SMARTboard Project #12b

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/0E7K4h3C3YA?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Blog Post #12

In the video, How to escape education’s death valley Ken Robinson talks about . He makes a comment that who ever thought of the title “No child left behind” understood irony because the program left millions of children behind. The United States spends more on education that other countries but yet still has a 60% dropout rate. He believes that America is going in the wrong direction. He talks about 3 principles for education. The first is that humans are naturally different and diverse. He talks about how no two kids are alike. He goes on to say that 10% of children in America are diagnosed with some time of ADD. He says that most children are not suffering from a physiological condition, they are suffering from childhood. Children learn best when the curriculum is broad and can celebrate their different talents that just one. The second priciple is curiosity. When a child’s curiosity is sparked, they will go and learn themselves with no push. He goes on and says that children are natural learners. Curiosity is the engine in education. He says that the main point of education is learning. He talks about how you can be doing something but not be engaged in it. He applies that theory to teachers. Someone can be participating in the act teaching but no real teaching going on. The third principle is the human life is creative. We create our own lives. One of the points of education is to awake the power of creativity. He talks about how Finland has high test scores and such. He says that the reason they do is because they individualize teaching and learning. By doing this, they don’t have a dropout rate. They realize that you have to spark student interest and support the teachers. He says that education is not in the government, it’s in the classroom. Teachers know what needs to be done. Education is a human system not a mechanical one. The schools should not be command and control, but should be climate control. If you change the climate or atmosphere, possibilities are endless.

Savanah Moore

In the video Changing Education Paradigms, Ken Robinson talks about the changes being made around the world in public education. He explains how there are two reasons for these changes. The first being economics and the second being cultural. He asks how we educate our children to take our place in the economy. He also asks how we educate our children so that they have a source of cultural identity.  He starts his explanation by saying we are trying to meet the future by doing what they did in the past. I really agree with this quote, and think it is a very strong and representational quote of today’s society. This type of thinking is alienating many kids who do not understand why they need to be in school, because the education system was created for a different generation.

Robinson believes there are two types of education abilities which are economic and intellectual. The academic are considered the smart people who go on to get higher education degrees and the intellectual are the non-smart people, who struggled in school or could not afford to go on to get higher education and who are judged for it. Robinson states how he thinks this has caused chaos. Robinson goes on to say that the non-smart people have had to suffer the ADHD “epidemic.” He believes that we are penalizing our students with drugs because they are distracted by all the technologies of today. He states how we are getting our children through education by anaesthetizing them, or deadening their senses. I really liked what Robinson says when he states that we “should not be putting our students to sleep, we should be waking them up.” This is a great statement, because many students are bored and uninterested in school today.

Robinson explains how school’s today are similar to a factory line, and if we want our students to succeed we need to change from the factory line mentality. Robinson ends his lecture talking about divergent learning and shows a study that was done on a group of students starting in kindergarten through 9th or 10th grade. This study showed how the students’ ability for divergent thinking or creativity deteriorates as the students grow and go through school. He explains how the students’ have gone through years of school being told there is only one answer and that collaboration is bad. Robinson ends saying that in order to change the way our students learn we must think differently about human capacity and not split education into sections. I really liked the final quote he uses “Great learning happens in groups.” This quote goes right along with project based learning, and collaboration in groups.

