"Web 2.0 Educator"

  I picked Cool Cat Teacher Vicki Davis to blog about. Her specialty is teaching and she seems very devoted to it. She seems very well informed on various aspects of technology and she seems to know how to explain to her students how to use these technology devices and why! That is the biggest thing. She makes the students understand why she does what she does. She has such a unique perspective on life and teaching. She definitely seems to have a positive attitude toward technology in the classroom and sees it as being helpful and teaching the students about the real world. I would have to say that I partly agree with her on things that she discusses and yet there are aspects of her blogs I am not totally in agreement with. I do believe that it is important for students to know how to do more things than just prepare for a test, and I do believe that technology is a very helpful and useful resource in the classroom. However, her approach to being so open to change and her willingness toward technology is definitely not the way I feel. I do not feel that classrooms should be completely taken over by all of this technological advanced equipment such as the "Flat classroom boards." These board act as boards as well as desks. I feel like these types of devices are what cause our students to be too focused on technology and not what the lessons in school are. Mrs. Davis seems to have an optimistic view on technology and how helpful it is, but it does not seem to me as if students in today's world are learning as much as they did before and I really feel that it is because of all the distractions they have available to them (i.e. cell phones, computers, etc.) I am not saying technology is not important but sometimes I feel as if it is a reason for students to not have to know so much or retain so much information because they have access to information at their fingertips.

      Her approach to teaching though seems very thought out and effective. She mentioned somewhere in her blog that she has this rule about asking two students before they ask her a question. When reading this I thought this was a very unique way of having students become comfortable working together and learning things on their own without running to her with every single question. This is an approach that as a student I may have found frustrating and harsh because I figured no one else knew better than the teacher, but now as a future teacher I can see why teachers do this and I can understand the importance of it. Mrs. Vicki Davis seemed very educated on technology and open to new ways of teaching her students as the future changes the dynamic of the world and flexibility definitely seems to be an admirable quality in teachers these days. She definitely seemed to be a teacher who was able to connect with the demands of the profession as well as encourage her students to work independently and this is a very important element of teaching.

(Information gathered from Cool Cat Teacher Vicki blog)

"Type I and Type II Technology"

Type I is just a way of using technology to do and teach exactly the way they had before technology played such a significant role in our society.

    One example of Type I applications of technology are iphones or ipads. These allow students to have access to the Internet where as before the technology era many students just went to the encyclopedias and were able to gather the same information that they can now with the "quick" access to the Internet. A second example of this would be a projector. This takes place of the blackboard or "white board." The projector's purpose is the same as the blackboard to show information but the projector allows the students to navigate and follow along with the teacher as they are displaying their information. Lastly, the third way this technology exemplifies Type I is through new things such as using the kindle an electronic device that allows people to purchase books online and view them on the kindle. Without this piece of technology education could still continue on just as it always has with using originally printed textbooks, but the kindle just allows technology to play a role in our fast pace society and makes it more convenient for students, especially at the high school and college level.

Type II is using technology that will help teachers try new aspects of teaching and take a different approach to teaching using more modern devices.

     One example of Type II applications of technology are smart boards, because they allow for more efficient ways to teach a classroom and allows both teachers and students to be interactive with the technology on a whole new level, because it's more personal than just pressing buttons; they can actually write with the tip of their fingers. A second example I would have to say would be one I was just introduced to a few days ago when I began practicum's technology class and that would be the tool Comic Life because it allows students to incorporate more creative ways of presenting their knowledge. A third example of this would be power point because it has made teachers lives so much more efficient now that they can put all their information on slides and they can even post it for students to go back and reference later.

From Internet Application of Type II uses of Technology in Education (Cleborne D. Maddux and D. LaMont Johnson, 2005).

"My MEL Experiences"

Student Teacher Relationship- My chemistry teacher in high school was very helpful and she set a very comfortable vibe in the classroom. She did not put up a barrier where students felt as if they couldn't ask her questions, but rather she was able to understand that many of us were new to chemistry and was very efficient and helpful in explaining directions for labs, was there to explain concepts along the way if we didn't understand why things were happening as they were.

Helping Students Succeed- Going into my junior year of high school I was going to take Honors English, but I was reluctant and nervous that I was not going to pass the exam over the summer reading books. This test had a reputation of being very difficult because its purpose was to "weed out students" because we had too many in our class. I explained my concerns to my teacher the first week of school, and he explained to me that the test was over all the required reading and his discussion with me not intimidating at all and even though at that point the didn't know that much about me, he was very encouraging and was not worried that I would have difficulty with the test. This really helped ease my mind, because a teacher who has never had me in his classroom before already believed I was capable of so much and that definitely helped me and pushed me to work even harder in his class than I normally would have.

