Chapter 7,8

Our group, Cam, Nick,and I did a small skit on rewards or having an activity period. The premise was that our class had the routine of having activity period every thursday at the last half of the period. But this thursday Mr. Mowatt wasn't going to allow us to have activity period. If you have to change a routine students are familiar with then it is a good idea to let them know in advance, give them a reason for it, and make any necessary compromises. If Mr. Mowatt had told us when we got to class that we were not going to have activity period today because we need to finish reviewing for the test tomorrow. If we still were upset he could compromise by saying that we would have activity period after the test.

Student Sample

Ever wanted to go back in time to a famous era? An era that has always interested me was the American Revolution. We do not have the technology to go back in time. So I brought the revolution to modern day. Instead of the founding fathers pleading their case before King George III in 1776, it is 2009 and myself and a group of actors (not so well paid) are interns for a big company. We wrote out a "declaration of independence from the tyranny of a powerful executive." Our hope is to state our grievances and convince our boss to change his mind. Enjoy the movie!

Chapter 10: Going Beyond the Classroom

Students like to do things outside of school. Take an interest and encourage their learning outside of the classroom. That is where learning will become real for them, when they do it on their own because they want to. I love to read, I always have. One of my favorite parts of summer was all the extra time to read whatever books I wanted instead of the ones the teachers assigned in English class. Other students will take an interest in things outside of school that can help them learn. The main point here is to encourage that learning.

Chapter 9: When Things Go Wrong

I thought a good point the book made was to not be afraid to apologize. The students that were interviewed said that they know when a teacher messes up or does something inappropriate. I think that means that my future students will know too. I think I might be afraid to admit when I have screwed up because that would make me look less in control or in charge. However, apologizing would set a better example and be the right thing to do. After all, teachers are supposed to model appropriate behavior for students.

Chapter 8: Teaching Teenagers who are still Learning English

The suggestion was “help us understand the secrets of book language.” Page 152 Things like chapter subheads, words that indicate comparisons, and where illustrations or charts fit in with the text. Also giving them a vocabulary list so they know what to look for will help. I never thought how a book is set up in English could be confusing. I am just so used to knowing what figure 15.3 means when I go to look for the graph. I will definitely keep this in mind if I ever encounter an ELL student in my classes.

Chapter 7: Teaching Difficult Academic Material

The suggestion was to try different ways to approach things. This just screamed MI to me. The student said that a computer program helped turn a word problem into a graph for math class. This helped the student learn it better because the graph was visual form while the text would have appealed to a linguistic learner. I was also reminded of a chemistry teacher I had. For three days in a row he tried to get a certain group of student to understand a concept. I understood it the first day so for the next two days I sat there bored out of my mind. They still could not get it and it suddenly occurred to me while reading this chapter, that he taught the material the same way all three times. Now that I look back on it, I wonder how he thought that was helping.

Chapter 6: Motivation and Boredom

The suggestion was that teacher help students stay on top of their home work load. One student talked about how teachers just passed him along from grade to grade even though he did not do the work. The other student talked about how things at home are distracting and it is hard to do work. I always thought that since I was at school for most of the day there was no reason why the work could not be done there. I can see doing a little bit for practice or to rethink a complex idea. But if the work load was heavy it was because we had to finish learning the lesson that the teacher ran out of time trying to teach us.That always made the work overwhelming and very difficult to complete.

Chapter 5: Teaching to the Individual, Working with the Group

The statement at the end of the chapter was what jumped out at me most. “Don’t forget to ask us!” page: 99 That jumped out to me most because I feel like that is what most educators miss. School is about the experience of the students and how much they learn, not about the teachers and how they teach. Who would better know what will best help a student learn than the students themselves? I think that students would be wiling to tell teachers what would work best, if teachers were willing to listen.