Jacquelyne Mckiernan

I really enjoyed watching Sir Ken Robinson’s video titled, The Importance of Creativity.  Sir Ken Robinson talk is about why creativity is important. He is very funny and engaging. He started his speech by saying that students starting kindergarten this year will retire in 2065. Robinson explains that, we do not know what the world would look like the in next five years, but we are to educate and prepare students for the future. He shares that creativity should be treated the same as literacy. He had a great quote, “If you are not prepared to be wrong you will never come up with anything original.”  He speaks about today in education; we are stigmatizing mistakes. In the education system,  a mistake is the worst thing you can do. Robinson explains, that the education system has the same hierarchy of subjects, Mathematics and Languages, Humanities and then the Arts.  Under the Arts, there is another hierarchy Art and Music are given a higher status than Drama and Dance. In schools, there is not a class that teaches dance everyday to students, like Math is taught to students. During his talk, Mr. Robinson included a quote from Picasso, “ All children are born artists, the problem is to remain an artist as we grow up.” Robinson says that educator’s task is to educate the whole being so, that they can face the future I really liked Sir Ken Robinson’s story of Gillian,  who became a dancer because ADHD had not been invented  yet. The school wrote her parents because they thought she had a learning disability. Gillian went to see a specialist. The specialist turned the radio on, and the girl began to dance. She was a dancer. The specialist recommendation was to take her to a dance school.  It turned out that he was right. She found other people just like her; people who could not sit still. She became a ballet dancer and a professional choreographer. Today, in schools too many children are mislabeled. I really enjoyed watching Sir Ken Robinson’s video. I learned that the arts should be held in the same hierarchy of content areas. It is important to create an education system that nurtures creativity not destroy it.

Shernaye James

C4K for October

Nick

Nick talked about how in the book he was reading, the dog, Butterscotch, was a great dog. He also goes on to say that Penny (a character in the book) will be getting more attention.

Aljes

Aljes's post is all about his field trip to Yamnuska. He talks about many diffrent kinds of plants in his post. He shares about moss, lichen, and fungus. Aljes gives facts and a picture of the plant for each.

Monty

Monty talks all sbout the Proboscis monkey. He shares diffrent things about the monkeies like the fact that it has a big nose to help attract a mate. He also includes a picture to help the reader know what he is talking about.

Norah

Norah's post is abut what the story "Out of my Mind" is teaching her. The story is full of life lessons on not giving up and following your deams. 

Project #12 - SMARTboard project

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/lmD_oKtdnPk?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Blog Post #9

Brian Crosby’s video TEDxDenver Ed is a really great video. I loved his presentation on the students. Seeing how excited the students were with the balloon experiment and watching them continue to grow in excitement as the project grew. The students began with a small synthetic audience, and then as there blogs gained notice their audience grew and grew. I loved how Mr.Crosby allowed his student to grow as self-learners and encouraged them to want to learn on their own. Mr.Crosby also provided his students with the chance to talk to students around the world. The balloon project became so widespread that the students’ blogs were being viewed by hundreds of students, teachers, and even some scientists who were amazed by the work these young students were doing.
One class in New Zealand wanted to do the balloon experiment but their teacher did not know how to do it. So the students in Mr.Crosby’s class studied the language and skyped the students in New Zealand and presented the experiment to them. This gave the students the chance to learn and to shine because these other students were looking up to them and their work. Mr. Crosby included a student name Celeste. She was undergoing chemo. Mr. Crosby used Skype. So, Celeste is now included into everyday learning. Brian Crosby is a great example of a 21st century teacher. He uses every kind of technology available to him and his students to enhance their learning. Mr. Crosby showed how encouraging the students to want to learn can promote higher level learning and provide students who have been labeled because of their home life the chance to succeed.

In the Blended Learning Cycle video, Paul Andersen explains his methods on blended learning. He breaks it down into 6 parts: Question, Investigation, Video, Elaboration, Review, and Summary Quiz. In Question, Mr. Andersen poses a question to interest the students. He uses Euler's Disk as an example for his class. When the disk is spun on a mirror, it continues to spin until stopped. This grabs the students attention and they want to know why it does that. In Investigation, you experiment and see what happens. Mr. Andersen gives his students the Euler's disk and tells them to spin it on other surfaces to see what happens. In Video, Mr. Andersen has podcasted the instructions so that the students can do it independently instead of in a whole group lecture. Elaboration is where the students get into explaining why the disk spins the way it does. It involves the physics, making graphs, etc. In review, Mr. Andersen meets with small groups to ask questions and answer questions to make sure they understand the material. The last step is the Summary Quiz. Each student takes the quiz to see how much they learned. If they don’t understand then they go back and go through all the parts again.

