers feedback and look at their projects to see how they handled some of the limitations of Scratch.
I can see the usefulness of this program for students.  i don't think I would take the time to teach them how to use it themselves, but I would like to design maybe two games as a review of the previous grade's skills they need to remember before starting lessons in my grade.  I don't think I would want to create more than that though because of the time it takes.  There are many available online interactive games to utilize, so I would only use Scratch is it was a subject I needed to customize the information for my specific class. 

Reflection from class 10/21

I need to remember to write my reflection on the blog from my iRLO.  Also, I still need to post my reflection for this chapter in Rethinking technology.  I still need to comment on my peers' Notebook lessons.  I will have time on Friday and will make those a priority now that this crazy weekend is over with. 

The Chapter group focused on three main points, that education is effected by parents, government, and individuals.  As far as the discussion goes, I think we need to start thinking about ways to discuss and report verbally the information.  Especially being one of the last groups to go.  We need to consider ways to engage many types of learners--including kinesthetic and visual learners as well.  Maybe we can switch groups after we converse on one topic.  That way when we regroup (having one person from each topic form a new group)  Each person will report what they talked about-- and even give their opinions on a new topic from their group's perspective--- called "jigsaw."  Also, the summaries started to get long.  If they made a structure on how to report and it can help lead and spark ideas for the discussions.  Reporting would be quick and easier to follow.

White Board lesson
*lock down objects that aren't supposed to be moved
*allow move lets objects moved but not be edited (like text of county names)

Also, if I need help with revising my Scratch or IWB lesson, Professor Boyer is on Skype.  I could message or call him when he is online/in his office.  This is more helpful because it would be an immediate reply rather than waiting for an email.  I also think that's important to remember as a teacher, to make myself available for my students.  Prof Boyer make it clear to us to always seek out help if we are frusterated.  Some Professors are very opposite, where even if the don't specifically say it, it's clear that asking for help is inconevient for them.  It's hard to feel comfortable contacting teachers when they are not happy and willing to help us understand their content.

Chapter 7: Flickr

I do see the potential use of Flickr in the classroom.  It would be fun to share pictures with families and the community or create assignments with images the students can access and annotate with this online tool.  However, as I pointed out in my last post, I feel it's important to narrow down the tools I think I realistically use in my classroom and I don't think Flickr will make the cut.  I see too many drawbacks from the stand point of a low-income district.  Parents need to have access to the Internet and the interest in surfing it to have time to view their child's classroom activities using Flickr.  This means they need to have an active Flickr account since I would make the album private for the safety of my students.  Also, as in many Phillips Elementary school (the school I hope to teach in) classrooms, I would be lucky to have one computer for the students to access.  And with every teacher vying for time in the computer lab, I cannot count on constant access to that either.  Flickr would have to be an ongoing endeavor and I don't think the benefits outweigh the cost of time and access. 
This chapter did make me realize that I want to send home a survey for the students' parents to fill out at the beginning of the year.  I know currently some parents don't have the Internet in their homes but with technology expanding so quickly, and the parents I will be involved with will have an increasing interest in technology since they will be a younger generation than current parents of elementary schoolers.  I want to find out what programs parents would be interested in and which they would keep up with, like a blog, Twitter, a Facebook page, etc.  I want parents to feel involved and connected to their child's experience in the classroom.  But, I don't want to do it in a technological advanced way that discourages parents.  I want them to find the mode of transmitting information easy, convenient, and inviting for them to keep updated on their child's success. 
I also don't see Flickr being the best tool for classroom learning either.  A lot of the possibilities of Flickr can be accomplished through other methods.  For example, if the goal is to have the students interact and label images, a SMARTboard can help facilitate that.  The students can come up to the board and write directly on the picture or make a star and tell the class about the picture, this method would be similar to annotating a picture on Flickr.  Overall, I can't see Flickr being the most advantageous tool for learning, classroom management, or parent involvement.  It would not be a wise use of my time and effort as a teacher. 

