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Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Free Post...
Tell me about your final project/portfolio..how is it coming along? Do you have any problems?To be honest I haven't had much time to work on my final project and the portfolio. With the weekly assignments and the blog, along with work from all my other classes, all I have been able to do is the work thats been assigned to be passed in. I have done the first lesson plan, which is an internet workshop, along with the actual handout that will be passed out to the students to do the internet workshop. I have also started the overview/narrative for the final project and I signed up for the date that I will present. I'm still not quite sure what activity I will present for the class. The internet workshop is all finished and ready to do, but it isn't as exciting as the Amusement Park ride that I'm planning to finish the unit on the digestive system. I've been able to explore the SketchIt program a bit, but I haven't written the lesson plan or designed the handout for the students yet. I think it would be really neat to present the Amusement Park ride activity to the class because it covers a program that we won't be covering in class (and a program that I think is super fun). I've also decided to try and incorporate the Inspirations! program, mainly because it has an excellent template for structure/functions that I can definitely use in the Digestive System Unit. I'm debating whether or not I want to tie it into the Internet Workshop, the Amusement Park Ride activity, or make it a lesson plan all on its own. I think that the best way to incorporate it would be during the middle of the unit as a lesson on its own, but I don't think I'll have to time to create a whole new lesson plan. Time Time Time!! I need more time :)I haven't had time to work on my portfolio either, other than the small amounts that we have done in class creating the actual page and titles. I'm still somewhat wary as to what to write for a paragraph on the different title pages, but that will be something that I'll have to sit down and really think about. I have been trying to figure out which project should go where and I have attached a couple of projects already. I'm looking forward to having more time in class, rather than weekly projects to work on both the final project and the portfolio.

Thursday, April 1, 2010

The Reluctant Learner...
"How will you handle the reluctant learner? This week, we talked about the learner and learning styles. We addressed the fact that there are many different ways to reach students. For this week's blog, I want to give you a fictional situation. You are the teacher of an 8th grade English class. Your class is reading the novel "Huck Finn" by Mark Twain. You have a student named Renee in your class that has some significant challenges. She is living in her 3rd foster family in the past 4 years having been removed from her birth family because of severe neglect. She has been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder and is receiving speech and language services for a speech/language disorder where she has a difficult time processing what you are saying to her (receptive language). You do note that she has a significant strength in math. You have assigned the class the task of creating a keynote presentation that highlights the main events from each chapter. You have broken the class into groups of 3. Each group has 4 chapters they need to present. Their task is to find a picture online that could possibly illustrate an event or character in that chapter and to note the most important events of the chapter. When this project is complete, your hope is that you can put all of the chapters together and have a keynote summary of the text. Renee is working with a girl named Liz who is a straight A student and a boy name Josh who is the class clown. Renee is refusing to engage with the other members of the group. She says that the activity is "stupid" and she doesn't like the other two members of her group. What do you do? What action do you take to try to get Renee to engage?"First of all, putting an attention deficit disorder child in a group with the class clown is a really bad idea. Josh, the class clown, will most likely distract Renee and make things that much harder for her. Renee also may be intimidated by Liz, who is obviously a better worker than she is. Although Liz may be able to supplement/aide Renee, Renee is to much affected by other people to find that helpful. Instead, she probably sees Liz as not only intimidating, but a constant reminder that she is inadequate. It is important for Renee to experience teamwork, but it is especially hard to make her work with others at this time. Renee has not felt kindness or love from other people, so she will probably feel that nobody cares and the everybody is against her rather than helping her. Renee also has a hard time understanding what you say to her, so it would be very important that you supplied her with a written copy of the instructions. A bulleted list of what she needs to do to accomplish the project might help her see the big picture. I think a better idea for Renee would be for her to work independentaly on her own work, and then when she is done she can present her work to the other members of the group. To provide some socialization/team work, she can discuss with her group how she can incorporate her own independent work with the work of the other two members. Renee has a strength in math, so instead of presenting the material using a bulleted list or paragraph summary like the other kids will do, it might be easier for her if she did something like a timeline or graph. Its essential to find some way to incorporate her strength of math into the project to make it less challenging for her to do and to get her more engaged. By allowing her to do something that she is good at instead of something like a Keynote presentation which will further show her ADD and speech/language disorder, she is more likely to be engaged and enjoy doing the work. Also, when she finally completes the work, she will feel more proud of herself for doing a good job then she would if she provided a project that wasn't up to par. Instead of working with Keynote, Renee could design a timeline of events over the four chapters or create a graph that shows specific parts of each chapter. For example, the graph could contain categories like characters involved, setting, conflict, resolution, and exciting events. After doing the graph, either by hand or using the computer, the members of her group could incorporate it into the Keynote presentation. This allows Renee to be a participant of the group without being distracted by them or having to communicate verbally a lot to with them (she can communicate visually instead). Lastly, you need to be extra sensitive with Renee. She has been neglected and she has a hard and unstable home environment. You should take into consideration that the content material might be too much for her to handle at the moment, or that some of the things that Huck Fin may be going through in the book rings too close to home for her. It's important that you give her extra support with the project, maybe providing extra time outside of class for her to come in and work on it together with you. You should be sensitive and understanding, and never ever get impatient with her.