In the video, Making Thinking Visible, it features sixth- grade teacher Mark Church. He teaches at the International School Amsterdam. He had his students work in groups, to discuss a video, from the previous day. The topic was The Early Human Beginnings the Origins of Human Society. The students work in groups and come up with a headline, from what they had been learning about. The students headlines were then hung on the bulletin board. Later on, when the students are doing their final project. After finishing their final project, students were told to think about what their headline is now. The students are to decide whether their thinking has changed. I like students working in small groups because I feel it helps keep students engaged. Personally, I like working in groups, because you can hear the thoughts of someone else. They can maybe better verbalize what you are trying to say. Furthermore, working in groups can help give you a better understanding of a topic. I like being able to reflect on my work, which I did not have in school. I feel that encouraging students to reflect is great thing to teach to your students. Visible Thinking is a research-based approach to teaching thinking; it develops students’ thinking and communicates the idea more effectively. Also, at the same time deepens their understanding of the topics they are studying. Visible Thinking is based on different practices such as thinking routines, small sets of questions, students sharing their ideas, having a discussion and reflecting. After watching this video,we agree with Mr. Church’s approach to teaching and learning. Watching this video encourages us as future teachers to experiment with other types of learning.
Written by: Shernaye James, Jaquelyne McKiernan, and Savanah Moore

C4T #2

I have been reading Beth Still's blog over the last few weeks. I have really enjoyed reading her posts! The first post of her's that I read was No Potty For You. She talks about how she thought that she had a perfect bathroom pass plan; only 2 each quarter. She soon realized that it wasn't a very good plan. She says that she has figured out that you don't make rules based on a few students. Just because 2 or 3 students went to the bathroom way too much doesn't mean you punish everyone when they have to use the bathroom. I shared with her my expirence with the teacher who would give you extra points for every bathroom pass you didn't use in the semester. Her second post was about a website called Diigo. She talks about how useful for sharing lessons and material with fellow teachers. It's pretty much Pinterest for teachers! I think it is great because it helps put all of your ideas in one place instead of them being all over and gives your fellow teachers to comment what they think.

Blog Post #8

My group and I found many different educational tools that could be very useful. Some of the resources we found are Learnzillion, WatchKnowLearn, neok12, Diigo, and TeacherTube. These are just a few of the many resources available to teachers in the 21st century.

LearnZillion is a website that provides high-quality instructional videos for grades 3-9. The lessons centered around Common Core standards in Math. LearnZillion provides assessment and progress reporting. Teachers can select a lesson for students to review and track their student’s progress, on the topic. LearnZillion is a free site. Teachers need to sign up first. You can search by grade level, topic, or standard. The way LearnZillion will be used, is by assigning videos for students to watch. After watching the assigned video, students will complete practice activities and quizzes. The benefits are: students can practice and review videos to help them understand the content, that they are learning. LearnZillion is great because it helps in providing high-quality instructional content, for each individual student’s needs. Written by: Shernaye James

Diigo is a site that I found through one of my C4T assignments. I had never heard of it before but after it was mentioned in the post I decided to look into it. Diigo is a site that allows you to save information and share articles. With Diigo you and those you shared the article with are able to highlight and put notes on articles, allowing communication right there on the article. This site also allows you to create groups. The groups could be organized by grade level, subject or certain staff members. When you share an article with the group only they are able to view and comment on the article. The articles are saved and stored until they are needed. Diigo is great for when you find teaching resources and would like to share them, and with it being free it could be possible to create a class account that the students are able to use for group projects. Written by: Jacquelyne McKiernan

Teachertube is a great website I use at work. At most schools, youtube is blocked when using the internet, so when teachers wanted to show their class a video about what they were learning they couldn’t! Teachertube was created so that teachers could enhance their students learning by showing them videos about the things they are learning on a safe website. It contains tons of educational videos that are appropriate for the classroom. At work, I use Teachertube when tutoring kids. Sometimes hearing the information another way in a video, helps the student understand better. Teachertube is also useful for me! The way kids are taught to do math is completely different from the way I was taught so it is useful for me to go on there and learn the new methods of learning! Written by: Savanah Moore