Project Based Learning

     In the article Project Based Learning by Suzie Boss, we learn about the history and benefits of using projects to teach.  Teaching by simply having students go through lessons may work to teach theoretical problem solving, or to teach them facts from research that are likely to be quickly forgotten, by using a project based curriculum to teach, the student is more likely to learn teamwork.  Also because the student is associating the knowledge with an activity, as well as using multiple styles of learning, the information is more likely to be retained in the long term.  Perhaps the most important benefit of project based learning though, is that students will learn how to take information and knowledge and apply it to real world situations and use them for real problem solving.

Digital Story

     Digital storytelling can be a useful tool in education.  Modern students are bombarded by a 24 hour news cycle, multiple forms of social media, and countless types of visual entertainment.  It is important to find new and unique ways to hold their attention.  By using digital storytelling, an educator can tailor their lessons and subject to their students by introducing it in a medium with which they are familiar.

Diversity Song Analysis

 In this video you see the inclusion of several different cultures from around the world participating in the video.  The images in the video do an excellent job of reflecting the message that race gender and whats on the outside is not what matters but your ideas and emotions are what defines you.  I believe that this song was written in the midst of growing racial turmoil in the country.  The lyrics work to send the message,to anyone who wants o hear it, that we are more alike that we often would like to admit. The music is high energy and written in a major key to invoke positive responses to the message.  The message is that e need to stop focusing so much on skin color.  I would use this to reinforce the idea that diversity of ideas is more important than diversity of skin color.

Team 4 Diversity Poster

Throughout this past week, I have recognized, to much disappointment, that for too many people the term diversity is simply a politically correct term for discrimination.  It is sad but when you hear the most outspoke members of our society speak of "diversity", they mean "race" or "gender" or "sexual orientation".  When faced with the question of diversity, many only want to be able to walk by a classroom and be confident that they can see a "rainbow of colors" on the outside.  it is all about the outside.  Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stated that his dream was that we all be noticed for what is in side and not the outside.  We have veered too far from that, and have abandoned the concept of intellectual freedom and diversity especially in the academic realm.  Whether it be the endless arguing over keeping evolution or creationism out of schools, or yet another incident of politically motivated censorship/bias or violence at a university, this is the area where intellectual diversity should be celebrated, not stifled (by anyone on any side of any issue).  We wanted to emphasize that need for intellectual diversity in our poster and in our songs and I really think we managed to do that.


 

Songs:

• "Lean on Me" by Bill Withers
• " Turn, Turn, Turn" by The Byrds
• "All Kinds of Kinds" by Miranda Lambert

The Learning Power of Webquests

 

"When a WebQuest poses an open-ended question, students must do more than “know” facts. Open-ended questions activate students’ prior knowledge and create a personal curiosity that inspires investigation and brings about a more robust understanding of the material."

The Learning Power of Webquests

Learning by Playing: Video Games in The Classroom

In recent years (1999 - present) the use of video games in classrooms has become more widespread and accepted.  Developers and programmers have created web sites dedicated to teaching through the use of educational video games.  whats more, is that the games they are creating are fun for students.  so much so that students often times rush through classwork to be able to play these games in their free time in class.  The fact remains that video games have become part of our culture so much that several professions are even recognizing the skills necessary for success can be enhanced through video gam playing.  Military operations are often carried out by unmanned aircraft operated from a control station half a world away, much like a flight simulator program.  Surgeons have even recognized that playing video games can help to improve dexterity, hand eye coordination, and reaction time.  This recognition has led to an incredible advancement in the applications for laproscopic surgery as well as delicate procedures being able to be performed by remote controlled robotics.

The use of video games in classrooms is the future.  Like any other tool it simply needs to be properly utilized.

 

Diversity in Little Boxes

We see in the video everything is made of cardboard and they are all inside a box. All were white artists but have different colored shirts. The music is slow and melancholy and very catchy. It was written after the baby boom and speaks of housing communities that were built with cheap materials. Speaking of college, it’s become a cookie cutter of what is expected for everyone. “All went to the university, where they were put in boxes, and they came out all the same”.  We go to college and are put into dorms which are like boxes and we are all expected to finish college. The song also goes into details about becoming doctors and lawyers, stating this is the only “real world” jobs that are acceptable; this doesn’t give the opportunity to be music majors or creative writers. The song was written for those who were trying to break away from the normal and the housing/baby boomers community system.

The group reaction to the images is that we liked how it brings you inside one of these very uniformed homes and everything is made of boxes. It makes you think about what you find as important goals and what makes individuality. Teachers should support debates that states ideas and information rather than allowing students to attack each other’s ideas. Support participation rather than the “right and wrong answers”.  You need to have a class that goes beyond the black and white view of thinking; you need to have diverse answers. Having a larger number of teachers throughout the school year helps support diversity; in elementary school it’s up to the one teacher to instill diversity opinions in the students. As for this assignment it asks us to write why it’s import to support diversity and how this song supports that, this is limiting in the assumption that the student has an idea about diversity that is supported by the message in the song.

