A Time for Reflection #3

Upon completion of this rigorous class, I feel relieved as well as invigorated to bring new ideas to the classroom. My goals for the advanced students are to have bi-monthly podcasts that they will be required to listen and respond to on a classroom blog. This will be adjusted for my Regents classes’ possible changes in frequency, podcast choice, and length of cast. One of my main goals and themes throughout this school year is to inspire students to think, question, and risk sharing their ideas while avoiding submitting to peer conventions. Each day lessons have been attached to the importance of thinking, risk, and building a trusting classroom community. My technical plans include integrating a classroom blog in response to deepening understanding of key concept and topic areas of our study and podcast feedback. .

Schools 2.0

The technological thrust resulting in the breakdown of school walls allows for communication on a grand scale for all the school’s stakeholders. It allows for collaboration of stakeholders to enrich the curriculum while striving to challenge and engage student learners. Often I think of technology minimizing the interaction among students. In this scenario, it clearly demonstrates that the technology is a tool used in the learning not responsible for all of the learning.

What is overwhelmingly evident is the emphasis on international perspectives, conversations, and outreach projects. What I would like to see restrained or monitored is the layman’s input on the instructional strategies. There are many experts in a number of fields who could be a valuable resource. On the other hand, this may open the door for many more with limited education, differences of philosophy, which may end up being a drain on valuable time and energies. I would not want to allow an infringement or false suppositions to negate the professional art of teaching and learning. Thereby, I would instill change and engagement through concept lesson design, using key themes, and allow students a variety of ways to work with the materials. I see this goal designed through the collaboration of teachers. The vision is contingent upon supportive and knowledgeable administrators along with a teaching staff welcoming the changes. This environment should be encouraging, trusting, and caring for the development of each classroom student.

Response to Dr. Zhao

Dr. Zhao made a number of valid points. There are many US teachers that have spent their lives in school, guaranteed a cliental each year, and have not experienced the so called real world. This alone can be an inhibiting factor to educators understanding globalization and its impact beyond theory. I think he is accurate in his statement that the US needs to be more creative, learn from other cultures, and expand beyond the system of yesteryear.

Studying Economics 101, we learn that competition benefits the consumer with a greater quality, efficient quantity, and a fair price. Inefficiency rises, quality sacrificed, monetary policies ineffective with the lack of competition. Yet in America’s capitalist system, public education is very much a socialized (communist) good, quite often tailored for outcomes to be mediocre at best. The sense of security, regulations and protections, lack of competition all can impede educators’ potential. There appears to be the lack of urgency, professional development tends to be an individual’s a choice not a necessity, and a lack of consequences for underperforming teachers as well as accolades for those who go above and beyond.

Time for rethinking our public school system has been here for a while.

International Collaboration Project through Global School House

Why People Fight in Wars: This international collaborative opportunity will be afforded to 60 of my AP and IB students. One of our selected IB themes is causes and effects of war, which is also an AP theme. This conversation should be applicable to American and Canadian history in regards to Native American relations, conditions of slavery, diversity, religion, women’s issues, homosexuality, and the concepts of freedom, democracy, and the role of government.

Class Reflection 2:

Class Reflection 2: The wiki is a tool that I am going to implement this week. It is designed, secured to Debate Club members only for security purposes, and I hope for students to use it beginning this week. For a tool that is too be saving time and increasing efficiency, it took me a number of hours to get it set where I have one page I need to edit. I can see this working, granting permission to Club officers, allowing me the history to make changes that may be needed. I see the wiki being a communication tool for Club organization and focus, discussion, debate preps, celebrating growth and success through VOD, POD, PICs and Press.
I am crazy for del.icio.us ! To be able to access my favorites anywhere is a dream comes true. Sounds geeky, I know, but there has been a number of situations where if I had access to my Favs I would save an immense about of time and effort.

Wikis

Although the word implies quickly, I see myself entering the wiki world slowly and with caution. My first venture into this new dimension will be with a new debate club at the high school. This will allow the club a forum to gather information, share ideas, and shape our new venture. In addition, I have a couple of projects that I think the use of the wiki might enhance students' work and understanding. With that, I am curious how much memory is available for posting a student generated docu-drama. Not only will the wiki assist in the planning stage, but also posting the finished product allows students who did not attend class or need to revisit the opportunity to view and comment on a project.

Are Schools Killing Creativity? – Online Video Sites

Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity

His contentions all kids have talent and school squashes it. Creativity should be at same concern as literacy. If you are not prepared to be wrong you will never come up with anything original. Educating people out of their creative capacities. Educated out of creativity. Humorous, hierarchy the same math, language, humanities, arts at the bottom. Educate progressively from the waist up. Education arises out of industrialization, hierarchy valued, class choice follows, and arts diminish.

What a powerful and entertaining speaker Sir Ken Robinson was in his defense of schools killing creativity. His argument is logical, we see this in students, and we see parents that promote in many aspects of their children’s lives in that failure is not an option. The arts are an area that is frequently subjected to ridicule and economic cuts, yet this is the cornerstone to cultivate objectivity, multi-perspective, analytical thinking. When subbing I was fortunate to cover for an outstanding art teacher in West Irondequoit. His students came into the classroom, worked with a variety of different mediums, and created their final work off of the same still life. This experience assisted my instruction in challenging students’ open-endedness, using historical facts to support alternative historical interpretations, and while fostering respect for differing views.

In regards to the online video, I have utilized YouTube quite often; however, need to preview, check for appropriateness and accuracy of information. TeacherTube has been effective in bringing into the classroom another instructor or topic expert for the students listen to for a few minutes. I like the concept of Next Vista, but agree that this will be a time intense project that will grow gradually over time as relevant educational avenues emerge. The advantage is that the video segments are short, previewed for appropriateness and academic related. The overarching goal to get people to remix, create, and maintain an academic focus in an community forum, preserving the criteria while offering free access to everyone is outstanding. On a different video site that was new to me was ClipBlast. This site had a multitude of clips that are relevant to my subject area.

I have used these clips for direct instruction, but am also interested in having students create their own video clips demonstrating accuracy of information, analysis, and creativity of sophisticated quality producing a video essay.

Blogging thoughts…

Blogging thoughts…Blogging is a venue I intend to implement in either or both my AP/IB courses 2008-2009. My goal is to further promote a community of learners, who are open to ideas, get the opportunity to express their ideas as well as read others that may not be heard in the classroom. I see this promoting skill for expression and analysis, furthering my topic knowledge as well as knowing my students. Thus supporting classroom work and community building.

Critical Thinking through Seminar & Simulations

As a secondary AP/IB Social Studies teacher, I have discovered that through the use of seminar my advanced students have deepened their understanding, improved their ability of developing a multi-perspective lens, and are able to make a more formable argument when participating at this level task. My goal is to infuse this at the main stream level in an effort to promote participation and critical thinking. Any suggestions?