Chapter 4: Creating a Culture of Success

One of the students in the chapter asked that teachers do not give up on them. Even when students are struggling, they want teachers to still push for the best from them. They also want the teacher to push everyone in the class, not just the smart kids. This was interesting to me because I maybe had three teachers in school that pushed me. The rest were so busy with the kids that did not understand what was going on. The idea is to strike a balance, to push all the students in the class even when they are struggling.

Chapter 3: Classroom Behavior

When the text said right off the bat that teachers are afraid of teenagers I was taken aback. A student even compared teenagers as dogs that can smell out fear. This struck me as strange because I always experienced that adults in general look down on young people. One of my concerns is students will not take me seriously but I am not afraid of them. I guess it is because I am still young and do not feel as threatened personally about the possibility of a power struggle between teenagers and myself.

My contributions to the WebQuest wikis

I made three contributions to the class wiki on Webquests. On this page, I made two contributions. I added the details as to why Reconstructing the Yellow Wallpaper belonged under the task section for well done tasks. My second contribution was on the same page. I gave an explanation for why Amazing Superlatives belonged under the section for webquests with a strong process. My last contribution was adding a hyperlink to the backwards design model text. The hyperlink led to a page that gives more information about that model.

How to Help Someone Use a Computer

“Your primary goal is not to solve their problem. Your primary goal is to help them become one notch more capable of solving their problem on their own.” I just thought that computer techs were there just to fix the problem. I have never had one even try to teach me or tell me what they were doing. If I ever helped anyone, I would do it for them so it was done and they did not have to. I guess this one ties into the important rule I chose: “Never do something for someone that they are capable of doing for themselves.” I guess as a future teacher I have to take EVERY opportunity as an opportunity to learn and to teach.

This impacts my presentation by realizing that everyone in the class already knows how to search a website so I do not need to explain it in the presentation.

http://polaris.gseis.ucla.edu/pagre/how-to-help.html

Copyright and Fair Use LR

Question 14 surprised me first because I thought that as long as the audience was not paying to view the movie and secondly because I have done that. Many times I watched children for a function and the kids watched movies while the adults were in a meeting. I guess I was violating the copyright law without realizing it. I wonder though if I bought the movie and then showed it, would that be against the law? It would not be if the children were at my house, is it because the setting is in public? Or is it because the school/organization bought the movie? What if the teacher was throwing an end of the unit party and showed a popular movie that had nothing to do with what was studied? Or the teacher showed the Grinch at Christmas? Would that be against the copyright law because it was purely for entertainment and not for educational purposes? I guess this question opened up Pandora’s Box of questions.

Copyright and Fair Use SR

1. Questions 2 and 5 seemed to be the flip side of the same coin. It is okay to download one copy of software to the server so it can be accessed by any computer in the school. However, that software can only be used by one person at a time. I would think that monitoring that would be kind of difficult. As soon as another person opens that program on the other side of the school, the copyright is being broken. So essentially it is the same as if there was one CD to use; only one person could use it at a time. By putting it on the server just means that no one has to go to the computer lab to get the CD. I think this makes it easier to violate the copyright law. So it is now clear to me, one CD= 1user.

2. Question 8 surprised me. I thought as long as I gave credit to where I got the information, if where I got it from violated the copyright law, it wasn’t my problem. Now however, I will be sure to check my sources for credibility, because if I don’t I can get in trouble for it.

3. Question 10 confused me. I can use files from a file sharing site in my lessons but I can’t share what I found with other teachers to use in their lessons. At first glance it seemed contradictory. As I looked closer, I realized that if another teacher found your lessons on the web he or she might credit you for the information. That would be breaking the copyright law by mistake. Neither you nor the other teacher meant to but the file sharing site’s information was just passed off by you as your own. I think that is where the problem occurs.

4. Question 12 was interesting. Manufacturers are putting copy-blockers on their devices, which are lawful, but it is interfering with the educators’ constitutional rights to the material for education. I guess it is up to the teachers to work around technology to exercise their constitutional right to the information.

