Video Reflection: I am what I learn

I appreciate the spunk of Alex wanting to follow his passions. I remember having the desire to be a tight rope walker. I thought it was interesting that in every room there were things that surrounded him in his environment of things that represented film making. There were director chairs, mac computers, electronic keyboards, cameras, camera crews, and many props. By surrounding yourself with the kind of things that you are interested in, then you are bound to end up in that profession. Like the young boy said, what you're doing right now is a good sign of what you will end up doing as a career. Start doing what you want, and make an education out of it. I think this is good advice. It's a little unrealistic in this economy, but it's a hopeful perspective.

Digital Story 3. Last Blog

What? 

We are still learning about Digital Stories. We have been learning how to polish and complete our Digital Stories. I actually just posted mine on my class website. It was a success. 

So What?

As a teacher, this all means that I know how to create a digital story. I can share it with my students, and I can share important information in a memorable way. As a student, this means that I have learned something to add to my collection of teacher resources to call upon for teaching valuable and meaningful lessons in the future. In Wikipedia, the definition of "Digital Storytelling" is an emerging term, one that arises from a grassroots movement that uses new digital tools to help ordinary people tell their own 'true stories' in a compelling and emotionally engaging form. These stories usually take the form of a relatively short story (less than 8 minutes) and can involve interactivity. The term can also be a broader journalistic reference to the variety of emergent new forms of digital narratives (web-based stories, interactive stories, hypertexts, and narrative computer games). 

As an emerging area of creative work, the definition of digital storytelling is still the subject of much debate.As a colleague, we couldn't really use digital stories to talk to each other or communicate. The truth is that I probably wouldn't use digital stories to communicate with my colleagues or create more meaningful working relationships. That is a lot of time, and I would rather spend the time working on digital stories for my students. We are doing this to try to help us become better teachers, students, and colleagues. 

Now What?

Technology will mean great things for my future students. Jennifer New from Edutopia says, "Storytelling is a vital skill with seemingly unlimited applications. Done well, it can have a magical effect -- moving, enlightening, or entertaining audiences of any size. We tell stories to woo lovers, calm children, or reassure ourselves. Lawyers rely on the power of storytelling to vividly re-create crimes to juries, archaeologists conjure former civilizations, and teachers make abstract concepts real to their students. 

In today's digitized world, visual storytelling is a favorite classroom tool, and the affordability and accessibility of technology such as iMovie provides opportunities not imagined a decade ago. Joe Fatheree and Craig Lindvahl, two teachers who have made seven films between them and who teach filmmaking workshops to educators, say that even when teachers are comfortable with the technology, they don't often feel confident about teaching the art of storytelling." I think it will be helpful to tell stories when I am feeling like I don't want to or am uncomfortable. I can use digital stories to tell about important things in a memorable way. 

I Am What I Learn

"Passion is something that sticks with you throughout your entire life." As teachers, it is important for us to give opportunities for students to find their passions. The young student in this video wouldn't have found out his love for movie making had he not been exposed to the programs and ideas. Now, he feels there is an escape out of his tough situation into a better life. Although a teacher may have introduced him to film making, he does say that 'you can have the greatest teacher in the world,' but if you're not willing to try to learn, then it won't do any good. By creating a classroom environment with lots of exploratory options for students to find their passions, teachers can help students make the difference in their own lives. We-teachers- are the facilitators to the great power that lies within each student we will ever have.

Digital Story 2

What?
We are learning how to use Photo Story. We will use this program to create our digital story. We will present our digital stories to the class for our Final.



So What?

As a teacher, this means that I am learning yet one more way to incorporate media into a better functioning and learning classroom. As a student, this means that right now I am working with Rachel to create a digital story about the propaganda used in America before the atomic bomb was dropped on Japan in WWII. We are learning how to use the photo story program on the school computers, and we have been working on finding good pictures to demonstrate our main points about the deceitful propaganda used at a certain time in history. As a colleague, this doesn't mean much for me now, since I am just a school janitor, but if they ever needed a presentation on how poorly taken care of the classrooms are by the students, I could use photo story to emphasize how messy and irresponsible the students are when it comes to cleanliness and sanitation.
We are doing this to open up more options to teach any of the subjects we will teach when we are hired. In my other classes, this can apply to me, because I could use digital stories for projects, final exams, or for my presentation in my math class of an instructional method to teach a certain math concept. In my life in general, this applies because I can make picture-movies with music for weddings using a new program, instead of taking up so much space with my imovies on my computer. This technology means, to me, that there are much more powerful ways of teaching than direct teaching and lecturing. This can be a means of showing examples, illustrating different perspectives, looking at multiple points of view, and much more. To my colleagues, this technology won't mean much now because I don't have any colleagues. I am one janitor that is used for the art department and I have two bosses. I could offer my bosses, who are UVU art teachers, some help with saving the work of their students throughout the year by taking pictures of all the favorite student pieces of the semester and putting them to music on a digital story. This could be a gift to the students for their portfolios and could be helpful in the future.


Now What?

To my future students, this technology means that they will be able to try less hard to pay attention. It will come more naturally for the parts of understanding that include these digital stories. They will be able to create a file cabinet in their mind to store later information that comes from the topics presented in the digital stories. This technology changes my current schema by introducing it to new ways of thinking how to give learning in a more productive and diverse way. This will help me be a better teacher by helping me improve the quality of my lesson plans with new innovative ways of presenting and creating information.
Some of the assignments I could give my students in the future would be the creating of these digital stories. I could tie it into an art lesson. What art work the students have done for a certain social studies unit, I could take pictures of them and put them into a computer for all of them to create a digital story telling of the Civil War or whatever unit we happen to be on. They could collaborate with their peers in class and outside of class making more art work, finding music, and putting it all together on the digital story program. This will help me become a better teacher because my students will enjoy coming to class, they will in turn be well behaved, and I will be able to have confidence running my classroom in a productive, diverse, different, fun, and learning filled manner. I could be a better colleague by offering my ideas and putting together an entire grade digital story day where the classes combine and get to work in groups of students that include student from any of the other classes. It will be nice for the students and the teachers to deal with different people and offer their knowledge to multiple groups under constructive group work settings. In the department, digital stories could be a fun way to start a meeting, a celebratory way to end each term. Digital stories could be a means of creating more positive relationships among the students, the teachers, the department, and other school members.

Spring Break.

Ridgeline Elementary School has spring break this week. So, I am off to six flags in LA and some family fun in the sun at my home--Las Vegas. Hasta Luego!

