Out of class slip

I had to present chapter 5 today, and I was very nervous! But overall, I think that it went well. People said that they liked that we had a different way of grouping the people together, they got to work with other people that they might not have otherwise. While at the same time we should have chosen specific locations for groups to go. They also liked that we were loud and had good movement and interaction with all the groups. We also distributed the work fairly! The activity was very organized that we had paper and marker provided. We had them choose what they thought was important with each category. We did a great job of facilitating a group discussion! Needed to give the other groups more opportunity to put their opinions in on the other topics. Timing is key! If you have an important point maybe write it down if a teacher does not allow time to open the floor to other opinions. A little more in depth reaction to each of the topics and pros and cons. While we were having this discussion about what they did well and didn't do well, I know when we sat down to put this presentation together, we put a lot of thought into some of these categories like how we could split up the groups in a new way, spliting the talking fairly, using the elmo to change it up a little bit. Overall, I am very proud of my group and how well we did, and everyone else seemed to think it was overall a good presentation!
Next, we went into talking about scratch and our irlo projects. The main point Boyer said is that we NEED to make sure that it is developmentally appropriate! Don't put a lot of text if your intending this to be for a kindergarten class! Scratch seems to be intimidating because its new. To start you need to create any objects you want in your Irlo. One way to do this is to draw your own (star with a paint brush), you can also use the existing sprite library (folder and a star), lastly, you click the random sprite button (star with a question mark). This is a great way to put yourself into the project! Encourageing to create all sprites NOW! You then have to make some controls on what you want all these sprites to do or say. Then you need to put it all together! I liek that you can go on the scratch website and learn how someone else creaeted their project. I feel like that will be a very helpful tool.
Homework: Read the next chapter (6), create a rough draft of irlo, and review interactive whiteboards.

Book Chapter

My group did chapter 5 and we struggled trying to think of an activity that we could present to the class. This chapter was all about the new seeds of education such as homeschooling and education in the work place, etc. We wanted our presentation to be different than what has already been preseneted. I think that we found a new way than what everyone has done but our activity may be similar. I think that it is very important for peers to present to peers; especially because were all going into teaching it gives us an opportunity to experience the feelings of a teacher; nervousness, excited, etc. Also, it gives everyone were teaching a different perspective than what the professor may have presented.

Fun With Flickr

I like the idea of using Flickr to share images and learn different styles from around the world. You could have a cultural unit in the classroom and be able to talk, share photos and ideas from all over the world. Also, who doens't like photos, i love to take pictures, be in pictures and share pictures with people. So this is an opportunity to show parents what is really going on in the classroom; kinda like behind closed doors of a classroom. Children come home everyday and tell their parents they didn't learn or do anything in school that day, now this is living proof that they did DO something that day! I think that it is awesome that it works like delicious. You can type in a link and find pictures about it. In the reading they talked about pictures from main events in history, 9/11, hurricane katrina, etc. One of the activities I did in fifth grade consisted of creating a newspaper all about me; in the reasing they talked about being able to create a Magazine Cover by using Flickr Magazine Cover. I think that would be a fun activity for students to do, also a way for all the kids to get to know each other. A great beginning of the year activity. I think that I will use this in my classroom for presentations, and also allowing the students to create masterpieces.

Social Networking

The one question I have is, when do teachers find all the time to do all this technological stuff; Twitters, wikis, blogs, etc. I feel like I don't have time now as a student, I don't know if I'll have more time when i'm in my career but as I read these chapters its a lot of time! But as I read on further, I liked how they talked about using twitter to find information adn be a resource for students to use.
I never heard about social bookmarking until I took this class, but I really like using the delicious account. I feel that its more organzied that if I were to just save all the websites to my favorites. I will being using this in my classroom and teaching students about social bookmarking.

Get out of class slip

Today in class we got to write on the SMARTBoard for attendence.
The group that presented today did a good job, the activity that they used was helpful to find an alternative way to go about using tests, textbooks, etc. It also was a great way to encoorporate student to student interaction and also teacher to student interaction. The one thing that group could have improved was that they need to learn to be louder!! I sat in the back of the classroom today and I could not hear anything that they said.
The textbook is dead, i don't know if I believe in this, I don't like the idea of not having a text book. For me personally, I don't like to read things off of a computer, I would rather have it on paper so that I can make notes in/on it.
60% of students are graduating from high school. THATS TERRIBLE! If a high school is too big that students are getting lost, then we should fix it! Maybe they need to build another high school so that students can have smaller classes.
Debrief:
Positive:
Ums/likes
encourage deeper thinking
repeat and summarize what someone had said
New presentation tool
Filling out the table
Negative:
Speak UP!
How to group your peers
redirect peers
setting expectations
We then moved on to start talking about the iRLO and when I first read the directions for this assignment, I because nervous. I was unsure what this was, and how I was going to do it. Once Boyer showed us examples of some iRLO's I feel much better about this and feel that it won't be that complicated. I think it will be a fun activity to create. I think that I will for sure use this in a classroom; especially for students who are visual learners.

Chapter 4 Rethinking Education

This chapter I think was very interesting because it gave the background on where the education system came from, the struggles that it went through, and how it has changed and evolved. I liked how it showed that history always repeats itself, in the 19th century there was a transformation in education and now we are experiencing one ourselves; the technology transformation. My thought on technology's role in teaching and learning is that you need to role with the punches. Times are changing, you must change with it or you WILL get left behind. Its as simple as that. Times aren't going to wait for you to make up your mind, its going to happen with or without you! Children are coming into the classrooms already knowing a good amount of technological advances and my thought is that as a future educator I want to be at least a step ahead of these children, I don't want to be the teacher that the students are waiting on to learn how to do soemthing. The one thing that scares me, will schools eventually go back to being based on the homes because of the violence, drugs, etc? Will their always be room for human teachers? Something that I will do differently is not only be the teacher that has to show up and work 8-5 to get my hours, I want to teach these children the curriculum, life skills, and be that support for children that a lot may not have at home. I want to encoorporate technology into my classroom because that is what is happening in the world, my students can work with students in other countries because of technology. I feel that these are experiences that if there not in the classroom they won't ever achieve! Its important!

Wiki's

I found this chapter really useful. It gave a lot of detailed background knowledge on where wiki's started from, how they are changing, and what type of people are using them. I liked how it gave a lot of resources to create your own wiki in your classroom. I really liked how it answered the question "if anyone can edit anything on the site any time they wan, how in the world can you trust what you read there?" I believe that is the question everyone asks to themselves. Professors and teachers say not to use Wikipedia but in here it says that its one of the best resources you will find!? And I was astounded when I read that wikipedia edits
appear as a rate of around 400,000 a day! Thats incredible. That also means that is a lot of people sitting on a computer and doing a lot of research! I didn't know that wikipedia offereed wikitionary, wikinews,wikispecies, and wikiquotes. I guess I have never spent that much time on wikipedia. Also, I didn't know that there is a discussion tab where you can chat with people about the information that you read in wikis. I thought it was funny when it said that teachers should spend some time checking wikipedia's accuracy on their own, because teachers have all the time in the world to be spending on wikipedia right? I think not, I mean if its a site that you think would be useful for your children I guess I would check the accuracy of the information but just to go on there and look over a ton of different pages, no thanks! I think students should be encouraged to contribute their own accurate information to wiki's, I think that helps them to be responsible and be more confident in their learning. Its a way fro them to see what other people think . I really liked all the websites they provided for different wikis. And I really liked when they talked about the teacher that is working with another classroom in bangledash. Thats awesome that we have to opportunity to work with kids and classrooms all over the world!