Reflections from class 10/14

Today Professor Boyer talked about how important it is to talk specially about how we can use technology in the classroom in a job interview.  We need to be able to list examples of what type of technology and how it will utilize them to help futher our classroom enviornment--learning, managment and communication.  This makes me want to keep of list of my very favorite technology activities that are doable in the low income district that I what to be hired in.  It is very overwhelming to learn all of these new ideas at once.  If I don't start to organize my my thinking and favorite ideas I might forget them, or at least the details I wanted to inculde in the technology activities when I get put on the spot to recall them.  Especaily since many of these are not accessible in my district (which is not very technologically advanced.)

From the debriefing I just wanted to remember that the goal in presenting the chapters is to facilitate group discussions on the big ideas, which this group did very well.  Also, they posted directions, and took us where to go to find the Prezi on the computer projected screen.  It helped clarify the directions.

Today we addressed our Scratch assignment.  Go to Scratch.mit.edu and actually install the program (in class we just downloaded it.)  Read the D2L instuctions for complete assignment.  Also make sure to look for the Standard that connects with my program idea.

Chpt 5 Rethinking Education

Overall, I understand and agree with this chapter's main idea: There are many small evolutions in the education system that are leading it to a life-long process rather then just for adolescence.  Home school, for example is growing as peoples are gaining access to more resources (although the idea was not started by technology.)  Adult education is becoming more and more popular as on-the-job training, Internet cafes, and computer software designed for learning is all catching on.  The very idea of learning becoming a life-long endeavor changes our goals as early-age educators.  We need to give students the curiosity and skills to seek information on their own.  Our curriculum's must evolve because our goal is not to stock the children with all the knowledge they will ever need in a lifetime.  It is now to give them the tools to educate themselves.  I know may "old school" teachers may not like our new responsibility because it lowers the power status of the classroom teacher.  We are basically teaching students to effectively teach themselves.  Instead of being the all-powerful knowledge source, the new teacher will be a resource, not a primary source for students.  In the long run, I think this will benefit the students more.  I will be enabling them to be more successful in their lives outside the classroom.  I want to spark a love for new knowledge and new information.  Often, students get frustrated with school because if they are "bad" at remembering a subject or can't understand a concept the teacher is telling them to remember.  By making school more of a "discovery zone" the students will have fun seeking out their own interests instead of being forced to memorize certain topics.

However, I think this chapter was far too long in addressing the topics of the changing school system.  I think they should of focused more on this new idea of learning and less on the "seeds" that are sparking this change.  A few paragraphs would have sufficed in summing up the causes of this evolution.  As a future elementary teacher, I am not interested in Motorola's training program for it's employees, or the many, many other examples of adult education.  Having a few sentences on each topic would have made this a more manageable read.

Chpt 6 The Social Web

This chapter really added to my thinking of how to utilize technology in the classroom.  Prior to this chapter, the text presented a variety of ideas to incorporate tools like blogs, wikis, RSS, twitter, and social bookmarking for the students to use to help facilitate learning.  However, this chapter presented ideas just for me to use as a teacher.  I can link with other teachers and brainstorm ideas for lessons and activities.  Also, if I'm having trouble helping my students understand a particular concept, for example, counting money, I can reach out to my Internet network of educators and ask for their ideas.  They can provide me with lesson plans they use, tools, or helpful hints and techniques they use with their students.  If I have a class full of kinesthetic learners, another teacher may post a link on her Delicious account to a great hands on activity she found online.  Or, I can search for tags like "money" "lesson_plan" and "activity" and scan through the archives of activities that other teachers have saved and found useful.  As a new teacher, I'm sure I'll have many questions and will only begin to build my activity repertoire.  It is very comforting to know that I will have resources in social bookmarking to turn to when I have run out of ideas. 
I'm not sure I'm completely sold on the idea of using Twitter or educational purposes yet.  The text claims it can be a powerful tool for porfessional development and communication.  I just can't imagine that enough teachers are using it for educational purposes for it to be useful for me.  In order for Twitter to be useful, teachers must have the time to devot to tweeting ideas and activities used in their classroom.  I have been helping in classrooms for a few years now and I already know that time is very precious to teachers.  It is much easier to ask a coworker in the break room about a stuggle then to search the "twitterverse" for answers.  Even if Twitter is just used to inspire ideas from other educators, I think the greatest ideas are probably left un-tweeted.  The best teaching techniques require time, research, and preperation.  That doesn't leave a lot of time to tweet about the teacher's success.  I know, personally, I would not tweet about my classroom strategies or lessons.  Not that I wouldn't be willing to share them, I just don't have the time to log them daily.

