"Friending" Your Students

I enjoyed this article because it tackled an issue that I still am unsure about. I lean more towards the no side; as in, a teacher should not friend request or accept friend requests from students. While I think the quote about "a lot of flirting" happening on Facebook is silly and kind of extreme, I agree with the commenter who said he accepted the friend requests until he started later seeing his college bound students doing keg stands. It sounds bad to say that accepting friend requests leads to too much responsibility, but essentially that is sort of what it does. As a teacher, you are already a mandated reporter. So if you see your 14 year old student talking way more sexually to another student than he or she should be, are you going to report that, or just pretend it doesn't exist? Right now, my current mind set is that I wouldn't accept the requests, but if some teachers want to, they should go for it.

Nothing's Impossible

This article brought up some topics I hadn’t really thought of before. .Technology is generally geared towards able-bodied people, but there really is a wide array of things out there for people with learning disabilities or the like. I had never heard of any of the technologies they covered in the article, but they sounded very interesting, and I would like to learn more about different types. It is hard to picture what sort of learning environment your students will need before you are actually in a classroom, so it would be nice to know about a whole variety of technologies that could help a student. I also liked the idea of the school Sara went to, since it really catered to every need. I wish more schools were able to do that, and I would love to teach in one that is like that.

Better Late Than Never

(Mod. 11 is posted below- This is for Mod. 10, as I forgot to do it last week.)

This article was much more interesting than I expected it would be. Which isn’t saying a whole lot, but still… it was better than I imagined. I really liked how the teacher set up his blog, including so many interactive tools, and really making it “for the students”. I especially like that he had a blog for a class that many people would say isn’t really a blogging type of class. When I think school blogs, I think English, maybe History, science is somewhat of a stretch…and NOT math. But he proved me wrong, and I’m rather glad he did. I want to make my blog that cool, though I feel like it will be easier to do once I actually have students, and can get their input on what they would like to see.

Parents: Love 'em or Leave 'em

This article was an interesting one, since it pointed out the potential role parents can have in the classroom. The last part of my website I left was the blog I created for the parents in place of a discussion board. I had wondered what topics I should post and if parents would even care. Honestly, I also wondered if I wasn’t giving the parents TOO much information. If I ask the parents what they think of the curriculum, is there really a point? If I have 20 out of 25 parents tell me they hate it, what am I supposed to do about it? So, this article was a good one, because it focused on gaining respect, not love. Another good topic they brought up is sticking to your guns about things. For instance, don’t just let the parents show up and demand a meeting at any old time. Make sure you plan a meeting, so you can prepare what you want to say. Being unprepared and vulnerable never makes you gain respect. Another point I liked in the article was about not picking fights. For instance, if you have a parent who is on your case about everything, the author said maybe it is possible to let it go when the parent wants to meet 15 minutes ahead of their scheduled meeting time. Know your battles, and choose them wisely. I really appreciated this article and was glad to read it.

Project Work in a First Grade Classroom

I feel that this article is one of the more interesting ones we have read so far. Project learning does sound like a good approach to learning, and it seems like the students gained a fair amount from it. The quote in the beginning from the teacher who was also a mother struck me. She said she felt like projects were a luxury, and students had to earn their way there, and they had to learn the more basic skills before they could do project based learning. I understood where she was coming from, and that idea did seem to make sense until I read about the study that had been done. The children began looking at problems in different ways and forming more coherent, and less generalized thoughts and ideas. Instead of saying “I love my dog,” they moved on to talking about how baby chicks walked, or how they were able to peck out of an egg. Clearly the lesson made an impact on them. I believe that project based learning isn’t just important in elementary classrooms, and that high school teachers should be doing it as well. It seems simpler to engage children in this than high school students, but I feel as if hands-on learning is really important at any age.

Module 6

This article was a difficult read for me. It was not written poorly, it was just far too lengthy for my liking on a topic that I didn’t much care about. I feel that week after week we are reading articles that inform us how much we need technology in our classrooms and our workplaces and essentially everywhere in our lives. This is all well and good but how many times must it be said? These articles aren’t really telling me anything new. 20 pages to tell me that America’s schools are no longer the best, and that technology is needed in the classroom? I’m fairly certain I’ve heard that before, phrased in every way possible. Perhaps I am just being dense, but I feel as if I took nothing new from this article.

PowerPoint

“Death By PowerPoint” was an interesting article. I enjoyed the tips brought up by the author. I especially liked the point he made about the difficulty in annotating slides during class, and how that has been solved by presenting on a whiteboard. I have had teachers do this in the past, and I find it much easier to follow along with. Also, when someone is making notes to the PowerPoint as they go along, it helps the class to focus more. It is similar to getting a paper with the exact notes on it; students stop paying attention because they have everything they need in front of them. I must confess that if I know a teacher posts the PowerPoint slides online after class, that causes me to focus on the class quite a bit less.
The first article we read did not capture my attention nearly as much. It was well written, yes, but I felt that it applied more to elementary and middle school educators. Although it helps to have a broad range of knowledge in teaching of all fields, I felt that this article was not relevant. I was excited when I first started reading, because it sounded as if it was going to offer many new ideas of how PowerPoint could be used. Instead, I found that I already knew about many, if not all of the ideas delivered in the text..

