Commenting on Angie’s blog…………..I think the way she described having a student use email is very innovative.  I agree with her that the student IS still using email to communicate (which is the only use I know of for email too), however most teachers would never think of having a student use email to voice their frustrations.  For a student with emotional and behavioral problems, using email during the day could be a great outlet for relieving stress and anxiety.

One of my students last year struggled as he watched his parents seperate and divorce.  He cried often, and had a great amount of difficulty being away from his parents.  It was almost like he thought he might not ever see one of them again after they dropped him off at school.  I allowed this child to use my email to write his dad each day.  Usually, he would simply write, “I love you”.  His dad would later write him back and the student would read the message.  This was the only technique I found to calm this student…………he actually felt closer to his dad by communicating through email.  If it had not been for email, the student would have remained upset all day and not been able to concentrate on learning.

Ipods are a tool that could enhance education.  They are becoming more popular and affordable. I have seen many teenagers with them at youth group activities.  In the past, Ipods have been used mostly to listen to downloaded music, however Ipods are evolving to where they can play movies too.  Currently, most teenages download movies and television shows illegally. I read a press release on PRLeap about a company (MoboVivo) that has become the first company to offer downloadable movies and shows legally to people.  Of course, it costs money to dowload these movies, but they are affordable.  Some of these movies are very educational. For example, I found a 45 minute movie about hurricanes that was only $1.99.    I tried to think about how Ipods might be used in the future……………….and it occurred to me that someday teachers might assign movies for students to watch on their Ipods.  I’m sure students would match rather watch a video for a homework assignment than complete a pencil and paper assigment and many videos for early elementary students are awesome for learning………..such as “The Letter Factory” by LeapFrog. 

For the classroom - I love the idea of beaming a movie to all of my students………maybe MoboVivo will eventually sell downloadable movies to teachers (for example, $10.00 for a movie that can be put on all students’ Ipods in the class). 

For online classes – Ipods could be used in the same way.  Teachers could require students to watch certain movies and then reflect on what they learned in a blog. For more on ipods in the classroom, go to http://www.prleap.com/pr/46011/

I visited Tapped-In today and came across another tool for educators that I hadn’t noticed before………..the library.  In the library, I found resources for digital storytelling.  From there, I found another link where I learned about why digital storytelling has become such an important tool for classrooms.  This website referred to digital story as a new genre……..I found this very interesting that telling stories through the use of technology has now become its own genre.  Here is the definition I found on Adobe’s website:

digital storytelling is a special genre organized around using the author’s own voice as the centerpiece of content while artistically dancing multisensory elements into personal understandings about self, family, knowledge, ideas, events, or experiences. http://www.adobe.com/education/digkids/storytelling/allthebuzz.html

I feel like a digital story is really just a personal narrative or memoir that has been improved by incorporating technology into it. Why is it it’s own genre?  Is it because the audience can actually hear the author’s voice?  Any thoughts? 

LeeAnn mentioned that teachers have taken a newer approach to teaching……….many teachers are using hands-on activities and learning centers.  Many teachers have thrown out the old method of students sitting in their seats all day and working on worksheets, for the new way (learning centers, cooperative learning, hands-on activities, etc.)  I am one of these teachers…………….my students do one, sometimes two worksheets a day and no more.  They never sit in the same spot for more than 20 minutes.  Most of the time they engage in learning games and play.  And many teachers just like me, walk around school, telling people this is the “NEW” way to teach. I’ve even heard retired teachers that sub on a regular basis at our school refer to this method of teaching as the “NEW” way………they are always saying they don’t like this “NEW” way of teaching…….it’s too loud, too noisy, too chaotic. 

Nate’s blog made me think about whether this more current style of teaching is really “NEW” or not.  I know from past classes that Vygotsky believed that learning was social; he believed that students needed to talk about what they were learning with each other.  So my classroom of learners that engage in conversations during center time is not really a “NEW” idea.  Vygotsky had already said that this is how it should be.  Other theorists such as Dewey said that children should “learn by doing”. He claimed that students could learn chemistry, physics, and biology by investigating the natural processes which went into cooking breakfast—an activity they did in his classes (basically he was teaching using hands-on methods).  So again, this “new” method of teaching is not so new when you consider that Dewey was already doing some of these things in the early-mid 1900s.

As LeeAnn pointed out, a SmartBoard is really an interactive chalkboard or whiteboard.  It is just an improvement on the older version.  A dvd is just a better version of a filmstrip or vhs tape.  Nothing ”NEW” there….

So where are all the new innovations in education?  The more I thought, the more I realized that most everything we do is just an improvement on the old and much of what we are doing, as a class, we have already said is not working.  Students are not scoring as high on tests as they could be because they aren’t learning as much as they should.  Where are all of the new inventions/innovations for education?  We need something different.  Is distance education finally a true educational innovation, along with the methods being used at Sudbury school?

