How To...

This week I looked up how to tie the Christensen knot with a necktie. This particular not, though not very popular, is very useful with long, skinny ties. I've recently come into possession of such a tie and it would be nice to know how to effectively tie it. (Here's a picture of a skinny tie)


Photo from DearEdward at http://www.flickr.com/photos/erussell1984/2606376945/?reg=1

At first I simply looked up on youtube how to tie a tie. I was returned a bunch of videos on how to tie the half/full winsor, which is the most common tie form. However, I already knew how to tie this particular not, so I had to refine my search for the particular tie type I have. I came across the Christensen know, which upon a quick youtube search, returned many videos. The had know audio, making it quite difficult to follow along, similarily the second video was very quick and equally hard to follow. The third video, however, was a slowed down version, leading me step-by-step in how to tie the Christensen knot. Overall, it wasn't hard to find videos, but it was more difficult to find a good, applicable video.

It definitely goes to show that our job as educators is less about teaching and more about equipping our students to learn. This exercise goes to show that there are millions of different places where we can be taught a skill, the only job on our part is to discern what info to use, how to find it and whether it is good or not. It is no longer about straight-up teaching our students, but rather equipping them in how to be self-sustained learners and problem solvers.

Educational Assessment

After reading the article'Assessment Through the Student's Eyes' we really have to rethink how our assessments affect our students. My school district seemed to always be test driving different types of assessments, some that I approved and excelled at, others that I did not enjoy. I was one of the students who was on a winning streak. I nearly always excelled at the standard assessments of tests and quizzes, but I found other means of assessments nearly pointless. I thought that if I could demonstrate my knowledge through an exam, why should I need to demonstrate it through a paper write-up or class activity? These seemed to slow me down from the winning streak I was on, not down to a losing streak, but I did feel that I was being limited. There were, however, students who were not as apt at the standard assessments as I was who often did benefit from those class activities.

I did appreciate that we were helping our fellow students learn the material and grow from their mistakes. But it almost seemed that those of us who were naturally gifted in learning the material, that we were being limited. However, there were classes where I greatly benefited from the class activities and those who struggled in other classes excelled. Perhaps I was limiting them in those classes.

I think the question becomes, how do we enable those who are already on a winning to fully embrace it and excel even further, but also enable those on a losing streak to turn their game around?

I think this article does a good job at addressing the latter half of the question of turning a losing streak into a winning streak. The ideas are certainly good and focus on developing a true, ongoing learning for the students. This allows the students to develop their own streak. If they desire to win, they have the capability to do so. But, I think the article does a rather poor job at addressing the first half of my proposed question. It doesn't take into account that by helping up those who are losing, we may actually be damaging those who are winning. For example, since the no child left behind policy has been enforced, our school has needed to develop its lower achieving students. However, in the national mandate to do this, the classes became easier, to the point where I wasn't challenged to grow or excel.

Also, the goal seemed to be to develop our image under no child left behind and we did this by teaching our students how to test well. We didn't teach them how to do math well or how to read well, only how to do well on a formalized assessment. So, even though our school was 'improving' in the eyes of the state, it is my opinion that the true learning was actually decreasing.

Needless to say, the assessment through the eyes of the state is flawed. But how do we, as educators, bring in student friendly assessments that allow student to grow from nothing if that is the case, or to excel to magnificence if they have the capability.

One-to-One Computing

After reading through the One-to-One computing article at eschoolnews there were a few points that stuck out to me.

The first was the difficulty in integrating computers into an educational classroom. They said that in order to have a successful and simple transition to computers that teachers have to be given their laptops, 'a full year ahead, so teachers can use the laptops and begin developing curricular possibilities.' On top of that, it takes months for the teachers to learn how to effectively use and teach with computers. Both of these are time costs that are often not included.

One important note is that some people think that by implementing 1-to-1 classrooms that performance and learning will naturally increase. The article does a good job of debunking this idea and places the responsibilities of growth back onto the instructor. The laptops are simply another tool that he/she can use in facilitating learning. If they do it well the “laptop computers [would not be] technological tools; rather, [they would be] cognitive tools that are holistically integrated into the teaching and learning processes of their school.” However, if done incorrectly the laptops only become very expensive notebooks.

In short, the article brought it back to the teacher. That it is their responsibility to facilitate learning and that technology, specifically one-to-one computing, is one tool that can be used to do so. The computing program will work so much as the teachers make it work.

