Sunday, May 8, 2011
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Blog Post 13
Alabama Learning Exchange (ALEX)
The first part of this assignment was to explore ALEX or the Alabama Learning Exchange. ALEX is a project of the Alabama Department of Education designed to share educational resources. These include lesson plans, podcasts, web links, and interactive activities. It is designed so that it benefits students, teachers, and parents. I am somewhat familiar with ALEX, in my EDF class last semester we used it to create lesson plans, but I decided to try and find out a little more.
I began by exploring the podcast gallery and entered the subject field that interest me, Mathematics. I scrolled through the resulting list and found a wonderful podcast created by Samford University entitled "Traveling Numbers". This tells about how numbers can show up in everyday life. I then began looking through various lesson plans and found a lesson plan by Sara Wheeler about Wheel of Fortune and probability. After this I was very interested to find out what ALEX had to offer in the Professional Learning category. I found that it has several useful tools such as different grant opportunities, school improvement, and multimedia applications.
In conclusion, I think ALEX could be a great tool for educators and one that I will definitely be using in the future. Not only can it benefit educators, but also parents who may want to enhance their child's learning experience. So go look, find, and contribute to ALEX!
Alabama Connecting Classroom, Educators and Students Statewide (ACCESS)
ACCESS is a site in conjunction with the Alabama Department of Education that provides distance learning for Alabama public high school students. It was created November 2004 to help promote equity in public schools. The objective being to offer students who may come from a more rural school or a school that doesn't offer as many courses a chance to take courses that may interest them on the internet.
I think this is a great idea, I went to a very small school and as a result of that wasn't able to take many upper level courses. For example, my high school only went up to Pre-calculus in the math field while most schools offer at least Calculus 1. Also, my high school didn't offer any Advance Placement (AP) courses. The ACCESS website makes up for those inconsistencies. While not completely solving the problem of unequal educational opportunities across the state, ACCESS is definitely a step in the right direction.
The first part of this assignment was to explore ALEX or the Alabama Learning Exchange. ALEX is a project of the Alabama Department of Education designed to share educational resources. These include lesson plans, podcasts, web links, and interactive activities. It is designed so that it benefits students, teachers, and parents. I am somewhat familiar with ALEX, in my EDF class last semester we used it to create lesson plans, but I decided to try and find out a little more.
I began by exploring the podcast gallery and entered the subject field that interest me, Mathematics. I scrolled through the resulting list and found a wonderful podcast created by Samford University entitled "Traveling Numbers". This tells about how numbers can show up in everyday life. I then began looking through various lesson plans and found a lesson plan by Sara Wheeler about Wheel of Fortune and probability. After this I was very interested to find out what ALEX had to offer in the Professional Learning category. I found that it has several useful tools such as different grant opportunities, school improvement, and multimedia applications.
In conclusion, I think ALEX could be a great tool for educators and one that I will definitely be using in the future. Not only can it benefit educators, but also parents who may want to enhance their child's learning experience. So go look, find, and contribute to ALEX!
Alabama Connecting Classroom, Educators and Students Statewide (ACCESS)
ACCESS is a site in conjunction with the Alabama Department of Education that provides distance learning for Alabama public high school students. It was created November 2004 to help promote equity in public schools. The objective being to offer students who may come from a more rural school or a school that doesn't offer as many courses a chance to take courses that may interest them on the internet.
I think this is a great idea, I went to a very small school and as a result of that wasn't able to take many upper level courses. For example, my high school only went up to Pre-calculus in the math field while most schools offer at least Calculus 1. Also, my high school didn't offer any Advance Placement (AP) courses. The ACCESS website makes up for those inconsistencies. While not completely solving the problem of unequal educational opportunities across the state, ACCESS is definitely a step in the right direction.
Blog Post 10
An Open Letter To Educators
For this blog post I was assigned to read a post by Morgan Bayda, a teacher in Saskatchewan, about a video she found by a man named Dan Brown. You can watch this video by visiting Ms. Bayda's blog post. In this video Dan talks about how if institutionalized education doesn't change it will eventually die and become unimportant. Dan went so far as to eventually quit school, while I don't agree with this, I do agree with his first statement.
Institutionalized education is already becoming irrelevant to students today. Think about it, you go to school and, for the most part, are lectured all day about topics that are irrelevant to your everyday life. Most students, in both secondary and post-secondary education, are bored and unmotivated in the classroom. Why is that? One reason is that most classes have become a sort of lecture the facts and memorize the facts type of classroom. Students simply memorize everything the teachers say and then are forced to regurgitate the information. Now wonder the dropout rate for high schools is reaching 50%.
