ED205 Online Blog

I will definately try to keep myself posted on technology with education in the future. I believe with the kind of world we live in now, and going into education myself, it would be foolish to not keep myself and my students informed of what is available to us. I went to http://www.thejournal.com and it seems like an interesting magazine to subscribe to. I love to read as it is, so having a magazine like that to read every once in a while would be beneficial. I also went to http://www.kentisd.org and found several different workshops I can attend to help me learn more about technology and teaching. I would most definately take advantage of this. I know we got a brief overview of how to use different programs, such as Excel for example, but I would like to take a class that would go more in depth with it, and I am very much interested in learning more about Access as well. I would like to be able to incorporate technology as much as I can in my classroom, such as playing with the handhelds, to get my students more exposure to something that they may have never thought of to use before. I know personally, I didn’t know much about handhelds until our second in-class lab. I am also interested in looking more into becoming a MACUL member and attending workshops in the future. The Special Interest Groups would be very helpful to me. It’d also be nice to be able to attend (at least once) one of the NECC conferences, just to get a feel as to what they’re like. Again, I can’t teach with/about something I am not familiar with myself, so I thing attending workshops and subscribing to magazines are not only helpful, but something that would be fun to do as well.

Oh how I’m thankful
You wish you could eat like me
Turkey every day

This haiku was inspired by a recent Lounge topic. I used to be embarrassed and ashamed that I had a freak metabolism and would constantly recieve snide remarks about it. But now, today, *sniff, sniff* I am able to hold my chin up, stand proudly, and say…… “HA!! Suckers!! Na-na-na-na-na-nah! What, no seconds? What? A diet? Sucks to be you!!! That’s ok, you just drink your supplementary shake–I’LL finish your food for you!*stuffs face in front of them*Muah-hahahaha..MUAHAHAHAHAHA *chokes on food for a few seconds, compose myself* MUAHAHAHAHA!!…”

It wasn’t very clear to me, initially, what kind of website this was (http://www.martinlutherking.org/). But as I kept reading, it was obviously written by “anti-Martin Luther King Jr.” people. I eventually assumed it was a group similar to the KKK, or along those lines, because they mentioned other races as well, like Jews. As far as using this site in schools, it depends what age group we’re talking about. I would strictly use this site with high schoolers and above only. It had graphic language that I don’t feel appropriate using with elementary/junior-high students, and I believe younger kids may still be vulnerable to misinterpreting what they real as real, without studying all sides and all facts. I was very surprised that this site was toward the top of the list in a google search (second, to be exact), and this was obviously done intentionally by the authors so this information would be impossible to miss. This is a very biased website and it was clear they wanted their readers to be convinced of everything they were talking about, and as I browsed some more, I was disgusted that they even encouraged readers to print and pass out flyers in schools and out in public. I think kids can learn to be more trusting of the information they read when it isn’t geared at any particular subject (or person/group of people, in this case) in a hateful way. The students might not recognize this site as hateful, so I would encourage them to always research any information that might seem out of the ordinary to what they may have heard before. If it seems like all the information is in a negative light, that should set off warning bells in their minds to maybe look into it more. Personally, I was shocked and appalled by this site and angered that it is so easily accessable to younger students who may be doing reports about him. We can only do our best to teach our students how to be good researchers when it comes to the information they read, be it good or bad, and able to know the difference.

Constructivism is a theory that bases learning through experience. It takes what the student already knows about a subject and uses that to form new ideas or outcomes. I strongly believe in this style of learning. I watched the movie Jarhead last night in the movie theatre, and there was a scene where the Marines were out in the desert about to practice their sniper shooting. The Staff Sergeant asked one of the Marines to guess how far away the targets were, and he replied by saying “three football fields.” The Staff Sergeant, after telling him that was correct, told the Marines to take what they already know and use it in new situations. I think constructivism can be extremely helpful when learning new things, and the student will remember this new information better versus just recieving a lecture. Take for example, a social studies/history class. If they were studying about the judicial system, a class could put on a mock courtroom scenario, with jurors, judges, etc. Not only would this give the students hands-on experience with this subject, it is something that would keep them interested. I know of many people who did mock trials in high school. I was not fortunate enough to be one of those people, but I guarantee it would’ve kept me interested and looking forward to coming to class. I know for myself, if I am not interested in something, my mind almost blocks everything from that content off, because I don’t want to learn it. The key to teaching is making learning as fun/interesting as possible.

Another point of constructivism that I like is the fact that there aren’t any “right” or “wrong” answers. The student is able to take prior knowledge and make it into something else of their own (http://www.funderstanding.com/constructivism.cfm), which makes their learning more personal. I don’t think constructivism should be contreversial any way. Learning should be individualized as much as possible, and the constructivist approach is adaptable to each child’s learning, since they make their own conclusions and build on them. I believe constructivism is highly integrated with technology because people use what they already know about it to create their own projects. They are active in their own ideas, rather than focusing on other students’. We used constructivism in class. We learned about PowerPoint (some of us already knew a little), we created a project about ourselves, and we can use the knowledge we have on PP to use it later in our own classrooms or jobs. There are enless possiblilites with incorporating technology to our personal lives now to make it work for us later. Constructivism is an efficient way of learning, and I hope to incorporate it into my classroom in the future as much as possible.

“That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you’ve understood all your life, but in a new way.”
-Doris Lessing