The NPR Education Podcast (http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/npr-education-podcast/id270655782) is about National news and laws being looked at in education. The episode I listened to was on the hot topic of teacher tenure (airing 2-17-11) and the host interviewed two people on different sides of the issue. The two main arguments that came out of the episode were there are no jobs that don’t take into account performance and just look at years in the profession. (this was a person against tenure) The person for tenure said, that the union should come up with ways of evaluation and the most successful case is in California where teachers rate each other and discuss improvement plans together. The person for tenure also brought up an incident where a Principal of a school was evaluating teachers poorly before stepping foot in the classroom and telling there assistant Principal to do the same. I found this podcast to spark lots of arguments within myself because there are teacher who don’t try after they get tenure. Those teachers are not there for the kids and hurt everyone else’s academic progress with the students. However there is a scare when people want to judge you on academic progress with each student sometimes we have no control over what a student does with their life.
Thursday, February 24, 2011
The Tenacious Teacher (http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/teaching-strategies-for.../id263604316) does a good job of responding to a variety of areas like differentiated instruction, lesson planning, visual aids, and learning styles. I could see many teachers getting ideas and improving methods by listening to this podcast. I listened to the podcast on differentiated instruction and the teacher gave an example of a lesson with differentiated instruction using the same text. She recommended each student with the same text but different assignments for example lower level could do writing on characters, intermediate will write on the setting, and advanced will identify and write about the plot. She also talked about how magazines as an alternative to text books create interest and engagement. She then said student could have the choice in class to use an audio version of a book and read, or watch a movie and read the book.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Incorporating Photo Sharing
Incorporating photo sharing in a classroom would be complicated and students would have to make sure posted pictures are approved. As a teacher a permission slip would have to go out and there would be a long discussion about what is appropriate and inappropriate. (I teach in Middle School :) However after students abide by the rules I think photo sharing could help a classroom create a sense of community in the classroom. Many teachers have students do writing activities using photos. I could definitely see photo sharing being useful for writing prompts. You could either assign themes for student’s picture sets or allow students to be creative with their pictures and post anything. After posting pictures I would assign my students to write a story using someone’s picture. It would be interesting to see how different someone story is to the actual events in the picture. Another activity might be to describe what you see in the picture. Having students take a picture of a setting and writing a description would be informative. I would also assign students to take a series of pictures and the students have to tell the sequence of each photo. Photo sharing is a good classroom builder and students can really learn more about one another. Even though there are plenty of benefits I am more of a private guy and don’t think I would feel comfortable allowing a child of mine to participate in a school activity of sharing photos for others to see.
What really stuck out to me in Chapter 2 were the characteristics of instructional design
1) Instructional design is learner centered
2) Instructional design is goal oriented
3) Instructional design focuses on meaningful performance
4) Instructional design assumes outcomes can be measured in a reliable and valid way
5) Instructional design is empirical, iterative, and self correcting
6) Instructional design typically is a team effort.
The process of Instructional design is very similar to how I try and write my lesson plans/units. I usually create lesson plans using a backwards design and create the assessment first. Then, I think about what are my goals/objectives for each student then I come up with a plan on how each student will achieve their goals. I try to create my lessons to be more inquiry based so that the learner is the center of the lessons. I use a variety of informal and formal assessments (projects, quizzes, journals, measuring activities) I try to use lessons in math that are applicable to the real world so students can see why math is so relevant. In my reading I learned that well defined project goals are important in the instruction design model. I have been getting better at designing expectations for my projects. I am always making changes to my projects by assessing how my students do on each projects and revising my grading rubric. I like how instructional design allows for students to have different tasks in a group and students can utilize their areas of strength. Another area I am improving at is allowing data to help drive classroom decisions. The chapter called data the heart of Instructional design and I think every teacher should have a re-teaching plan for students who are struggling. Every student wants to be successful in your class! Many students need coaching and confidence before they feel successful. The best way to coach is through data and showing the kids what they can do better next time. Allow students to correct mistakes and they will want to learn. I like how the instructional design has revise instruction for every step because that is most important in a teachers lesson plans too. I can’t really think of anyways in which the instructional design is different than a lesson plan.
What really stuck out to me in Chapter 2 were the characteristics of instructional design
1) Instructional design is learner centered
2) Instructional design is goal oriented
3) Instructional design focuses on meaningful performance
4) Instructional design assumes outcomes can be measured in a reliable and valid way
5) Instructional design is empirical, iterative, and self correcting
6) Instructional design typically is a team effort.
