Educating Esme

My technology class has come to an end, but I'm not sure if I am done with blogging, so I will just share some recent discoveries. I have just finished reading the book Educating Esme. It is a diary of Esme Codell's first year of teaching. When the diary was written, it wasn't meant to be published. It was simply a journal to collect thoughts, to vent about the problems and joys of the classroom. Yet after it was found by a friend, it was published to inspire new teachers everywhere and to remind others why they went into teaching in the first place. That being said, it wasn't edited before put into print so mistakes were made by Esme, and there are some situations she probably didn't handle the best, but as you may already know, how can you improve if you never admit to mistakes?

This book was great. Esme is definitely a creative, strong, and determined individual. She brings imagination into the classroom by creating such things as a time machine and the happy box. She doesn't let people bring her down, she challenges the administration when needed and makes sure that everything she is does is what's best for the children whether or not that matches the other teacher's views or the administrations. She is a fantastic teacher who knows strengths of combining creativity and uniqueness with discipline and respect.

The best part of the book is that it has tips for educators in the back, including a shopping list and advice for how to handle the current political view on teachers. It also talks about Planet Esme, a website created by Esme herself to help teachers explore the world of literature and use it if they wish in their classroom. On that website, there is also a link to esme's blog: http://www.educatingesme.blogspot.com/ where she talks about current struggles teachers are facing or learn about new books with the book-a-day setup.

I strongly recommend checking these out if you're a teacher or even if you have an interest in children or creativity, but as Lavare Burton of Reading Rainbow used to say, "You don't have to take my word for it!"

May 12th Exit Slip

Today we had one last discussion. We did an activity where we learned how people who have a lot of differences can also connect together.  Then we also talked about other jobs we could do if we don't end up teaching. We then talked about if we  had Ella Boyer in our classroom, how could we integrate technology? As a class we talked about the use of technology in reenacting old historical events in present times, or using blogs to connect with parents. I talked about the use of visual clickers for younger kids for assessment to hear the voice of each student. We talked about new things to add to our portfolio and explain specifically how we will integrate technology in our classrooms. Change standards 3-5 to say I will in. Also, remember to submit reflection paper. Long enough to cover context (who you worked with, what you did, where you did) and what did you learn (what do you now know that you didn't know before. 

Chapter 10 in Rethinking Education

Well I can't believe it, but I just finished the last chapter of this book. This is the first chapter that not only talks about the possibilities of what technology might do to society, but how it will. It provides ideas to help assist education through technology. It talks about the importance of education to helps students in the workforce. This includes providing federal funding to provide offices in high schools to include information about colleges and higher learning as well as for students who are not going to college. It talks about implementing a who cares attitude when teaching subjects to teach students about the jobs that use that information or careers that might implement them. These careers could technological based or otherwise. It talks about the importance of teaching technological opportunities. It talks about the importance of teaching transition properly. Students should be aware that just because their leaving school, they shouldn't stop learning. It is becoming more common for people to switch jobs constantly and move up in the world in other areas than their major. It's important to also have federal government be a big benefactor to the schools in order to implement technology. It should no longer be the jobs of the towns or states.

As a whole, this book raised a lot of important issues and ideas. It was still very vague about what to do. The majority of the book was to make people aware of problems, but it did little to explain how to fix them.  I hope teachers still try. I think this book has helped my learning and it is a great resource for an introductory technology course.

iRLO Scratch Project

I had a lot of fun working with Scratch. There were times when it was frustrating, but I am very proud of my accomplishments. I can now say I made my own mini video game. I don't know if I will use Scratch in the future because it is very time consuming, but I may use pre-made videos from the internet to promote interaction. I spent hours on my project. I wanted to make it look professional. I also recorded my own voice and used music to make it apply to Early Childhood aged children the best. It impacts my future teaching due to the fact that I now have a new resource to use in my classroom and a new way to engage my students in lessons.

PSA-Security Theft

It was a lot of fun working on our Public Service Announcement about Security Theft. This was a video made by Bryan Ratz, Elizabeth Sommer, Lynsey Carlson and myself. We met twice to work on this project. Each time we met for at least 2 hours. We met once to plan it, and film it, and once to edit/upload it. We tried to make it like an old fashioned PSA commercial from the 90s. We did it in black and white, and referenced people like Nancy Grace. This was a great way to apply the technology we learned in the class and apply it to a project. I wish there was a more advanced rubric for it, since we didn't know what kind of effects were wanted, but I still had fun doing it. Here it is. Let me know what you think!

May 5th Exit Slip/Peer Led Discussion Post

Today in class, Lynsey and I presented. I was weirdly nervous even though we were well prepared. It's hard to have a 20 minute discussion on anything. I'm really looking forward to next week when we can spend the majority of the time on one main discussion. I wish we could have gotten feedback, but sometime we run out of time. It was a worthwhile discussion and I'm glad I got to give it. We put a lot of work into our lesson. We met beforehand to decide what we were going to teach, and then I worked individually on the Prezi and she worked on the discussion questions. I also found a video to engage the students. This lesson helped me to create an interesting discussion from a chapter that had many choices of what to focus on. This lesson helped me to evaluate the reading and to have the class evaluate it and learn it to a greater extent as well.

Chapter 8 and 9 in Rethinking Education of Technology

Chapter 8 talked about specified learning. It talked about using tests similar to the GRE to allow children to learn about their interests. It would be a different kind of test taking. The test would customize to what each student is best in and focus strongly and teaching them those skills. It would allow students to learn subjects at their own pace. Each question would be given in response to another question. If a question was too easy, it would give you a harder question. If the question was too hard, it would be easier. While this is a great process in order to become proficient in a subject, would it be limiting since the student is only picking out what they want to learn? If students only focus on their original interests, they would no longer be well rounded individuals. While it might not be fun to learn about History if that's not what you're into, it's still important to learn about it. This chapter brought me back to the age old question: Is it better to be sorta good at a lot of things or be able to excel and one thing and one thing only? It's definitely a question to be pondered.

Lynsey and I are presenting Chapter 9 in class. It talks about how to connect to your children through education. If your child likes video games, ask them to teach you how to play. If they like Dinosaurs, show them an interactive website where they can use them. One of the websites talked about using a program called Second Life to get them interested. For my teaching topic, I am going to download Second life so I can show the class how to use it and we can talk about the pros and cons as a class.