Blog Post #10

Sir Ken Robinson: Bring on the learning revolution!

Honestly, by watching this video it was the best sixteen minutes of my day. I am not sure exactly what I should say or where I should start because everything presented from Sir Robinson was of great value. What can I learn from Sir Robinson?

A "Crisis of human resources", the moment he said that, I was wondering where he was going with this. Then he continues by saying that he meets all types of people, dividing them into two groups: ones who endure their job and ones who enjoy it. Now when someone brings up a category (diving people in groups), I always wonder where I would be put. He makes a connection with how this choice would be picked and one explanation would be from education. But sadly the system of education now is not digging deep to help create or find a "person's resources". When the education system fails to dig deep, this potentially affect a student on finding a career they love.

He states, "Every education system in the world is being reformed...and it is not enough." Wow! How accurate is that? We are fixing this "broken record" and trying to make it evolve with the traditional ways of teaching we are accustomed to. He urges throughout this message that the education system needs a revolution, a complete transformation.

Another powerful metaphor that Sir Ken Robinson used is, "One is fast food,where everything is standardized... And we have sold ourselves into a fast food model of education." That is such a powerful visual metaphor, where I can image students in a "food process line",and the school system moving students in and out of one grade level and into the next not caring about the actual student, but just the number.

For myself, a future educator, I will cherish the lessons learned from this. I have already saved the video to my computer.

Project #15

Carousel of Progress

In this project, the students will be traveling back in time researching how far we have come in "home devices", such as: appliances. This project is worked in groups and each group has a time period, where they will create presentation (using Prezi or Google Docs)describing the era's typical home.

Lesson Plan for Carousel of Progress

Project #12 part A

Project 12 part B

Blog Post #9

What can we learn from Ms. Cassidy?

In the video, First Graders in Ms. Cassidy's class,showed all that is going on in her first grade class. This video featured her students and even had some tell how technology is helping them grow their skills. Ms. Cassidy has her students blogging, skyping, and using wikis.

In the other three videos with Ms. Cassidy, she says," that by allowing her students to blog, it has opened doors and has given the students the chance to meet people all over the world, it has allowed parents to keep track of their child’s writing progress, and gives the students the ability to keep up in the technology driven world." Her students have grew pass first graders using technology and will apply these lesson to everyday.She also explains that she has her students have a permission form signed by their parents. This form lets them know exactly what is gong to be shared online.

I have learned several tools and tips from her and her classroom. She empowers her students and wants them to become a life long learner. Ms. Cassidy said it best when she said technology is here to stay and we must keep learning.

Project #14

Lesson Plan

Calendar

The lesson plan this week will be for first grade. The students will be able to use Storybird and create a short story.

Blog Post #8

Tools for My Future Classroom

This week's topic is about tools that will be used to teach for the 21st century. After reading the topic at first I was overwhelmed knowing how many options will be out there when I started to look. But I quickly became at ease, because that is great thing, to have a lot of options for my future classrooms. At first I just started looking a tools that Dr. Strange already led us to, such as: Prezi, Blogger, and iCurio. These tools are great, but I needed to find some new ones to add to my personal learning network.

The first website I found and excited to add to my PLN, is Storybird. This website helps create short, art inspired stories. These stories can be read, shared, and printed. Students and Teachers can use a free account to help with assignments, to make beautiful presentations. For teachers, there is just an ease with grading, setup, and rewards. This is an awesome example of a creative short story, What Happened Next Was.

The second site that will be helpful in the classroom is TubeChop. In the classroom I am observing, my teacher loves to play clips to help with her lesson plan. I would love to do the same, but I was wondering how. Well, this website allows me to basically edit scenes from Youtube videos. That way if there is part of a video that I don't like or find a little inappropriate for the classroom I can just chop it out.

These two sources were just some that stood out to me and wanted to share. There are so many options out there nowadays for teachers to use in the classroom. These tools will help keep the students interested in the lesson plans and apply to the project based learning assignments.

Project #9

C4T #2

"Live the Conversation"

The first post from Becky that I read was "Always on the Clock". Becky writes, "As a teacher, the job doesn't end when contract time is up at the end of the day. I don't mean the paperwork or the planning, I mean the title." She continues to tell us that throughout her weekend, she is constantly running into her students and/or former students. She will see them anywhere from the grocery store to a fundraiser. This post was just a simple reminder that we, as educators, are always on the clock. I will always be Ms. Lauren, their teacher. Since,I choose to live in the community in which I teach, I will always need to remember that "little adoring eyes" could be watching me.

I scrolled on down to a post that I thought was very interesting and it was not a "housekeeper's" post. This post was called "Turning it over to them - Success in the making". Becky explained how her class is nearing the end of the school year and was struggling with socializing in the classroom. She asked one of her administrators to come observe and see if there were any ways to decrease the socializing. The administrator later pointed out that Becky was working harder than the students. She suggested that Becky should pass over some responsibilities to the students. So with that advice Becky got with her class and created a rubric. This rubric is for students to assess themselves throughout the day, and focuses on three problem areas. She chooses two students each day to do the official assessments. She explains, "Doesn't this take a lot of time? To begin with, yes. It took us a few hours as a class to come up with the rubric. I have to copy rubrics and plan who is going to assess the class. We have to take a minute to report at the end of each of the three subjects, but things that are worthwhile do take time. If this helps the learners in my classroom focus more, it's totally worth it!" This new approach of keeping students to a minimal of socializing in the classroom is great.