Gaming and English

This post is inspired from an edutopia article entitled, 'The Role of Video Games in the English Classroom.' At first I was skeptical at the topic, the English classroom was the last place I was expecting video games to be proposed. I've seen computer games for science and math courses, but I never considered their value in an English class. Overall, the article did discussed how video games can be viewed to look at various parts of speech. They particularly mentioned showing clips/using games with different tones to emphasize what tone is and how it is applied in different circumstances.

I see the general idea behind the article. The standard, use what the students already enjoy and equate it to learning. I've had some teachers use clips of games/movies to emphasize points, but they were few and far between. However, I think this article comes up short. They discuss using the games a learning tools, but all the games they mention are main franchise games that require significant time and effort. They even mention skyrim as an inspirational game, allowing students to develop their character and choose their own path, but, as they mention, the game takes dozens (or even hundreds) of hours to complete.

I do see the point that certain topics, such as tone, are more easily recognizable when heard. Though I think movies would be a better fit than video games. I also recognize the appeal that video games can have to the student population. However, I still do not see a valid use for these types of games in the English classroom.

Another point against games is the audience it hopes to reach. Though they may appeal to certain students, particularly the young males, other students may find the games crude, un-enjoyable, and lacking purpose. It would allow for a group of students to be reached in a new manner, but it could completely alienate others. I do think that English classrooms can have a modern input from movies, games and media. Though the focus of these particular classes is often based on the great authors of centuries past and that is unlikely to change. These games will come and go, but will they stand the test of time, perhaps. But one thing we do know is that the classics from Shakespeare, Orwell, Dickens and others have already stood this test as masters of literature and language. We should act very conservatively when we consider to introduce new ideas, less we may inadvertently replace the tried and true classics with modern works that teach improper and temporal language.

The Democratic Classroom

I was perusing the blogs on edutopia and I came across an entry entitled, "If they don't practice democracy they won't learn it" Here is a link to the blog: http://www.edutopia.org/blog/practice-democracy-to-learn-democracy-mark-phillips.

The blog discusses that schools, particularly high schools, do a decent job at preparing students academically for life after twelfth grade, but put forth little effort develop them as a citizen. The gist I took out of the article is that the schools are teaching students about democracy, but in the classroom democracy plays little to no role. The article mentioned students not having influence in the learning outcomes or school reform, both of which are places where students' opinions could be very highly cherished. I certainly see the point of this article, particularly in high schools where the students have the mental capacity and desire to have control over their education. Students' would certainly be good candidates for influencing school reform and learning outcomes. Just as we have mentioned in class, the learning outcomes must be tailored to the individual student populous.

One thing I disliked about this article is the tone it implies in Democracy, that students should have a democratic say in their classroom. In my high school experience I got to experience classes with a high degree of democracy and some with a low degree. In one of my math classes we were told exactly what we were supposed to learn and had almost no autonomy over our education. That class was disliked by many of my peers, but we did learn a lot, though the fears of freshman geometry still echo in my peers minds. On the other side I had a calculus class my senior year where the students had nearly all of the control. The class ended up being a lot of fun, we would have mandatory 'chill time' each day where we would not learn and each Friday we would have donuts or cupcakes or something of the like. In the end we had a lot of fun and developed friendships, but we didn't learn a whole lot. We were a month behind other classes at other high schools and I still don't know some of the topics we were supposed to learn in that class.

So no control will can to the students despising the class/material/teacher, though they may be more geared to learn the material. While with complete autonomy students will choose a more social setting that, though it will be fun, can severely damage the learning aspect of a course. Finding the right mixture of autonomy to give students is certainly a role the teacher needs to play. I remember one English class that had a degree of autonomy, where the students all felt like we were participating and engaging in the course, but the teacher retained some of her power, enough to guide us towards the material we needed to learn.

In short, the idea that students can use Democracy is certainly a good idea. Who better to tell the school board what improvements can be made than some of its students. Democracy also greatly increases the engagement in the class and the material. If the students feel that they have contributed to the course, they are more likely to care about the material that is covered. However, I think there is an amount of control that should remain with the teacher. The teacher has the students academic interests in mind, whether the students realize it or not. I think a teacher's role can be that of a voice calling out in a corn maze or lazer tag game. They direct the person towards the ultimate goal, but the people can choose which route(s) they want to take to get there.

