Assessment through the Student's Eyes

I really enjoyed reading this article.  I thought it had a lot of really good ideas about how to make each student to learn all that they are capable of.  There is so much to be said for students being their own teachers and letting students learn from their own mistakes.  I really like the idea of student regulated assessments.
I also really like the concept of getting each student to be on a winning streak.  As educators, isn't that our goal?  Don't we want every one of our students to be successful?  If we could truly get each and every one of our students on a winning streak, we would have such a great learning environment for out students.  It is amazing how impressisonable young kids are.  If we help them to believe that they really can do anything that they set their mind to, they will believe it and we will hae a lot of kids out there reaching their full potential.  Wouldn't that be awesome?
I loved the example of the fifth grade student getting to retake the test and earning a 100%.  That teacher definitely had the right idea when it came to assessment. It sounds like it was qutie the form that the students worked through, but it was obviously worth it in the end.  If we want our students to be the best they can be, we are going to have to do a little more work, but that is a sacrifice I am willing to make.  When we let students figure out for themselves what it is that they don't fully understand, they are going to be a lot more motivated to fix it themselves.  Kids get tired of being told all the time what it is that they are doing wrong.  If we let them figure it out on their own, they will feel accomplished because they could figure it out, and they will know what they personally need to do to fix the problem.
This was a really good article.  I liked a lot of what it had to say.  What did you guys think?

1-to-1 computer classrooms

I thought that this was a really interesting article.  I would definitely agree that a program like this can only be as effective as the teachers implementing it.  I think that is true of any program.  Nothing is going to be successful in the classroom if the teacher isn't wholeheartedly inolved in it and wants to see it succeed.  I think  this ideo of a 1-to-1 ratio of computers to students in the classroom could be a really good idea.  Like they talked about, one of the schools used the computers for difficult group projects. 
That is being very advanced in teaching strategies.  It is including technology in the classroom and encouraging working with peers.  There is a lot of value in that.  I can also see the downside of the computer ratio. It is a very costly idea and like was said in the article, is something that is extremely difficult to keep up with as times change.  How long will it be before laptops are obsolete and everyone has an Ipad or tablet?  Do we re-vamp the classrooms then to give each student an Ipad?  As much as I love the idea of each student getting to work on their own laptop and become more familiar with the technology culture that now surrounds them, I feel like it might be an idea that is both easier said than done and better in theory.  We can so easily fall into the trap that says that as long as we have technology, we are doing well.  If the technology isnt being used, than it serves no point and we might was well go back to the way that things used to be.  I think no matter what the new idea for technology-rich classrooms, the key to their success is the how involved the teachers are.  That puts a lot of pressure on us.  Do you think it is possible to make a seemingly unlikely program effective in your own classroom if the rest of the school doesn't do it well?

SMARTboards: Are they really worth it?

I thought this video and the following comments were really interesting.  The first thing that caught my attention in the video was the number of times the word easy was used.  It was really annoying, I thought.  And I am not a big fan of that word.  Teaching is hard work, and so is learning.  I understand that they meant it to mean that the smartboard was simple enough that both the students and the teachers could use it, but it would have been more effective to say that, rather than "easy"  seven mission times.  When I watched the video, that is the only thing that really caught my eye, but after reading the comments,  I see that there was a lot wrong with the video.  I definitely agree with the comments about it not really advancing the way we teach at all.  The kids were still sitting in their seats and not getting any chance to interact with the teacher or each other at all.  I think we often fall into the trap that says just because it is technology means it is a great advancement in the classroom.  But if we aer still using all the same methods we have used before, are we really changing the way the students learn?  Isn't that the goal as educators, to change the way a student thinks about the world around them?  I like the idea of having a class set of net books and a projector.  I think it would get more of the kids involved at a time.  Another really good comment was made in the comments.  When using the SMART board, the teacher's back was still to the classroom, making it hard to control the class.  True innovation is going to occur when a teacher can walk around the classroom and engage each and every student while they are teaching.  I don't really have a solution to this problem of using new "toys" to do the same old things, but I think it is a problem that should be addressed.  What do you guys think?

Does "Flipped Learning" really work?

For this blog assignment I spent some time wandering around on the eschoolnews website.  I found an article that I really liked about a new concept of teaching where learning is done at home and the homework is done in the classroom.  The link for the article can be found here :http://www.eschoolnews.com/2012/02/09/a-first-hand-look-inside-a-flipped-classroom/?   This idea of "flipped learning" really had me intrigued.  It is this idea that rather than having a teacher in the classroom lecture, students are given an Ipad and told to watch 15-20 minute lectures from their own homes.  After watching the lecture, students take assessments that help the teacher to see where the kids are at and what needs to be worked on in class.  The teacher can look at the scores each day before school to get an idea of who needs help with what. During the day, then, students are given their assignments to work on based on what they learned the night before.
There are definitely advantages and disadvantages to this system, but I think it is a great idea.  We talked about something very similar to this in my EDPS 362 class recently.  We tried to figure out if actually having a computer teach the class could be a viable option.  And although I don't think we can ever totally replace teachers, technology is becoming more and more important in our society and we have to know how to use it.  The idea that  kids can monitor their own learning from their homes is a great concept.  One might worry that kids won't actually watch the lectures and thus, won't learn anything.  While I think that could be an issue, the article says that most kids were very excited about watching the lectures.  I also think it provides a very unique opportunity that lets parents be actively involved in what their child is learning.
Also, by working in the classroom, the teacher is readily available for questions.  Kids don't have to come in for extra help, because that is what is going to be happening throughout the day.  I love the idea that kids can ask the questions they have right when they have them rather than waiting until the next day to try and figure out what it was that was confusing them.
I don't think that this kind of instruction is always going to work or that it is possible for every school to teach this way.  That is a really unrealistic way of looking at this idea.  However, I think there is a lot of value in changing up the way we teach on a regular basis to truly be the best teachers we can be (as cheesy as that sounds.)  When we keep up with what actually holds our students' attention, we are going to be very effective teachers who are always working to help our students to learn in the best possible way.

