Reflection 9 - my classroom

I have been assigned to a classroom temporarily until graduation so I can be assessed twice. When I found this out, I was a little stressed since it added to a heavy workload for me, but after meeting the teacher and students, I am completely at ease and excited about working there for the remainder of the school year. My school is Discovery Elementary in the Issaquah school district. I will be working in the fifth grade with some wonderful students and with their teacher Mrs. Buhler. I was happy to learn that every classroom has an interactive whiteboard, computer, projector and document camera that are all interconnected. I am excited to try out all the new possibilities with these technologies. They are on spring break this week and have WASL next week, but after that, I will be taking on some of the teaching responsibilities. I am very thankful to Mrs. Buhler and her understanding of my situation. She has been more than helpful!

Reflection 8 - blogging to connect to world

I was recently listening to an interview on the radio with a man who was promoting the Emerald City Comic Con April 4-5. He made an interesting point that I have been pondering in its relation to the world of education. When he was growing up (basically the same time I was) he had interests that put him in the "geek" category and was often criticized for his love of technology, particularly the gaming industry (arcade games). He tended to be a loner through school because there weren't too many people like him. Now, he keeps a well-known blog and is able to connect with "geeks" all over the world. He said people used to criticize blogging by saying how impersonal it was and that it could not be truly relational. He has found just the opposite to be true in that now he has friends all over the world that he never would have connected to without blogging. He also found it to be funny that the "geeks" are the ones that have made technology the way it is today and now they tend to be popular for being a "geek." In education, by having our students blog, they may be able to find people like them with similar interests and not feel so alone in their world. I can show them the world beyond the walls of the classroom that they can connect to.

Entry #11 - gradebook software/kidspiration

I enjoyed looking at the grading software and realizing how easy it is to use. I played around with chalksite gradebook. With just a few minutes of playing with it I was able to see all the features available and learn how to use them. I liked how you could keep all student information organized and accessible on one page. The one crtique I had of chalksite was that you could not assign different weight for assignment categories like you could on the grade source software. I like to put more weight on papers and projects than I would on homework or in-class assignments. Otherwise, anything that is user-friendly is wonderful for me!

Kidspiration is a creative way for students to organize their thoughts. I loved how colorful and appealing the templates were. I have a hard time thinking in scattered webs like that, so I liked how you could change it to a written format and save it that way. I tend to think orderly and the webs distracted me.

Reflection 7 - forum with NU graduates

I really appreciate the discussion last week with recent NU graduates who are out in the teaching field putting to practice what we are learning in class. Sometimes because of my age, I feel at a disadvantage to the younger students who are very familiar with all kinds of technology, and it was encouraging to hear that what these teachers use on a daily basis, I would be comfortable using too (thanks to this class!) I also really liked all of their personalities and feel they were very emotionally balanced in their approach to their students. Teaching is a daily step by step progress, and sometimes we may not feel like we are reaching any of our students, but it is happening however slowly, and we will be able to look back and see how far they have come. Thank you, Professor Sorenson, for arranging that meeting!

Reflection 6 - Chilean students

Last week I attended a round table discussion with a group of Chilean students that were visiting Northwest. The education students that were there were able to meet with these students in small groups to discuss the Chilean education system. I was very surprised at how rigorous their education seemed as compared to U.S. education. They have to basically pick their lifetime career path before their junior year and that path will dictate which math, science, and electives they need to take. They also have a massive exam at the end of their senior year that will allow them to pass high school and enter a university. Many of these students had lofty career goals: engineering, medicine, environmental scientist, etc. They seemed to take their studies seriously, unlike many U.S. high schoolers. I'm sure you could find the slackers in the Chilean schools, but I think their culture tends to put a much higher emphasis on academic success. All in all, it was a fascinating meeting and I am thankful for the opportunity to interact with another culture.

Entry #10 - educational blogs

I spent some time reading through these blogs and enjoyed just about all of them. Some of them lost me with techie lingo, but others got to the heart of teaching. I especially liked an article on differentiated learning.
http://www.edutopia.org/differentiated-instruction-student-success

So many times we forget about the quiet non-disruptive students and don't give them the attention they need and deserve; just because they are not causing any problems for us doesn't mean they are learning. There are many different ways to meet students needs, and we should remember that we certainly should not treat every student the same when it comes to their learning. That's where differentiated instruction comes in. While it may be time-consuming and difficult, we are there to teach every student in our class and meet them where they are. I liked the idea of "do-overs" mainly because I am still working on allowing students a chance to redeem themselves, relearn an idea or concept, and change their results. Some teachers tend to give extra credit to students who are doing poorly in their class, but that does not always meet the learning objectives. Allowing students to do several drafts of a paper, test or quiz corrections, or allowing them to redo math problems once we reteach a concept will achieve the learning objectives that we set out to accomplish in the first place.

Assignment #4 - tech project plan

For the end of the year project, I plan to create a plan for student video book reports. I will give detailed instructions on a wiki, along with a sign up to check out the 3 classroom flip cameras. For the main part of the project, I will provide an example (or 2) of how a student video book report should look. Students will be given a graphic organizer to complete before recording their video so they will have some idea of what is important content to include. I will also provide them many ideas and options to encourage them to think creatively about their book. For the actual example video I will be using my third-grade son as an example; he is very excited to help mom on her college assignment!
I chose this assignment because I think there's a movie-maker in all of us, and because I want to experiment more with making movies. This type of report uses many more senses than a typical written report. Students who are dying to show off their creativity can be as creative as they want in this type of an assignment. I don't know what age group I will be teaching in the future, but I think I could use this assignment with any age group above 1st grade.

April 14th - I have created the wiki with several pages waiting for items to be inserted. I have not completed the plan for the video or the video itself. I plan to do that this weekend when I get the camera. I was surprised how easy it was to create the wiki and how helpful the tutorial videos were.