Hands on- My freshman year of high school I was assigned to take on the leadership role of our class project in World History class. My task quickly began to take on many forms and I had to incorporate the whole class and motivate them to work on one project as a group, even when they may have some "down time" when they may have completed their assigned task. This was my first real experience of learning how to incorporate various learning styles and various students’ interest. The point of the project was to make something illustrating a point in history. We picked war scenes and fighting scenes, but the purpose of the project was not necessarily to have a completed product by the end (because no class had ever achieved that in the history of this teacher's career) but rather to work together and figure out the most effective way to get as much done as possible. I split the students up into interests, for instance: those students who liked the "hands on, activity" learning style were the ones that were the warriors and fighters in our movies, while I had others who liked the planning portion better and they helped me coordinate and direct the movie along with make the script for the project, we had people video record it, edit it, etc. This was my first "hands on" experience working with working with students my own age and making a movie and coordinating all of the behind the scenes work, and surprisingly we were the first class ever to finish our movie just seconds before it was due!

Autonomy-In middle school we had book groups, where the teacher split us up into groups depending on how fast of a reader we were. My partner and I were not the quickest readers in the class, but this assignment gave us flexibility in terms of our reading. The teacher said we weren't allowed to assign any less than 20 pages for every two days but that was our only limitation; we were able to assign up to however many pages we wanted to or complete the whole book, and then we were supposed to write in our journal and exchange journals and read the responses of the other group members. This was a very effective approach, because first off we were able to pick the books that we wanted to read so it kept me more interested in my reading, and it motivated me to want to read faster to see what was up ahead. Also, watching the other students reading multiple books within a few weeks and having detailed conversations gave me more encouragement to continue reading at a faster pace, not to be included with them, but because it was giving me more opportunities to discuss the literature. The flexibility was what made this assignment one of my favorite assignments by this particular teacher.

Connections- In biology, I remember we had to do a project explaining the process and the functions of different parts of the cells, (the mitochondria, the cell, etc.) I remember first being very intimidated by this project, but we had to connect each element to some sort of real life job and explain what each thing would be in that job. I remember using my mom's Insurance company (State Farm) as my "real life job" because then each of the parts functions became clearer to me and I was able to understand what each parts purpose was. This approach was much more effective than just trying to read and memorize the definitions from the textbook and I remember that I retained that information a lot longer then normal.

Fires in the Bathroom Chapter 2: “Respect, Liking, Trust and Fairness"

           In chapter two, the part that presented me with both an understanding of where the student comes from and the difficulties and challenges of being a teacher was when the book discussed how students were able to relate better to teachers who are closer in age to them (page 20).

            I was able to relate to this well because in my experience having both teachers young and older, I was able to relate to those closer to my age easier. However, I was in high school at this point but it allows the students a sense of understanding and compassion from the teacher if they feel that the teacher can understand the demands of being an adolescent or teenager in school these days. This also addressed my thoughts on respecting a teacher though and how it must be challenging for young teachers to gain the respect of students who are not that much different in age from themselves. This may have been what jumped out at me in this chapter because it has been a concern of mine that as a future teacher my own students won’t take me seriously, especially in times when I have to discipline them if I am so close in age with them. However, this chapter’s discussion on respect and the importance of a teacher’s first impression on students has allowed me to feel as if there are ways to be a successful young teacher that is able to gain the respect of their students.

Fires in the Bathroom Chapter 1: “Knowing Students Well”

           The part of chapter one that struck me most interesting and what left me most shocked after reading was when a student stated that they didn’t want the teacher to recognize or reveal personal information about themselves especially publically, specifically acknowledging a student’s birthday (page 1).

            When I read this particular sentence by this student I actually had to go back and reread it because this was the first time I had to think of all the different aspects of students lives and feelings from the other side. This was the first time the job of a teacher became real to me and this students feelings allowed me to understand with more clarity that teaching deals with way more then just knowing the content of your subject matter, but it’s about how you connect with each student and how to adjust to each students comfort level. This will definitely help me in my future encounters with students because it allowed me to relate back to my feelings of being a student at the high school or middle school level and how I had a similar though process as this particular student. This one simple sentence has allowed me to connect being a teacher with the feelings of students at this age and influence how I approach each student in the future.

Learning Styles Inventory Results

     I think my results are accurate in some ways but surprising in others. I knew that I was a mix of all the categories, but less of a physical learner than anything else which is what my results prove. I would have to say I am mostly a verbal learner over any of the other categories but surprisingly the chart shows that I am strongest in the verbal area which in my opinion is one of the learning techniques that I have difficulty with because I do not retain information or learn it when spoken verbally compared to visually. I would say that my results are not as accurate as they could be, especially because they illustrate that my learning style using logic is equal to that of the visual learning style and I think that is completely inaccurate. I would have to say the rest of it is pretty accurate, I am about equal in the solitary and social learning techniques; I do both of those depending on the assignment.  

Learning Style Survey and results from learning-styles-online.com