So I have put this off as long as possible because for some reason I find edubloggers very daunting and commenting on one of their post frightens me. I even went back and looked at our assignment to see if there was a way around commenting on an edubloggers post but unfortunately there is not! I am not sure exactly why this part of the assignment has me so nervous, I have had two edubloggers' pages open in my browser for over a week now and only because I have to turn in a link to prove that I did comment on their blogs.
I actually haven't done it yet, but I will! I have also spent waaaay to much time finding the perfect blog post to make a comment on!! I don't know what to say, I feel like I do not have anything to add to the conversation. All of the posts that I like have a lot of comments on them already and through reading them all I do not feel like I have something to add. The other posts the are less intriguing have few posts which I also find intimidating. It is nerve racking to post something to the internet with my name on it. Also what is the blogger etiquette? If a post is older than a month can I still comment on it?
While I have spent too much time looking at edubloggers I came across this page and maybe you all did too for new teachers and I have found it useful!
Ok I did it!!! I am not sure why this was so difficult for me. I think this comes at a time when I am feeling very insecure about my confidence in creating my own idea for the classroom and contributing to the conversation. I have been a student for so long I am very good at going to class and answering the questions my professors ask me but when it come to planning my own lessons and commenting on edubloggers I have zero confidence. Is this normal? I know that I am not supposed to be perfect or have all of the answers but I think I need to be a little more confident! This might be a good time for fake it till you make it!
I do have something to contribute and I will be a great teacher!! Thanks for sticking with me for this frustrated post! From here on out I will be more confident and positive!
Monday, November 18, 2013
Sunday, November 17, 2013
Lots of Questions
This semester as we have been learning about new tech tools, how to flip our classroom, incorporate cell phones, and utilize all google has to offer, I have been thinking about how classrooms are changing and how hard it is for teachers to change. I will be a relatively young teacher when I start teaching next year and I am hesitant to use technology in my classroom. What if I plan a lesson centered around technology and something goes wrong, the internet is not working or the website that I would like my students to use is down? Do I plan two lessons? Do we just try again? I know that problems like this are occurring less often in many schools but in some schools internet is still an issue.
We have read articles explaining that we cannot teach the way we were taught, but how do you decide what type of technology or how much to incorporate. What is enough and what is distracting? Do I need to use technology to move forward as an educator? I feel that I have learned a lot about effective ways to implement different tech tools or tech strategies in teaching but when I am a full time new teacher I fear that I am going to go back to what I am comfortable with and what I know. How do I prevent that?
I have been learning a lot through reading the edubloggers and I think that is a good solution to keep my teaching up to date and to push myself as an educator. I hope that I will be able to teach with people who also would like work to be innovative in incorporating technology or in pushing themselves as teachers. I am excited about all of the technology that we have learned about this semester but worried about actually using it. What do you all think? What are you going to use or not use? How will you decide?
This year is for us to learn how to be the most effective teacher we can be. I would like to try to incorporate some of the tech tools that I have learned about this semester but how do I balance this with trying to learn all of the other aspects of teaching and working in someone else's classroom?
I am sorry for all of the questions in the post but this is where my mind goes when I think about everything we have learned this semester and how I am going to be able to apply it all come January.
We have read articles explaining that we cannot teach the way we were taught, but how do you decide what type of technology or how much to incorporate. What is enough and what is distracting? Do I need to use technology to move forward as an educator? I feel that I have learned a lot about effective ways to implement different tech tools or tech strategies in teaching but when I am a full time new teacher I fear that I am going to go back to what I am comfortable with and what I know. How do I prevent that?
I have been learning a lot through reading the edubloggers and I think that is a good solution to keep my teaching up to date and to push myself as an educator. I hope that I will be able to teach with people who also would like work to be innovative in incorporating technology or in pushing themselves as teachers. I am excited about all of the technology that we have learned about this semester but worried about actually using it. What do you all think? What are you going to use or not use? How will you decide?
This year is for us to learn how to be the most effective teacher we can be. I would like to try to incorporate some of the tech tools that I have learned about this semester but how do I balance this with trying to learn all of the other aspects of teaching and working in someone else's classroom?
I am sorry for all of the questions in the post but this is where my mind goes when I think about everything we have learned this semester and how I am going to be able to apply it all come January.
Thursday, October 31, 2013
Cell Phones in the Classroom
As some of you know I have been fairly reluctant and even resistant to some of the tech tools that have been presented and how useful they would be in a math classroom. But recently I have been coming around! The presentation by Liz Kolb on cell phones in the classroom and the webinar that I watched about twitter got my wheels turning about using technologies and devices in the classroom.
Liz Kolb showed us some very interesting websites to use to get students involved in class through their cell phones. There are a couple of different ways and different apps and websites that Lisa showed us that I would like to try using in my classroom. The first is remind101. I have seen other teachers use this and I think it is a useful tool. My mentor teacher always posts the homework to the class moodle website but I think that some parents and students would find it easier and more useful to receive a text.
