This was a very interesting and cute video. I would first like to start off by saying that the Wii system has more than the average video gaming system. If it can be brought into the classroom, then it will surely make for a great learning tool. Kids will be ever so interested in learning because all they see is the game. Our little presenter talked about voting systems which helped with class participation. If a student is not made to participate, then he or she will not. I have seen classes where the same students raise their hands while the others just sit and look or act out in the classroom.
Parents can now be involved on the go. No more excuses. You can go to the website and be as involved as the parent who is at the school everyday. His mother is the one who brought this whole new way of learning, teaching and communicating to life. Parent involvement cannot be stressed enough. Parent involvement makes for more confident students. Kids can download and upload homework. This is a great feature also because now kids will not have any excuses for not doing the homework. You did not write it down in class...it is on the website for you!!! You do not have a laptop? No problem. You can check one out on us. This makes students, once again, responsible for their learning.
About Me
- Alexis D. Taylor
- I am a Secondary Math Education major. I transferred from Auburn University (WAR EAGLE)!!! I am originally from Birmingham, Alabama and I miss it up there. I am not a fan of the humidity down here. I cannot wait to graduate so I can give my new baby girl everything she wants (and live to regret it lol)!!!
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Vicki Davis: Harness Your Students' Digital Smarts
Vicki Davis is a teacher in a rural part of Georgia. Her ideas for using technology in her classroom to broaden her students' perspectives is quite impressive. Students need to be stimulated while in the classroom. The routine of sitting at the desk with paper and pencil, listening to the lecture and taking notes is a thing of the past. This approach may work for some students but not all of them. Students become bored rather quickly. One good way of snapping them out of it is to bring something different to the table; something that they are interested in doing.
I appreciate what she is doing with her students. She does not tell them how to do everything. Once they are introduced to the material, it is their responsibility to learn it and, possibly, educate the teacher and fellow classmates. Allowing the students to be involved keeps them wanting more and wanting to contribute. Once a student figures something out on his or her own, the student's self-esteem soars and that is what we want as educators; confidant students who are not afraid to express themselves nor are they afraid of being wrong and taking a chance. Technology in the classroom has its rewards and it should be implemented.
Sir Ken Robinson: The Importance of Creativity
In this video, Sir Ken Robinson exposes the non-encouraging attitude towards creativity. Children have an awesome imagination and they express their creativity through drawings, writings and play time. Two examples that he gives are the little girl who draws God and is asked by her teacher how will they know who it is since no one knows what God looks like and the little girl responds to her by saying that they will know in a minute [when I finish drawing]. His second example was in reference to a nativity play where the third king said that Frank sent this instead of saying frankincense. Children are not afraid of being wrong. Creativity brings about originality which is what an artist requires. By criticizing a student for being wrong, we are missing out on the modern versions of Bach, Shakespeare and da Vinci. In the classrooms, students are creative in their approach to solving problems. There may be a standard way to solve a mathematical problem but there are infinite number of ways for a student to reach a solution.
Sir Robinson also speaks about the hierarchy of subjects; math and language at the top and the arts at the bottom of the system. Within the fine arts system, drama and dance are at the bottom. He makes reference to the Industrial Revolution and how certain subjects were emphasized as they related to the time period and those that did not relate to the way of life were deemed useless. Now where has this way of thinking left us? We, as a people, need to see that creativity should not be put on the back burner. It is an important tool to possess in the classroom for both the students and faculty like Vicki Davis who uses technology in a fascinating way in the classroom. She had to be creative in planning lessons for the year in order to come up with the things she did. The same goes for her students who are responsible for their learning the new technology and what to do with it.
Sir Robinson also speaks about the hierarchy of subjects; math and language at the top and the arts at the bottom of the system. Within the fine arts system, drama and dance are at the bottom. He makes reference to the Industrial Revolution and how certain subjects were emphasized as they related to the time period and those that did not relate to the way of life were deemed useless. Now where has this way of thinking left us? We, as a people, need to see that creativity should not be put on the back burner. It is an important tool to possess in the classroom for both the students and faculty like Vicki Davis who uses technology in a fascinating way in the classroom. She had to be creative in planning lessons for the year in order to come up with the things she did. The same goes for her students who are responsible for their learning the new technology and what to do with it.