Technology Rich Classrooms: Video

Integrating technology in this School System in Kansas made many learning strategies easier to incorporate in the classroom for greater success. The methods we've been learning about to teach children most effectively can best be reached through technology, as was shown in this video.
One of the psychological tools teachers need to use to reach all learner levels is scaffolding. The technology used in this particular Kansas School helped students learn at their own pace and level, while urging them to push forward and improve their skills to keep up with innovative ideas and creativity occurring in the classroom.
A teacher in this video made a very good point- she was only one mind with 40 minds listening in. Why not use all 41 minds to create the most amount of learning possible. Technology helped facilitate a way for all the minds in the class to be utilized.
21st century learning tools used in the 21st century shouldn't be such a revolutionary idea. In my field work, I noticed that all his methods were probably effective in the 20th century, but not today, not in 2010.
We don't use an ink jar and a feather to write. Why? Because we have a better way! The same goes with one teacher standing in front of a class to lecture within four walls, within the one text book. We have a better way!
One student spotlighted in the film had never enjoyed school. He was not good at being a 'traditional student'. Why should he? How can we expect our students to have traditional behaviors and learning styles when they are inhabiting a modern world with modern ideas, behaviors, and learning styles. The father of the boy said, "You give him that technology and let him shine a little bit... and now we've seen leadership skills we've never seen before." New skills will start emerging that had never been tapped into before as we present 'traditional' material in a modern way---TECHNOLOGY!

Field Experience 3

What? 

We are in our last week of field. Next week is spring break, and so we have wrapped up our assignments including: social studies, arts, math, and english lessons, while performing with much media in presenting our lessons. 

So What?

As a teacher, this has helped me see that students of this particular generation love up-to-date ways to learn that include technology. As a student, I have learned how to teach more effectively and more organized using power point presentations, class websites, and other technology. As a colleague in the future, I'll be able to feel like a better contributor as I share lessons via email and other media methods. We are applying technology into our lessons now in order to be better prepared for using up-to-date methods of teaching. It has been good to understand how to make back up plans for when technology doesn't work how we hoped. 
This can apply to me today because of all the same reasons I mentioned above. I am preparing to become a teacher. If I want to be an effective teacher with quality lesson plans, then I need to practice using technology in the classroom and understand the pros, cons, and just how children deal with it in general. Collectively, this technology that we've been learning about has been helpful in collaborating with my field work partner, has given me more options in my lesson preparation, and has been a tool in helping me prepare and organize enduring understanding in my teaching. 

Now What?

To my future students, this technology means that they will have more input in their schemas for future careers, school tasks, means to learn new material, present important information, and other life tasks. This information also changes my schema and will continue to shape multiple options for presenting and teaching information to students. This information will change the type of teacher I will be in the future because I will find it easier to incorporate the curriculum into my lesson on multiple levels because of the immense organization technology can provide. 
We performed an assignment that allowed the students to work inside and outside of class, but since we didn't have permission to assign homework, we just used class time to have the students develop a class website we (Charis and I) had created. The internet wasn't working, except for the plug in at the front of the class, so we just projected our computer and worked through the website links and created the page links as a class. It worked, but it would have been more fun for the students to collaborate in groups. Knowing that I had this kind of an option to create a website, opened up my options for the students to learn in a cooperative learning environment. This kind of activity idea to teach an important unit will help me become a better future teacher. I can be a better colleague by giving the websites used in my class to other teachers in my grade level so they can get ideas. As a department, it would be awesome and helpful if we had unit projects, lectures, and assignments as an entire grade level on one shared power point presentation or website that the students could look at in and outside of school. I have learned at field how important it is for same grade level teachers to collaborate so their students get to participate with all students their age in activities supervised by all different styles of teaching. 

Field Experience 2

What? 

I am learning how to use technology in the classroom as a teacher. This week, I am learning how to teach social studies lessons, using technology to enhance learning, in a 6th grade class. 

So What?

As a teacher, this means I am learning how to incorporate media into social studies lessons in a meaningful way that helps reach the core curriculum standards, objectives, and indicators. I have learned that power point is an effective way for the teacher to stay organized and on topic. I have a tendency to go off on tangents, and I was glad my partner and I had prepared a power point presentation to help us stay on track today. We still didn't end up having time for one part of our lesson, but we were able to look to the power point when we got lost or needed guidance to transition us to the next step in the teaching process. As a student, I learned today that activities sometimes take a lot longer than you had planned, so it is important to have every step mapped out. The easiest way to do that is to have an organized media tool/presentation to keep everyone on the same page. The students in our class always get excited when they see technology in the classroom. They jumped for joy when we told them we would be bringing the mobile labs in for an assignment on Thursday. As a colleague, I have been able to use google presentations and google documents to plan lessons with my partner while I've been at work or at home. The collaboration and organization between our communication has been effective enough to have successful lesson plans and have the lesson run smoothly. 
We are learning, hands-on, how to incorporate media into our daily lesson plans to familiarize ourselves with all the different aspects of preparation that come with having an effective technology based or included lesson. This can apply to me in my classes because for my classes, I am in fieldwork, and I am learning how to work media lessons for a 6th grade audience that isn't totally familiar with computers yet. In my life in general, this opportunity is allowing me to have experiences that will fine tune my teaching skills into a more organized method. To me, this technology means I am responsible for teaching future generations of students how to survive in a technology based world. I am responsible for opening them up to the world they are surrounded by and will soon be surviving in independently. My colleagues will have the same responsibility as me, and we are only bettering ourselves, our students, our careers, and our schemas by applying media and technology into our daily lesson plans.

Now What?

To my future students, this technology that I provide will be the means in which they make the difference between simply surviving or graciously thriving in their environment. This new information changes my current schema by allowing me to introduce media based lessons to a new and younger audience. This improves my schema by giving me more ideas of organized ways to teach, and using media in the classroom is teaching students more ideas of organization through observation and experimentation and learning about totally different subjects all at the same time. This information will change the kind of teacher I am in the future because while I have been observing in field, I have noticed the kind of excitement and passion that comes from Mr. Shirley's technology based class, as opposed to my cooperating teacher's paper worksheet, silence, independent work based class. I see how the students react to new, modern, current, relative technology that is brought into the classroom, and I see how they react when they build a worksheet. The difference is vast, and it is important to have up to date ways of teaching with technology because the students will learn better and they will actually like coming to school. The students may actually begin to see ways things can apply to them better than ever before because of the current content.
The kinds of assignments I can give my students, using up to date technology, is much more plentiful than those assignments I can assign without technology. For our lesson tomorrow, the students will be using mobile labs and in a group, they will research, create, and develop a link on a class website about inventions in Ancient Rome. If they don't finish in the allotted time in class, they can work at home because it is an online class page that they can work from anywhere on. Since it is a more wealthy area, they may even be able to work on it from their parent's phone at a soccer game or other places outside the school. In class, it is cooperative learning, and outside of class it is cooperative learning. That is something that could not have been done as easily in the past before these kind of technology resources. This will help me become a better teacher by allowing me the chance to be organized, resourceful, helpful, knowledgeable, creative, and full of options and ideas to help the students learn in the best way possible. Learning how to incorporate media in daily lesson plans will help my colleagues and I to feel more confident and aware of what is going on in our classrooms. I'm sure departments will get along better if they don't have frustrations about internet, technology, and computers. Our cooperating teacher has a poster in his room that is a picture of Garfield chain sawing a computer and saying, "Compute this!" The frustration about computers and technology can only be conquered when taken head on and harnessing all that energy into something productive and useful. The department would be wise to encourage this negative 'every thing is always broken anyways' fear about technology to completely disappear and transform into a positive and working relationship between the opportunities technology provides and the classrooms it can provide it for. Getting over the frustration of technology and facilitating opportunities for the students to learn to use the tools they will grow up with will benefit the teacher and the learner both. 