Reflection from class 10/7

If I do want to resubmit my interactive whiteboard lesson, the peer reviewers are going to be assigned next week, so I have a week if I do figure out how to edit photos.  I found it interesting that the flexibility in the lesson challeneged me.  Usually I try to follow the requirements to achieve a high grade.  However, with more freedom, it's harder to know what's required.  Professor Boyer made a good point that outside of college we will have a lot of freedom in the educational field.  I will be able to design my lesson plans and add any activities that I select to enchance the students' learning.  I hope that as I continue to design lessons and explore activities it can become more of a natural process for me.  Also, I know that it will depend on my class every year.  I may have to revisit my lesson plans yearly, to revise based on my current classes needs.  One year they may need more help in writing, and the next year a new class may need more hand-on experince with science concepts. 
We also critiqued the group presentation.  Two things to change that I wanted to remember for my presentation is to speak up and consider how to group if we make discussion groups.  I couldn't hear some of the discussion because I sit on the other side of the room from the presenters.  Also, this room is set up poorly for grouping, so we need to consider that when designing our lesson plan.  One interesting idea that came up that I want to remember for my classroom is about redirecting.  One discussion group was considering the wrong topic.  How can I as a teacher redirect the group without making the group feel bad for their wrong ideas? I don't want to discourage them from inputting their opinions in the future.
We also talked about the interactive reusable learning objective lesson.  Using Scratch I can design an interactive game that can target a specific skill or content area for my students to use through the Internet (they don't need to download Scratch to use it.)  For next week we only have to come up with ideas for our iRLO.  But I think it's important to start experimenting with Scratch so i know the capabilities before I start brainstorming.  For the IWB lesson I thought of all kinda of activities that notebook couldn't even do (the Scratch website is under the helpful resources in the agenda for today.)

IWB Lesson

It's a good thing this is only a draft!  I have tried a lot of different techniques, and it took me a little while to get aquatinted with the Notebook software.  I pulled together a review of different Wisconsin counties.  The one thing I wanted to do and couldn't figure out was create a puzzle with the counties by cutting apart a map of them.  I couldn't figure out how to edit pictures, but hopefully for my next draft I will be more familiar with the software and know how to do that.  For now, I have a few different memorizing techniques that will help the students review.  The slides get progressively harder , starting with matching, fill in the blanks, and then writing in the names with out any prompts.  The Interactive white board allows the students to get involved and drag the names to the counties and fill in the blanks or label directly on a blank map. 
I decided to do this lesson because I have my observational hours with a 4th grade teacher in Price county and part of their fourth grade curriculum is learning all of Wisconsin's counties.  He is willing to let me use my SMART board lesson as a review before his students test.  
Their curriculum fits into the social studies performance standard: A.4.5: Use atlases, databases, grid systems, charts, graphs, and maps to gather information about the local community, Wisconsin, the United States, and the world 
Learning the names of counties will help them further study Wisconsin communities and maps later.  I still remember when I learned counties and it especially help me when look at the the weather since those announcements come out by county.  