The idea that supporting diversity in schools is one with a tricky and very sharp edge.  Too many people (many of whom are in positions of power) only look at outward diversity.  They want to SEE how many colors that you have in your classroom.  They don't care about content, as long as they don't see a class full of white kids.  The more important diversity, the one that is being ignored, is diversity of thought.  opposing ideas are not heard and studentss are all too often not taught how to back up their thoughts with facts and research.

Webquest About Webquest

_X_Efficiency Expert

___Affiliator

___Altitudinist

___Technophile

Your Impressions

WebQuest	Strengths	Weaknesses
Gorillas	Teaches the use of multiple sources for research purposes.	There is a lot of wasted time on researching unnecessary information such as the extraneous background on the chosen organization and thee failure to explain that the information on the gorillas should be used in the context of how they are threatened.  The time and understanding that this project would take is probobly best left for upper levbel classes who can gain the most from the underlying lessons.
Shakespeare	students are split into specific roles with specific assigned tasks.  this would allow for time limits to be set on each phase since the research materials are already set out for the student.	the student will need to be given deadlines that are fast approaching yet reasonable for each role.  the information is there so too much time spent on one phase may lead to not enough time in other phases
Earthquake	Clearly timeline and duties are laid out for each group member and their roles.  parameters and rules of the contest are clearly stated.	progress reports would help to keep groups on task and communicating.
Foreign Country	outline for the student is already created and thee structure is sound.	there is no timeline and this should be set depending on the detail that the teacher wants the student to go into in his.her project.
Waves & Sound	very detailed	highly complex and probably only appropriate for an AP class.  no timeline and the organization is difficult to follow clearly.  i fell that there will be a lot of wasted time just figuring out what the directions say to do.

Best: Earthquake

Worst: Foreign Country

Looks Aren't Everything: Media Literacy

For the assignment of designing a magazine cover portraying ourselves as the Teacher of the Year, I chose a picture of myself at a moment of pure joy in my life.  I felt that choosing a photo of happiness would portray an image of a teacher taking pride in their job and making an effort to pass that pride on to his students.

I feel that the use of graphics that "pop" to catch the attention of a prospective audience.  

As far as persuasive techniques i used the Experts technique with an interview with the "Teacher of the Year", the Frae technique in the Old Tech article saying that not using more modern gear is "dangerous", and i chose to use simple solution in convincing readers that they would be able to help children with higher math.

In addition to the three dimensional graphics for the text, I chose the color blue as a main theme for the cover.  Research into sales techniques have shown that shades of blue increase a persons willingness to purchase or buy into a product.  To maintain consistency, all the headlines are the same size (slightly smaller that the title) and the descriptors are also the same size.  the use of photos as well as math graphics stress the focus of the issue.

Not a real magazine cover.  All article titles are
meant to demonstrate advertising techniques.

Wikipedia vs. Textbooks

Many educators are still reluctant to allow Wikipedia as source.

Over the past week we have seen and read several examples of how textbooks and many types of traditional learning are extremely one sided and/or censored to the point of becoming almost useless.  In the article “A Textbook Example of What’s Wrong with Education, “ author Tamim Ansary states, “most of these books fall far short of their important role in the educational scheme of things. They are processed into existence using the pulp of what already exists, rising like swamp things from the compost of the past. The mulch is turned and tended by many layers of editors who scrub it of anything possibly objectionable before it is fed into a government-run "adoption" system that provides mediocre material to students of all ages.”  Ansary goes on to talk about how all textbook publishers have merged into one entity so school systems have little choice in what they can get as far as textbooks go.

One of the main examples of how the history we teach is one sided was that of the history we have with the Lakota or Sioux tribes of the Midwest.  It should come really as no surprise that there is little written about the other side of the fight.  As they say, history is written by the winners.  To bring the issue into sharper focus here is a page from a history textbook on the Wounded Knee Massacre.  In contrast here is a Wikipedia article on the same event. Hardly an equity of information, and the fact that the textbook is on the lacking end shows the sad state of our educational resources.

This censorship and political correctness in an effort to avoid giving offence in an age where a weak populace is offended by everything under the sun, and in some cases the sun itself, has sent many educators running to seek out new sources of information.  Unorthodox sources of information to help students see more than one side of an issue.  To help students learn to do proper research requires multiple sources of information on a subject.  Students need to learn to ask questions and find the answers rather than taught to simply regurgitate facts that they get from an abridged version of a topic written in a painstaking effort to avoid making people feel uncomfortable.