Video Reflection: Next generation learning

Next generation learning is all centered around up-to-date technology and incorporating it in the classroom. The comparison between the generations before me and now is immensely different and it is hard to bridge the gap. This video gave resources and a website to help bridge this gap and incorporate more current media into the school's learning.
I found it interesting that this particular school found a way to incorporate learning with one of the most popular children's video gaming tools in our day- the Wii. The more technology we can use that the kids enjoy and love, the better.
The boy in this brief film said, "It's amazing the doors it opens." He then gave an example of how incorporating media through a class website allowed the parents to feel confident about their children taking a field trip to Madrid because they were able to see uploaded pictures from the trip the day they were taken. This Mother that felt the need to push for technology in her son's school even though she didn't have a similar education growing up. Parents can adapt to the new changes and it will benefit them to be familiar with all the things they can do with technology in this day and age.

Field Work 1

What? 

I am learning about how to incorporate different media tools in my classroom lesson plans. I am learning how to get sixth graders interested in Social Studies by giving meaningful lectures with hands on assignments.

So What?

As a teacher, this means that the students will trust my ability to teach effectively. It means that I will be able to gain 6th graders attention by relating to them with their current technology based world and growing schemas. As a student, this means that I can learn to have better teacher presence by being more prepared in my lesson plans. I can be most prepared by organizing myself through media tools. I find that when I have vidcasts, podcasts, or digital stories I have created or found, my lesson remains interesting, and I am able to stay on track and get myself organized and together while the media tool is teaching. As a colleague, this is helping me be a better team teacher. My partner, Charis Jensen, and I are having great success using Google's many collaborative tools to plan our lessons. We are doing this to expand our horizons and become more well-rounded individuals that are better prepared to involve students in RAD teaching, Whole Brain teaching, and reaching multiple senses to keep the students interested.  

This can apply to me today in my other classes because it is helping me create more valuable Social Studies lessons for field, and the technology I have come to learn about is creating more opportunities to find primary sources and create valuable methods to present them. In my life in general, I have found that the technology tools I have learned about have helped me serve other people in more effective and important ways. I am now able to help my Mom create a powerful Sunday School lesson using Google Presentations and attaching digital stories and mp3 files. To my colleagues, this means that I am more capable of communicating, sharing ideas, and using 2 brains to create one awesome and organized media tool creation.

Now What?

To my future students, this information means that they will be learning in a style that is relevant to their time. They will be learning about technology through learning about Social Studies. This information changes my current schema and it is evident by the way it has changed my day to day vocabulary. I catch myself saying things like "Good idea. You should podcast that," or "Let's google doc it over the weekend," or "Search google images and add it to the presentation, and I'll edit the format." All these phrases show me how much my schema has changed over the past 3 months. This information will help me become a more well-rounded teacher with tons of new ideas to display and educate in a sophisticated and interesting manner. The kind of assignments I can give my students have become much more group oriented, which matches the theories I've been studying in Psychology. Group work is socially vital, and in the 6th grade class I'm in now, we don't see much of it. Charis and I will be giving a Google presentations assignment in class that we think will improve the social unity of the class by having them work in groups It will force them to complete the assignment they are learning about in class rather than goofing off and saving it for homework if they are required to present their slides to the class at the end of the lesson. If we don't have time to complete the assignment with our allotted computer time, the students will be able to collaborate from their home computers. 
This will help me become a better teacher because I will be including the students in a deeper learning process. This will help me be a better colleague because I can share my idea, work together to produce valuable teaching tools, and create sharable lesson plans. In our department, we can rely on multiple ways of communicating, sharing information, improving our lesson plans, exploring new ideas, and motivating our teachers with things like digital stories. All these tools we have been learning about can work in any of Gardners' 8 intelligences and can help anyone produce the most effective form of lesson from their type of creative genius. 

Video Reflection: Teach or Educate

Some things I liked from this clip were the quotes about education by socrates, the analogy of filling a vessel and lighting a flame that showed the differences between teaching and educating, and the music transition that recognized educating as the better choice.
I didn't like that there were no pictures of students. Teaching/Educating is all about the students, and I didn't feel the point the author was making really made that deep of an impact without any pictures of students.
I thought the  color of the font was too translucent. I also thought the speed of the words transitioning was too fast, and I thought the words needed to be more interesting to make up for the lack in interesting pictures.
I also thought the pictures were a little irrelevant. An empty school chair on the grass didn't really make any connection with the topic, to me. I also thought the blue flowers weren't related to the subject at all. I thought the connection between the fire extinguisher and the quote about lighting the flame in the students was contradictory and a little confusing.
I thought the definitions of teaching supported the ideas of an educator, so it didn't really separate the light between the two ideas that the creator was trying to get across.
Overall, I didn't think this Digital Story was all that educational or moving. It didn't practice what it preached by really educating the audience.

Digital Story 1

What?

We have just finished building our podcast and vidcast. I liked it so much that I made an extra podcast and then posted my favorite. We are now beginning our Digital Stories. I think I may enjoy the digital story almost as much as the podcast.

So What?

As a teacher, this information means that I will be able to teach my students with combinations of music, pictures, videos, and other graphic images to present them with valuable information. As a student, I can use this information to put projects into a more creative and interesting form. For my brain fair project, I was able to use my knowledge of how to build a website in order to organize the information, videos, and pictures from my team's research. They also knew how to do it, which helped with the collaboration, and it reminded me of how it could work with my colleagues in the future. We are doing this for the very reason to help us become better students, teachers, and colleagues.

This can apply to my other classes and my life in general in many ways, like being able to use my enlarging schema of media to create better and more interesting ways to share and teach information. This technology we are learning will allow me to portray important messages to the students in a way that can be interpreted by them and only them through what they see, feel, hear, and take in from media organizers like the digital story.

Now What?

To my future students, this information means that they won't have to listen to me tell them information, but they will be able to decipher which facts are and aren't important through visual and auditory imagery. This information changes my current schema by enlarging the ideas I have floating around that I can retrieve to help build a better learning foundation for my future students. I can give my students an assignment at the beginning of the year to build a website and throughout the year, I can have them post their assignments on their website. They can go back to their website and edit it throughout their school years and it can serve as a journal to them in the future. Hopefully they will continue to build on it throughout their secondary education and high school.

This will help me become a better teacher because I will be helping the students create fond memories by harboring good experiences and long-lasting assignments. This information will also help me become a better colleague because I plan on keeping the google site I created in this class and adding to it and taking away from it as I shape my schema and teaching philosophy. I really enjoyed making my podcast and even made an extra to help my friend, who was having sleep troubles, to fall asleep. I hope my students will connect with one of the many assignments I now know about and can give them.

Web Quest Final Touches and Pod/Vidcast Reflection

What?

As my partner and I put on our final touches to our blog today, we were very impressed with the turnout of the hours and hours of work we put into our web quest.

As we started planning for our vidcast and podcast, we were bouncing ideas off of each other and are excited to get together again to learn a new teaching strategy by planning our pod and vid casts.

