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Hey everyone,
As you can probably see, I have been using this blog for three semesters with Amy. If you are interested, all of the previous entries met Dr. Ackerman’s requirement for blog entries. I often attach pics and documents in order to flesh out the blog and make it more of an organic dialogue, but these don’t seem to be required this week.
Sorry not to get this up sooner, but I’ve been sick this week. Seems my daughter brought home a bug with her and I’ve been out of work since Thursday…today’s the first day back.
As I said on the Bb posting, I felt that the first class was successful, though the syllabus was a bit daunting at first. Read the rest of this entry »
I just wanted to congratulate everyone on their classes this week. Each presentation was quite unique, yet utilized the course information very well. Sorry to everyone that I had to disappear for a bit with my daughter, but those that I saw I very much enjoyed. Thank you to everyone for participating in my discussion on online teaching, I had a great time.
Initially I took this class without knowing what I was going to do with it in my career. I saw this class as, instead, a tool for the future. Things changed, as I have mentioned, as I have taken over teaching various workshops in the school for using PowerSchool and our SmartBoards. The principles of adult learning have helped me to make these workshops a bit more interesting…which will hopefully pay off by increasing the staff usage of the new software.
Good luck to those of you who will be graduating at the end of next semester. Hopefully I will see you all at the showcase next week. See everyone on Monday!
For this blog entry I wanted to congratulate the three presenters from last Monday night. Your lessons were all well prepared and interesting. I could see where adult learning fit into the assignment and am left feeling a bit uneasy in following up such great presentations.
As for viewing adult learning in the real world this week, I again have to look at my administration and the use of Power School in the schools. The district administration have begun implementing this program substantially, however I can see many teachers who have yet to become comfortable with the product or willing to abandon their paper gradebooks. Readiness seems to be lacking when looking at the learning that is taking place. The administration has also not presented a valid reason for why we must use the technology that the older generational teachers accept. The view that keeping grades on paper is good enough…or what if the computer looses everything I do is very prevalent. Looking forward to December, our current computer teacher and myself have offered to teach a workshop addressing these facts…looks like this class will be coming in handy!
After conferences throughout all of this past week, I am totally ready to relax and enjoy the Thanksgiving break! Here’s a great video I found online recently.
After last class, the spark of motivation has continued to ride with me. I have been thinking of its implications on my project for IDD. For Jung’s class, I am using my current videogame club to create an educational unit that uses console (xbox360, ps3, wii) games as a motivational element in order to have a learning outcome in a traditional subject. Simply put, I use the student’s current interest in videogames in order to create an interest in the lesson that we are learning.
In my club, the students were tested and found to have a lack of understanding in fact/opinion statements as well as a need to improve their writing skills. In order to create interest in the lessons, I had the students read videogame reviews from current magazines and break down the statements that were facts and opinions. I then have had the students play games and take notes on what they liked/disliked using fact and opinions of their own. Finally, last week I had the students write the reviews.
As such, I hoped that the fact that they were writing about their interest would motivate some students while others were motivated by the fact that if they did not complete the work, they would not be able to play games afterward. All in all, I’m having a blast doing this with my students.
Personally, I have been playing Fable 2 at home. This game just came out and it is quite obvious how motivation is used within it. The game allows players to choose between right/wrong or good/evil in playing and does not force the players to work in a linear path (provides adults with choice). The game also rewards your good deeds with increased strength within the game (extrinsic motivation?) while at the same time progressing through a story of saving the world…its always interesting to view things that I’m interested in through the lenses that we use in class.
-Pete
This week, well Thursday and Friday to be precise, I attended the NJ Teacher’s Convention in AC. As many of you probably know, this is basically a collection of vendors attempting to hock the latest in teaching supplies and tools as well as various workshops.
The first thing that I found striking was the lack of freebies that tend to accompany the vendor’s stalls. In previous years, these were overflowing from my bag, but this year it was a bit empty. I suppose this is a sign of the impending recession and the need to cut budgets. On the positive side, there were many stands promoting graduate studies and professional development in the various subject areas. It appears that even with the economic slowdown, those with our degree will continue to be employed as instruction can function to be cheaper than hard goods.
I feel, however, that the presenters should have basic instruction in adult teaching/learning methods. Both ot the workshops I attended made very little attempt to bring the class together through communication to previous experiences, attitudes, etc. As a result, these lessons were quite boring and dry…and a waste of my time. Looking back on the lessons that we’ve had in class, it is quite evident where these classes could be improved…especially in the area of giving the audience a voice. Many of these presenters, as teachers
As I talked about in class, we have recently purchased 13 SmartBoards for our school in order to improve technology usage. Last year we had 2 of these boards, which were mobile, but only myself and another teacher used them all year. In order to encourage more teachers to play around with the hardware we had a half day inservice where we were shown everything that the boards could do and ways to use them in the classroom…which did nothing…
This year I have been plesantly surprised in the interest in the boards with our staff. Regularly I have been using my duty and prep periods to show another teacher how to use the boards or ways to improve what they are currently doing. This can really only be explained though the teachers’ readiness to learn the technology. I suppose this readiness was helped by the fact that that there are more boards that are easy to set up in our classes.
So, following our lesson on Monday, I got to be the lead teacher for our workshop in the use of Powerschool in our schools. Powerschool is a great piece of online software that our district has adopted that allows for data collection by the administration as well as a complete grading package for the teachers. Finally, we are finished with writing out student report cards by hand and will instead be printing these forms off.
In thinking about our class, it was quite important to see how the teacher’s prior experience with technology reflected in their acceptance of the program as an important tool. Teachers who have not used many computer programs for teaching tended to be hesitant to embrace this software, which was the purpose of the inservice.
As a group of teachers, we showed the inexperienced staff the reasons the software was an improvement to paper grading and the numerous forms that we needed to fill out at the end of the marking periods. Next month report cards come out and hopefully we will have little problem in printing them…knock on wood…
This week I attended a workshop in Sewell, NJ as a member of the Rowan University Literacy Consortium.
These workshops were possibly the best that I have ever taken for Language Arts classes. We began the workshop by analyzing our own student’s work and comparing it to accepted standards for middle school students. By looking at this work, we created a district goal for literacy improvement for all students.
The instruction was then begun by a master teacher from New Hampshire that included substantial amounts of hands-on work. These included various writing topics as well as ways to use storyboarding with the students in order to improve student writing.
The final part of this workshop allowed for all of us to mix with teachers from across the state to discuss common instructional problems for all teachers and then a debrief with the staff from our district.
This week I had the joy of going to the NJ EIRC for a workshop on the Language Arts series that we have just adopted in our district. Presented by Prentice Hall, I was informed by the district administration that we would be discussing how to best use the software and materials that came with the text as well as be shown additional products that could be used to improve our lessons.
As for the text, I was on the planning committee that selected this book series. After looking at dozens of middle school texts, we found the Penguin Edition by Prentice Hall to provide all of the new tools that we have planned to use this year. Data analysis is of high importance, according to the state, and there are two benchmark assessments for each Unit as well as a direct alignment to the NJ Core Curriculum Content Standards.
Unfortunately, all that we covered in the workshop was the new products that would be released next year…products that are not compatible with our current textbook series. This was presented as a multimedia free lecture with little hands on materials….another waste shop. Hopefully next week’s Literacy Workshop will provide more useful information.
After class this week, I have begun to wonder if this is a valid theory, or simply “best teaching strategies” that are good for all ages.
Reading through our discussions on this theory, there are some close connections to Constructivist theory that we covered in Theory last semester. I’m going to attempt to look at each attribute and share my feelings.