Technology Literate Students

After reading the Profile for Technology Literate Students, I feel less upset by the idea of integrating technology into the classroom. I was never horrified by the idea, really, I just felt like it was being taken a step too far. While I still sort of feel that is the case, there are some very interesting ideas laid out in this article. Last week, we read an article that called for creativity in the classroom, but they did not deliver it in the article. That is not the case in this week’s article though. I will be teaching high school students, so I focused more on those topics than the others, and there were some great ones on there. The first one in particular stuck out to me. The task of the students would be to design and develop a learning game, and then test it out. I think that is a fantastic idea, because it trains the students to think of different ways of learning a topic.
The performance indicators of these standards also impressed me. Unlike last week’s article, I felt that they had actually thought about what they were presenting, and what the best way to do that would be. I was largely impressed by the fact that creativity and innovation was the first thing they look at. I found that in school, creativity was saved for the art classes, and was not welcomed or encouraged anywhere else. I would love for this to change. All in all, these were very interesting ideas.

21st Century Skills

This article took an interesting, albeit wordy look at how we are going to need to begin to teach children 21^st century skills if we want them to succeed in life. While I felt as if the article contained some valid points, I feel like if we place too much of an emphasis on technology, we are setting our kids up for failure. As we do not know what the world will bring in a few centuries, decades, or even years, we should still be teaching our children the knowledge they need to succeed without technology as well.

Another thought I had while reading this article is that the 21^st century ideals aren’t going to be around forever. The article seemed to focus on making a concrete plan to help children for tomorrow, while at the same time forgetting that by the time this plan is solidified, we will probably need to incorporate new technologies. Studies were shown in which adults commented that the skills they need today are different from 20 years ago. Clearly even the best laid plans will not help our children in 20 years. While we might be preparing them for a literal tomorrow, in a few years, what we need to know will have changed once more. There are some critical skills we need to continue to teach our children that have nothing or little to do with technology. In “Pride and Prejudice” by Jane Austen, Mr. Bingley comments that “All [young ladies] paint tables, cover screens and net purses. I scarcely know anyone who cannot do this all, and I’m sure I never heard a young lady spoken of for the first time, without being informed she was very accomplished.” It is clear from this quote that after some years pass, needs for certain skills change. We adapt and change to fit these needs accordingly without much structured assistance. So while I do think this article makes some interesting points, all in all, I disagree that we need a structured change to keep our kids equipped with 21^st century skills.

Works Cited

Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. New York: Barnes and Noble, 2006

Kozma, R.B. (2009). 21st Century Skills, Education & Competitiveness. Partnership for 21st Century Skills. http://mrgalusha.org/EdTechDocs/Readings/Module%203%20Reading%20-%2021st%20Century%20Skills.pdf>

Reaction to Dr. Marlow Ediger's Article

Dr. Marlow Ediger’s article entitled “Psychology of Lesson Plans and Unit Development” was an interesting article on problems one may run into in the classroom and ways a teacher can fix them. He emphasized the need for a teacher to truly understand his or her lesson plan, and to be well prepared for class on any given day. He also mentioned the need to be sensitive of student’s needs, learning styles, and health. Learning styles in particular are very diverse, and Ediger covered the main ones that teacher may encounter. Since one teacher may be able to focus on the learning needs of one type of student better than another, it seemed worthy to take a closer look at those styles and how one teacher might be able to cover all of them.

Of course, in any given class, there are far too many students and too little time to reach every need during every day. But throughout the period of a school year, teachers should try and create a curriculum that will reach out to each of these students. The first type of intelligence Ediger covered was verbal. As an English teacher, these students will probably be the easiest to cater to. Verbal learners do best with reading and writing, so handing them a book and asking them to write an analytical response to it may not instill the same fear into them as it would into another type of learner. The next type Ediger writes about is the logical thinker. These students often enjoy math or science. They like things that are concrete and have a definite answer. I had an English teacher who once said he could not understand why a student would prefer math over English for the sole reason that it was more logical. English, he said, is much more logical than math, especially when you find out that i is an imaginary number, and some problems have multiple answers. Perhaps taking this mindset and trying to apply it to English would make it more helpful for some students. As a teacher, I could try and point out what about English is logical. For instance, we are never going to say “I have the coat red.” It is not the way we speak in English and that is not going to change. Showing students ways like that to look at things would hopefully help them learn. The next type of student is the musical/ rhythmic student. By incorporating projects into class that deal with music, these students would be able to tap into their best learning style. Instead of a written paper, perhaps they could compile a CD that relates to the book we have read in class, and explain why they chose each song and how it pertains to the book. Interpersonal/ intrapersonal learners will hopefully be stretched during the class, as I hope to do both group work and individual work during class. Those who learn best bodily or kinesthetically will perhaps be the most difficult to teach. They learn with use of gross motor skills and enjoy sports or other activities. Perhaps an open-ended project where a student can design a game that relates to our reading would be appropriate. Scientific intelligence is another difficult learning style to nurture in an English class. It would be an interesting idea to think about during the year, and to explore ideas that would benefit this learning style. The final style Ediger writes about is the artistic learner. This person uses art to best understand concepts. Fortunately, I often think of English and art as going together. Students will be encouraged to create cover art that shows the main or underlying concepts of a book, or to create something like a sculpture to go along with a presentation on any given topic.

A teacher must be in tune to all the learning styles of the classroom, and this is what I sincerely hope I will be able to do. It would be ideal to have a lesson plan that incorporates all of the learning styles throughout the year, and I will strive to make this possible. At the same time, I will remind myself that it is impossible to address every single style of learning in every class, and I will be content in knowing I am trying to reach as many as I can on any given day. The article by Ediger was informative and brought up some valid points which I hope will stick with me through my teaching career.