So What?

As a teacher, this means that I will be able to put vidcasts and podcasts on my web quests and gather all my information to make amazing lessons. As a student, I can create organized and impressive lesson plans with web quests and I can make them interesting with pod/vidcasts. As a colleague, this means doesn't mean much now, since I'm a janitor. But I suppose if they ask me to do a tutorial on 'how to be the world's greatest janitor', like I am, I could do a very cool 'how to' vidcast. I can see it now... "How to be like Ally, the world's(UVU's) greatest janitor." We are learning how to create these web quests, vidcasts, and podcasts, so that we can use them as tools in our future classrooms. This new information can apply to me as I put it to use in teaching new concepts in regards to my presentations given in my other classes and come up with innovative study songs and memory techniques I can record.

I can be more creative. I can have a method to the madness going on in my wildly over-creative mind. I sadly don't have any colleagues at my current working position, just bosses, but my bosses could definitely be more effective teachers to their students if they would use things like this. They could create a site with podcasts and vidcasts demonstrating art techniquest in print making and drawing. That would allow their students to work from home when their stuff is much too large and unorganized to bring into class.

Now What?

My future students will be provided with a much more prepared teacher- prepared to deliver lessons in a creative, innovative, colorful, and organized way. This current information will allow my schema to reach out to different pathways to find ways to teach and formulate lesson plans for my students. I can give my students assignments in class with all the technology they come with (like ipods, phones, internet accessible tools, and cameras). They could formulate a song having to do with all the continents and their climates and record it and publish it on the class site all in one hour. That would be awesome. They can work in groups to collaborate all their tools, and they could use songs from each other's ipods to come up with a good rhythm for their song. If they didn't finish in class, they could google doc it at home, skype, or ichat to correlate. These type of activities that are all inclusive and allow students to use the tools they thrive on and love will allow me to be considered a cool teacher in their eyes, and if I can effectively teach the curriculum along with that, then I will be cool.

This information can help me become a better colleague because if I figure out how to do something really well, that other teachers are struggling with, I can make a how to vidcast. If other teachers have great ideas that need a little more organization to improve upon them, then these tools will be perfect organizers. The department can put together a DVD where all the teachers film the how to of their greatest lessons. The DVD can be used by all teachers to use great classroom study techniques, review games, assessment activities, etc. Technology can help teachers collaborate with each other in so many more ways than just lesson plans. This kind of technology can pass on individual philosophies, passions, and psychology theories to come up with the best balance of everyone's input on effective teaching.

Video Reflection: Schoolhouse Rock and why let our students blog

Schoolhouse Rock:

This was a very energetic vidcast that I enjoyed watching with my class team. We brainstormed ideas for our pod and vidcasts and thought of ways we could recreate something like this for other class projects and our future classrooms. The chorus: "Every person you can know, every place you can go, and anything you can show" was very catchy and even could work more effectively than that average 'person, place, or thing' memorization tool that is most often used in defining nouns. I also learned that music is an extremely effective tool to use in vidcasts.

Why Let Our Students Blog:

In this music slide video presentation, I learned a few reasons why blogging can be a useful learning tool for students. They can feel the same way I do when they get a comment on their post... basically like the coolest person alive. I have gotten several prompts and advice to become a writer as people have commented compliments on my blog. That has been an effective motivating tool in my writing career to have an encouraging audience. My nephew, who is in the 3rd grade was given a blog of his very own for Christmas from my sister. He constantly hears all of his aunts and his grandma talking about how great blogs are, so he caught on to their 'coolness.' He was very excited to receive his very own football decorated blog with a picture of him scoring a touchdown front and center. From him having a blog, I made the connection to this video that he felt empowered, motivated, and he was was able to interact with our family of bloggers. There are many reasons to incorporate kids with the blogging world, and I found it interesting that the person who created the video is from New Zealand. Talk about connecting with the world! Children can learn things from bloggers in the third grade all the way in New Zealand. That's pretty sweet.

Twitter Video Reflection

One thing that really stood out to me with the University of Minnesota's technique of using media in the classroom was their supply of computers. In the clip, it showed a few different shots of all the students in the class having computers to work with and a filing system for all of them. I don't think I will have these kind of resources in my future classroom, so it will be hard to use it as much as the seemed to be. I do know we will have computer labs, with assigned days to work on the computers, but the assignments need to fit into that hour- 2 hour time span.

As for outside the classroom collaboration for the students and teacher, I think it would be important to spend one of those computer lab days showing students how to work twitter and get them signed on to a class twitter page or whatever class on-line collaboration networks the class prefers to use.

Being an practitioner of on-line knowledge will be an important skill to have obtained when it comes to interviewing for jobs, choosing colleges, picking a major, and having applicable life skills that involve so much media.

Web Quest 2

What?

I am learning how to make a Web Quest. Right now, we are adding to our basic Web Quests and using skills like hyperlink and other tools to make the navigation process more effective.

So What?

As a teacher, this information will help me prepare organized lesson plans. As a student, this will help me reach my goals of becoming a more prepared teacher, by going into the field with loads of ideas and ways to organize those lesson plan ideas so that they are useful. As a colleague, having web quests will help my fellow-employees to borrow my lessons and hopefully add to them and share back with me how to make them better. We are doing this to become better teachers, with more media resources to organize and effectively teach large lesson units with specific instruction and information. In my other classes, this will help me to be aware of the kinds of organizational methods there are to plan a lesson. In my life, this can be helpful to me because I am becoming more familiar with basic technology skills. I use technology daily, and I like to make creative projects/gifts, so I am becoming more technology savvy, which is great.

To me, this technology means that there are endless options to create valuable, teachable, and creative lessons. That makes me happy. I want to be a super awesome teacher. Whatever skills and specific methods I can learn to do that-- bring 'em on. Hopefully, my colleagues, whoever they may be in the future, have some great ideas and different media approaches. We can combine our lesson plans/ideas/tactics and become a superpower of teachers. I can see it now... No fear, Super Schlauder is here. Here come Super Schlauder(mac laptop symbol for her super hero symbol) and her pack super hero teachers!! Yes. This is going to be good.

Now What?

Technology has a negative connotation for a lot of more experienced teachers. It definitely has its cons, and I've seen teachers get so mad with overhead projectors, that they have hit it with their hand and shattered the glass. I have seen other teachers use technology so effectively that when it stopped working, they had no problem teaching it another way. They preferred a technological way, but they were so familiar with the way to teach that subject that they gracefully kept flying on through. So, we are learning how to make web quests, but if all goes wrong and suddenly the internet site for my web quest gets deleted, I will be better prepared by having organized it so effectively that I'll be able to pick up with it no problem. That situation represents an example where my schema would be changed for the better. I will be a more prepared teacher by having delved so deep into the organizational process by developing an all-encompassing lesson plan.

I can give my students an assignment about finding the latitude and longitude of places in the world they want to travel to by using google earth. I can preface this assignment with a web quest that allows the students to find out more about different countries in the world. Once they are familiar with the different options, they can have that 'hook' of interest that will allow them to give attention to other subjects like latitude and longitude. They can create a google doc with members in their group to do a collaborative research paper that includes their country(topic), its latitude and longitude, a picture of a city/area/neighborhood they might consider living in from google earth.