5. Question 16 seemed as much against the law as possible. However it is just another way to jump through the necessary hoops to exercise the educators’ constitutional right to the material. I did think that using outlawed technology wasn’t allowed but I guess that depends on what that technology is.

6. Question 17 was creepy. I did not know that it was perfectly okay to take pictures of random people outside of businesses and post it on the web. It seems weird to think that a random day I decide to visit Starbucks my picture can be taken and posted on a blog about the differences between Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts, and Tim Horton’s.

7. Question 19 I couldn’t believe was against the law. My sister’s seventh grade yearbook was on a CD with music on it. She had to buy it and everything. Maybe the school just doesn’t know that it is illegal.

8. Question 20 is so technical. It is okay for the students to use the material in the projects. It is okay to make a CD of all the projects for records. However, it is not okay if everyone involved with all the projects wants a personal copy for their own records. Fair use is okay as long as wider distribution is not intended. I don’t think when the students started using the sources and doing the projects they intended that a movie was going to be made. I’m sure they did not foresee anyone wanting a copy of it. I think anticipation is the wrong word for the law. In this example I do not see any of the original users of the information (the students) anticipating anything like that.

Web 2.0 Educator

The blog I chose to read was created by Hey Jude. His blog had a lot of videos posted on it to illustrate what the topic of the posting was about. It would definitely appeal to a visual learner. The type of technology that was the subject of the entries I read was more effective internet search engines. The author quoted leapfish, semantic web, and Calais. The author's ideas about technology in the classroom was about collaboration. How collective ideas are better than a single person's thoughts. Leapfish not only searches the key words but related ideas and topics. An example is if you searched Martin Luther King Jr. Links about him as a person would appear but also links to other relevant topics like Rosa Parks, Malcom X, Plessy vs Fergusson, and the Chicago Riots. Semantic Web is what Calais is. Calais is built by all the people that use it. Anyone can write and post it. The post is automatically categorized so it will appear on another users seach page if the topic is relevant. One video posted on the blog is an interview of Michael Wesch, a collge professor at Kansas State. A loose quote from Michael Wesch is, "I have 400 students in my lecture. I am not really interested in what one person can do. I am interested in what 400 people can do when they all set their minds to a common goal." This idea of using technology for people to join together for a common purpose: to learn and discover the world, is what the blog postings I read by Hey Jude are about. I think the ideas presented here are very good in theory. I believe it is indeed the way of the future. I'm just not sure if the future is here yet in terms of application. I guess it all depends on the skills the students already possess for that type of technology and what resources the school provides. Hey Jude's Blog.

My MEL Experiences

• Context- In the 5th grade my sister was learning what a biography was. The teacher had all the students research and write one. The personal connection the teacher help the students make was helping the students choose a famous person in history with the same name as the student. My little sister's name is Molly and her biography was on Molly Pitcher.
  
• Avoid Rewards- In my elementary gym class, we had to do assessments at the beginning of each year. We had to do jumping jacks, sit ups, and a sprint. My gym teacher would always give the kid who won each event a lollipop. I think it made the other kids feel bad for not being as fast or not being able to do a lot of jumping jacks or sit ups. In retrospect, a gym teacher feeding kids sugar seems counter intuitive.
  
• Hands on- In my biology class, we were doing a bird unit. My teacher played for us some recordings of bird sounds of birds that were local to the area. Then we went outside and walked the cross country trails listening for different birds. I think we ended up hearing 5 different birds that we could identify. That was fun and it helped us appreciate something as mundane as bird chirps.
  
• Helping Students Succeed- I was struggling with the review at the beginning of my AP Calculus class because I had not had any math classes since the beginning of my sophomore year and this was my senior year. My teacher was very patient with me and reviewed with me some basic principals that I had forgotten. I was getting frustrated because I knew I had done it all before and I could not remember it. He just said, "hey take it easy. I know you can do it, just relax and let it come back to you." Knowing he had confidence in me helped me feel comfortable to come in after class whenever I did not understand a concept. I got a 4 on the AP exam but even without that kind of success, I know he helped me a lot.
  
