Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Blogging!

Yay!

One of my classes (not my main class), but one of the other 2. They are each creating blogs and are blogging about an environmental issue using Edublogs.org. Unfortunately, not a lot of the students show up to class so this is a sad point. Helping them design their template and coming up with a title is a wonderful feeling. They will be using their blogs throughout the semester and hopefully I'll be able to monitor their progress, even when my block is over. Another cool point to this is that my associate is asking me for assistance and tips on how to design and do things with blogs.

Period is over and I have to end this quick post.

Monday, October 18, 2010

GIZMOS: A lab alternative

I realize I haven't posted in a while, and I apologize for that (for anyone that cares, lol).

So during my 3rd observation day, one of my associate teachers made me aware of this online resource. What resource you might ask?

GIZMOS provided by http://www.explorelearning.com/

What I found to be really interesting about the GIZMOs are that they contain labs/activities that falls coincidentally into our specific curriculum expectations in Ontario. Now, they only cover Math & Science topics for grade 3-12, for you Math and Science teachers. The only thing I could see that would be a bad thing about this tool is that it does cost money to get an account, but my school has teacher accounts. So ask around, maybe you have access to it.

To learn more about GIZMOs please go here http://www.explorelearning.com/index.cfm?method=cCorp.dspLearnMore

Monday, October 4, 2010

Elevating the Education Reform Dialogue: An Elluminate Session

So I just recently sat in on an Elluminate session hosted by FutureofEducation.com and Edutopia which presented speakers to talk about the issues in the educational system (mainly USA) and possible ways to reform current thinking.

I know there are probably other blogs out there that will summarize what each speaker said but the issues that Will Richardson and Julie Evans spoke about were the ones that I felt applied the most to the educational system in Canada.

Will Richardson talked about trying to incorporate technology into your pedagogy. If you want to talk about learning differently, it is hard to ignore talking about how technology can play a role in teaching. One of his points was "how to help kids become self-directed in a world where there is so much out there?". I can help but think about what we are learning about being the "guide on the side" and assessment AS/FOR learning. How we need to always give them that feedback, the ongoing gathering of information, to make sure they're doing it correctly, but always letting them self-regulate themselves. One final point in this is that teachers need to be learners themselves in this process because if they're not learning, then what are they going to be teaching?

Julie Evans slides related the most to our system here, her top 5 forces at work:
1.Changing value proposition of education,
2. parents want a greater say,
3. "one size fits all" teachers don't fit,
4. severe deficit of local leadership capacity,
5. today's learners have different expectations for learning.
These forces could not fit better than what they are teaching us in Teachers' College and trying to get us to become as educators. Assessment and evaluation in the curriculum were just revised, the government is trying to incorporate more assessment AS learning rather than OF learning. Free Agent Learners, self-regulation, assessment as learning... a lot of tie in with our own teachings here at BrockU.

One thing I think is the most important noun to get out of all of the talks is "community" without it, from the teachers, students, even parents educational reform will be difficult to achieve. It is especially disheartening to see how badly the media, networks, and "billionaire bullies" have represented the public American educational system. As Sir Ken Robinson says "Don't diagnose the problem. What are the solutions (alternatives) to them?"