This will help me become a better teacher because I can use authentic tools that are used in real world daily jobs, careers, and social skills. It will help my students be more prepared for working effectively in their future positions. It will help my colleagues develop these same skills the students are learning.

I just planned a direct teaching lesson with media influence that was well organized and prepared. I feel way excited to give it tomorrow because I am confident and prepared. It is so nice not to have to rely on your brain, but you can rely on valid internet resources. It is easier to trust a latitude and longitude mapping system on-line rather than on a worksheet map, and it is more fun. It'll be a great presentation tomorrow. I'm sure of it.

Video Reflection: Engaged Learning

This video made some striking compare and contrast visuals. This video compared old with new, India and China with the U.S, Shakespeare with Eminem, the ipod with the jukebox, collaboration in person with over the internet(google), and in class text books versus all kinds of computer resources.

Their main comparison was with the classroom in the past and the classroom today. What are we preparing our student for? Are we preparing them to work in one career? A statistic presented on the video stated that one person in this generation may have anywhere from 10-12 careers in their lifetime. We are not preparing students for one career out of a plethora of careers that all include the same competencies. We are preparing them for a world with all different levels and kinds of knowledge and competencies, and in order to cope with the vast progression in our ever increasing world, student must learn to have a self concept that allows for continual improvement.

So, as teachers, we must be improving daily, and we must be helping our students improve daily to interact with the world they must be prepared to live in, work in, and socialize in.

Holiday

What?

I am learning how to make a web quest using power point. I am performing a group assignment with my partner, Rachel, to come up with a useful complete lesson plan using the layout of a standard web quest.

So What?

As a teacher, this means that I am preparing to navigate my lesson plans in a different format. As a student, this means that I must learn to organize my lesson plans and call upon good examples that I make now for the future. My job is to make the good lesson plans now to look to later for guidance. As a colleague, this doesn't mean much to me today because my job is as a janitor, and I work alone, but in the future I will need to collaborate, and I could do that with web quests. We are doing this to be better future teachers, employees, and colleagues.

This can apply to me today in my other classes by organizing other presentations using this format. This can apply to my life in general because I can use these tools outside of school like at church, family activities, birthday presents, etc. It is a way to organize information, pictures, memories-- anything that is desired to be organized. This technology means that my schema is growing and creating more pathways to complete personal goals to continually improve. This will improve the life of my colleagues in the future in the same way that it will open up a new door to create lesson plans and other informational masses, but it will be different because there is room to be creative and unique within an organized layout.

Now What?

To my future students, technology is--their world. It means everything because it is everywhere and it is the key to accessing any past, current, or unique idea or information. My schema is changed by this information because my need to be have a technology supported classroom is becoming ever more obviously necessary. This changes the type of teacher I become in the future because I will be able to use Web Quest to organize lesson plans in a new innovative form that may appeal to students over other organizers. I can assign my students projects and assignments where the information can be accessed at home on how to complete the processes and remember the information to do so. They can be paired or in groups and can collaborate via previous tools taught to them like google documents.

This new information will help me be a better teacher because good teachers provide students with options and options they can understand and access. This information will help me be a better colleague because I will be less stressed about making copies and I will have time to make the kind of preparations necessary to be a confident and successful teacher. This information will help collaboration in the department because teachers can just type up their links the their web quest and it can be a resource for the entire district rather than even just the school. All these great lesson plans will just be floating around on the internet for anyone to access, and the school department can make a list of all these websites to help teachers give great lessons.

This information, I believe, will help teachers, like me, to be more confident through being better prepared. There will be less stress in the classroom, and there will be more synergy by creating more organized and efficient lesson plans.

Video Reflection: Surface Computing

Video Reflection

Recently having watched the movie, Surrogates, with Bruce Willis(no he was not on my couch watching it with me, he was starring in the film), my immediate response to this film was fear. I was scared that our world would turn into some psycho technological surrogate surreal world with computer tables and coffee tables-ah! I took a step back and thought about something we talked about in class--how teachers are afraid to use new ideas and technology out of fear of trying new things when education could be done the simplest and easiest way. I then thought about how I don't want to keep my students from knowing everything they can; I want to be the teacher that presents students with information and allows students to decide for themselves what they want to be interested in.

This footage of this futuristic technology surprised me when they said that it could be in stores as soon as 2007. I haven't seen any but it makes me wonder what kind of technology is out there that has been in the works for a long time. I'm thinking some pretty big things are coming up in our world of technology. I just hope that surrogates aren't!

I thought it was pretty cool how they could just set the camera on the table, and the pictures would just automatically download. It blew my mind when they set the cell phone on the table/computer and they could just transfer info on the phone. There are some brilliant minds out there. At one point, all those inventors of "Surface Computing" had a 4th grade teacher. I want to be the 4th grade teacher that facilitates an environment for minds like these to develop.

What?

I am currently learning about Web Quests. Although we are not using a web quest designer, we are learning how to perform/build the basic functions of a Web Quest through PowerPoint. These functions present the information for a task in a very organized and accessible manner.

So What?

As a teacher, this means that I can plan my lessons in a more structured way that will help me feel more prepared going into a unit. My students will be benefited by the organization and clarity of the assignment and its precise instructions. The parents will be able to have access to understanding all the elements of the subject assignment. We are doing this for those very reason... to help the students and parents be totally aware of what is expected. This applies to me, right now, because I can use this for future lessons that I have to give in my field work this semester and to come.

I can start building a portfolio of great lesson ideas. More than just having these great lessons written as ideas, I can have great instruction and organization within the lesson. I can rely on these in-depth tasks and processes to fully reach the core standards and objectives. As I do my backwards design, I can most certainly use this layout to organize each lesson well.

Now What?

My future students will understand the rubric, instruction, and expectations, so they will be able to fulfill those while venturing out into more creative ideas and abstractions within the boundaries set by the teacher. This changes my schema by allowing one more option of organizing lesson plans to enter into my pool of organizational techniques that are swimming around like fish. The nice thing about them is that they are easy to catch and use over and over, improving with each time it's used. This information will change the kind of teacher I am by allowing me to be a fisherman in a boat that is surrounded by that many kinds of fish rather than a pool with sparse living of any kind--struggling for ideas. This will help me become a better colleague because I will want to share my ideas and stay in touch with the other teachers. I will be able to offer my ideas, being proud of my work, while looking at their ideas--again, expanding the amount of ideas to fish for. This kind of collaboration will promote positive 'sharing' within the department.

I dream a lot. I have at least one dream I remember every night. I had a weird one the other day that I woke up to work out in the morning before I had to be at school. I was the teacher of a 3rd grade class. After I got done with my work out, I went to school. It was a surprise teacher evaluation. The principle was in my class before my class was and he asked me to change my lesson plan from an overhead projection lecture to a different teaching technique. I stood there in terror. I could not think of one other idea than just talking to the class about the subject and using the overhead projector. He wrote Brainless on the evaluation and left, shouting through his ears(it was a weird dream) about how no teachers in the school had any good ideas and he was going to go get some good ideas and make us eat them for dinner.

