Advice from MACers

Friday’s class was so great! We met so many great teachers that taught us a lot. It is always nice to hear from teachers, but it is even better when the teachers are former MACers. Since we are in a unique program, it’s so great to hear how things have worked out for people that have once been in our shoes. I definitely liked hearing from Lauren the most. It was great that we could talk with some of her students and ask them questions about how she runs the classroom. I was really surprised to hear just how much cell phones are allowed in the classrooms these days. I just feel like I would get so distracted if I was in the classroom and students were whipping out phones and texting all the time. I think it’s rude when people do it to me in general, let alone when I am trying to teach a lesson. Understanding that most of my students, especially in high school are going to have cell phones I will need to figure out my own rules for my classroom.

I also really enjoyed hearing about all the ways that Lauren got around her technology problems. One thing that I am worried about is that some of my students will not have Internet access. I want to have my students doing up-to-date projects and I want them to have access to all the possibilities that other students around the country are afforded. Not having Internet access seems like it could be a problem, but I have learned some great tips from Lauren. Allowing the students to complete the assignments in class if computers are available and assigning Internet assignments well in advanced are some of the great options that Lauren talked about. Another great idea that I took away from Lauren was her idea of having office hours on Facebook during the week. I think that is such a great idea! Why not utilize the technology that we have? I wish I would have had virtual office hours with my teachers growing up. There were so many times when I needed help with my homework or project and as I got older it was harder for my parents to understand what I was doing. Having a teacher online, able to answer questions is such a great idea. Hopefully, I can be as unspiritual as Lauren is one day! 

Humans are seeking machines

I guess on the last blog, I have decided to be somewhat more creative in the naming of my blogs..

The first reading discussed the “Generation MySpace” and how children growing up today are very good at multi-taking. I would to definitely agree with that. I can very easily be in the classroom, playing a game of solitaire, writing notes, talking with friends online and listen to what the teacher is saying. I can’t say that I am paying attention to all of those things better than if I were doing them alone. I feel bored if I do not have those applications all open up at once. If I were doing one of those things, my mind would wonder uncontrollably to something else. In the article it talked a lot about the issue of privacy among young people today and before it was mentioned in the article, I honestly have not really thought about it. It seems so normal to me to have people share their inner most thoughts via the internet. I wonder sometimes, if people are not posting pictures of their life online then they must have a boring life. Why wouldn’t they want to show the world what they are doing? At the same time, I sometimes wish we did not live in this generation where it is assumed that I am going to let everyone know about every aspect of my life. One of the biggest things that annoy me is when I am expected by my friends and family to get back to them or call them right away. When I receive a text message from someone, its expected that I return the message within five minutes and if I don’t then I am somehow being rude. Another weird thing about this article is that the author quoted Wikipedia a few times. Did anyone else find that strange?

The “Seeking” article was so interesting to me as well. It made so much sense to me and it was a little hard to read. I do not like the idea that we, as humans have a short attention span. That because of twitter, Google, and Facebook we cannot keep our minds focused on one thing for a long period of time. I find myself opening up my computer to check my e-mail and then an hour goes by and I am looking at pictures of my friends or checking up on the latest news. I can’t stand that I do that, but for some reason it happens all the time! I am getting better, but there was also a point in my life where I was obsessed with checking Facebook. Like it was so important to see what other people were doing and what new pictures they posted. I did find myself feeling more excited when I got new notifications or someone commented on my wall. Why? I do not know. Why did I care about when other people communicated with me via Facebook? As I got older, I realized I had more important things to do and my time was better spent elsewhere.

Lauren’s video was inspiring to watch. It was the second time I’ve seen the video of Lauren and her class and I caught a few new things this time around. Lauren seems so confident and in control of her class. She seems powerful in a situation where it can be very easy to lose power. It looked like one of her students was making a concept map, something we have practiced in EDUC 511. I am excited to hear and speak to Lauren tomorrow during class and hopefully meet some of her students!

Class #4

Last Friday in class was another interesting one.  Discussing gaming and gamers with Jeff really opened my eye to a lot of things. Especially with the things that R.J. was discussing, I can see the benefits of games and how they are not completely useless. I also really enjoyed the activity that Jeff had us do. I was surprised at how challenging the activity was! I was mainly frustrated with the fact that I was not absolutely certain what the author was trying to say. It was all up to one’s perception of the symbols. For example, Kyle and Mary thought one symbol indicated the author was talking about a pamphlet, but I was not as certain. At first glance, the symbol looks like it could be a pamphlet of information but because of the rest of the symbols I wasn’t as convinced. Anyway, the discussion got me thinking that integrating aspects of the gaming world into the classroom may not be a bad idea. Taking the lessons and the objectives that students learn while playing games into the classroom may not necessarily mean integrating video games into a social studies lesson.

