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