The correlation between this dream and my feelings about learning new methods of teaching do relate-- believe it or not. In deciding to be a teacher, I felt like my method of teaching for any lesson was pretty much the same. Use some kind of visual, write some kind of paper, and share some kind of personal experience. I always resort back to these familiarities, and coming into the program, I figured that that was what a good teacher was. Don't worry. I have learned that the more resources the better, the more teaching methods the better, the more ways to present the better, the less speaking and the more showing... the better. This Web Quest is just one more addend onto my teaching philosophy- that using more/knowing more/teaching more is better.

My Beliefs

I would like to incorporate more technology in my teaching techniques for many reasons. Number one, the students will be tech-savvy, and it will be a common interest we will share, as teacher and student, if I can be up to date on the latest trends and fads of their generation and mine. If we, as a class, can collaborate and use as many common interest tools as we can to be organized and communicate, then the class will be that much more synergetic. The classes I am most successful in are the ones where I am capable of independently knowing what is going on in the class at all times with assignments, due dates, and learning topics. If I can give myself a little heads up before class by looking over the content for that day's lecture, then I feel comfortable, prepared, and confident to do my work. Most importantly, I succeed in the classes that I can navigate the syllabus well and understand the curriculum goals fully.

I believe the students will learn to trust their teacher as they are able to understand the expectations and goals of the class. The class must be fair, and the teacher must be willing to help and answer questions. This type of synergetic relationship and understanding is only developed with a clear and purpose-filled curriculum with clear and reasonable assignments that benefit the student and help the teacher assess and evaluate the next direction to head towards. Trust can be developed through proper communication, and communication can be facilitated by multiple internet, phone, texting, and in-person contact. There needs to be explicit and unchanging 'lab hours' where the students can come in for help. There needs to be a consistency and fairness in the response given by the teacher to emails and texts. There also needs to be an overall professionalism set in place so there is no misunderstanding or error in helping along this process of communication through technology.

Lessons Learned

Some of my favorite insights from the videos, readings, and websites were the following:

WWW- "To counteract with the new WWW's potentially harmful impact on youth, educators must use technology to create learning experiences that are real, rich, and relevant."

This is the age of 'instant media gratification' where it is vital to be feeding the dendrites in the brain the right kind of knowledge that will serve the students the most successfully. They are at an age ripe and ready for knowledge, so I learned that we need to be feeding them with the most useful resources and skills that will continue to develop and progress throughout their student career.

High Tech Learning- There is a "big difference between providing access to resources and facilitating the learning process." Going along with the last lesson learned in WWW, this lesson also incorporates the importance of giving students valid and useful information- information that can give students a plethora of accessible opportunities to use when searching for any other educative information.

Shorthand- This article was very entertaining, but more than that, it gave me a few ideas for lesson plans teaching acronyms and poetry in English. Certainly it would be useful for the class to come up with other acronyms to use in texting to be funny or just to keep up with the growing rate of language changes in instant messaging, informal emailing, and texting. We, as teachers can incorporate social networking systems into our basic teaching tools and lessons to relate to the students, keep them interested, and teach them the madness/history behind LOL.

Did You Know- Teacher Tube is an awesome resource I had no idea existed before this assignment. I watched an amazing primary source on DDAY; in memory of the fallen. Primary sources are vital in teaching and this site was a great resource to make learning history interesting and real.

There are many resources out there that can help me become a better and a more up-to-date teacher. These are a few ideas, websites, and methods I can incorporate to make me a better teacher.

Strengths & Weaknesses

Weaknesses from NET Standards:

II. Planning and designing learning environments and experiences includes a few elements that I find difficult to apply into my teaching/training at times. For instance, C: Identify and locate technology resources and evaluate them for accuracy and suitability, is a hard element of technology support for me to implement. It is a weakness of mine that I don’t evaluate the accuracy of websites before trusting their information. My students deserve the truth, and in order to give them the truth, I need to better examine what methods I can use to evaluate the validity of a website’s information.

III. Teaching, learning, and the curriculum includes an overall skill that I haven’t fully developed. Sometimes I solely use technology to create an aesthetically pleasing presentation (cutesy elementary teacher coming out), and I use technology to entertain rather than to teach.

Strengths from NET Standards:

V. Productivity and Professional Practice

D. Use technology to communicate and collaborate with peers, parents, and the larger community in order to nurture student learning.

I have strength in this particular area because I have been educated in email, instant messaging, and other technological communication methods since I was a middle school student. I am familiar with Skype because I have used it as my only source of communication for 6 months while I was traveling abroad. I also used Skype in teaching Taiwan preschoolers about technology and cross-world cultures (America). I know that this will be a continued strength when I am a teacher because I am passionate about the effectiveness of organized communication through the internet. It will be a great tool to be able to post the weekly newsletter, spontaneous announcements, the syllabus, and the calendar all on one website. This will be much easier for me, my students, and especially my parents. Since making the parents happy is my biggest fear, it will be a continual concern of mine to keep them happy through constant and organized communication.

Strengths of the UNI survey:

The only strength I tested above the Apprentice level was on Standard 15; Use audio/visual technology to produce artistic informational audio/visual projects.

I was rated between an apprentice and a practitioner because I have created many(50) pieces of work that have included editing mainly via imovie. I have made wedding videos, study abroad videos, contest entry videos, commercial advertisement videos, interviews/news videos, and many other types of editing and creating with film. I have taught other peers how to use these editing tools to make effective projects, advertisements, or presentation aids. I haven’t taught a class of my students how to use these tools because I am not a teacher yet, but I have had practice teaching these skills to my peers, so I believe I test slightly above the apprentice level.

Weaknesses of the UNI survey:

I do not use databases or spreadsheets, and though I have taken courses on how to do so, I do not implement them into my current life and may not have the abilities to do so when I am a teacher.

Goals:

In order to improve upon my weaknesses, I could take these two workshops.

1. http://sites.google.com/site/colettecassinelli/spreadsheet
2. http://eduscapes.com/tap/topic32.htm

The first workshop will help me to improve my understanding of how to use spreadsheets and data, and they will help me to understand why they are important tools for me as a teacher.

The second workshop is a great resource to learning how to find out the accuracy of websites, and it is built especially for teachers.