• Student/Teacher Relationships- I had a geography teacher, Mr. Jones, that for all of his classes, he gave each student a nickname. Even outside of class, when Mr. Jones saw us, he would call us by the nickname he had given us. My nick name was M.C. which are my initials but the day he gave me the nickname, he asked me if I could touch this. I just looked at him and said, "touch what?" He said, "come on M.C. isn't that your song?" I just laughed but the name stuck. It made me feel like he cared enough to come up with nick names for all of us and remember them.
  

Type I and Type II Technology

Type 1 Technology- Uses technology to accomplish tasks already being done in the classroom. There is nothing innovative or future thinking about how the technology can change the way students are educated. Here are a few examples of this use of technology. A teacher posting the reading assignments on the web instead of using a text book. The teacher I had that did this did not even add pictures or anything. All the link consisted of was uploaded text or links to speeches. The most elementary use of technology that most clearly exemplifies this concept, but students have been doing it for as long as computers have been accessible, is word processing papers instead of handwriting them. If the teacher is even more willing to take risks she might have the students email their homework so there is no paper at all. Another example is taking a test on a computer instead in paper form. One of my teachers signed up our mobile lab, which is a 30 laptops on a cart, so we could take an essay style exam. He wrote the questions on the white board and we wrote our responses on the computers. What is even more sad about this scenario is that he had us print our essays so he could grade them.

Type 2 Technology- An interactive, innovative, and adaptive approach to technology's use in the classroom. This focuses more on the student's use of the technology in new ways, rather than using the technology to do things the student is used to doing. A few examples would be: a virtual recreation of an important fort in a war that the student could explore by going into different rooms to find the answers to a list of questions, a collection of art works the student could look at and analyze at his or her own pace, and a debate between the same class at a different school through an web camera.

Chapter 2: Respect, Liking, Trust, Fairness

Students respect good teachers even though they hate the subject or dislike the teacher on a personal level. This jumped out at me because this seemed way too mature to be coming from most of the kids I went to high school with.

I must admit, I was not this mature. I had biases and hated certain teachers whether they were good teachers or not. I learned ALOT in my chemistry class. I still to this day hate that teacher because of who he is as a person. He's not a bad man or anything like that. We just don't see eye to eye on a lot of issues. I think that the above statement is true only on a very small scale or on a superficial level.

Chapter 1: Knowing Students Well

Something that stood out to me was one of things that "Tiffany" said about a chemistry teacher she had. She said that the teacher never asked the class if they were understanding or if they were confused. The teacher kept on talking, "teaching to the whiteboard" so to speak.

This jumped out to me because I have had a few teachers more interested in covering the curriculum or getting through the lesson plan than if we were understanding it. One particular teacher I had was doing this when she realized how quiet the room was. My teacher turned around and looked at us. We all just stared at her with blank looks. So she asked, "does anyone have any questions?" This was definitely a speak now or forever hold your peace kind of question. When no one else even moved, I raised my hand and said, "I don't have a question, I'm so confused that I can't even think of one. All I know is that I don't get it." The teacher looked at me, rolled her eyes, and then continued teaching more material. I guess she thought I was being a smart Alec. I really don't know.

Learning Styles Inventory Results

These are the results of your inventory. The scores are out of 20 for each style. A score of 20 indicates you use that style often.

Style Scores

Visual	6
Social	19
Physical	14
Aural	12
Verbal	18
Solitary	4
Logical	4

I agree with the results from this test. I knew I liked words and the suggested ways to study for reading/writing learners are the ones that I use. I hate studying alone. I usually do it a lot because I do not need a lot of study time to remember the material. So studying with a partner does not work well. Usually I study in the lounge in my dorm or if I am in my room I play music while I study. I did not realize that I am a kinesthetic learner. I have never really explored any of those study suggestions. The one time I can remember doing something like that was in high school. I used to practice conjugating Spanish verbs while running during track practice. I have not tried anything like that in college.

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