Did You Know? 3.0
I was not expecting to see what I saw in this video. But I did learn of some interesting facts. It is amazing to know that China, a country that does not have English as its first language, will be the number one English speaking country in the world. That is mind-blowing. I am still trying to figure out how this could be. Is it because we are over there or they are coming over here and going back? India has more honors kids than America has kids! I can understand how this can be true since India's population is four times that of the United States. Also, as expressed at the end of the video, 395 babies had been born in India, whereas only 67 were born in the United States. However, it does sadden me to know that our kids are so out performed.
The next two facts bothered me as a college student because I wonder if I am wasting my time obtaining a degree (the answer to that, however is no). Jobs that are hot now were not hot 5 years ago. We are preparing our children for a world that does not exist. Sir Ken Robinson also made a similar reference to this in his presentation. The video also stated that we will go through more than a dozen jobs by the time we reach 38! I do not know about you, but if I go to a university and get a degree, I am not intending on changing jobs that often. We find so much wrong with one job instead of thinking about job security. What we need to ponder is how the computer is going to one day replace us all in the workforce.
The Internet boom is ridiculous. We rely on the Internet so much. What did we do before the Internet? I recall grabbing the encyclopedia for all of my information. Books were abundant with research but it is a thing of the past now. Google searches and Jeeves are the new way of researching. Honestly, if we could pull up what people search on these search engines, none of it would be relevant to us as a people nor would it be of any substance (who cares about who wore it the best or who is dating who in the celebrity world)!
As far as communication is concerned, we went from writing letters, to the telephone, now the cell phone (text messaging) and PDA/email. True enough, text messaging requires you to know how to spell but these days we have abbreviated phrases with OMG, TTYL, WTF, LMAO, etc. Spelling has gone out of the window because we are too lazy to say what we mean. How difficult is it to just say, "Talk to you later," or "Keep in touch?" We have relied on these new technological advances so heavily and done away with the old-fashioned way of doing things. This is making us one lazy world in my opinion.
Technology has progressed so much in such a small time frame. I took a class similar to this at Auburn only 3 years ago and we did not cover half of this. We made web pages but through Microsoft Access. It was not so technical as it is now.
The next two facts bothered me as a college student because I wonder if I am wasting my time obtaining a degree (the answer to that, however is no). Jobs that are hot now were not hot 5 years ago. We are preparing our children for a world that does not exist. Sir Ken Robinson also made a similar reference to this in his presentation. The video also stated that we will go through more than a dozen jobs by the time we reach 38! I do not know about you, but if I go to a university and get a degree, I am not intending on changing jobs that often. We find so much wrong with one job instead of thinking about job security. What we need to ponder is how the computer is going to one day replace us all in the workforce.
The Internet boom is ridiculous. We rely on the Internet so much. What did we do before the Internet? I recall grabbing the encyclopedia for all of my information. Books were abundant with research but it is a thing of the past now. Google searches and Jeeves are the new way of researching. Honestly, if we could pull up what people search on these search engines, none of it would be relevant to us as a people nor would it be of any substance (who cares about who wore it the best or who is dating who in the celebrity world)!
As far as communication is concerned, we went from writing letters, to the telephone, now the cell phone (text messaging) and PDA/email. True enough, text messaging requires you to know how to spell but these days we have abbreviated phrases with OMG, TTYL, WTF, LMAO, etc. Spelling has gone out of the window because we are too lazy to say what we mean. How difficult is it to just say, "Talk to you later," or "Keep in touch?" We have relied on these new technological advances so heavily and done away with the old-fashioned way of doing things. This is making us one lazy world in my opinion.
Technology has progressed so much in such a small time frame. I took a class similar to this at Auburn only 3 years ago and we did not cover half of this. We made web pages but through Microsoft Access. It was not so technical as it is now.
About Alexis D. Taylor
My name is Alexis Taylor. I am originally from Birmingham, Alabama. My major is Mathematics Secondary Education. I also did some of my undergraduate studies at Auburn University in Auburn (War Eagle)!!! When I chose math as my major I was not aware of how deep the subject could get but I am happy with my choice. Coming fresh out of high school, I believed that math was just some numbers, variables, graphs and easy calculations but I found out that I was so wrong once I moved past Calculus III. It has been difficult but whatever it takes to educate the future I am for it. I graduated from Huffman High School in 2003. I also attended the Alabama School of Fine Arts (ASFA) in downtown Birmingham, Alabama. My major was Math and Science but I only stayed for a semester because it was a very challenging school and I had no time to socialize. I missed being in the band and did I mention I had no time to socialize!!! At the time I thought of it as college; now looking back, I wish I would have stayed.