Another website tool that Liz suggested was polltgo.com a website that allows you to poll your students instantly. This is something that we have seen our professors and others use or some other type of polling website that allows students or audience members to respond. I really like this idea to get students involved in the class discussion or to share answers that some quieter students may not feel comfortable with but I have some concerns. I like that the tool allows for the students to have anonymity when responding to questions in class which would hopefully help with participation and allow students to guess if they do not know without being embarrassed. But I am afraid with the anonymity comes the ability to goof off and give ridiculous answers. I would like to think that I will have created a classroom where this is would be unacceptable but I have seen adults not take these polls seriously and take advantage of the anonymity. I do like that some of the other sites similar to polltogo.com that Liz showed us can have people sign in so students' name or login name would be attached to their post. I believe that this would eliminate some of the abuse of the poll but I also think that it may take away the advantage of having less confident students involved in the conversation. I do still think that completing a poll on their cell phones may reach a different group of students than a normal class discussion.
Along with polltogo.com I believe that twitter could be an interesting tool to use in the classroom. I am going to have to look into it more to see what trouble students can get into on twitter before encouraging my students to use it in the classroom or for homework but it could be a good tool for homework help or another way to have a class discussion while we are in the classroom. I am also excited for the networking possibilities of twitter. I never knew you could connect with people in such constructive ways through twitter.
I am excited to learn more and try some things out. I think that I would like to do some testing with the polling and see how it goes in the classroom. I foresee using it in a warm up in the future! I will keep you posted on how it goes!
Liz Kolb showed us some very interesting websites to use to get students involved in class through their cell phones. There are a couple of different ways and different apps and websites that Lisa showed us that I would like to try using in my classroom. The first is remind101. I have seen other teachers use this and I think it is a useful tool. My mentor teacher always posts the homework to the class moodle website but I think that some parents and students would find it easier and more useful to receive a text.
Another website tool that Liz suggested was polltgo.com a website that allows you to poll your students instantly. This is something that we have seen our professors and others use or some other type of polling website that allows students or audience members to respond. I really like this idea to get students involved in the class discussion or to share answers that some quieter students may not feel comfortable with but I have some concerns. I like that the tool allows for the students to have anonymity when responding to questions in class which would hopefully help with participation and allow students to guess if they do not know without being embarrassed. But I am afraid with the anonymity comes the ability to goof off and give ridiculous answers. I would like to think that I will have created a classroom where this is would be unacceptable but I have seen adults not take these polls seriously and take advantage of the anonymity. I do like that some of the other sites similar to polltogo.com that Liz showed us can have people sign in so students' name or login name would be attached to their post. I believe that this would eliminate some of the abuse of the poll but I also think that it may take away the advantage of having less confident students involved in the conversation. I do still think that completing a poll on their cell phones may reach a different group of students than a normal class discussion.
Along with polltogo.com I believe that twitter could be an interesting tool to use in the classroom. I am going to have to look into it more to see what trouble students can get into on twitter before encouraging my students to use it in the classroom or for homework but it could be a good tool for homework help or another way to have a class discussion while we are in the classroom. I am also excited for the networking possibilities of twitter. I never knew you could connect with people in such constructive ways through twitter.
I am excited to learn more and try some things out. I think that I would like to do some testing with the polling and see how it goes in the classroom. I foresee using it in a warm up in the future! I will keep you posted on how it goes!
Technology at a Small High School
So far from my experience student teaching at a small high school technology has been an interesting area to explore. By "small" I am talking around 300 students make up the student body. The school is an accredited International Baccalaureate high school, the student body is academically driven and focused. This forward thinking curriculum and academic work ethic I imagined coming with cutting edge technology. That is not the case.
The school has a computer lab and two computer carts and every classroom has a document projector and a smart board, so there is not shortage of technology but the functionality of the technology is more of the issue. There are always at least one or two computers in the computer lab that do not work and the same goes for the laptop carts. In my mentor's teacher's classroom we have only used the laptop cart once but the word in the teacher lounge is that one of the laptop carts is much better than the other and competition is pretty fierce to get the "good" laptop cart. Another issue that my placement school has with technology is that there is not designated "tech" person. There is not a librarian or technology trained person at the school. The lead teacher has been designated this person by default but has no experience or qualifications to be a technology expert. This makes fixing the broken computers in the computer lab and on the laptop carts difficult. The lack of computers has not affected my classroom as much as it has affected other teachers classrooms. But there aren't enough computers for an entire class to do research which some of the other teachers struggle with.
Another aspect of the small school that the tech study help me think about was the school's device policy. There are no phones allowed out in the hallways or used in class for non-educational use. Inside the classrooms it is up to the teachers to decide how they In my mentor teacher's classroom the students are allowed to use their phones as their planners or to take pictures of some of the group work that we do in class. There are also two students who do all of their work on their computers. When working on my tech in my placement survey I discussed with my mentor teacher how he felt about students using technology in his classroom. He said he did not mind as long they were using as a learning tool. This policy seems to be the norm at this school, but in talking with the students there is one teacher who lets them have the phones out and text if they would like. I thought this was interesting. According to the student who I was speaking to the teacher's idea behind his policy is that the students are going to text anyway so he might as well let them text and get back to work then have them spend time hiding the text from the teacher. I thought this was an interesting policy. I would be interested to see how this policy plays out in his classroom.
I have always thought of technology as a distraction but after the cell phone presentation and seeing how limiting a lack of technology can be I wonder if we let student bring their own device if our classrooms may be more productive?
