My contributions to the WebQuest wiki

The Trial of Creon This webquest fits the genre of judge and jury. This webquest requires students to do a mock trial of Creon from greek mythology. Roles for this webquest are clear and it provides links for courtroom procedure and information about Greek mythology.

I added roles for the best list webquest page. I suggested that some possible roles for these best lists webquests could be judges, or people trying to get the nominated. The basic idea of the webquest would be make a presentation to decide what deserves to be on a bestlist or to try and get something onto a best list.

I added roles for the press conference webquest page. I suggested that some possible roles for this kind of Webquest include roles like the person presenting and the press. This would require an active role from both the person presenting and the press.

Chapter 10 Going Beyond the Classroom

A section of chapter ten that caught my eye was when the chapter suggested the teachers steer students toward summer and enrichment programs. The chapter discussed how summer enrichment programs can be a great resource to further educate students as well as stimulate their interests.

This section of the chapter caught my eye because I have done many summer programs that have allowed me to explore many of my interests. My favorite enrichment program was a course computer programming which I did in middle school. I remember for a project we made our own digital pet that we programed to do many things. I regret not exploring computer programming further because of how much I enjoyed it that summer.

Chapter 9 When Things Go Wrong

A section of chapter nine that jumped out at me was when the chapter discussed how teachers should never give up on their classes. The chapter gave an example of a teacher in a wheel chair which students targeted with relentlessly bad treatment. However, instead of giving up on the class, the teacher changed some students classes and eventually won over teaching his remaining students. This teacher did not give up when it could have been very easy to do so.

The section of chapter nine jumped out at me because it reminded me of my seventh grade math teacher who did give up on my class. For some reason the students in my seventh grade math class and my teacher did not get along. Eventually the classes outburst made the teacher resort to harsh punishments and very basic teaching styles. Eventually the teacher just gave up on our class and continued to handout busy work for the rest of the semester. This was insulting to me because I had never had a teacher do that to me before.

Chapter 8 Teaching Teenagers Who Are Still Learning English

A section of chapter eight that caught my eye was the part where a student was defending himself speaking Spanish with other students who could also speak Spanish. The student claimed that if they did not understand what was being said in English they would converse with other students who could speak Spanish to help understand what was being said.

This section of the chapter caught my eye because I disagree with it somewhat. I feel that students learning English should try and distance themselves from other students who can speak their native language because this separation will help them learn English faster. While this is frustrating to students in the beginning, they will eventually gain functional use of the English language enough so future learning will come much easier. I feel this way from observing two German exchange students within my high school. They had all the same classes together and could always be seen whispering in German between each another. By the end of their stay in Maine they had made little progress in developing their English skills because they had rarely spoken English in normal contestation.

Chapter 7 Teaching Difficult Academic Material

A section of chapter seven that jumped out at me was when the chapter mentioned how teaching out of the textbook can successfully be done. The chapter suggests that when a teacher assigns a reading it should have a point to it and it should involve what is being taught in the classroom.

The section of chapter five that discussed textbooks jumped out at me because it reminded me of a history teacher I had who did a very good job of including the textbook within the class. About half of his classes consisted of a short reading assignment involving what was being discussed in class. While the reading was usually met with a mixed response, he asked us to do it because the textbook had a very different interpretation then what we learned in class. Using these multiple interpretations the class got a much bigger perspective on what they learned.

Chapter 6 Motivation and Boredom

A section of chapter six that caught my eye was the part where a student named Diana was discussing about how it was difficult for her to accomplish her homework at home. However, if she stays after school she can get her homework done with little issue. Diana suggests that it is difficult for many students to be motivated to do their homework in their home environment.

This portion caught my eye because what Diana says is very true amongst middle/high school students. It is difficult to expect students after a long day of learning to do more schoolwork because of how distracting their home environment can be. Homes are full of distractions like televison, video games and the internet which make getting work done very different. Even when a student is doing work on a computer they are frequently being distracted by instant massages from their friends. A good example of this is that in the time it took me to write this short response I had a conversation with four people over instant messenger.

Chapter 5 Teaching to the Individual, Working with the Group

A section of chapter five that jumped out at me was when the chapter mentioned about participation being a part of a group assignment. The chapter suggested that within groups there be roles assigned to different group members that effect the grade of an individual.

The participation portion of chapter five jumped out at me because it reminded me of many group assignments I have done throughout my education career. I feel that participation grades are very important in group assignments because of students who don’t do any of the work. Within highschool one student slacking off was expected in just about every group assignment. This caused me to do more then my share of work for my “group” assignments. Grading participation makes a lot of sense because it allows diligent and prepared students to get a grade for the work they did.

Chapter 4 Creating a Culture of Success

A section of chapter four that caught my eye was when a student named Andres was discussing how he had made fun of students who did well at school. Andres obviously felt bad for their decision to make fun of a student for academic achievement, which he admits was due to anger.