Student-friendly objectives

Writing student-friendly learning objectives is so important.  Like he said in the article, it makes a big difference in whether or not a student learns what it is they are supposed to learn.  If students know ahead of time what they are supposed to learn, it is a lot easier for them know when they have reached their goals.  When kids can see that they have learned what they are supposed to, they will have a great sense of accomplishment.  I think the biggest help technology can be is the amount of information on the internet.  Writing student-friendly objectives is difficult, but with lots of examples on the internet, we, as teachers, can see good ways to go about writing objectives that will make sense.  Also, if we are lucky enough to have smartboards in our classrooms, we can use that technology as well.  We can write the objectives on the smartboard and work with students to help them understand the objective.  If there is something that the students still don't understand, we can work through it as a class, on the smartboard, to word it in a way that the students understand.

Tech Trends to watch in 2012

I think this was a really well written article.  I think the author had a lot of valid points about what, as future educators, we are going to have to deal with.  I would like to be naive enough to think that as an elementary school teacher I won't have to deal with cell phones and students bringing their own computers, but lets be honest, that might not happen.  I don't really see how a third grader is going to need to bring an IPad to school with him, but times may be changing faster than even I can think.  In a world where more and more people are reading a book on some sort of e-reader and not in print, how do you encourage a student to bring a book to read and then tell them they can't have their IPad?  I think it is important for teachers to have a basic understanding of all the technology that is entering into main-stream society.  While I don't really plan on teaching with and IPad, I want to know how it works so that when a student in my class is using one I can be understanding of that and not just assume he is using it to do something wrong. 
As far as cell phones go, I personally think it is riduculous how early kids get cell phones now.  I didn't get one until I was a junior in high school; and even then I didn't have texting until a month before I left for college when I started to pay for it myself.  But as ridiculous as I think it is, I can't stop parents from buying their elementary school aged children a phone.  In a high school I have seen where teachers have done polls on-line through texting, but I just don't see that being necessary in an elementary school. 
I do think it is important to know how to teach using technology such as an ELMO and/or projector connected to a computer.  I think kids can learn a lot when teachers take the time to put together a presentation that caters to what the students in their classroom enjoy.  Not everything can be taught from a powerpoint or document camera, but kids need to get used to that kind of learning because it isn't going away.  It is only going to continue to be prevelant in classrooms at all levels of education.
I also really like the idea of "Social Learning."  I think it is so valueable to have students work with each other to solve a problem.  There is so much to be learned in that situation.  Kids are so much more likely to listen to a peer than a teacher who they think doesn't understand them as a student.  I definitely want to integrate this kind of learning into my classroom when I am teacher.  I want to encourage social skills but also see what the kids in my class best respond to so that I can begin to use some of those same teaching styles.  I think I can learn just as much from my students as they can learn from me.

Technology in Education

I honestly can't say that I had great access to technology in my schooling.  I learned how to type in Elementary School and then again in middle school, but I never took a computer class in high school.  Although I feel like I used the computers a lot, but it was mostly just for writing papers and the occasional powerpoint presentation.  And even at that, we never had a full lesson on how to make  the best powerpoint.  The one thing that I still use, technology-wise, from high school are the onlice databases that help to create works cited pages for papers.  I still find that very helpful.  Now that I am in college, a lot more teachers are using discussion boards or blogs online, which is something I am not used to, but I think it is a really effective way to share ideas within a large classroom.  I am looking forward to using that kind of technology.  As an elementary school teacher I know I am going to have to keep up with the ever-changing technology.  Kids have shorter and shorter attention spans now than they did even just five years ago.  So, in order to keep the attention of the kids in my classroom, I will have to know how to efffectively use things like a doc-cam or elmo for large class learning.  I am also going to be learning how to use prezi in one of my classes, so I think that could be a really effective cool.  I also think that I will need to have a really good knowledge of things like an iPad or tablet so that if any of my students feel the need to use one, I can control the use of it the best I can.  Hopefully, in an elementary school classroom I won't have to deal with a bunch of the kids having cell phones or ipad's but times are changing and I have a feeling that by the  time I am running my own classroom I will have a lot more of those things to contend with.