Advantages………..

Learning takes place anywhere, anytime.  I have been busy all weekend, barely at my house other than to take a shower, however tonight when I got home I had time to read a few articles, catch up on other classmates posts, etc.  I’m learning, even though it is the weekend.  How many people can say that about their college classes? 

Learning can be more centered on the student’s interests.  In a classroom, a teacher sometimes has 30 students in her classroom.  She can’t possibly work with each student and therefore has to provide similar instruction to all the students as a whole.  When a student already knows how to do something, he/she has to sit through the assignment and do it anyways because all the other students are working on that assignment and the teacher doesn’t have time to plan another lesson for that one individual.  Also, a great amount of time is wasted on classroom management………..taking students to the restroom, letting them get a drink at the water fountain, standing in line for lunch, etc.  All of this is avoided with distance education…….in the classroom, learning stops at 2:30 when the bell rings, with distance education learning is continual………because students can learn any hour they choose.  They can even eat their supper and learn at the same time if they want.

Disadvantages…………….

Distance ed is a wonderful method of education for older children and adults, but early primary students have a disadvantage when it comes to distance ed.   They need manipulatives in their hands; they need to engage in play with other children as they learn, they need direct instruction from a teacher that has been trained to teach reading.  They can’t read and therefore can’t blog, engage in online chats, etc.  They are simply not ready for this online world, but their parents are………………….

I think materials could be provided to K-1 students’ parents online through blackboard or TappedIn. I know as a kindergarten teacher I would like to hold a few parent conferences online throughout the year; some parents can’t get to school before 5:00, but they could talk to me online at 9:00 or 10:00 after they get their child to bed…..we would have to make sure the site was secure and confidential, of course.

The Good………….

There are many great things I can say about this class so far.  For one, I have learned a lot of new knowledge.  I have been challenged to think; many of the articles I have read I have shared with other teachers in my grade level and talked with them about their viewpoints.  So not only am I blogging about what I am learning, I am also talking with others about what I’m learning/thinking.  I believe that learning is social and I’m very pleased that the discussions/articles and work I have done for this class carry over into the conversations I have in my daily life.  So many times I have taken classes and never really thought.  I find myself thinking all of the time about what I am reading, what I think about what I have read, and how I could apply those things to my classroom.  I truly have gotten a lot from this class.

I also appreciate that Nate expresses his opinions openly and that he expects, even challenges us to do the same.  Some professors want you to just nodd your head and agree with every word that comes out of their mouths.  I get the sense that while Nate may not necessarily always agree with our viewpoints, he enjoys hearing them and doesn’t expect us to keep quiet if our educational philosophies are somewhat different than his.  I feel like he has created a community of learners…….where we are all in this together………….he is our instructor and we are learning from him and each other BUT he may even feel like he has learned some things from us. 

The Bad…………….

We were asked to be genuine in our responses. I feel like the grading scale for the participation area is a little vague.  I realize that I am thinking like a “student” by examining grading criteria; I’m working on thinking like a learner rather than a student and getting better at it, but I admit I still need a lot of improvement.  Here are my thoughts…………..

The criteria for participation is below:

I feel like there should be a score for “Participates in all activities” after “Participates in most activities”…………….(such as below:)

• Fails to participate or merely goes through the motions   0-1
• Participates in some activities     2-3
• Participates in most activities    4-5
• Participates in all activities       6-7 (this way the student gets credit for completing all assignments)
• Participates in all activities with enthusiam and engagement    8-9                        (the student gets credit for completing all assignments, but if he/she does them with enthusiam and engagement more points are awarded) 
• Partipates in all activities with enthusiam,engagement, and engages others   10    

I am in no way suggesting that Nate change the grading criteria………I just tried to put a lot of thought into my critique and the only thing that has bothered me so far is that there is no score for simply “Participates in all activities”……I feel like credit should be given for completing all of the assignments and then more points should be awarded if the student does them with enthusiam and engagement.  This is just my opinion………..

The Ugly…….

There is no “ugly”.  I just wanted a good title for my blog.    I am excited about how much I have learned in only 3 weeks; I am curious about what lies ahead.  What is most important to me is that I feel like this class is making me reexamine my views of our educational system and the methods I use to provide instruction to my students.  I am starting to see why “as good as the classroom isn’t good enough”.  I need to make some changes in my own classroom and plan on doing so.  I am already in the process of doing that…………but I’ll save that for another blog!