The school has a computer lab and two computer carts and every classroom has a document projector and a smart board, so there is not shortage of technology but the functionality of the technology is more of the issue. There are always at least one or two computers in the computer lab that do not work and the same goes for the laptop carts. In my mentor's teacher's classroom we have only used the laptop cart once but the word in the teacher lounge is that one of the laptop carts is much better than the other and competition is pretty fierce to get the "good" laptop cart. Another issue that my placement school has with technology is that there is not designated "tech" person. There is not a librarian or technology trained person at the school. The lead teacher has been designated this person by default but has no experience or qualifications to be a technology expert. This makes fixing the broken computers in the computer lab and on the laptop carts difficult. The lack of computers has not affected my classroom as much as it has affected other teachers classrooms. But there aren't enough computers for an entire class to do research which some of the other teachers struggle with.
Another aspect of the small school that the tech study help me think about was the school's device policy. There are no phones allowed out in the hallways or used in class for non-educational use. Inside the classrooms it is up to the teachers to decide how they In my mentor teacher's classroom the students are allowed to use their phones as their planners or to take pictures of some of the group work that we do in class. There are also two students who do all of their work on their computers. When working on my tech in my placement survey I discussed with my mentor teacher how he felt about students using technology in his classroom. He said he did not mind as long they were using as a learning tool. This policy seems to be the norm at this school, but in talking with the students there is one teacher who lets them have the phones out and text if they would like. I thought this was interesting. According to the student who I was speaking to the teacher's idea behind his policy is that the students are going to text anyway so he might as well let them text and get back to work then have them spend time hiding the text from the teacher. I thought this was an interesting policy. I would be interested to see how this policy plays out in his classroom.
I have always thought of technology as a distraction but after the cell phone presentation and seeing how limiting a lack of technology can be I wonder if we let student bring their own device if our classrooms may be more productive?
Monday, September 30, 2013
How to Decide When to use Technology in the Classroom
When we learn about new technology tools or application of tools for the classroom I am always thinking about how I can incorporate these tools to be effective in my math classroom. On Thursday we listened to a very interesting presentation on the use of Google apps in the classroom and presentation on Prezi in the classroom. Although I have used both of these tools for my own learning I have never used Prezi or Google apps to enhance my student's learning. Both have very good uses in the classroom but come with some warnings.
Our classmates showed us how effective Prezi can be in the classroom but they also showed us some of the ways that Prezi can be distracting and ineffective in the classroom. Prezi is a very helpful tool for seeing connection between concepts, ideas, or different representations. For my math methods class we just read about how graphic organizers can help show some of the students misconceptions and understanding of the connections in a math classroom. Prezi could be a productive way to give my students the opportunity to be creative in math class. The warning that our classmates gave us about Prezi is if it is done incorrectly it can be disgracing and take away from the material you are presenting or you students are presenting in the classroom. This would be a major aspect when looking at my students creations about the connections in the unit or throughout the year. I can imagine a lot of different ways to scaffold the connections in math with Prezi.
The other tool that we learned about on Thursday were some of the Google apps. I can see how helpful the Google apps could be for me as a teacher to organize my lessons and units with other teachers and for myself. But right now I do not see many effective ways to use the Google apps to help my students in math (I would be open to suggestions!). As I am learning more and more about assessment I think that a student portfolio can be a strong assessment tool. Pete Pasque showed us how Google can be used to help our students organize their online portfolios. If I do use Prezi in the way that I outlined above Google could be a nice tool to help students organize their different Prezis for each unit or concept. But using Google as the platform for their final portfolio is not the most effective use of the Google tool. Because I think instead of assessing their mathematical knowledge I think I would be assessing their use of technology and scanning abilities to upload a lot of the handwritten homework, test, and projects. I would like to do some more exploring of equation editors to possibly move toward an online portfolio in math classrooms.
I am excited to learn about more tools that I can use in my math classroom to bring a more creative twist to math!
Our classmates showed us how effective Prezi can be in the classroom but they also showed us some of the ways that Prezi can be distracting and ineffective in the classroom. Prezi is a very helpful tool for seeing connection between concepts, ideas, or different representations. For my math methods class we just read about how graphic organizers can help show some of the students misconceptions and understanding of the connections in a math classroom. Prezi could be a productive way to give my students the opportunity to be creative in math class. The warning that our classmates gave us about Prezi is if it is done incorrectly it can be disgracing and take away from the material you are presenting or you students are presenting in the classroom. This would be a major aspect when looking at my students creations about the connections in the unit or throughout the year. I can imagine a lot of different ways to scaffold the connections in math with Prezi.
The other tool that we learned about on Thursday were some of the Google apps. I can see how helpful the Google apps could be for me as a teacher to organize my lessons and units with other teachers and for myself. But right now I do not see many effective ways to use the Google apps to help my students in math (I would be open to suggestions!). As I am learning more and more about assessment I think that a student portfolio can be a strong assessment tool. Pete Pasque showed us how Google can be used to help our students organize their online portfolios. If I do use Prezi in the way that I outlined above Google could be a nice tool to help students organize their different Prezis for each unit or concept. But using Google as the platform for their final portfolio is not the most effective use of the Google tool. Because I think instead of assessing their mathematical knowledge I think I would be assessing their use of technology and scanning abilities to upload a lot of the handwritten homework, test, and projects. I would like to do some more exploring of equation editors to possibly move toward an online portfolio in math classrooms.