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Are Online Games Harmful or Helpful to Education...
"Are online games helpful or harmful to education? Why do you feel this way? Find an article online about educational games that supports your argument. Provide a link for it in your blog and a response to the article."I believe that online games are extremely helpful to education. My main supportive fact for this argument is that online games provide a way for students to learn while having fun. There are so many games that are available online that provide ways for students to learn more about a variety of subject material, including physics, health sciences, vocabulary and writing skills, along with an immense number of math related games. Last semester I was placed at Bangor Christian Middle School with an instructor who taught 7-9 science and pre-algebra. She was mainly a science teacher and she was stuck with a random math class that was out of her comfort zone. However, she was extremely open-minded to different ways of learning and in her science classes she used labs to create motivation for students so she sought a way to create motivation in her math class as well. At least once a week she would break the students up into groups (either by skill level or by mixing skill levels so that the high achievers could help the struggling students) and created stations throughout the classroom. At least one station would incorporate an online game that she would project using the SmartBoard and the students would be able to play on the big screen. The students absolutely loved using the online games and learned more than they would have if they were just given worksheets of equations. More often than not the students would fight to stay at the station longer and complain when they had to move on so the next group could have a turn.I've also experienced a multiplayer online role playing game as a student in an Advanced Math class. Motivation was extremely down, mainly due to the subject matter and the fact that almost half of the class would be leaving early because they were seniors and had the last two weeks of school off for their finals and graduation walking practice. Instead of giving a final cumulative exam that covered the entire year (which had been interrupted for over a month for the Juniors to undergo an intensive SAT math prep program- it was the year that Maine made the SATs the junior level standardized test), the teacher decided to assign a huge project that would be created using the program Teen SecondLife. Using SecondLife we had to create our own houses using geometric shapes and textures. This program integrated business (our teacher had his own beauty salon that actually made him real life money by creating and selling nail designs that rich women would purchase for their avatars), geometry, engineering, geography, communication skills, art and technology. This program allowed the students to learn so much more than we would have if we just had stayed with the textbook. Although the content material was not identical with what the textbook covered, we still learned a massive amount of geometry and engineering skills, along with a whole new technology skill using the program. We were not only learning and having fun while doing it, but motivated to work on the project during study halls and after school! After we finished our house that was complete with color schemes, full bathrooms (luxury bathtubs included), designer kitchens and living rooms, and our ideal personal bedrooms (what student doesn't want the ability to design a perfect bedroom!) we were so proud of our projects that we tried to show them to as many people as possible. I think that online games are an excellent way to introduce students to new topics or support material that's being covered in class. They boost motivation and allow teachers to integrate several subjects, while giving students a chance to work on computers. However, online games do need to be carefully monitored- the games that students are playing should be content-related, educational, and appropriate. Students should also only be playing the games when the teacher deems it appropriate, and not during lectures or other class periods. Online games are only harmful to education when they serve as distractions to the students rather than supporters and motivators of their learning. The article that I chose supports multiplayer online role-playing games like SecondLife for education. It states that it boosts motivation and supports a varied assortment of learning requirements from geography to engineering. Programs like SecondLife also provide a way for students from all over the world to interact and learn from each other. Students from the study included in the article stated that the online role-playing game helped them to develop an awareness to natural resource decision making, benefited their team building skills, and supported their electronic communication skills. The study states that online games could provide training and learning in groups in a wide range of subjects areas. Link to Article:"Online Gaming as an Educational Tool in Learning and Training"http://web.ebscohost.com.prxy5.ursus.maine.edu/ehost/pdf?vid=10&hid=106&sid=2509330f-5ab2-4fd3-9030-3d2386d7373c%40sessionmgr112( I don't' know if this will work or not because it was a PDF document)