I owe my decision to pursue a math education degree to my high school Pre-Calculus/Trigonometry teacher Ms. Little. She has since passed away but her legacy lives on in me and in every one of her students that she taught. As I stated before, I am from Birmingham, Alabama and I attended Huffman High School which is a predominantly black Birmingham public school. I was fortunate enough to have two excellent math teachers while I was there. The lack of a sufficient math experience in high school led me to want to make a change. Inner city schools do not get the best and, therefore, deter students from wanting to learn especially math. I want to get our inner city students back in the classrooms eager to learn math and retain the information. When I was at Auburn I had an experience that changed my attitude. In one of my classes, we were talking about public vs. private schools, suburbs vs. inner city, etc. One of my classmates very blatantly blurted out that he would never teach in an inner city school and that he would only teach in Hoover, Alabama. This upset me because I felt like where I came from was not good enough. Our minority students need good teachers too. From that point on, I vowed to not chase the money but chase the dream of one day turning things around for my people. I am honestly one of those people who is not in the profession for monetary reasons but I could do it for little to no money and feel good about the difference I am making in someone's life. May be hard to believe because who would not want money especially during these times.
These times have not been all frowns for me however. I am a new mommy to a beautiful baby girl Chloe Marie. She is two months and it has been hard this past week trying to juggle her and school but I have to find that strength to make things work in my favor. She is my little bundle of joy and I cannot wait to teach her, you guessed it, MATH!!! Other than enjoying motherhood, I also have a love for music. While in middle school I decided to join the band. My instrument of choice...the flute. I continued this new found love on to high school and had I gone to a HBCU, I am sure I would have been marching in the Magic City Classics or screaming those famous chants. I chose Auburn University because I wanted to be exposed to more than just people who looked like me. It was time to diversify. Now I am at USA and I hope there will be great memories to be made here. I am looking forward to learning a different way to approach teaching mathematics. I can do some comparing and contrasting between the two universities and see which is better in my opinion.
I owe my decision to pursue a math education degree to my high school Pre-Calculus/Trigonometry teacher Ms. Little. She has since passed away but her legacy lives on in me and in every one of her students that she taught. As I stated before, I am from Birmingham, Alabama and I attended Huffman High School which is a predominantly black Birmingham public school. I was fortunate enough to have two excellent math teachers while I was there. The lack of a sufficient math experience in high school led me to want to make a change. Inner city schools do not get the best and, therefore, deter students from wanting to learn especially math. I want to get our inner city students back in the classrooms eager to learn math and retain the information. When I was at Auburn I had an experience that changed my attitude. In one of my classes, we were talking about public vs. private schools, suburbs vs. inner city, etc. One of my classmates very blatantly blurted out that he would never teach in an inner city school and that he would only teach in Hoover, Alabama. This upset me because I felt like where I came from was not good enough. Our minority students need good teachers too. From that point on, I vowed to not chase the money but chase the dream of one day turning things around for my people. I am honestly one of those people who is not in the profession for monetary reasons but I could do it for little to no money and feel good about the difference I am making in someone's life. May be hard to believe because who would not want money especially during these times.
These times have not been all frowns for me however. I am a new mommy to a beautiful baby girl Chloe Marie. She is two months and it has been hard this past week trying to juggle her and school but I have to find that strength to make things work in my favor. She is my little bundle of joy and I cannot wait to teach her, you guessed it, MATH!!! Other than enjoying motherhood, I also have a love for music. While in middle school I decided to join the band. My instrument of choice...the flute. I continued this new found love on to high school and had I gone to a HBCU, I am sure I would have been marching in the Magic City Classics or screaming those famous chants. I chose Auburn University because I wanted to be exposed to more than just people who looked like me. It was time to diversify. Now I am at USA and I hope there will be great memories to be made here. I am looking forward to learning a different way to approach teaching mathematics. I can do some comparing and contrasting between the two universities and see which is better in my opinion.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)