"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..