I am excited to learn about more tools that I can use in my math classroom to bring a more creative twist to math!
Wednesday, July 31, 2013
Last Class of the Summer
In looking at common core standard and smarter balanced assessment I have been thinking about assessment in a whole new way. I have been reading about assessment for my concept paper for our EDUC 606 class. I have been reading about what standardized test are actually testing vs. what people think or use the test for. Currently standardize test only test what a student knows, not how they learn, how much a student could learn or how successful a student they are. But people use these test to decide how "good" a school is, if the teachers in the school are good, if the students are "smart" or "capable".
With this new smarter balanced assessment I wonder what other things people will falsely interpret and how the results will be skewed by the use of a computer as the format of the test. We discussed in class the different ways we would have to prepare our students for taking a test on the computer and the different challenges the different subject areas face but we did not really discuss how capable young people are with technology.
Clearly some of the test taking strategies are different when they are asked to write complete sentences to explain their answers and math and have no opportunity to explain their answers with a drawing or in math equations. But should we worry about them knowing how to operate a computer? I know that not all kids have access to a computer at home by the time they reach us in high school how fluent will they be with a keyboard and finding the symbols on the keyboard? I would assume this would be incredibly dependant on where you are teaching. But is it fair to have students take a test in a format they are not familiar with or do not know how to use? or a better question is this equitable? Whose shoulders does it fall on to make sure that all students can operate a keyboard or know how to drag and drop an object?
It seems to me that the students who are going to have to hardest time taking a test on a computer are the students who are already struggling with the lack of an educational environment at home. Student's whose families cannot afford a computer or a smart phone. How will they learn if their school cannot afford to give them all enough time in the computer lab? How can we make sure that they are all comfortable with the keyboard? Whose class time does that come out of?
I realize that this post is a lot of questions but I think I need to think about these questions a little longer before I make a decision or start to formulate how I will teach in these situations.
With this new smarter balanced assessment I wonder what other things people will falsely interpret and how the results will be skewed by the use of a computer as the format of the test. We discussed in class the different ways we would have to prepare our students for taking a test on the computer and the different challenges the different subject areas face but we did not really discuss how capable young people are with technology.
Clearly some of the test taking strategies are different when they are asked to write complete sentences to explain their answers and math and have no opportunity to explain their answers with a drawing or in math equations. But should we worry about them knowing how to operate a computer? I know that not all kids have access to a computer at home by the time they reach us in high school how fluent will they be with a keyboard and finding the symbols on the keyboard? I would assume this would be incredibly dependant on where you are teaching. But is it fair to have students take a test in a format they are not familiar with or do not know how to use? or a better question is this equitable? Whose shoulders does it fall on to make sure that all students can operate a keyboard or know how to drag and drop an object?
It seems to me that the students who are going to have to hardest time taking a test on a computer are the students who are already struggling with the lack of an educational environment at home. Student's whose families cannot afford a computer or a smart phone. How will they learn if their school cannot afford to give them all enough time in the computer lab? How can we make sure that they are all comfortable with the keyboard? Whose class time does that come out of?
I realize that this post is a lot of questions but I think I need to think about these questions a little longer before I make a decision or start to formulate how I will teach in these situations.
Saturday, July 27, 2013
Other Education Blogs
Before this class and assignment I was not connected to the blog world at all, and to be honest I did not really understand how blogging worked and why people would need or use them. I have really enjoyed seeing how creative my classmates are and reading their blog posts has given me a little insight to their writing style and online personality. I have really enjoyed using my blog for this class, while I am not as creative in my writing style or blog appearance as some of my other classmates I have enjoyed having this space to write my thoughts. It has also been powerful for me to see how my classmates have interpreted the things we are discussing in class and how different we all are. After exploring some of the educational blogs listed on cTools I am excited of the possibility of this being a major resource when I am a teacher.
For this week I read some post from Elona Hartjes's blog Teacher At Risk and Dan Myer's blog dy/dan. The Teacher At Risk blog was more about the state of education in our country in general. She often has a TED talks attached to her blog or other education articles. The topics are thought provoking and very interesting. I think that when I am teaching I may use this blog to see what is "new" in education discussion and how I can incorporate it into my teaching. I am not sure I would use this blog all of the time but I think it is important to go back and look at information about education in a general sense from time to time to make sure you are not getting to caught up in your one classroom or school setting.
The other blog I looked at dy/dan is a math education blog. These seem a little bit harder to come by and I would guess this is because publishing your writing for the world to see is a littler nerve racking for a math person (like me for example). But this blog is great!! I did not read all of the posts but one that I did read and really enjoyed was looking at a standard math problem form a text book and showing how he used it in his classroom and connected much better in real world questions. He lays out the steps that he went through to change a mundane problem in a text book about tires skid marks and speed into a real world problem about car accidents. The steps he outlines can be used on most story problems that are presented in text books.
