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.
Wednesday, July 31, 2013
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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