Kristin also gave a very interesting lesson dealing with podcasts. Like I have said many times, technology can be a hard thing for me to grasp, but Kristin makes it so easy! I have heard of podcasts before, but never really knew what they were or what they entailed. The actual making of the podcast was so simple and so easy, I cannot wait to do more with it. I am excited to bring things like podcasts into the classroom, but it allows students to be creative and you can relate them to any subject. As we have talked about before, children these days are very technology-savvy and incorporating podcasts into a lesson will allow them to learn something while using technology with which they are probably very comfortable with. Podcasts also give the teacher the chance to use group work or individual work in a different light. Podcasts really incorporate verbal, creativity, and social skills and it can allow those students to shine that do not shine in other areas. 

7.22 Readings

So, I feel as though the feeling I have right now is becoming pretty typical after each weeks readings. I'm on the edge about the idea of bringing a gamer like atmosphere into the classroom. Because of the reading, I now see the advantages of gaming and what it brings into gamers lives. I guess I never saw any meaning to gaming and I would definitely judge gamers who would spend hours on end staring at a screen instead of interacting with real people. 

The most interesting part of today's resources was the video. Something that Jane said really stuck out to me. She said that "we should make reality more like games". Now, at first I thought I heard it wrong and it was the other way around, but after going back and replaying the part I realized that I heard right. I think there is a definite problem with that statement. And I never got a clear answer from her on why that needed to happen. Why can't we make games more like reality? I understand her reasoning for the love of games, but I think she is being a little optimistic claiming that we can solve social/ economic and other problems through gaming.

Just for the sole fact that I cannot stare at a screen for a very long period before my eyes hurting turns me off from bringing more screens into the classroom. Until I realize how gaming can bring learning into the classroom, I'm not sure I will be doing that. How can that be done if our well-being as society members is to network and be social? Aren't most jobs found through the people that you know? How can we expect our student to find a place in society if they only know "people" through screens? 

Class #3

Class today was so exciting. It was definitely a great experience to be one of the first groups of people to work in the Brandon Center. I really enjoyed working with the different librarians and very thankful that they all took time out of their schedules to come and work with us. It was definitely very useful to have them there and I know that we all appreciated it very much.

I especially enjoyed working with Rachel, who met with our group today. She had so much to offer and showed us SO many resources that helped while we were preparing our lesson plan for the Japan earthquake. One of the most interesting things that Rachel showed us was about google and how to incorporate google into the classroom. She made a great comparison about google in the classroom. She said that google is like sex-ed; students are going to be using it no matter what so you should teach them how to use it responsibly.  I think that is a great point. There are some things that you cannot stop students from doing no matter what so you might as well embrace it and teach students how to incorporate it the right way into their learning is key.

We also talked a lot about the use of primary sources in our lesson plans. It can be hard sometimes to incorporate primary sources into lessons, but especially for social studies, it is very important. A lot of primary sources can be boring and hard to read for students, but in the case of the Japan earthquake we found a great resource. It was a website that showed front pages of newspapers from around the world on any given day. This can be so easy and important to incorporate into lesson plans. It can help students understand the globalized world that we live in. This was a really great class and hopefully we can visit the Brandon Center again soon!

7.18 Readings

Backwards design is a very deceiving name. Although it seems like something that would be complicated to understand, it is probably the most understandable theory I have read on instructional methods. When I first started reading it, it was like an “ah-ha” moment… how is this so simple and yet made such complete sense??

Because of some computer issues, I was not able to read the article until after class this morning, but I really wish I had a chance to read it beforehand. I feel as though so much time could be saved when making lesson plans if the desired goal is decided before making the details of the lesson. While working through the assignment during class today, we tried to plan our lesson and the details of the activities that we wanted to do and after all of that, then we tried to decide what exactly we wanted our students to learn and get out of the activity. Having that desired goal in mind and the objectives that you want the students to understand makes it that much easier to plan a great and effective lesson.

I think another important aspect of the backward design model is informing the students about the objectives. I am not sure that is involved in other instructional methods, but I think it is one of great importance. The students should not have to be guessing what the end product needs to be, that will just distract from the learning. The goal of education is getting to the students to learn so the more barriers there are in the lessons, the harder it will be for those students to get to the learning level you want them to be at. 

Class #2

Friday's class was a lot more informative than I expected. I guess I didn't know what to expect to learn about twitter, but I was surprised that I could do so much with it! I assumed that twitter was much like Facebook and it was mainly used for socializing and keep up with people's day-to-day routines, but I had no idea that twitter actually had this whole other side to it. Seeing that twitter is used for many different professional uses is very exciting, but also scares me a little. I guess until I search through twitter on my own and really learn how to use it, I will get more comfortable with it.
I really enjoyed Antonia coming in and talking with us, not only about twitter but also about her experience in the MAC program. We have heard from a lot of people about the MAC program including past macros, but she shared very different things with us. It was really great to see her excitement over twitter and how much she uses it! It seems strange to me that out of everyone in her cohort last year, she is one of the only ones that likes and uses twitter. It was great to hear that she has found a job and learned a lot through the MAC program.. it gives me hope that in the end, all this work will be worth it!
Finally, even though we did not spend much time on the product review assignment, I am very excited about it! I am very excited to be published in a magazine from my product review. This assignment is very different than any other assignment I have done and I think it will be great experience. I am also excited that my product that I am reviewing is Adobe Creative Suite! Hopefully, I will be able to figure out how to work it...

