Chapter 1 Response

After reading Dr. Haskell's chapter 1 in the zombie guide, I found that the idea of goal setting is extremely important. For me, I need to clearly organize and focus my goals in order to succeed and see them through. Organizing and envisioning also allows for more than focused goals, there becomes much more room for creativity. If you make a plan, you see more things you can add to it. I really liked the idea of thinking about all aspects of your classroom. Beyond just how it may look, but how it will feel, and how students will be influenced and inspired by it.

Each individual students schema is one of the most important factors contributing to their education. This even includes my own as a teacher, and the schema of anyone working with another person. This can apply to both children, and adults alike. Knowing your audience, their needs, and experiences will allow you to better help them. Everyone has a different collection of knowledge, and there is nothing that makes one persons collection better than the other. One might be larger, or more extensive, but neither of these defects on ones ability to learn more or be more successful.

After watching Dr. Haskell's video on blowing up the grade book, I honestly felt inspired. I think it is incredibly true that the future of education is going to change drastically in the future, and our grading system should as well. The comment made about "Playing the game" I can relate to a lot, it was honestly my motto almost all through middle school and high school! Thinking more on this, you find some real problems in our current system. There were kids I knew that probably knew far more than I did, but were just not as skilled at "playing the game". This isn't fair, and a new way of learning is definitely needed. The one good thing that comes from our current system however, is actually the way we learn the game. Currently the teacher-student relationship is very similar to the boss-employee relationship, and I think there is value in understanding this type of situation very well. This being said though, I'm sure the passion of learning could be restored in students if game-style teaching was widespread. Lets blow up the grade book!

After watching Dr. Haskell's video on technology invention tools, there were many that I found very interesting. While teaching, connecting all of your iPads over bluetooth to your computer opens up a lot of really cool ideas. I really was drawn to the ideas addressed in the video, that a student from anywhere could be connected to what was happening in class. The augmented reality visualization tool was my particular favorite. It lets you use iPads to toggle and view an object that you don't have in real life, to be seen and experienced in 4D. This tool would be amazing for teaching science, and letting students explore things like cells, or electron levels, when the real 3D models aren't affordable or available. The hands on participation that students would take would really grab their attention, and enhance their understanding. It truly is "magical" as is said in the video.

CLASSROOM NETIQUETTE

Miss Kellie’s 8th Grade class online use

Participate: This is a shared learning environment. No lurking in the cyberspace background. It is not enough to login and read the discussion thread of others. For the maximum benefit to all, everyone must contribute.

Help Others: You may have more experience with online discussion forums than the person next to you. Give them a hand. Show them it’s not so hard. They’re really going to appreciate it!

Cite Your Sources: Another big must! If your contribution to the conversation includes the intellectual property (authored material) of others, e.g., books, newspaper, magazine, or journal articles—online or in print—they must be given proper attribution.

No YELLING! Step carefully. Beware the electronic footprint you leave behind. Using bold upper-case letters is bad form, like stomping around and yelling at somebody (NOT TO MENTION BEING HARD ON THE EYE).

Emoticons and Texting: Social networking and text messaging has spawned a body of linguistic shortcuts that are not part of the academic dialogue. Please refrain from :-) faces and c u l8r’s.

Wii Bowling

In a game of Wii bowling, we compared the scores of two types of bowlers. Two who were putting in full effort, compared to two test bowlers, who were closing their eyes and sitting while bowling.

1. In our game of Wii bowling, the difference in first ball average went in favor of the control group, that was actively trying.

2. The trend I notice in the data, is that the control group had much more regular patterns. The test group that I was in had much more random data.

3. The base technique differences I notice, Is the first ball and second ball averages. The control group has a higher first ball average, while they have a lower second ball average because they have less pins available.  For the test group, the difference between the first and second ball was much smaller.

To see the game data and more findings, check out my spread sheet:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1jrisbGl4yKTHc9mqal1dC-z6a9R0vLDaVty0cKCwBO8/pubhtml

REVIEWS ON THE FUTURE OF EDUCATION VIDEOS


I found these videos of futuristic education very interesting. The way people in the 80s pictured technology in our present day really doesn't seem that far off to me. While they imagined it to be a bit easier, we still have very similar ways to do the things that were shown in the video.

The student in the video, did a video call to his partner on a project. This is almost exactly the same as what we have, Skype and face timing. We also have a way to "screen share" where we could flip the video off of your face, and to what you are doing on the screen. Another thing I connected was the use of voice control. When the student need to search something, he voiced it out loud and gave direction, similarly to what we can now do with Siri.

While there were some great similarities, it seemed much easier in this imaginary future. Technology is very useful and helpful today, but at times it can be frustrating. Skype does not always work, calls are dropped, FaceTime has a bit of a time lag, and Siri is just a way to short cut your google searches.