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Class Progress...
"Please let me know how you feel you are doing in the class so far. Is there anything that you are struggling with? Is there anything you would like to learn about that we haven't learned yet? What are some things that you have learned from this class? How are you planning to put these things to use in your teaching? Is there anything I can do as a teacher to better support your learning?"The class has been extremely interesting so far and I think that I am doing fairly well with my assignments. Although I wish that I did not have to come to Husson every time I wanted to do my homework, I've still enjoyed the work that we have done and I have learned a lot. The first two assignments were things that I had done before, but had done through the use of different programs such as PowerPoint. I'm not quite sure if I prefer Keynote to PowerPoint yet, but it was very easy to use and I enjoyed the simplicity of it. The templates that Pages provides are amazing and I'm excited to explore with the different lesson plan templates when I become a full time teacher. I've been curious about the GarageBand program ever since I first saw it as a student in the ninth grade, but my teachers never allowed us to use it or even try figuring out what it was. I was super excited when we got to explore the program and create a song, although I would have preferred picking a poem of my choice (I'm quite partial to the sonnets of William Shakespeare!). I think that I might struggle with the most recent assignment, the digital story, because I have never used anything similar to the IMovie program. I'm finding it difficult to organize my thoughts into a storyboard and bringing all of the pictures together to create 'emotional content'. I normally don't organize my work into something like a storyboard, and I probably would find it much easier just to do it rather than outlining everything out first. If its ok, I will probably do the storyboard after everything else is done, because thats how my mind works (please let me know if thats ok?!! I really need to get all of the pictures first before I can figure out a storyboard, so I definitely will have a hard time having that done for Tuesday). I would have loved to do something super controversial, because I tend to get extremely passionate when I argue for something that I believe in and that correlates into great emotional content. However, I'm going home this weekend to visit with my grandmother and I'm hoping to get some great old black and white pictures to add to my IMovie to add more emotion. I think coming up with a song will be more difficult then I want it to be, because I'm quite the perfectionist when it comes to things like that (I'll want it to be 'just right'). I'm thinking about maybe even creating my own song using the GarageBand program, but we'll see how much time I actually have! I'm not quite sure that I will have as much done as is expected for Tuesday (especially the storyboard!), mainly because I need to go home (four hours north) in order to get a lot of the pictures that I need, but I'm sure I will have it done by the due date. I think I'm also going to struggle big time with the online portfolio project. I think that its a great program, but I just don't know enough about the ISTE-NETS to be able to connect the assignments with them. I think it would help a lot if we took time in class to go over each standard and what exactly they mean. I don't know how to write a description about each standard if I'm not quite clear on what they mean. The entire aspect of the content of the portfolio confuses me a bit, but I am extremely glad that we are doing it so we can be better prepared for our online portfolios during student teaching seminar. I love the fact that examples are available for almost every assignment. The IMovie example was simply amazing (by the way, I absolutely love Steven Curtis Chapman, and I saw him play that song live! It was amazing :) ) and I'm glad that I actually got to view one before I was assigned the project. I'm also excited about exploring with the Sketch program for my final project. I loved creating things using SecondLife in high school and this seems like the perfect way to create a 3D amusement park ride. I think that I'm also going to incorporate the Inspirations program into my final project as well, possibly as part of the Internet workshop or a follow-up activity before the students are expected to do the Ride project. There are so many different programs available on the Macs that I've never seen before, and I'm excited to explore the ones that we won't be covering in class. In my future classroom I hope to incorporate what I've learned so far in this class as much as possible. I definitely hope to have a SmartBoard in my classroom, not just for my benefit but for the students as well. Its great that whatever you write on the SmartBoard can be uploaded to the Internet, because that is such a great resource for students to go to. I fully agree with Authentic Lessons, especially when it comes to science. High school students ask 'why will we ever need this in the real world' more often then not, and authentic lessons almost completely prevent that. As a hopeful future human anatomy teacher authentic lessons will be essential to creating an exciting classroom environment. I hope to do plenty of diagnostic work with the students, because you have to be knowledgeable in how the body systems work normally before you can understand how they can be dysfunctional. Microbiology is also a great subject to create authentic lessons, and I hope to use the SmartBoard to help me with microscope projections. Nothing irritates a student more then when they are trying to find something on a slide using a microscope and they have no idea what they are looking for. By projecting the teacher's slide, everybody knows what they are looking for and how to get there. I think Pages, Keynote and the Inspiration program will be great for student projects and as learning tools. I think GarageBand might be a little bit harder to incorporate, but I'm sure that I'll find some way to use it!

