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.