Why do people think learning has to take place in an actual school building?  I read a book to my kindergartners today…………it was a silly book about a little boy that planted 3 pennies in the soil, he watered them every day, and waited for them to grow.  Of course, they did not.  Only one child caught on to the humor in the book………….the other children just stared of me with blank faces while he laughed out loud.  When I finished reading I asked this little boy how he knew so much about growing things and his response was that he lives on a farm and helps his parents work in the garden.  So, this child has a ton of knowledge about agriculture that none of my other children possess.  He didn’t learn this information at school, instead he learned it at home………..proving that learning can happen anywhere, anytime. 

It would take me weeks to teach my students what this child already has learned about nature and agriculture.  Assuming that I had this much time available, would it be fair to make this child suffer through countless lessons filled with information he had already mastered about this topic?  NO!!!  But we do to our students all the time……..we force this to sit through lessons on things they already know about.  This is a need that I think the technologies we have been working with could address.  Rather than teach every child the same lesson, we can allow children to explore their interests and sign up for RSS feeds related to subjects they are interested in or don’t know about already.  They can then have online discussions with other students that are interested in the same topics and later blog about what they have learned.  I think much more learning would take place this way.

I agree with LeeAnn’s post………why do we expect students to be a Jack of All Trades?  We force them to study all subjects in school, whether they are interested in them or not.  This is very unrealistic when it comes to the real world.  I have no interest in nursing and I would have most likely made very poor grades if I had been forced to sit through nursing classes in college.  In fact, I made straight A’s in all of my education classes, because I had such a strong desire to be a teacher and the classes just made sense to me, but classes such as physchology and philosophy were boring to me and I resented having to sit through them and therefore did not apply myself as much as I could have. 

What would happen if we quit focusing on “The Test” and focused on our students interest.  If we came in to school one day and gave every student a gator and let them subscribe to feeds they were interested in and then write about them?  Would we have more students that were truly gifted in areas instead of students that were just hard workers and made good grades?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14638573/site/newsweek/

Newsweek researched schools and found that “Instead of story time, finger painting, tracing letters and snack, first graders are spending hours doing math work sheets and sounding out words in reading groups”. 

I’ve only taught kindergarten for three years, but from conversations I’ve had with the other K teachers, the curriculum has greatly changed during the last 10 years.  5 year olds used to come to school and spend a great part of their day in play.  It was thought that children of this age needed to socialize, have storytime, and engage in fun, unstructured activities such as fingerpainting, playing in the housekeeping center, building towers in the block center, etc.  This is definitely not the case today.  We do some of these things, but it is only the 4th week of school and already we are writing the letters E, F, D, and B and the numbers 0-5.  The students are matching uppercase and lowercase letters, identifying colors, making A/B patterns, sorting objects, etc.  My little ones can even tell you what sound sh, th, er, and au make.  Most of these kids will leave kindergarten reading on a first grade level, at least.

Is this too rigorous?  I don’t really think so……….my students are happy and my parents tell me that their children can’t wait to get to school each day.  The students think school is lots of fun; everything we do in kindergarten is hands-on.  The kids always have manipulatives in their hands and all of the activities seem like a game; most of the time the kids don’t even realize they are learning. For example, one of my students commented this morning:  “Mrs. Miller, it’s already lunch time?  I used to get hungry in the mornings and start thinking about lunch, but these games are so much fun, that I forgot all about lunch!”

………By the way, when I say kindergarten is not too rigourous, I am taking into account, that modifications have been made for students that need them.  I believe that all students, whether they have IEPs or not, should work on the skill level that is appropriate for them, otherwise the activity is meaningless.  There is no one size fits all for the classroom.

One thing I like about this school is that it encourages students to focus on their strengths, rather than their weaknesses.  As teachers, we are all familiar with Howard Gardener’s multiple intelligences……some people are good in music, others excel in art, some are excellent writers/readers, etc. 

While I was eating in the teacher’s lounge today, a teacher commented on a conversation she had with a parent earlier in the day.  A parent had commented that her daughter was very smart.  The teacher’s response to the parent was that “if this young lady was smart, then she is hiding it from me because she sure isn’t showing it in class”.  The teacher further commented that she wasn’t going to tell a lie and mislead the parent into believing that her child was smart when she wasn’t.  I was quite appalled by this statement because I was sure that the child she was referring to was smart in something.  Maybe the child is not “book” smart, but she very well could be a talented musician, have a beautiful singing voice, be a shining athlete, or an artist.  What else does her teacher know about her other than that she is making bad grades in her class? 

I think we forget that every person is unique and we are not all meant to be gifted at the same things.  My brother struggles with school despite my parents’ efforts to hire several tutors, take him to Sullivan, and work with him at home. However, he is EXTREMELY talented at playing guitar. He spends countless hours practicing every day and learning new songs.   He can listen to ANY song (and I’m not exxagerating) on the radio and play it after hearing it once.  You can’t tell me that isn’t “smart”.