The process of Instructional design is very similar to how I try and write my lesson plans/units. I usually create lesson plans using a backwards design and create the assessment first. Then, I think about what are my goals/objectives for each student then I come up with a plan on how each student will achieve their goals. I try to create my lessons to be more inquiry based so that the learner is the center of the lessons. I use a variety of informal and formal assessments (projects, quizzes, journals, measuring activities) I try to use lessons in math that are applicable to the real world so students can see why math is so relevant. In my reading I learned that well defined project goals are important in the instruction design model. I have been getting better at designing expectations for my projects. I am always making changes to my projects by assessing how my students do on each projects and revising my grading rubric. I like how instructional design allows for students to have different tasks in a group and students can utilize their areas of strength. Another area I am improving at is allowing data to help drive classroom decisions. The chapter called data the heart of Instructional design and I think every teacher should have a re-teaching plan for students who are struggling. Every student wants to be successful in your class! Many students need coaching and confidence before they feel successful. The best way to coach is through data and showing the kids what they can do better next time. Allow students to correct mistakes and they will want to learn. I like how the instructional design has revise instruction for every step because that is most important in a teachers lesson plans too. I can’t really think of anyways in which the instructional design is different than a lesson plan.
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Social Bookmarking is real fun!
Social bookmarking is a fantastic way to check your favorite websites from any computer. I think having a delicious site set-up with educational websites for students can really help get the students engaged from at home into. I put on my delicious account compass learning, study island and math websites with games. I really like how the delicious site sets up and organizes your bookmarker automatically by tags. I think setting up one is a great relationship builder with students looking at having good clean fun from home or in class. Many of our students pollute their mind with only music or celebrity websites. These sites are a poor portrayal of what life is all about. If each teacher came up with educational sites on their delicious account the resources will be very rich for our students. Teachers can also learn from one another and keep up on the latest research in education and technology. I really think that administrators should look at Professional Developments set-up for teachers using all the social linking on the internet. I am very surprised by how many teachers in our building use Facebook. Sometimes our teachers use Facebook as an outlet or a place to gather ideas. Social bookmarking might be an easier form of less complaining and more ideas of what to do. I also really think parents might enjoy reading links to articles on the latest research of teaching. Many parents tell me they want their students more engaged when they get home in doing academics and I think that this might help with that problem. I really think that social bookmarking can hold tremendous value in linking teachers, administrators and parents together. I think by setting up a Professional Development on social bookmarking schools can decide how they would like to develop a plan to implement bookmarking on their website or as individual teachers.
Technology is always evolving and it shouldn’t shock me that the definition of incorporating technology into the classroom has gone through several transformations/modifications. I like the definition of instructional technology
“Instructional technology is the theory and practice of design, development, utilization, management, and evaluation of process and resources for learning.” Pg 1
The wheel is a good visual of the 5 areas of study being connected or having a relationship. Technology is now much more hands on for our kids to create, explore, design and develop projects/ideas on the computer. There was a time where technology was only able to support students to watch or listen. Now students are able to learn and display knowledge from programs on the internet. This Summer I was able to teach my students using an accelerated virtual math course from Michigan State University. The kids had several labs they were able to explore while learning about proofs, theorems, and math concepts. The individual pacing was wonderful for a summer program. The definition of technology created at the beginning of 2006
“Educational technology is the study and ethical practice of facilitating learning and improving performance by creating, using, and managing appropriate technological processes and resources” pg 1
This definition does a great job of explaining clearly that teachers are facilitators of the knowledge used in technology. Like any area of teaching the students should be engaged in exploring and an inquiry based learning model. Students should not be told how to use the technology but rather be able to use their creativity. I think one good thing that is missing from this definition is the teacher being listed as the center of technology. Instead the student should be driving the technology. One bad thing that is missing from this definition is using technology as a social network or collaborating with peers. I don’t think the definition clearly says anything about learning by connecting ideas with one another. That is the only thing I would add because of the Web 2.0 era we live in.
Technology is always evolving and it shouldn’t shock me that the definition of incorporating technology into the classroom has gone through several transformations/modifications. I like the definition of instructional technology
“Instructional technology is the theory and practice of design, development, utilization, management, and evaluation of process and resources for learning.” Pg 1
The wheel is a good visual of the 5 areas of study being connected or having a relationship. Technology is now much more hands on for our kids to create, explore, design and develop projects/ideas on the computer. There was a time where technology was only able to support students to watch or listen. Now students are able to learn and display knowledge from programs on the internet. This Summer I was able to teach my students using an accelerated virtual math course from Michigan State University. The kids had several labs they were able to explore while learning about proofs, theorems, and math concepts. The individual pacing was wonderful for a summer program. The definition of technology created at the beginning of 2006
“Educational technology is the study and ethical practice of facilitating learning and improving performance by creating, using, and managing appropriate technological processes and resources” pg 1
This definition does a great job of explaining clearly that teachers are facilitators of the knowledge used in technology. Like any area of teaching the students should be engaged in exploring and an inquiry based learning model. Students should not be told how to use the technology but rather be able to use their creativity. I think one good thing that is missing from this definition is the teacher being listed as the center of technology. Instead the student should be driving the technology. One bad thing that is missing from this definition is using technology as a social network or collaborating with peers. I don’t think the definition clearly says anything about learning by connecting ideas with one another. That is the only thing I would add because of the Web 2.0 era we live in.
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
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