This section of chapter five jumped out at me because it reminded me of myself within school. However, unlike Andres, I was the one being made fun of for my academic achievement. Unfair pressure because of my academics would come from many of my friends but mostly from members on my football team. I was one of forty football players to consistently make honor roll throughout highschool. That fact alone would have probably caused them to leave me alone, however, for most of the football teammates their bad grades were affecting if they would be able to play in games or not. The team would rarely decide to press this issue on me within school because my other more academically inclined friends would usually back me up and destroy their argument with simple logic. However, on the practice field they were generally relentless with the insults about being smart. Even my coach would get in on it if I made an incorrect block. I realize now they were all just being ignorant and I did the correct thing in not slacking off and continuing my education.

Chapter 3 Classroom Behavior

A section of chapter three that really jumped out at me was the part where students were discussing accidently falling asleep in class and putting their heads down. The chapter discusses how teachers should react to sleeping students and what is the most polite way to wake them up.

The sleeping section of chapter three jumped out at me because it reminded me of an incident I had in highschool. During my senior year I had a difficult time sleeping occasionally. After one rough night during a video in physics class I accidently fell asleep in class. My physics teacher saw this and reacted very poorly and unlike what the chapter suggests should be done. She jabbed my shoulder with a ruler until I woke up and then lectured me about how disrespectful it is to sleep in classes. This was embarrassing for me because of how she had chosen to deal with that problem. A more appropriate way to wake a sleeping student is lightly tapping them on the shoulder and asking if they want to go wash off their face or something. After that incident I lost respect for that teacher because she had punished me for something I could not really control.

Web 2.0 Educator

I looked at several pod casts and blogs from Wes Fryer who is the man that moves at the speed of creativity. It does not take very long to figure out that Wes Fryer is a man who knows a lot about technology. His blogs and pod casts mostly consisted of various information about technology and how its changing the face of education as we know it. The most interesting blog I read about was his response to a video about cell phones use in the UK. The statistics from that video are amazing of how many teenagers are using cell phones now. In one of his pod casts he presented to a group of students at a school about the benefits of technologies like garage band and the iphone. I found this interesting because we are currently using similar technologies in our class. In another of his blogs Wes Fryer posted an article about plagiarism on Wikipedia. Apparently because Wikipedia is in the public domain anyone can copy anything from it legally without siting it as a source. This came as news to me after 3 years of siting Wikipedia on every project that I was allowed to use the site for information. Wes Fryer’s site had a lot of important information about how technology can be useful in the classroom.

Focus the Nation

For my focus the nation activity I viewed Al Gore’s Film an Inconvenient Truth. The film was a mixture of montages about Al Gore’s life and clips from his slide show that he does to make more people aware of the dangers of global warming. I learned several things about global warming by watching this film particularly how dangerous things are becoming. The piece of the film that I found the most interesting was when Al Gore talked about how major scientists are being forced to conclude that global warming is theory and not fact. This really opened my eyes because I had heard the argument many times that global warming is just theory and that is not yet proven. However, it seems that major experts are being censored in order to benefit other sections of the government. If the idea of global warming was more widely accepted around this country I feel like much more progress can be made to help stop it. Another section of the film I found particularly interesting was when Al Gore talked about how fast the artic poles were actually melting. He showed a diagram of an area of Antarctica that was not suppose to melt for fifty years but had already almost completely broken up. This was because of pools of melting ice drilling deep holes into ice sheets. This causes the entire sheet of ice to be much less stable. With all that ice melting the water is going to have to go somewhere and flooding worldwide seems like it might not be far away. Another interesting thing I learned from this film was just how dangerous Greenland is to our hemisphere. If Greenland melts rapidly there is a possibility that the cold water would have an effect with the gulfs and streams in the Atlantic Ocean. If those streams change do to a temperature change it could have devastating effects on the world with the possibility of another ice age. My biggest disappointment with the film was that Al Gore did not show enough ways that people could change these devastating effects from happening.
Within social sciences there are several ways to get students to focus on global warming solutions. Perhaps the best way is to approach this from a Political Science angle because Politicians frequently focus on the environment. A good way to apply this to a lesion would be to ask students to research politicians environmental backgrounds and plans and ask them based off that information who they felt has the best environmental policy. Geography would also be a good subject to used to help students better understand global warming.

