Near the End, but just Beginning

So my official last class for block one is over. It is sad to see the month end so soon, I thoroughly enjoyed both of my classes. I'm in the computer lab right now using blogs with another class (that I don't teach). I just want to give out a congratulatory thumbs up for any teacher that blogs while having 3 classes to worry about. It is a lot of work

I now have a full realization on how much work a successful teacher does day in and day out.Of course there are things I would like to comment on about what we're learning in Brock and the reality of schools. Let's just say some things are insufficient in preparing us for the high school environment.

Some of my students wrote out a quick note saying thank you, it was such a sweet gesture.You know you've made an impression when the students do this kind of thing. I will post it once I get home. Sometimes, the hard work pays off.

There is a lot more to say, but until I actually sit down and review everything i've done this block (during the weekend). I hope everyone else has had a great experience as I did.

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.

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

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?"

My #edchat Experience. Overall Grade C+

Okay, so I just participated (or tried to) in my first twitter session with #edchat. The topic was "Is a blend of E-learning and face to face learning a viable option for reform?". For the whole transcript, look here.

To be totally honest, as a person that is looking in from the outside (or new), I would rate this experience as negative. As an analogy to this, I would liken myself to a confused student that has no sense of direction (self-directed learning anyone?).

Here's a list why:
- Very difficult to keep up with all of the tweets
- No consistency on topics talked about. It was just a smorgasbord of similar thoughts put into one place
- No focus. It was just multiple conversations between different people
- None of my tweets were responded too (probably got lost from all of the other tweets)
- Twitter is not a good platform to have conversations with multiple people
- Too many people

If your only reasons for following #edchat are to see what people are saying/reading/watching/doing, then it is an excellent source for information.With your hand up, how many people actually get a response with the #edchat hashtag?

But I did end up following @ShellTerrell @web20classroom

Here are some links (I couldn't catch them all since it was way too fast and I'm not going to go through the archive to find them all):
Schools Blend Virtual and Face-to-Face Teaching - http://bit.ly/aFG1KY
15 Back to School Apps for Teachers - http://bit.ly/cGL7v0
Funny Comic about eLearning - http://yfrog.com/mzu7xkj
School in a Pocket? - http://www.drdouggreen.com/2010/04/a-school-in-your-pocket-handhelds-go-to-school/

If my expectations are incorrect and there are certain ones I should be aware of, please let me know. I don't want to be misinterpreting what #edchat does.

Evaluating Groupwork

During a topic about group work in geography class, my instructor posed a question to us "How do you evaluate group work?". He pointed out that not a single teacher, in any department, will mark group work the same especially knowing that not all students learn the same way.

Is it fair to mark everyone the same on their final product, knowing some members may have contributed little? Or should you give each member a separate mark that takes into consideration their involvement (through observation or peer evaluation)?

The website here Assessing Student Learning with Groupwork addresses more of the pros/cons and it's uses in more detail.

In university I experienced both types of group evaluation. If you have a modified rubric/marking scheme which touches upon this please leave a message/comment.

wiki: an excellent source for sharing

As the title suggests, I was thinking about how a wiki is a great tool to share and modify information between classmates and the teacher. During university we had group work that used a wiki and it was great in that everyone could collect, modify and update information on an ongoing basis.

In terms of looking at wikis from a teacher's perspective, a wiki keeps timestamps and backups of when work is updated so you can easily tell how early or how much work a student has provided. It also keeps logs of who was the last to edit each page. The convenience of not forcing students to meet face-to-face and adding material when they are available is a huge bonus.

A wiki is not only suited for group work, but also for individual assignments. Instead of having students create a poster, why not have them create a wiki page on their topic? It puts all contributions into one easily accessible place.

There are other benefits to using wikis and the article here by Elgort, Smith and Toland further addresses what I've outlined.

I know there are probably a ton of teachers who incorporate wikis into their units. So if you have an example of a wiki that you did for a geography or science class could you direct me to your URL?

A wiki resource for educators: http://www.wikispaces.com/site/for/teachers

Thanks for reading my first post!