Over the course of this spring I know I have grown as a teacher, and I believe ECMP 355 really helped me to accomplish things (like my wiki) that otherwise I never would have done. This class has ade me realize the endless possiblities of useing technology in the classroom, and given me the opportunity to become comfortable using some technology. I’ve always been one to try new things, and now I have been introduced to so many new things that I want to try in my own classroom….animoto, epals, skype, radiohead, twitter, picasa, and the list goes on. Through ECMP I worked with and became comfortable with a number of programs, such as: scribd, jing, screencast, wikispaces, windows movie maker, audacity, smartboard, blip.tv, photostory3, flickr, skreemr, and of course google reader, docs, and calendar. It’s amasing how much has been accomplished in such a short time, especially when thinking back to the beginning when I was completely clueless about anything to do with computers.
I have to admit, on the first day of ECMP when Alec said we had to create a blog as a class requirement, I thought blogs were dumb. I thought blogs were pointless, and only gossipy teenagers used them to fill time. But now…I have to say, I am actually quit happy that Alec made me keep a blog. My blog shows how I’ve grown as a digital immigrant and one day will serve as a professional portfolio. Through this blog I can make posts about school, technology, my personal interests, and know that someone somewhere might be thinking the same things, or be able to help me out. I’m also beginning to see the benifits of twitter, even though I am not a member, it may be useful one day to have a network of people with similar interests in mind around to chat and brainstorm with…especailly as a teacher. Two heads are better than one…how about 100 heads?!
If you read through my blog posts, you’ll see my progression. This is not a journal, but I’m becomming more and more comfortable writing about my personal thoughts and experiences. One of my favorite blog posts would have to be Axe vs. Dove, even though the post is very simple and includes barely any text, it had quit a few responses and challenged others to think critically. Some of my best responses were to Sarah’s blog posts, some of which turned into my own blog posts. Just as In Schools Today was a response to one of April’s posts, that I just had to copy and paste into my own post.
Just as we did in ECMP 355, I think student blogs would be useful in the classroom. Students could submit homework and assignments as blog posts, they would be able to view eachothers work, and I as the teacher would subscribe to all my students’ blogs. This would also be a great way to keep up to date and in touch with my students. I would learn a lot about my students from reading their blogs, and the fact that I would be keeping current with technology would also give me a common ground, something in common, with my students, creating positive relationships for in the classroom. And anyone who knows me, knows that building relationships is a huge part of my philosophy as a teacher.
Thank you to everyone in ECMP 355 this spring for all your supportive comments. This has been a great spring session!
Sharlene and I created a stop animation film using smart board, windows movie maker, and audacity. After all our hard work and frustration with movie maker…this is what we created. Enjoy!
For my final project I decided to create a Math Wiki, that hopefully one day I will be able to use in my classroom. My reason for choosing this project is because I hope that by creating online lessons, I will become more active in and around the classroom, and have more time for one-on-one teaching moments. With my Math lessons available online, my students will be able to choose a concept and learn at their own pace. For example, those who understand and finish an assignment early can move on to the next lesson, while I am helping slower students with the first lesson. Possibilities are endless with wikispaces, I hope to one day incorperate more than just math lessons and assignments, I would like to include educational games for freetime, and add other subject areas into the mix.
I hope you all enjoy my Math Wiki. It may not be perfect yet, but the curve is steep and I’m learning more to make it better everyday.
This past winter while I was pre-interning, my grade 6/7 split were finishing off their Health presentations on drug addictioins/abuse. One of the presentations really surprized me, children use Dust Off, a computer cleaning product, to get high! It’s called “dusting” and when you spray into your mouth and inhale it, you get a 10 second high. This is scary stuff! To kids, it might sound like harmless fun, but the reality is that the compressed air can make your lungs and airway sieze…preventing you from breathing. It also contains a propellant called R2. It’s a refrigerant, like what is used in your refridgerator. It is a heavy gas, heavier than air. When you inhale it, it fills your lungs and keeps the good air, with oxygen, out…that’s why you feel dizzy, or buzzed. It decreases the oxygen to your brain and to your heart. Inhaling Dust Off can kill you!
“Dusting” is becomming more and more popular amoung our children, and it needs to be addressed in schools and at home. I’m wondering how long it will take, after how many children are sent to the emergency room, will suppliers take Dust Off off the shelves. But while this product is still being made available, we need to educate our students, our children, in order to protect them. We can’t always stop them from the things they do, but we can support and guide them to make the right decisions, and not give in to peer pressure.
I completely agree with April’s post that weather or not students succeed or improve completely depends on how we define achievment. Achievments will variey from student to student, and thats something I think more educators need to gain an understanding of. Too often do we categorize and label our students, we need to see our students as the individuals they are.
I also liked that she commented on homework loads. Homework is an issue we argued about in EPS390 with our prof. Some educators disagree with giving homeework, but I think most give it. When teachers assign homework, I think they have to know their students and how much they can handle. From my pre-internship experience, it seems to me that their are some students who could not mentally or physically handle homework, but many students lack the responsability to even atempt to complete homework. This is where I have an issue. While I was teaching in an average middle class school in Regina, I assigned homework only once. The students knew when it was due and what my expectations were, yet only about 5 out of 28 were complete on presentation day.
