Chapter 5 of Rethinking

I found this chapter to be very interesting.  This chapter is probably the chapter that has changed my thinking the most so far.  I started out this class and reading this chapter with a somewhat negative perspective on “nontraditional schools” including home schooling and virtual schools.  This chapter however changed my thinking for the better.  It proved to me that these schools can be just as good or even better than our standard public schools.  When students learn in these “nontraditional” ways, they have more control of their learning and I feel like they really get out of it what they put in.  And although my overall opinion on these types of schooling has become more positive, I do still believe that we need both public schools and “nontraditional” schools, because not all students are the same and learn the same ways.  I believe that certain students will do better in each school.  Sometimes the traditional public way is what is best for a certain student, but also there are students who do better with these “nontraditional” ways. 

                As a future teacher, I plan to use this in my teaching to help my students realize this same thing that I realized from reading this chapter: that different students learn better in different ways and different schools.  This is important to me because I remember that as a young student, my classmates and I would often stereotype or categorize all students who were homeschooled as “weird” or “different” from us, and that homeschooling was a bad thing.  As a teacher, I hope to steer my students away from these thoughts and show them that neither school is better or worse, just better or worse for each individual. 

Chapter 6 - Blogs

I found this chapter of reading to be a pretty controversial section.  Even as I read this section, I found myself shifting positions on how I feel about the “Social Web.”  I do agree with statement that almost everything on the web is becoming more and more social.  As a regular internet user, I do use Facebook and delicious, but refuse to use Twitter.  It is not that I think Facebook doesn’t have any faults, because I don’t agree with many of things that go with it, but I do think that between Facebook and Twitter, Facebook is the less of two evils.  I do not like Twitter because I feel that it is just a huge gossip chain.  Many people use Twitter to follow what others are doing, especially celebrities, and I guess this probably is a great thing for those of us who are obsessed with celebrities and their opinions, but as a common U.S. citizen, I find that some things don’t need to be shared with everyone around the world.  I see Twitter as more of a form of stalking than anything else. 

As a future teacher, I do not plan to use social networking sites in my classroom.  I feel that these sites do have some great advantages to them, but also many scary things come along with these sites.  And as a teacher, I will not introduce my students, or require them to use something that could be potentially harmful, or that I do not agree with myself. 

Exit Slip 10/7

Today in class, we started off by having the chapter presentations.  My group presented today on chapter 4.  It was very nerve racking, but I think we did good.  Next, we talked about the iRLo lesson that is due for next week.  I am pretty nervous about this lesson, but also intrigued all at the same time.  Creating this lesson will be something new to me and probably hard to get started, but I am hopeful that it will be fun and it allows me to be creative.  I am also very relieved that Professor Boyer will be going deeper into this assignment more next week. I can’t wait to go home and download it and start “playing around on it.”

Chapter 4 Presentation

Today my group presented chapter 4 to the class.  I was very nervous to do this because it was a difficult chapter for me to get into and I felt very stressed this week because of this presentation and other exams and projects I had do. 

                As a whole, I was pleased with our presentation, and felt like we did a good job presenting and conducting our activity. And although I was afraid that they wouldn’t become engaged with what we were doing, I liked that our peers actually seemed to get into what we were talking about.

                Another thing that I really liked about the presentation process in this class was how we as a class debriefed immediately after we were done presenting.  I thought it was helpful for us as the presenters to get immediate feedback on how we did.  Some of the things our peers commented on about our presentation, is that we did a good job using smart notebook, encouraging thinking, and diffusing our time and speaking.  Some of the things they felt that we could work on, was speaking up, how we group or peers (not doing it in rows), and setting expectations for how we want our groups to do and use their time.  These comments and suggestions really help me because it really made me think about our presentation from the students’ point of views.  I took notes on all of the comments they made, and I plan to incorporate them into my future presentations.           

        Even though I was nervous for this presentation, and we did find out things that we need to work on, I had fun doing this and learned a lot about my presenting techniques. 

Chapter 4 Rethinking

Today’s chapter talked a lot about the history of education and our American schools.  Although I found this chapter to be kind of dry, and hard to stay focused.  Although it gave us a lot of information, I found it hard to stay focused on what I was reading and felt like it was one of the more boring chapters that we read so far.  It was very informational and got me thinking about how our educational system and schools have changed in history.  I also thought a lot about the bullets on pages 60 and 61 that included: Compulsory attendance, graded schools, tests, textbooks, Carnegie units, and comprehensive high schools.  While thinking about these bullets, I considered them each individually and how each one was both a great thing, but could also be changed or tweaked somehow to make the school system better in one or more ways. 

            As a future teacher, I plan to incorporate what I have learned from this reading by always trying to remember where our education system has evolved from, and that change can be a good thing.  I think that great teachers don’t just follow the rules and examples laid out before them, but they take things to the next level, being extraordinary and sometimes for the common good of educating learners, they change things.  That is why I have taken the following message from this reading.. change is okay!

Blogs, Wikis, Chapter 5

In the second reading today, we learned a lot about what an RSS is. I had actually never heard of this term before and when I started reading the chapter I was very confused as to what it really was. I was surprised to learn that an RSS actually brings information to you, instead you always having to go to many different websites to get your information. This kind of reminded me of our delicious account but it seems to be smaller and more hands on, in that, you can’t have as much information and it is more accessible with one click.  One major thing that I really like about this chapter is that it goes through the process of how to have and use RSS.  This is very beneficial because I probably would not have tried an RSS without these easy to use instructions of how to set one up and how to navigate through them.

            As a future teacher I know that I will use RSS to organize my resources because after reading this, I have actually already went and created my own on iGoogle.  And although I have not begun to fully use it on a regular base yet, I feel like I will use this a lot just because it is very convenient and even setting it up was easy to do! As a teacher, I can see how this would be a very beneficial way to organize your resources for your classes, so that they are more convenient and you can access them more easily. 

Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts Chapter 4

Today’s reading really opened my eyes to some possibilities of using technology in the classroom.  I enjoy this class, but I find myself often times being very skeptical about some of the stuff we learn about and I am not sure I neccesarily believe in using so much technology in the classrooms.  Don’t get me wrong I think we need to use and teach technology in our schools, but I am not sure exactly how I feel about how much to use.  I liked this reading because it helped me to understand some of the real positives of using technology in the classrooms.  We have been learning about Wikis and how to use them, but it wasn’t until in the reading they used an example of having the class use the wiki to create a virtual textbook. I really liked this idea because it not only has the kids use technology but I think it will be more fun for them, and it is great to have kids create something like that because they have the ability to put things into their own words and they can feel good about the work they have done.
As a future teacher, I am almost positive I will use this example in my own classrooms.  I also feel that it would maybe be fun to have your students create this virtual textbook and use it to teach another grade or classroom what they have learned.  After this reading I finally feel like I truly believe there is some good of using technology in the classrooms.