This blog is very cool as a math teacher and I think that I could use a blog like this daily to see what he has been doing and how I can do some of these things in my classroom. This blog also inspired me to want to do more research into other math teachers blogs and maybe even start using blogging as a way to share activities that were sucessful in my classroom.
Over all this blogging assignment has shown me the power and possibilities of blogs and how excited I am to use them in developing my teacher education!
For this week I read some post from Elona Hartjes's blog Teacher At Risk and Dan Myer's blog dy/dan. The Teacher At Risk blog was more about the state of education in our country in general. She often has a TED talks attached to her blog or other education articles. The topics are thought provoking and very interesting. I think that when I am teaching I may use this blog to see what is "new" in education discussion and how I can incorporate it into my teaching. I am not sure I would use this blog all of the time but I think it is important to go back and look at information about education in a general sense from time to time to make sure you are not getting to caught up in your one classroom or school setting.
The other blog I looked at dy/dan is a math education blog. These seem a little bit harder to come by and I would guess this is because publishing your writing for the world to see is a littler nerve racking for a math person (like me for example). But this blog is great!! I did not read all of the posts but one that I did read and really enjoyed was looking at a standard math problem form a text book and showing how he used it in his classroom and connected much better in real world questions. He lays out the steps that he went through to change a mundane problem in a text book about tires skid marks and speed into a real world problem about car accidents. The steps he outlines can be used on most story problems that are presented in text books.
This blog is very cool as a math teacher and I think that I could use a blog like this daily to see what he has been doing and how I can do some of these things in my classroom. This blog also inspired me to want to do more research into other math teachers blogs and maybe even start using blogging as a way to share activities that were sucessful in my classroom.
Over all this blogging assignment has shown me the power and possibilities of blogs and how excited I am to use them in developing my teacher education!
Wednesday, July 24, 2013
Re-thinking Video Games
My last post was about the educational video game Lure of the Labyrinth, I was pretty critical of the labyrinth aspect of the game but after discussing video games and thinking about how can school be more like a video game I am rethinking some of my criticisms.
I was frustrated by the ambiguity and lack of directions in the Labyrinth but then Jeff asked us how do these video games replicate or even exemplify some aspects that are missing in schools today. Most of the information or lessons that I remember the most from my undergraduate and secondary careers were things that I had to struggle with. I remember the struggle and the difficulty and sense of accomplishment that I felt when I finally figured out the solution.
As a math major my last two years of college were predominately spent writing proofs and struggling to show how certain math statements are true. I had a certain language and process to follow (a map) but otherwise I was given very little instruction on how to solve my homework problems. This reminds me of the Labyrinth game you have a very unclear map and you are supposed to figure out which door to walk through next.
The one thing that the Labyrinth video game lacked that I benefited from in my last two years of college was years of practice and knowledge that I had gained in math. In Labyrinth there was not scaffolding or intermediate steps to figure out how to use the map. This is an important aspect of learning that we need to remember when we ask students to do a new task. Are they ready to do this? Have I provided them with an enough information to solve the problem? Do they understand the process that I am asking them to carry out?
We need to make sure that we challenge our students at the appropriate level. Let them explore and fail but not to the point where they want to give up. This is the challenge that a good video game accomplishes and that more classrooms need to strive for.
I was frustrated by the ambiguity and lack of directions in the Labyrinth but then Jeff asked us how do these video games replicate or even exemplify some aspects that are missing in schools today. Most of the information or lessons that I remember the most from my undergraduate and secondary careers were things that I had to struggle with. I remember the struggle and the difficulty and sense of accomplishment that I felt when I finally figured out the solution.
As a math major my last two years of college were predominately spent writing proofs and struggling to show how certain math statements are true. I had a certain language and process to follow (a map) but otherwise I was given very little instruction on how to solve my homework problems. This reminds me of the Labyrinth game you have a very unclear map and you are supposed to figure out which door to walk through next.
The one thing that the Labyrinth video game lacked that I benefited from in my last two years of college was years of practice and knowledge that I had gained in math. In Labyrinth there was not scaffolding or intermediate steps to figure out how to use the map. This is an important aspect of learning that we need to remember when we ask students to do a new task. Are they ready to do this? Have I provided them with an enough information to solve the problem? Do they understand the process that I am asking them to carry out?
We need to make sure that we challenge our students at the appropriate level. Let them explore and fail but not to the point where they want to give up. This is the challenge that a good video game accomplishes and that more classrooms need to strive for.
Sunday, July 21, 2013
Video Games in the Classrooms
After doing the readings and playing one of the video games I am not sure I am sold. I enjoyed the readings and I thought that the points made were for the most part very true! I remember playing computer games when I was younger and I remember the challenge of a new game but if I had figured out all of the secrets then the game became too easy and I no longer wanted to play. I did not have this same experience when playing Lure of the Labyrinth this evening.
Lure of the Labyrinth starts out with a story of a man losing his dog and going down a drain pipe to find him. He runs into a fairy that helps him turn into a monster to blend in to help find his dog. Then you become this man and your mission is to find the lost dog. You have to make your way through the labyrinth to find the lost dog (I think this is how it works, I got too frustrated to finish). The fairy gave you something that you can use to access hints and maps. This is how you figure out where to go and what your next steps are.