Video Reflection: Power Point

In this video, my negative feelings towards poor power point presentations were well represented. I struggle when a teacher throws on the power point and stands or sometimes sits with no enthusiasm and a long-winded approach to talking us through each bullet pointed concept. Some 'to avoids' that the speaker indicated in his presentation were to avoid the following: too many bullet points, bad color schemes, confusing data charts with excess information, and too much animation cancels out effectiveness. Through his presentation, I also came up with some things to remember when presenting an effective power point. The enthusiasm displayed by this speaker was very entertaining and 'effective.' Without mentioning the importance of passion and enthusiasm, the presenter displayed the kind of emotion necessary when using a power point and really in doing any kind of teaching. A hands-on activity won't require such intense enthusiasm and ranging voice tones as much as a lecture type lesson will. So, if I'm not in the mood one day to be enthusiastic and energetic, I can be assured in knowing that a hands-on activity will allow the students to be interactive, and it will keep their attention and provide the students with the opportunity to learn and remember the material being taught. I'm not an avid supporter of power point presentations because the majority that I've been involved in have created a sour feeling about the topic being learned. I have, although, seen one or two power points work out and benefit the learners immensely. The downfall of power points is that the teacher really does have to prepare so much and spend a lot of time in creating power points- even the ones that end up being 'boring' to the class. So, my theory is: why not spend that same amount of time, hard work, and preparation on something that is guaranteed to work. If a power point can work for that particular subject better than any other technique, then it's important to know how to make it aesthetically pleasing and effective.

Reflection Google Part 2

What?

I am currently learning about how to build a google site. I learned how to create a professional, free, and user friendly website for future students and their parents. We are currently assigned to completing a website for our future classroom using lots of tools on the website to create lots of resources for future site accessors.

So What?

Learning how to create this website means to me as a teacher that I am going to be using technology to create more resources for the students in my class. It also means that the parents will be aware of what is going on, ways they can access my advice and help, they will be able to keep up with an organized schedule they can follow, and therefore, they will be happy. The parents will be able to be as involved in their child's education as they would like to with all the tools to their child's success listed in an accessible website. As a student, learning how to create a website helps me reach my goals of becoming a better and more educated teacher. As a colleague, it will allow me to collaborate with other teachers in one more way. They can be aware of how my class is in order and feel comfortable with what's going on in my classroom.

We are learning how to make a website with google sites to be educated in as many technological areas as possible. This adds to the density of our knowledge, as teachers, of tools that can be used to help parents and students be active members of the classroom. This can apply to me today because my classes are gearing me towards becoming a better teacher, and learning about these technological tools will add to my nest of knowledge and resources to make a great classroom. All my other classes are attempting to add to this collection of knowledge in different ways, and this google site can help me be more aware of resources to access for organizing all my classes. This all means that I can be a more organized student, colleague, and a smarter teacher with lots of different sources of knowledge to tap into.

Now What?

This technology will allow my future students to be interactive members of the class in and outside of the room. This information changes my current schema by introducing my mind to multiple pathways to reach successful conclusions. It creates ways to perform my tasks as a student and teacher in more diverse methods. This particular new schema will change the type of teacher I become in the future by allowing me to explore more options to involve parents and students. It will help the class stay organized and aware of any changes. It will help me have the ability to make changes, be flexible, and yet still maintain professionalism and fairness. I can give my students assignments that can all have the option of meeting in groups in person or collaborating online using google documents. This would only work for the oldest grades in elementary, but either way, the assignments will be more likely to be completed on time and correctly because the parents will be involved and aware. I can let my students know that the assignments will always be listed on the website, and I can help them through whatever assignments they have via google email, blog post comments, google documents, etc.

This will help me be a better teacher because I am teaching them technology to allow them to function in a technology based world while offering them other learning opportunities within the basic school subjects. This information will help me be a better colleague because I can organize events with them, if they have Gmail, and I can organize class activities that include them. We could even share calendars with each other to collaborate our lesson plans. There are many doors opened with the awareness of Gmail and all of the tools that can be used to benefit careers and personal life via online organization. I am excited to get the parents thrilled about their child's education and feel comfortable with me as their teacher. I don't want anything in the classroom to be a secret, and I hope that by having lots of different ways for students, parents, and colleagues to contact me, and by having an organized and informative website, the class will have no child left behind.

Video Reflection: Do Schools Kill Creativity

In this presentation, the man speaking had several interesting views that I appreciated. In speaking to teachers he said, "all kids have tremendous talents and we squander them." He also said, "Creativity now is as important as literacy and we should treat it with the same status." So, understanding that creativity is being squandered or at best pushed to the bottom of the learning hierarchy, and also understanding its great importance, can allow teachers to re-evaluate their method and philosophy behind teaching. When children are young, the worst thing isn't 'being wrong' like it becomes by adulthood. This is an example of creativity being squandered. It was also said, "We are educating people out of their creativity." The school system is set up in a way that the universities design the system in their image." The highest form of academic achievement seems to be the 'university professors.' I agree that this needs to change or else there will be an academic inflation where the only jobs available require masters degrees. "We have to rethink the fundamental principles on which we're educating our children." This quote sums up the entire article by expressing the need to reconsider our teaching techniques as a whole and as individual teachers. Why is art at the bottom, why is creativity at the bottom, and why are there less and less imaginative thinkers? Certainly we must "use our gift of imagination wisely." I found this video to be a very positive motivating speech that provided psychological facts and data supporting art. If art and creativity will help my students be successful and reach their individual potentials, then I need to consider it as a vitality to my curriculum and daily lesson planning.

Week 2 Reflection

What?

I am learning how to use Google Calendar, Google Sites, and Google Documents. This week, the assignments include Blogging, watching a video clip of President Obama, creating a welcome letter for our future classroom, and making a rules presentation, and using Google documents to collaborate with our partners online.

So What?

This technology will help the students have better resources to access, understand, and fulfill the curriculum requirements. It will also help the parents be as involved as they would like and to be aware of everything that is going on in the classroom. I am learning how to better incorporate online tools into my daily life and into my future classroom for better quality instruction and organization.

I can use this information to organize my class homework assignment schedules and due dates so I stay on top of my studies and do what I came to school to do… learn how to be the best teacher. These Google skills can help with everyone I collaborate with, including my colleagues.

Now What?

This technology means that my future students will have all kinds of tools to receive the kind of help and instruction that fits their learning styles best. This information changes my current schema because now my brain processes the possibility to tap on these resources to fulfill any challenge or task at hand. This information is slowly adding and connecting to other brain pathways making a web of information accessible by even more ways. These new online skills will impact my future teaching styles and allow me to attract my students to learning with their favorite thing… media.

Technology opens up a whole range of new lessons and ideas that can reach across the globe. One lesson idea would be to Skype a teacher somewhere else in the world, like Spain, and to have a question answer session back and forth with the class. This type of non-restricted lesson planning will help the class to be open to as many things as they are willing or want to learn about. Technology can help me outsource for the students in my class to receive other instruction than from just me all year.

As for my colleagues and the district I work in, it will help everyone collaborate on a highly organized level… if everyone has access to the kinds of technology and skills in the same programs. It would be helpful to coordinate meetings, assemblies, fieldtrips, and schedules apart from the physical individual classroom.

I am very excited and passionate about becoming a teacher. I’m constantly thinking of awesome lesson plans and ways I can get my kids to be excited about school and love their teacher. I’m constantly trying to improve myself so that I can use ‘model teaching’ for morals, values, and self-discipline. I like reading textbooks when they tell me how to be a better teacher, and that is really a rarity for me to even use the word like and textbooks in the same sentence, so that’s a good sign. I feel smarter everyday. I think its because I want all the assignments I’m doing to help me become Miss Schlauder, so they are doing just that.