Now you might be thinking, maybe the assignment was too difficult. Well I was in a grade 6/7 split and the assignment was to design a poster about themselves and where their families came from. I gave 2 or more hours of class time to work on the posters and then it was homework. The fact that only 5 students were able to present on time seemed to me like a lack of responsability and a lack of caring. Once the posters were complete, they looked great and I posted them up in the hallway, but getting them done was a real challenge. There must be a way to make our students more accountable. Docking late marks didn’t seem to help. Any advice for the future?
I recently watched a video released by Childnet International about cyberbullying. This video really got to me, I realized that its a lot harder to escape from cyberbullies than the oldfashioned kind of bully, especially in this day and time. Watching the video, in a way let me see what it was like to be cyberbullied, and now I know that as impossible as it may seem, cyberbullying needs to come to an end. Let’s fight it together!
This past winter a fellow pre-intern created a unit on bullying, and included some wonderful lessons and tips to fight bullying and cyberbullying. With her permissino, hopefully I can post a slideshow she created on my blog in the near future.
Sharlene gives 4 steps to stop cyberbullying:
STOP: Do not try to reason with or talk to someone who is cyberbullying you.
BLOCK: Use the block sender technology to prevent the person from contacting you again.
TALK: Tell a trusted adult, inform your school, use a help line and/or report it to police.
SAVE: Save any instant messages or emails you receive from the person who is bullying you.
These 4 steps give me a starting point to fight cyberbullies and some good advice to give students on how to stop cyberbullying in thier own lives. Bullies have exsited from the beginning of time, and stoping them has been an age old quest of teachers. So, as teachers it is our responsibility to address bullying in our classrooms. We need to make our students aware of thier rights and responsabilities, create an atmosphere where they feel accountable for themselves and eachother, and give them the stepping stones to climb and stand up against cyberbullies.
I viewed the slide show (above), “Eat…..But You Will Die.” If anyone knows me, they know I love to eat, so a title like that really got my attention. As powerful as the slideshow was, I am not critiqueing the content, but giving feedback as to what I think could improve the design of the show.
First off, yesterday we spoke about black/dark backgrounds to slide shows being bad, I have a mixed review of this. With the black background, it made the coloured text difficult to read. However, white writing on a blackground really sticks out, and the dark background really helped set the mood for the ending reality of the show. 30 million people go hungry each year! Hard to imagine. My advice: keep the black background and have the text in white bubbles to make it readable. I liked that the prices of food were red, that made the price stick in my head.
Today in ECMP 355 guest lecturer, Dean Shareski, helped me to learn more about technology its applications in the classroom. During Dean’s online lecture I watched his video Design Matters, which was packed full of innovative classroom ideas. A helpful hint from a wise speaker…less is more. Although this presentation was about the uses of technology, I took a lot away that I think will help me develope and maintain relationships with my future students. And to me, relationships are essential to education.
I am a learner who detests the restraints of the classroom. When I learned about “the walks” implemented by Codman Academy, and the idea of getting out of the classroom daily or weekly for learning to take place while walking along streets, or fields, or anywhere other than at school during school hours, really hit it home for me. When we think about how we teach and the structure of our lessons, we need to focus on learning, not school. School needs to be designed for learning!
One day I will have a classroom to make my own, floor plans, seating arrangments, all sorts of ideas are already barroling through my head. I think I will take the advice of Clarence Fisher, “think about what you want to happen in your classroom…and create a space for it to happen.” These words will remind me to think about learning, not school, when I design my classroom.
As I said earlier, relationships go hand in hand with education. Designing a classroom that will allow students to learn and express themselves to the fullest will allow me to become a learner in my own class. Expressive, engaged learners working together, develope relationships. Going on walks, giving students a break from the monotonous atmosphere of “the classroom” will hopefully give them energy and make them excited about learning. I am also inlove with nature, this may be one way I can share a piece of myself with my students in a meaningful way…creating relationships.
For Tech Task #3 I created a “priceless” Mastercard commercial. The photos were taken by a friend during our golf game this past May long weekend. I then uploaded the pictures to Flickr and played around on Photo Story 3 untill I came up with this priceless peice of work. Enjoy
In this article students and staff from Priory Woods are inspired by the work of Pete Wells to explore and create stop frame animation films. There is no doubt that technology has had a great impact on education, but for special needs students technology has greatly increased the value of education and day to day lives.
At the Cosmopolitan Learning Center in Regina, where I currently work, different Life Skills rooms have implemented center wide challenges between the rooms. The most recent challenge, is that each room must create a film(such as a music video, skit, etc) 100% participant made. Meaning, the participants must choose an idea to film and operate the video camera.
This “challenge” lead me to thinking about inclusive education and how I might use technology in my own classroom. Digital photography and digital videos have been around for quit some time now, but are excellent ways to capture and document student work and progress. Children love to see recordings of themselves, and now more than ever our children are technologically advancing at a more rapid rate than we are. Allowing our students to use their technological skills in the classroom will make their school experience much more enjoyable and meaningful.
As a teacher I hope to use inclusive technology in my classroom and provide my students with the tools to advance their technological skills. I am beginning to view techology use as a right, rather than a priveldge. In this day and time, our students will need techology to advance in the workforce. However, I know that not all schools have the resources or the money to provide their students with access to the technology they need, and this creates conflict with my developing philosphy that technology is a need, not a want. I’m affraid that if I am placed in an underfunded school district it may be left to me to provide the neccessary technology. Therefore, as a techer, as a school, as a community funding and resoucres will need to be compiled. What can we do to ensure that our students, our children, will recieve a proper education in a society where technology is a need, yet not every classroom is even garunteed to have a computer with internet access?
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