I like the premise of the game and it sounded fun but when I started playing I was annoyed off the bat with the amount of reading it had to set up the story, I realize we are looking at educational games but I think the words should be more worked into the game and not just given like you are reading a story at the beginning of the game. Then I had a hard time with the lack of directions, I did not feel I knew what to do. I think this is supposed to be the problem solving part of the game but it did not appeal to me.
I did like the games that you got to play once you got into the rooms. The lack of directions in these games were very good for helping me to problem solve. There is an option where you can go directly to the games and skip the fumbling around in the labyrinth. I liked that there was this option, it gave me the opportunity to play more games and figure out more about the premise of the entire game.
It has been a long time since I was 10 and liked to play games on the computer so maybe I would find the labyrinth more exciting and I would be able to understand the map more easily if I were 10 but to me the map was confusing and the labyrinth was frustrating (which I do think that is the point). But I did think that the games were educational and fun!!
I am not sure that I would use computer games as a teacher though. As a parent I think it may be a good compromise for children that would rather play video games than do puzzles. But I am not sure how I would work this into my classroom especially for secondary math.
Lure of the Labyrinth starts out with a story of a man losing his dog and going down a drain pipe to find him. He runs into a fairy that helps him turn into a monster to blend in to help find his dog. Then you become this man and your mission is to find the lost dog. You have to make your way through the labyrinth to find the lost dog (I think this is how it works, I got too frustrated to finish). The fairy gave you something that you can use to access hints and maps. This is how you figure out where to go and what your next steps are.
I like the premise of the game and it sounded fun but when I started playing I was annoyed off the bat with the amount of reading it had to set up the story, I realize we are looking at educational games but I think the words should be more worked into the game and not just given like you are reading a story at the beginning of the game. Then I had a hard time with the lack of directions, I did not feel I knew what to do. I think this is supposed to be the problem solving part of the game but it did not appeal to me.
I did like the games that you got to play once you got into the rooms. The lack of directions in these games were very good for helping me to problem solve. There is an option where you can go directly to the games and skip the fumbling around in the labyrinth. I liked that there was this option, it gave me the opportunity to play more games and figure out more about the premise of the entire game.
It has been a long time since I was 10 and liked to play games on the computer so maybe I would find the labyrinth more exciting and I would be able to understand the map more easily if I were 10 but to me the map was confusing and the labyrinth was frustrating (which I do think that is the point). But I did think that the games were educational and fun!!
I am not sure that I would use computer games as a teacher though. As a parent I think it may be a good compromise for children that would rather play video games than do puzzles. But I am not sure how I would work this into my classroom especially for secondary math.
Tuesday, July 16, 2013
Learning from Classmates
I really enjoyed learning from my other two classmates about new ways to organizing your online life. I learned about two new two new online tools, dropbox and Xmarks. While dropbox was a new tool to me we have been using a similar tool M+ box for our MAC classes so the concept and the uses were not new to me. But Xmarks was an entirely new concept for me, I never thought about how crucial bookmarks could be.
I have about 7 bookmarks that I use on a fairly regular basis but I never really thought about how much these help and how much I could help students or colleagues by sharing book marks. I thought if we could share particular bookmarks with students and both edit this list it would be a good way to control research and help students manage and learn how to navigate the internet. I think that you could quite easily use this tool to scaffold your students research. Starting by having more control as a teacher and then as the year moves forward allow the students more and more opportunities to add or subtract resources from you Xmark folder. I have not yet explored Xmark but I could also see it as a good tool for connecting with other teacher in your department at school and sharing resources.
Dropbox seemed like a useful tool as well but very similar to google drive which I am more familiar with. I think it would take a little more convincing to get me to work with dropbox but it again would be a great way to share information with students and colleges.
Discussing new technologies was not the only way that I learned from my classmate thought. On Monday in class we played a modified 20 questions game and while I understand the other cohort has not played yet and I will not reveal too many details here (because I know my blog is not private) I will say that I learned a lot about the way my classmates think. I did not participate as much as I think I normally would and just observed what when on and how everyone developed their questions. It was very interesting to do this and I think that when I am a teacher I hope that I can design a way for me to sit back and watch my students develop questions like this and get a bit of an insight into their procedural knowledge.
I have about 7 bookmarks that I use on a fairly regular basis but I never really thought about how much these help and how much I could help students or colleagues by sharing book marks. I thought if we could share particular bookmarks with students and both edit this list it would be a good way to control research and help students manage and learn how to navigate the internet. I think that you could quite easily use this tool to scaffold your students research. Starting by having more control as a teacher and then as the year moves forward allow the students more and more opportunities to add or subtract resources from you Xmark folder. I have not yet explored Xmark but I could also see it as a good tool for connecting with other teacher in your department at school and sharing resources.
Dropbox seemed like a useful tool as well but very similar to google drive which I am more familiar with. I think it would take a little more convincing to get me to work with dropbox but it again would be a great way to share information with students and colleges.
Discussing new technologies was not the only way that I learned from my classmate thought. On Monday in class we played a modified 20 questions game and while I understand the other cohort has not played yet and I will not reveal too many details here (because I know my blog is not private) I will say that I learned a lot about the way my classmates think. I did not participate as much as I think I normally would and just observed what when on and how everyone developed their questions. It was very interesting to do this and I think that when I am a teacher I hope that I can design a way for me to sit back and watch my students develop questions like this and get a bit of an insight into their procedural knowledge.