Video Reflection: Obama speaks to children

Something I wrote down from the President’s speech that I liked was this: “ Every single one of you has something that you’re good at. Every single one of you has something to offer…And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover what that is.” I liked how he talked about the students’ worth in such a positive light. His speech involved examples/stories of many people who had hard times and overcame them by getting an education and never giving up.

I did think the speech had some unprofessional content because he shared his personal life experiences and even said, “When I was your age, I was a little bit of a goof-off. My main goal was to get on the varsity basketball team and have fun." I didn’t like that he said this. When I was young and people talked about overcoming mistakes, all I thought about was that I could make those mistakes too and turn out fine like them.

There were some articles written about this speech that discussed that issue of some parents and some teachers not allowing the speech to be shown in the classroom because of a possible political agenda. If I was a teacher at the time this speech was going to be presented, I would’ve liked for my students to see it. After watching it, I don’t think it had any political ‘polling,’ so maybe I would have recorded it and showed it to them later if the parents were ok with it. Giving the President of our country the benefit of the doubt, I think he had pure and good intentions of getting the students of America a motivational boost, and I support that fully. I never remember an opportunity to have the President of the United States speak to me, as a student, and I think it would only improve the value and importance of each student's feelings for education.

Video Response

This video of Dalton Sherman wasn't really my 'style' of motivation or getting excited to be an educator, but I was impressed by his talents in speaking and skills in presentation. The praise he received from the crowd will help give him confidence throughout his life, which will have a positive effect on his learning foundation. Positive memories in education especially including sufficient praise from their teacher will create a positive pathway of learning in their own system of gaining knowledge. The support Dalton received was more of a motivation to me as a future teacher than his actual speech. I appreciated the support shown to him by the tremendous applause and praise from the audience. Teachers should certainly do that for students that are extremely talented, but just as important as that, teachers need to praise individuals' personal successes no matter how small they may be. Even if it is just finally remembering to put their name at the top of their paper- stickers, smiley faces, and praise. If it is as simple as raising their hand to speak or capitalizing the correct words in a sentence- praise, stickers, smiles. Children shouldn't ever be made to feel that they have to do something truly extraordinary and exceptional to be recognized by the teacher. Praise is so important in guiding children's confidence in their ability to learn. Giving students effective praise can encourage them to learn in the most positive way; this was the lesson I learned from this very talented student.

Week 1 Post - Visualize

Journal Entry from a future student:

Dear Journal,

This morning I woke up without my Mom having to 'pull out the jaws of life'(as she says) to get me out of bed. I rushed downstairs to eat some cracklin oat bran cereal. My brother says it looks like bird food, but it's my teacher's favorite, so I really like it.
Today at school, it's my turn to do my silent reading in the reading tub. Miss Schlauder has a red bathtub in her room that's filled with all kinds of pillows. When someone gets a certain amount of points for reading, they get to sit in the read tub during class reading time AND teacher read. It's going to be such a good day.
My birthday will be the next best day because whenever it's a student's birthday, Miss Schlauder does something really funny. During Social Studies, she dresses up like someone from the history we are studying and she sings 'Happy Birthday' in their language or style or sometimes she even does a dance with the song. Last year, I heard she dressed up like a mummy because they were studying Egyptians and she sang a spooky happy birthday song.
Oh oh oh, and guess what else our class does! Once we all get 10 'caught being goods' for helping each other or being nice to someone else, we get a class goldfish. My older brother says they got three goldfish last year and one had a red spot on its belly so they called it a Japanese name because the Japan flag has a red dot in the middle.
I like my desk. Because I don't have junk falling out all over the place. I get my own cubby where I can put the extra things I don't need all the time like my art supplies and reading books. It has my name on it. I really like my name.
In the 2nd grade, I tripped over someones backpack and my hands stung all day. I was really embarrassed, but in this class, we keep our backpacks on hangy racks around the room so it's not so messy on the floor and dangerous.
I like the color blue. I think Miss Schlauder likes it too. Maybe I'll ask her today what her favorite color is. She says she's like an open book because when you ask her a question, she tells you everything, but I don't think she really looks like a book at all.
I used to hate spelling tests because my pencil always broke because when I get nervous I write really hard. But now I kind of like spelling. There are two boxes on the counter by the cubbies that say "sharpened" and "not sharpened". When ever we get a broken pencil, we put it in the not sharpened box and take a sharpened one. It's really handy.
I'm starting to like English too. Miss Schlauder brought in a picture today of when she was a little girl. She used to carry around a pink blanket that her Mom made for her. Well, today she also brought the actual pink blanket that was in the picture. We brainstormed together about questions we had about the blanket and we wrote it all down on the board. Then, we got to think of our own favorite childhood 'artifacts.' And we wrote some questions other people had about them. The writing part was easy because all we had to do was answer all the questions other people didn't know about our favorite thing from when we were little. I brought my stuffed animal gator. It has a tee shirt on it that says 'Someone in Florida loves me.' Hmm. I don't know who that person is.
Well, I better put away my writing journal. It's 10:30 and the 'transition song' just came on, so that means in 5 minutes, it is time for Math.
Bye!
F.S

I decided to try to get the feel for what I would like my future classroom to be like through the eyes of my future student. I did this for multiple reasons. First, I would really like my students to enjoy and appreciate my class and respect me as their teacher. In every personality/job test I have ever taken, they all say that I need praise and continual support, and if I receive both, than I will flourish. If I don't, than my talents won't be useful. It is important that I am passionate and enthusiastic about teaching. If my students can feel how much I love to learn, that I like them, and that I want them to learn, then I think my talents will be very useful to the classroom.
The second reason I used the journal entry approach to explaining my vision of my future classroom was to put come up with a few ideas and try to think how a student might respond to them. I will probably use a survey at the beginning of each school year to evaluate the kind of rewards, games, and types of things the class is most interested in. I did this as a teacher assistant and found that in the 'other ideas' column, there was listed goldfish, class parties, and a few other unique ideas, so I will try to continually come up with new motivational and fun ideas for the students.
Other things I tried to focus on in this journal entry were elements of safety in the class and an element of comfort. The students can feel more safe when the room is organized and there is walking space(clear paths). Also, by having a specific place to put their belongings, they will have less anxiety about losing things as kids often do. The element of comfort was the bathtub full of pillows for reading. This also included the idea of only having logical consequences. If you do your reading well, you get to do your reading in a comfortable place. That matches. Some teachers offer extra recess for completing their math assignments on time, but this consequence is neither logical or natural and will not be an intrinsic reward. Physically, by having an element of softness in the classroom, it emotionally adds positive warmth that the desks can't offer.
I want to get my students excited to learn and excited to come to school. I want their parents to be happy with their children's happiness. I want my collegues to feel welcome in my classroom and to feel able to take ideas from my class and share their class successes with me so that we can all incorporate a much more positive environment that will have less behavioral problems.
I don't mind what grade I teach, but I love english, writing, and art, so an older class could get into writing a little more deep. I will embrace honesty and optimism and set class goals that maintain a higher class moral.
I want the students to feel safe, respected, happy, liked, and smart. These are the class goals I will strive to facilitate as their teacher.