One of the more popular alternative sources for information available is Wikipedia.  And while the site has gained a more positive reputation, many educators still are reluctant to allow students to use it as a source.  Truthfully I feel similarly to this group of educators.  While “much of Wikipedia is not edited by just ‘anyone.’” According to the article “Wikipedia Emerges as a Trusted Source for Ebola Information” by Noam Cohen, I would still rather have students use it as a site to find other useful sources for research rather than as a source itself.

Learning Styles Don't Exist

The idea of there being specific learning styles by which students learn is coming under fire.  For years there has been the idea that we learn either visually, aurally, or kinetically.  However recently some scientists have proposed the idea of multiple intelligence's. in this theory there are nine different intelligence's that people have.  Rather than focusing on how a person learns, the stress how a person see and processes information and works on the idea that any subject can be taught through more than one method.

My MI evaluation showed my top three intelligences as musical, mathematics/logic, and naturalist, so my picasso head portrait incorporates musical notes, a fish and an infinity symbol.

I feel that anyone can learn anything, and while there is more than one way to skin a cat, so to speak, some ways are better than others.  you cant learn about the civil war by leading an uprising, but you will never learn to hit a field goal without going out and actually kicking some footballs.

Since human intelligence is based mainly on pattern recognition, the key is to find how to present the patterns to the students.  Many of the MI classifications suggest spreadsheet or powerpoint style presentations to facilitate learning and pattern recognition.

Should Kids Learn to Code?

My father was a computer programmer for a long time.  Throughout my childhood that’s what he did.  But I didn’t try my hand at coding until last semester.  I took the intro to programming course for my major, and found that I was pretty good at it.

Every video we watched or article we read hammered home the point of the need to teach coding in elementary schools.  Reasons given ranged from improvement in other subjects such as math or languages, to preparation for jobs in tomorrows technologically advanced.  It almost sounded like an old “here is the world of tomorrow,” advertisement.

I think that teaching coding to young students, in one form or another, would have some valuable benefits.  Coding is in essence a language, and because at younger ages the language center of the brain is still open, the lessons may be more easily received.  The languages used to code are based in mathematics and logic.  So an understanding in coding will lead to better understanding of math as well as an improved ability to think and reason logically.

What the videos and articles didn’t touch on, that I feel is important, is how learning coding can make a person a better teacher.  One thing my father always told me about coding, “The computer can’t think.  It will only do what you tell it to do.”  You need to learn how to explain how to do a job to a creature that can’t think for itself.  This requires logic, problem solving, and patience.  Much like teaching.

Learning to code has value, although it may be difficult to see until you have tried it yourself. “Coding is great and all, but the necessity of it still doesn’t seem that relevant to me.” – Andrew.

Education Needs A Digital Upgrade

In her article, Ms. Heffernan argues the point that not only do we need to do more to incorporate modern technology in our education system, but also we need to restructure how we teach students.  Ms. Heffernan believes that a return to more archaic system of education, retooled for the digital age, would better prepare students for jobs that don’t even exist yet.  To support her ideas, she largely cites a book called “Now You See It” written by Cathy Davidson.  Unfortunately, her lack of multiple sources results in this op-ed piece sounding much like a plug for Ms. Davidsons book by the end.

            I tend to agree that incorporating technology into our educational system is important and to instruct students on how to use outside sources to supplement the information in the classroom.

 

Texting and Writing

The video, “Texting is Killing Language, JK,” and the article, “Can Texting Help With Spelling?” both seek to confront and analyze the impact that text messaging has had on our society from a linguistic perspective as well as an educational perspective focusing on grammar and spelling.  Both take the stance that not only is texting not having a negative impact on language, but may in fact be benefitting students creativity, information processing and may even be a natural evolution of a dialect.

To claim that texting is ruining us as writers is eHlazy.  Texting and the language, spelling, and grammar we use for that specific medium of communication are tools, and it is our responsibility to use them correctly and in the appropriate situations.  Fire is a tool.  A chef will use it to create a wonderful meal, an arsonist will use it to destroy a building.  Is it the fire that is to blame for poor usage?  No.  As educators, it is our job, to first understand the rules of texting, and second to educate students about how in different circumstances, and in different forms of media the rules that must be followed are different.  If we recognize text messages as a dialect or new language, we can approach it from that angle and teach these rules.

I have seen in my experience working with teenage students examples of students who understand how to apply proper grammatical rules and students who don’t.  They aren’t difficult to find.  A student who uses “lol,” “UR,” or “l8er” in a research paper does not know the proper way o follow rules for more formal writing.  That lack of knowledge may not be the fault of the educator, but it is certainly our responsibility to correct.