Sunday, July 14, 2013
Trials and Tribulations with Pinterest
When we received the organize your online life assignment and I was assigned Pinterest, I thought oh I use Pinterest all of the time this will be easy!! But when I started trying to explain Pinterest to my boyfriend who had just created an account and did not understand what Pinterest was I realized how hard this could be.
Pinterest consists of a lot of strange words that do not make sense outside of the Pinterest website, for example "pin", "board", "pinner", "bookmarklet" and many more. So my first dilemma was which words to define and which to just use in context and hope the reader would understand the meaning in the context of the sentence. I chose to define "pin" and "board" because if the reader did not understand those two words they would be lost for the rest of the handout. I also defined "bookmarklet" within the context of the sentence because I think that word is made up.
Another issue that I encountered was whether or not to include how to make a pin. In my social use of Pinterest I have never created my own pin but when I considered how a teacher may want to use it I thought that creating a pin could be very useful. So I then had explore how to make a pin and the benefits of this feature of Pinterest. It was fairly easy to make a pin but to make a pin that was connected to an actual website with content was a little more difficult. When I am using Pinterest to find recipes or lesson ideas I find pins much more helpful when they are linked to actual content on a website and not just an image. I briefly brush over how to do this in my hand out and hopefully I will have time to talk about this in my explanation. I do think this is an important thing to know but not essential when learning to use Pinterest, this would be something I would include in the second lesson if that were an option.
My last challenge in creating the handout was figuring out which images would be the most helpful and most productive to include. If I had unlimited pages I would have just walked people through entirely with screen shots but we were limited to two pages. So I tried to pick images that I could use text boxes to explain multiple things. I ended up with 4 images and all except for one has at least 2 text boxes.
Overall this assignment was much more difficult than I first anticipated but I was pleasantly surprised at how much I could learn about a website that I already use and felt pretty comfortable with. I have attached my handout below, I hope it is self explanatory but if you have any questions please let me know!!
Pinterest consists of a lot of strange words that do not make sense outside of the Pinterest website, for example "pin", "board", "pinner", "bookmarklet" and many more. So my first dilemma was which words to define and which to just use in context and hope the reader would understand the meaning in the context of the sentence. I chose to define "pin" and "board" because if the reader did not understand those two words they would be lost for the rest of the handout. I also defined "bookmarklet" within the context of the sentence because I think that word is made up.
Another issue that I encountered was whether or not to include how to make a pin. In my social use of Pinterest I have never created my own pin but when I considered how a teacher may want to use it I thought that creating a pin could be very useful. So I then had explore how to make a pin and the benefits of this feature of Pinterest. It was fairly easy to make a pin but to make a pin that was connected to an actual website with content was a little more difficult. When I am using Pinterest to find recipes or lesson ideas I find pins much more helpful when they are linked to actual content on a website and not just an image. I briefly brush over how to do this in my hand out and hopefully I will have time to talk about this in my explanation. I do think this is an important thing to know but not essential when learning to use Pinterest, this would be something I would include in the second lesson if that were an option.
My last challenge in creating the handout was figuring out which images would be the most helpful and most productive to include. If I had unlimited pages I would have just walked people through entirely with screen shots but we were limited to two pages. So I tried to pick images that I could use text boxes to explain multiple things. I ended up with 4 images and all except for one has at least 2 text boxes.
Overall this assignment was much more difficult than I first anticipated but I was pleasantly surprised at how much I could learn about a website that I already use and felt pretty comfortable with. I have attached my handout below, I hope it is self explanatory but if you have any questions please let me know!!
Thursday, July 11, 2013
Computers in the Classroom: A Mode for Achievement or an Escape to Isolation
In our discussion of Dewey not only in our technology in education class but in our records of practice discussion of intellectual characters I find a question about technology. Dewey believes that "school life should grow gradually out of the home life; that it should take up and continue the activities with which the child is already familiar in the home" and lets face it technology is something that most students have access too and spend a great deal of time interacting with it. But does the use of technology in the classroom foster the disciplines that are essential for intellectual character?
Intellectual character as outlined by Ron Ritchart describes "curiosity, open-mindedness, metacognition, the seeking of truth and skepticism" as keys to developing intellectual character and success in school. While these can be cultivated through the use of computers adding another element to this already complicated and this already difficult task to create this intellectual culture just seems unnecessary. There are already so many things that make teaching difficult why complicate it with technology?
On the other hand technology gives students a unique opportunity to relate to school in a new way that could potentially be more accessible. The importance of students feeling comfortable and the opportunity to relate to academics is incredibly important for students to learn. If we use technology to help students connect with different people around the world and to help them look at their own thinking then isn't foster intellectual characterer?
I know I have been rather contradictory in this post but I just am really struggling with the fact that there are so many aspects of education and it all seems very difficult and overwhelming already so why add technology to this mix if it may just confuse the situation or further isolate the students from one another and the teacher? I can see some benefits of adding technology into the classroom and I do not believe we should ignore technology as it is a major part of our society but I think it should be limited in the classroom.