I think that if we have been given an opportunity to change this course of learning, it won't be easy and it will face opposition, but it will be better off in the long run.
Don't Let Them Take Pencils Home
I really enjoyed reading this blog post. In it Tom Johnson uses a metaphor by saying "Don't let them take the pencils home" he really means, "Don't let them take the computers home." The angry Academic Specialist claims that computers will lower the students' test scores, while Johnson argues that they will enhance learning. See he states that in lower-income neighborhoods computers are only marketed as entertainment systems so that's all they are seen as. But he also says with a little instruction families can be taught to use them educationally. I think that is so true, computers are marketed as these gaming systems, but if you teach students and their parents how to use them educationally they can open up a whole new world of learning!
For this blog post I was assigned to read a post by Morgan Bayda, a teacher in Saskatchewan, about a video she found by a man named Dan Brown. You can watch this video by visiting Ms. Bayda's blog post. In this video Dan talks about how if institutionalized education doesn't change it will eventually die and become unimportant. Dan went so far as to eventually quit school, while I don't agree with this, I do agree with his first statement.
Institutionalized education is already becoming irrelevant to students today. Think about it, you go to school and, for the most part, are lectured all day about topics that are irrelevant to your everyday life. Most students, in both secondary and post-secondary education, are bored and unmotivated in the classroom. Why is that? One reason is that most classes have become a sort of lecture the facts and memorize the facts type of classroom. Students simply memorize everything the teachers say and then are forced to regurgitate the information. Now wonder the dropout rate for high schools is reaching 50%.
I think that if we have been given an opportunity to change this course of learning, it won't be easy and it will face opposition, but it will be better off in the long run.
Don't Let Them Take Pencils Home
I really enjoyed reading this blog post. In it Tom Johnson uses a metaphor by saying "Don't let them take the pencils home" he really means, "Don't let them take the computers home." The angry Academic Specialist claims that computers will lower the students' test scores, while Johnson argues that they will enhance learning. See he states that in lower-income neighborhoods computers are only marketed as entertainment systems so that's all they are seen as. But he also says with a little instruction families can be taught to use them educationally. I think that is so true, computers are marketed as these gaming systems, but if you teach students and their parents how to use them educationally they can open up a whole new world of learning!
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Final Report on PLN
First of I want to start by saying that my PLN or personal learning network is far from complete and I'm sure it will develop much further as I get further into the program. I told you last time that I created a Symbaloo page for educational purposes and since then I have added many more tiles it. These include BBC Math, which gives many fun activities to help students learn math skills in a different way. I also began using Google Scholar to find many articles about integrating technology in the classroom, such as Effective Teaching With Technology in Higher Education by A.W. Bates and Gary Poole, in this article they offer guidance for developing a course using technology.
I also began using YouTube and TeacherTube to find great resources for teaching Mathematics at the middle school and high school level. I did research alittle on the ALEX, Alabama Learning Exchange, website, many of the lesson plans I found were pretty pedagogical, but their were some that I thought could be pretty useful and others that can be modified.
As far as making connections with other math teacher I am still working on. I have found some very useful blogs such as SweeneyMath, a blog run by Mr. Sweeney who is a high school math teacher. I have also begun following many other teachers on twitter who I think could come in very useful in the future.
C4T Summary Post
My assigned teacher for the past few weeks has been Joe Dale, his blog focuses on using ICT to enhance teaching. You can visit his blog here.
Easy classroom blogging with Posterous
In this post Joe gave very detailed instructions for creating a classroom blog. He specifically focused on the site Posterous, but the instructions could be easily modified for another blogging site. I thought this was a very useful blog and one that could come in handy for any teacher looking to set up a class blog. In fact, I'm saving this blog for when I start my own. He also has on there a podcast you can download about setting up a blog. One of his main objectives for doing this was to show the educational benefits a class blog can have. Check it out!
Listen, Speak, Read, Write Web!
In this post Joe spoke about a recent opportunity he had to go to Scotland and lead a national ICT event. He mostly spoke about using technology to enhance students' creativity and raise their standards. You can see a video of this workshop on his blog. In the first session he listed some helpful programs to enhance listening and speaking skills, such as audacity, and cue prompter. In the second session he focused on programs like Wordle to improve reading and writing skills. I think that both of these sessions can be extremely useful to the everyday teacher. Especially when enhancing listening skills! These sessions tackled big problem areas for schools and gave useful suggestions to improve those areas.
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