Type I and Type II Technology

Type I and Type II technology are two very different ways to use technology for education. Type I technology is a passive way to make tradition teaching easier. Type I technologies usually involve a program that relays information to the user. Throughout my life I have experienced type I technologies many times. At my old job Hannaford I experienced a training CD-ROM which showed a series of training videos for a Hannaford Cashier. The user could choose the video they wanted to watch and it played the movie for them. In many classes I have witnessed PowerPoint presentations which show images and information in a slide show format. PowerPoint is usually used in presentations. Several times within classes I have been asked to take personality or intelligence exams that require me to answer questions and the program deducts an answer about my personality or intelligence. These are all examples of type I technologies because the user has very little involvement with the program and the program is in control of the eventual outcome. Type II technologies are technologies that bring about better ways of teaching. These programs are at the control of the user and end in a wide variety of results. Throughout my life I have experienced type II technologies many times. An example of a type II program is Photoshop because it allows the viewer to change a photo but the changes are at the will of the user. Internet browsers could be considered a type II technology program because it gives a user access to the internet but is at the control of user. Simulation technology is another example of a type II technology because it allows the user to simulate something but the end result is at the will of the user.

My MEL experiences

• Learning Styles: Throughout my high school career I was challenged by a varying array of different teaching styles. I was always a slow reader so I dreaded all reading assignments. In most of my classes this proved to be a problem because of how many reading assignments there were. However, my European history teacher taught using a wide variety of methods. These methods included using hands on assignments, lectures and some reading assignments. This variety really helped me as a learner because it did not restrain me to learn under a system that I was poor at. The reading assignments that were assigned were short and relevant enough to keep my interest and allowed me to excel.
• Student/Teacher Relationship: I have always responded well as a learner to a friendly environment from teachers. In middle school I had a Science teacher who used humor very liberally in the classroom. I can still remember his lecture on how it’s impossible for evil geniuses to build their laboratories in volcanoes. He created an environment that made learning fun and more functional. This friendly atmosphere made the classroom more functional because every student felt comfortable in asking a question. If a student had an incorrect assumption about something, the teacher was respectful in correcting them but still used humor to show how that would be incorrect.
• Helping Students Succeed: Perhaps the poorest learning environment I have had was in a middle school English class. The environment established was an extremely serious one. Questions were usually attacked by the teacher which made students very scared to ask anything. Laughter and any kind of fun within the classroom were reserved for days that the teacher was absent. This serious environment was not at all beneficial to learning. This teacher did not help students succeed.
• Interests: Motivating students is probably one of the biggest challenges for teachers. Throughout my education motivation was usually done through Extrinsic means. This focus on grading and punishments is a decent way to get already motivated to do their work. However, in a few classes I had the teachers found new and interesting ways to motivate me to do work for more then just a good grade. An example of this is in a current events class the teacher would focus on recent events and compare them to similar historical ones. This method of using our past knowledge and comparing it to modern events really fascinated that current event class. It motivated the class to want to learn about both history and current events to be able to further compare the two. The class required regular viewing of the news for homework and it was at that point I began watching the news consistently out of interest.
• Context: Showing meaning in what is being taught can be challenging to teachers. Certain subjects have this particularly hard like in mathematics where it’s difficult to prove that students will actually need to know what is being taught. While this job was hard, one teacher I had did a particularly poor job at teaching meaning within her subject when she taught statistics. At the beginning of the school year she even addressed this issue by saying that most statistics are lies and that for most of you what you are learning will not be used outside of this classroom. This started the semester off on a particularly bad note and made it annoying to learn statistics.

Fires in the Bathroom QR Chapter 2

In chapter two of Fires in the Bathroom, a part that caught my attention was in the discussion about teachers and trust, specifically when a student mentioned about how he was asked to redo an assignment that a teacher had lost. This part caught my attention because I have had a similar event happen to me on a project that could not easily be redone and it is very frustrating because the teacher never admitted that they lost it. Teachers should take accountability for their actions and if they lose something that cannot be replaced the teacher should give the student credit for an assignment that goes missing.

Fires in the Bathroom QR Chapter 1

In chapter one of Fires in the Bathroom, a part that caught my attention was when scheduling was discussed. Kathleen Cushman suggested that a good teacher learn the schedule of their students to better understand them. This section was particularly interesting because in schools teachers frequently give lots of homework without thinking how long it will take them and if this is beneficial to the student. The idea of learning students’ schedule is to show teachers how long it takes students to do work, when they are doing the work and what other activities the students are involved in. Teachers can use this knowledge to prepare different assignments that allow students with differing schedules to complete assignments at a time it would be most beneficial to them. On page 12 of Fires in the Bathroom it shows the schedule of a student named Porsche, who is so busy with varsity sports that she cannot begin doing her work until 8:30 at night. In a quotation Porsche mentions of how hard it is to be productive at 8:30 p.m. after a long day of school and varsity sports. If a teacher saw this and understood Porsche lack of time, he or she could change the amount of homework given every night.

MEL Graph

Style Scores
Visual 13

Social 18

Physical 9

Aural 10

Verbal 11

Solitary 9

Logical 15