In our discussion of Dewey not only in our technology in education class but in our records of practice discussion of intellectual characters I find a question about technology. Dewey believes that "school life should grow gradually out of the home life; that it should take up and continue the activities with which the child is already familiar in the home" and lets face it technology is something that most students have access too and spend a great deal of time interacting with it. But does the use of technology in the classroom foster the disciplines that are essential for intellectual character?
Intellectual character as outlined by Ron Ritchart describes "curiosity, open-mindedness, metacognition, the seeking of truth and skepticism" as keys to developing intellectual character and success in school. While these can be cultivated through the use of computers adding another element to this already complicated and this already difficult task to create this intellectual culture just seems unnecessary. There are already so many things that make teaching difficult why complicate it with technology?
On the other hand technology gives students a unique opportunity to relate to school in a new way that could potentially be more accessible. The importance of students feeling comfortable and the opportunity to relate to academics is incredibly important for students to learn. If we use technology to help students connect with different people around the world and to help them look at their own thinking then isn't foster intellectual characterer?
I know I have been rather contradictory in this post but I just am really struggling with the fact that there are so many aspects of education and it all seems very difficult and overwhelming already so why add technology to this mix if it may just confuse the situation or further isolate the students from one another and the teacher? I can see some benefits of adding technology into the classroom and I do not believe we should ignore technology as it is a major part of our society but I think it should be limited in the classroom.
Sunday, July 7, 2013
Thoughts on Dewey
After reading My
Pedagogic Creed by John Dewey (a couple of times through) and John Dewey A Significant Contributor to the
Field of Educational Technology by Peter Rich and Thomas C. Reeves I was
amazed at how many of Dewey’s fundamental principals are still things that I
would like to shape my classroom around. I was also surprised and discouraged
that Dewey and his ideas were written and created over 50 years ago and there
are still many classroom in America that have the students sitting “absorbing”
knowledge.
How we learn and how we relay what we know to other is
something that happens everyday all over the world, Dewey’s emphasis on
teaching students in ways that resembles what happens at home and making
students feel comfortable in the school environment by relating it to their
social and home life is something that I would like to incorporate into my math
classroom. It is intimidating for me to take this task on because if it was
easy and natural then all math teacher would be doing it. I believe that an
important aspect of being able to make your students feel comfortable in your
classroom and being able to relate to your students is getting involved in the
community that your students are a part of. In many schools where student struggle
the teachers do not live in the same community as their students so they in
particular need to get involved and learn about the community that their
students are apart of.
Dewey’s educational philosophies have been applied to so
many current educational trends I wonder what Dewey would think of the current
state of education in our country and how he would evaluate the work we are
doing in the MAC program? I think that he would be surprised at the
standardization and how much emphasis there is to teach the standards and how
little change his work has made. Although his work is still inspiring future
teachers like me, I wonder what has hindered the actual application of Dewey’s
ideas. I am sure I will find out shortly when we start working in classrooms.
Thursday, July 4, 2013
Discusion of Cuban Reading
After reading the Cuban article I was shocked to read that some classrooms used to use radio as a teaching method. But then when I was reflecting on the article I remember that some of the classrooms that my classmates in California were observing were using a lot of Khan academy videos in their classrooms.
Khan academy is now a database of videos of different lessons in math and some of the sciences. It started out just as youtube videos that a Salman Khan was posting to help his nephew with math. The Gates foundation figured out what he was doing and started funding him. Now the Khan academy has over 4,000 videos online all for free. Their mission is "a free world class education for anyone anywhere".
After our fist day of class when Rory was talking about how there are a lot of people out there who would like to see classrooms turn mostly over to computer and have teachers become obsolete. The Khan academy would be a perfect way to do this. So I have been thinking, what is this revolution all about? is it about giving kids more access and information to the world around them and allowing teachers to have more resources in there lesson? or is it about having all lessons online and taking the standard classroom teacher out of the equation? I am studying to be a high school math teacher and I am in no way advocating for less teachers, but what do you guys think, can we have classrooms that operate with students watching these videos and learning? is this a useful tool?
If you would like some more information on the Khan academy here are some links!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khan_Academy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gM95HHI4gLk
http://www.khanacademy.org
Khan academy is now a database of videos of different lessons in math and some of the sciences. It started out just as youtube videos that a Salman Khan was posting to help his nephew with math. The Gates foundation figured out what he was doing and started funding him. Now the Khan academy has over 4,000 videos online all for free. Their mission is "a free world class education for anyone anywhere".
After our fist day of class when Rory was talking about how there are a lot of people out there who would like to see classrooms turn mostly over to computer and have teachers become obsolete. The Khan academy would be a perfect way to do this. So I have been thinking, what is this revolution all about? is it about giving kids more access and information to the world around them and allowing teachers to have more resources in there lesson? or is it about having all lessons online and taking the standard classroom teacher out of the equation? I am studying to be a high school math teacher and I am in no way advocating for less teachers, but what do you guys think, can we have classrooms that operate with students watching these videos and learning? is this a useful tool?
If you would like some more information on the Khan academy here are some links!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khan_Academy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gM95HHI4gLk
http://www.khanacademy.org
Tuesday, July 2, 2013
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