PTL,

Travis Ray

Educational Trends

There are many technological trends that weave their way into education. I remember when it was 'trendy' in my school to have an overhead projector. But the modern trends are continuously updating and furthering the past advents. While reading the '12 Education Tech Trends' article two of the trends stuck out to me as trends that will affect my future job as a science educator. 

The most notable advance was the 'maker-movement.' It has been my experience that many science classrooms enforce a lab component, but that it does not have a creative basis. Most labs were simply done because the teacher told us to, we found what the teacher wanted us to find with his/her experimental set-up. There were very few cases that I remember a teacher having the students do something original, be it slightly altering an experiment and trying to discover something extra on their own. So often I feel like the teachers hold the students' hands and walk them through the lab, but the students are rarely encouraged or forced to grow and develop their own procedures. The maker-movement is just that, encouraging students, particularly in the sciences, to develop and make their own experiments, leading to greater understanding and care for the STEM fields.

The other trend that I could see in my future life in education is gaming. Often times students are turned off to science and math courses because they seem boring. Gaming is a way to incorporate a fun aspect to teach scientific phenomena. I remember in my senior physics class we had two lessons that were portrayed to us through games. One of witch was a game where we had to place charges at particular points to direct a free charge into a goal, sort of like electric hockey. While using this program we were able to see how the charges interact based on their sign, distance, speed, etc. and have a fun time trying to solve the various challenges.

Student Friendly-ness

Prompt: "Are there ways that technology might help with writing and communicating' student friendly' learning objectives?"

I see technology certainly assisting in the creation of student friendly learning objectives. Technology allows us to communicate with our peers and bounce ideas off of each other. Social studies teachers can talk with other colleagues across the world, perhaps Mr. Smith of New England has a knack for developing student friendly objectives and he can assist Mr. Brown of Wisconsin. For example, the blog we read to inspire this post would have been completely innaccessible without this technology, but we are now able to see what Mr. Ferriter thinks and better learn how to adapt objectives to students' needs.

With communicating the learning objectives the possiblity exists that, with older students, the objectives could be sent via email/update prior to class to prepare the student for that day's lecture. It also allows the possibility to do a follow-up after each lecture to see if the students are understanding the materiel. It also opens the door to more parent-teacher relationships and allow the parents to actively provide input to their child's educational objectives.

I don't see many downsides to using technology to creating and communicating these learning objectives. Perhaps an educator could more easily piggy-back on another's objectives, making it unauthentic. But this, any most other downside, simply become easier with technology, not perpetuated by it. In short, I see technology as an extremely helpful tool for communicating valuable ideas between educators leading to the creating of student friendly objectives.

PTL,

-Travis Ray

My Technology Experience

Growing up I was a part of the Lincoln Public School system. We had always had computer labs, though times that we got to use them were few and far between. They were used almost exclusively for teaching us typing and it wasn't until high school that we were using the internet for academic purposes. My school was not the wealthiest, so we used the older equipment, such as the projector, but we were also given first opportunity to access new technologies, such as the Elmo, a tool that sat on a teacher's desk and project their writtings onto the board.

Since coming to college, technology has played a key roll in my academic endeavors. Most professors use blackboard on a weekly basis: assignments are given, answer keys are accessed, grades can be viewed, etc. Many of my classes require lab sections which often require some technology to take and analyze the data. Even in lecture based classes, technology, specifically computers and the internet, play key roles in my current education.

Technology has certainly permeated the educational world. Slowly, but surely new technologies are trickling their way through the school systems. I view this new development as both a blessing and a pitfall. The amazing aspect of the technological advances is having the world at our fingertips. I research, communicate, write papers, etc. all from a single device. Information that was previously inaccessible or extremely difficult to obtain is now readily available and just a mouse click away. There are, however, many academic downsides that I feel are overlooked. The first being a lack of pure research. In the days of old a paper required many hours perusing books, studying texts and learning how to critically analyze a document. With the internet I can get the wikipedia or sparknotes quick answer without putting any significant effort in the project. I feel like this leads to a decreased ability to critically analyze texts, as well as, alienation from ones work.

In short, technology will undoubtedly play a large role in the future of education. It offers many possibilities previous generations did not have, but also overcasts some of the appreciable qualities gained from older methods. I will certainly use technology in my classroom, but I will hope and pray that it is simply a tool to be used when needed and not a crutch upon the students' education.

Live for Him,

Travis Ray

First Blog

This is my first blog for teac 259.