7.15 Readings

Since creating a twitter account a few weeks ago I have come to find it useful and also time consuming, very much like Facebook. I also question why twitter even exists and how it has become so popular. I am still getting used to twitter and learning all the ins-and-outs of it, but it seems so similar to Facebook. How many social networking sites does one world need? One seems like enough for me. In the "Join the Flock" article, the author states that twitter helps to bring strangers together. I'm not sure whether that is a good or bad thing. Our world is becoming so globalized and twitter gives us yet another way to communicate with others through a computer screen. That factor alone turns me off networking sites like twitter and Facebook. Our society continually separates itself from one another, what is wrong with having a conversation while being in the same room as someone and talking with them directly? I, for one, am scared where this technology craze is going to end up.
Although I found many interesting points in the "Tweacher" article, I have to say I do not know how much of it I would want to incorporate into my classroom. Especially with the 140 character limit, I think a lot of the things suggested in the article may be much harder to do than the article leads up to believe. I am especially worried about using twitter with younger children, middle school age. There are so many liabilities when using the internet and especially with sites like twitter that I just do not believe that the benefits outweigh the costs. There is also the problem of cheating; there are so many more options for students to cheat and plagiarize with the internet and I am not sure as a teacher, I would be able to detect it. Also, when using sites I think that twitter is a nice thing for students and professional to have, but I just don't see myself encouraging the students in my classroom to use it as a tool for my lessons.
There are definitely a lot of people out there who believe in twitter and the benefits that it can bring to the classroom, but I am not fully convinced. Like I mentioned before, I think it is a fun idea for my personal life but incorporating it into the classroom? I'm not sure. When I think of twitter in the classroom, I imagine students learning and seeing lots of things, but learning those things alone. That idea doesn't settle well with me. I want classroom discussions with emotion and sharing instantaneously and I just don't see that happening with twitter. Maybe by the end of this course, I will be convinced to use twitter in the classroom but not as of right now.

Class #1

Class last Friday was a great way to start off the course! Entering the class, I have to admit that I felt somewhat intimidated by the subject of technology, but also excited to make technology apart of my classroom. I hope that technology does not become a distraction for my students and I, but an aid in classroom discussions and lessons.

I also really enjoyed when everyone spoke about why they wanted to become a teacher. It was really inspiring to hear everyone’s stories. I thought it was great that Kristen and Jeff asked us to share those stories because I think that a lot of times, after teachers have been in the profession for a while they forget why they began to teach in the first place.

For this first blog, I want to elaborate on why exactly I want to become a teacher and not only that, but a role model in my student’s lives. When I was eight years old, I just started the third grade and came home one day in October only to notice a huge mass on the side of my neck. I had been wearing a turtleneck all day so no one noticed anything different from me. After a night in the ER and the following two days driving all over the state of Michigan to see specialists, it was determined that I had Hodgkin’s Lymphoma but a biopsy was necessary to be absolutely conclusive. After the biopsy, it was determined that I did indeed have Hodgkin’s Lymphoma and it was staged at level 3. The cancer had spread all over my body and into some vital organs; the doctors believed that the cancer had been growing for over six months.

The diagnosis did not look good and my treatment plan for chemotherapy and radiation was very intensive and lasted a little over a year. The doctors and the school told my parents that I would probably have to repeat the third grade when I was done with treatment because I would be missing so much school. I did end up missing most of the school year and probably would have had to repeat the third grade if it was not for my third grade teacher, Mrs. Clark. She is the most extraordinary person I have ever met. She would visit me at the hospital, bring me my homework, and make sure that I was getting everything done that I needed to so I could keep up with the rest of the class. I got packets a few times a week with all the work that my classmates were doing so I could get it done in the hospital and at my leisure. She went above and beyond any teacher I know. There is nothing in her contract saying that when something like this happens, she needs to make sure her students still pass the grade. She went above and beyond because she believed in me and believed that I could still do all the work I needed to get done. Without her support and help, I would not have passed the third grade or even had the outlook I do on school and the teaching profession.

Because of her, I want to become a teacher. I saw the compassion and the love she had for seeing success in students no matter what their circumstance is. I cannot think of a better profession than one that gives students hope and encouragement for doing things that they never thought were possible. If I can change one life like Mrs. Clark changed mine then all of this will be worth it.

I know that was long and definitely very “corny” and I know that most people probably are going into teaching with for many other different reasons, but I hope by writing this blog and reminiscing on the reasons for why I chose teaching as my profession, that I will not forget this one day. I hope that I will not be so caught up in life that I will forget about these inspirational reasons.