Aha 4-6-11

Class was a lot of fun on Monday night. I enjoyed all the Save The World presentations. It was incredible all the directions that the groups went with the idea. There was everything from the crazy plot to take over the world, magic seeds that grow magic trees that will produce food, shoes, clothing and many other needs, carbon foot print counters, the star wars related presentation which I can't rememeber and of course the most creative and only actual use of the stickers, the SunSpots super solar cells. Ok so I am a little biased in my opinion. I was amazed at the ideas that came from one little page of stickers, even when I posted on facebook and asked for suggestions I got such a vast array of ideas all of which were awesome. I would love to have the opportunity to use a project like this in a junior high technology class, they would have so much fun with this and it would be such a new concept to have so few guidelines. Middle school aged kids have such great creative minds that the chance to let them run free would be very interesting.

interesting reading for teaching majors

http://bigthink.com/blogs/dangerously-irrelevant

This is a blog link that our superintendent sent us today. We have an extremely block internet at our school, so closed that they can not access KWWL because it is labeled entertainment. Drives me crazy. But, we keep getting these links and articles about open access and using technology in our classrooms. I agree with that to the utmost extent but am a little confused why we get one message but act in the opposite. Maybe he is leading up to a change in the next year or so when we go to the 1 to 1 program.

All of that aside, the blog is awesome and poses some really good questions for teachers and administrators to think about.  How are we going to prepare our students for the real world of technology? If we are not using in our classroom the technology that they will be expected to use in their jobs are we really doing our job? Can we continue to run our schools on the same educational foundations that have been used for decades or are we going to change with the current times and truly prepare our students for what is to come?

These are the questions that lead me to the masters program in instructional technology. I want to be prepared for when schools realize that they are out of date and need to take the plunge into the techno world that we live in. We can not continue to ignor the world around us we need to be a part of it. The video is a little dry but he makes a good point, we need to update our schools and we need to do it very soon.

This is an awesome commercial. See if you can guess what the commercial is for. I wasn't even close.

3-30-11 aha

We watched the TED talk with Chimamanda Adichie last week.  I have been thinking about it ever since.  I really liked her idea of a "single story", it is so true of people in general. We form our opinions from what we see and from our own experiences and that is what creates that story.  I don't think she was saying that is all a bad thing, but just to keep in mind that it is only one piece of a very large tapestry. We need to keep our minds open to more stories to add to our collection. In some ways it explains our ignorance, does not excuse it but does put it in to a new perspective. People are not always bias on purpose they have just never had the chance to hear other stories. When your view of the world starts to expand only then do you really begin to realize how limited it had been and only then will you start to work to hear more than the one story. I grew up in a small town but was close enough to Iowa City that I had a chance to see a little more than the small town story. I loved to go and sit in downtown Iowa City and just watch people. There were people from all over the world and I could see the different clothing and hear many different languages. It was an awesome experience. I was also lucky to have a mother that valued a good story so we were always hearing stories from different cultures, we went to the library often. And yet when I went to college I was still amazed at how much I did not know.

http://blog.timesunion.com/marshall/files/2011/03/tritop.jpg

Disturbing to say the least, this article and picture are about stores selling push-up bikini tops to children as young as 7 years old. JUST SO WRONG!!
I said it in class when we were discussing the sexualiztion of young girls in ads that the clothing that is sold for young kids is very inappropriate for children that are not yet teens.  I do not want my 4 year old child to look like a slutty teenager.  I didn't even allow my teens to dress in the type of clothing that is out there for little girls.  It is just so scary that people promote this by purchasing this type of clothing for their young girls, where is their head. Why do they not see what they are doing to their children.

No matter how much we complain and contact these companies it doesn't seem to change what they are offering up out there.  I am so ready for people to join in the opposition of this and stop buying this crap for their kids.  What is more important that you think you have dressed your child to be popular and fashionable or that you allow your children to BE children.

I am done ranting now. Thanks for listening, I feel much better now that I have let it all out.

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/displaying-student-testing-data-ethical-elena-aguilar

This was a blog post that my daughter sent to me. She believes that it is ok to post the scores because students should know that it is not ok to fail math. Of course this is coming from a student who always found math to be easy and was on the math team in junior high and high school. Her and I do not see eye to eye on this point.
I personally liked the idea of having the kids set goals and then posting their progress toward their goal. No one has to know what their goal is just that they are making progress toward that end. Which to me is what school and differentiated instruction is all about. I don't think that their scores should be posted in the classroom with their names beside them for all to see. Humiliation for failure is not a good thing for an elementary or really any student. Showing whole class progress like the chart pictured might be ok but believe me the studetns always know who is at the top and who is at the bottom. 
With so much focus on student scores and showing that you are improving the test scores in the classroom I can see where some of this thought comes from but I don't think that this is the way to go about motivating kids to do better. Teaching them goal setting and helping them to feel successful and to feel personal accomplishment is so much more important then the end score on a test.  It is ok to fail sometimes as long as you don't dwell on it and get stuck in that failure.  You need to learn from failure, look at why you failed and then learn how to improve.  With that said, I go back to posting test scores in the classroom, how is that supposed to help them learn and improve if they are embarassed and humiliated in front of their peers. 
I would be interested to hear everyone elses feelings on this, am I right or should children's test scores with their names next to them be posted in their classrooms or even on the classroom door for all to see?

social networks in the classroom - aha moment

This is a short video of students from Van Meter talking about how they use social networking sites in their education. I found it extremely interesting that these are just 8th grade students and the things that they have done in school.  They are lucky to have a teacher with vision and a school that allows these sites to be used in the classroom.  We do allow our students to use skype but on a very limited basis and YouTube is completely blocked from them. As I have researched different topics in this course I have found so many things on the internet that would be so cool to use in the classroom if only the students were allowed to have access to it. Many teachers do not even let have their phones in their classrooms. If they see them they take them away and here is a teacher that is encourageing her students to use twitter, YouTube, Facebook and Skype to communicate with other students all over the world and even to talk to authors and people in fields of study that her students are exploring. This is just really awesome and I wish that we were seeing more of it in our school instead of trying to keep the outside world away from the students.