Chapter 4 Rethinking Education

This chapter was titled "The Development of American Schooling."  It was basically a history review of how schools have developed from being a parent's responsibility to the state's responsibility and now offer more variety of knowledge rather than just job-skill based.  Most of the chapters I find pertinent to my life as a future teacher, and I can connect ideas to my ideals or values as a teacher.  The chapters help me revise and update my ideas of what teaching is and how I can best facilitate learning for my students.  This chapter did not help me reshape or build on my ideas about teaching.  There was one idea that reinforced my thinking about individualizing education, but it was something that was also said in an earlier chapter.  
Near the conclusion of the chapter, it said one of the current issues in school is the diversity of students, with students from various religions, ethnicities and cultures.  According to the text, teachers need to be able to individualize their teachings instead of giving every child the same amount of information on every topic.  This does not fit their needs as learners.  A students will excel in some subjects and struggle and need more attention in others.  This will be different for every learner.  I do agree that technology will help individualize students education.  It makes information more accessible to the students, instead of having them all go directly through the teacher whenever they need information.  I can have a class of 15 students in a computer lab, having each of them play a game I picked out especially to help them develop skills in areas they are lacking, like reading comprehension, or fractions in math. 
However, the idea the opportunity technology gives to individualize information was already brought up in class and in the book.  This was not even the main point of the chapter.  It was generally to outline the history of the evolution of school.  I hope the group this week does well in their presentation so I can connect how the evolution is important to my future teaching.

Chapter 5 RSS

I found this chapter especially interesting because I've never heard of RSS (Really Simple Syndication.)  The idea of collecting all of my favorite sites and information updates all to one place reminds me of my news feed on the home page of my facebook.  I get all the updates of peoples relationship statuses, their events, pictures, comments, and current statuses.  Instead of revolving around my friends' lives, RRS updates me on all my own interests because I pick the pages it pulls updates from.  I do check many different websites like CNN, MSNBC, Glamour and Self.  So having one place to look for all of them would be a great time-saver.  The book called RSS "The Daily Me," implying that like a daily newspaper, RSS has the headlines on all the current topics that are customized for each user. As for using it in my classroom, I am really looking to teach elementary school, so I think they wouldn't be as interested in using RSS for themselves.  I could see how upper elementary school (5th-6th grd) could use it for research projects.  They could type in key words, or add websites that have to do with their research topic in order to recieve updated material.  However, I think I best utilize this tool for my own use in planning lessons.  It is important to stay up to date on the information I'm teaching.  I can add websites or search a subject we are studying in class to get ideas or new information to bring to my students. 

Chaper 4 Wikkis

Chapter 4 is about the interactive, collaborative tool wikkis.  Wikipedia is the infamous example, and the one the book calls a “poster child for the collaborative construction of knowledge…[that] the interactive Web facilitates” (pg 57.)  Wikipedia, however gets a bad reputation from teachers because students often try to cite it as a research resource.  Because wikkis can be edited by anyone at anytime, it is understandable that teachers, as I did, doubt Wikipedia’s usefulness in the classroom.  But, after understanding more about wikkis, I did get inspired for a wikki-related lesson plan that can teach students the proper use of these interactive tools. 
The chapter listed many ideas for a wikki’s role in class like collaborating resources/lessons with other teachers, let students be the creators/manages and educate them on how to research with/ evaluate wikki content. 
My idea is sparked from researching with wikkis.  The book informs us that wikki’s are a common research tool because they have the summary of information from many sources.  This is meant to be the point of a student research paper, therefore, it would be too easy for students plagiarize Wikipedia’s information.  As a teacher, I want my students to consult a variety of sources, extracting the main points of each, and pulling them together into an organized research paper.  After they finish, I can have them compare their results with the Wikipedia page about their topic.  They can edit false information, or add more detail to the page.  It's a great way for them to understand that Wikipedia can be helpful, but because the information can be altered so easily, they need to be cautious about the material on wikkis.