Monday, February 15, 2010

Authentic Learning..
First, give your overall impressions of this model of learning. Be observant of how the technology is used as a tool in this kindergarten classroom. What different applications or devices were utilized? What were some ways you saw the teachers using technology with their students? How did this support learning?First of all, I think that this model of learning is absolutely wonderful and that every single classroom should use it, if not all of the time, at least once a week! This model of learning completely exhibits the authentic lessons idea, in that everything that students do in the classroom should reflect upon an authentic experience that happens in the real world. I hope to incorporate this type of learning in my own classroom, although it will be a little harder to do with high school science then it is in a kindergarten classroom. I love the idea that everything the students do in the class is connected to every single subject (its the ideal complete integrated classroom!). The trip to Brazil lesson incorporated math skills, technology skill, geography skills, writing skills, hands-on art creation, social skills and science! The students were not only learning something from every subject domain, but they were having fun doing it. Each student was generally interested in what they were doing, because it corresponded to something they could do in real life. I also feel that this type of lesson planning is great because it makes learning fun for the students. First of all, it is essential that students take a huge part in lesson planning in order to keep them interested in the learning and for them to feel that learning is fun. This classroom gives the power to the students, in that the students' curiosity is responsible for everything they do. A lesson is created by student questions and the teachers find ways to integrate all of the subjects into that student question. Instead of just writing about anything to practice sentence structure and letter formation, the students write in journals about an experience one of their classmates had. The students are not only taught new information, but are taught how to learn. The students in the class are not expected to go to adults to find the answers, but to find the answers themselves using resources around the classroom. This is great in establishing the basis for self-mediated learning. It is also essential that students feel free in expressing themselves and have fun learning, and this classroom supports this amazingly. The students are not expected to do everything right, but just to try and have fun trying. Students are amazed that they are actually writing and are having fun doing it, rather than being lectured every time that they spell a word wrong or write a letter incorrectly. This reflects upon my blog last week in that students should be allowed to make mistakes, because they learn from them and have more fun in the learning process. This type of learning is so important in our society today because it builds self-esteem rather than tearing it down, which is essential when so many of our students suffer from extremely low self-worth. The use of technology in this classroom was absolutely wonderful and astounding for a kindergarten classroom. The teachers took something basic like Show And Tell that is used in almost every early childhood classroom and made it special, by giving the child who is sharing a microphone. They also used a SmartBoard which is a great tool, especially for kindergartners who can get messy when dealing with markers and chalk. The SmartBoard also allowed for manipulation of whatever they were writing (pulling the letter d onto the letter b to show that they were different), which is impossible when using a marker or chalk board. The SmartBoard also allowed projection of the Internet onto a large screen, making group work much easier (everybody can see everything) and a lot cheaper than having a laptop for every student. I love how the used the Internet to teach the children how to use the resources they are given to find answers to their questions- for example they used dictionary.com to look up a word instead of the teacher just giving them the answer. During the Brazil trip lesson, the students also role played using telephones to reflect upon the communication between an airplane pilot and the airport/weather station.

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Creativity in Schools...
"Do you agree or disagree with Sir Robinson? In the video, he makes some pretty serious statements such as "I feel creativity should be as important as literacy in today's schools." Do you agree or disagree with this statement. Why or why not? What have your experience with creativity been in the past? How do you express yourself?"The first thing that I would like to reflect upon concerning Sir Robinson's speech is his statement that "All kids have tremendous talents, and we squander them". I completely and utterly agree with this statement. I feel that all students have talents, but the majority of them are not in the areas that we consider 'important'. So many students are talented in the art and trades like carpentry and machine tool, but these subjects are barely covered in our school systems. Schools look at students who are three grades below their reading/writing levels, or extremely behind in math and see them as 'unintelligent, untalented children', when in reality most of the are exceedingly talented in other things. For example, I know of a student that is pretty average academically (she maintains a B average or so), but she captures the interest of every single person in the audience when she is on the dance floor. I also know of a former classmate who has extreme literacy problems, but is making amazing money (more than I will as a teacher!) as an underwater welder. When our schools do not support talents other than those in English, math and the sciences, we are leading these students (often the majority) into thinking that their talents are nothing of importance. I love Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences, because it supports the fact that everybody is intelligent at something!I love Ken's statement about children that 'if they don't know, they'll take a go'. Children are always guessing at things, because they do not have the knowledge yet to know the right answer. Children use their imagination to come up with the answer to something that they do not quite yet understand. Our schools, however, frown upon the use of imagination to reason something- they want 'critical thinking' skills instead. They put so much pressure on students to be right, that slowly this wonderful skill of imagination is dead, with logical thinking in its place. In order to keep creativity, it is important not to concentrate so much on the 'right' answer, but the fact that they thought of an answer and were courageous enough to take the risk on it. Giving a wrong answer, or even just an answer that is different from the norm, opens the eyes of people. When the first person suggested that the earth might be round, everybody thought he was wrong, but in the process he opened the eyes of others to get them thinking. This is an extremely important process that we need for the future- people need to open their minds to possibilities that are not possible yet! Students need to feel that it is OK to be wrong and that sometimes wrong answers turn out to be not-so-wrong. Even if the students are wrong, it should be stressed that people learn from their mistakes and they grow as a person. If you never made mistakes you would not know what it would be like to learn. Everybody has a different way of thinking and brains work in different ways. One of my best friends in high school had a thought process that was extremely different then everybody else. In physics, she would often times come up with the right answer but she had used the most original means of getting that answer. The method that she used could have been viewed as 'wrong' by the teacher because it was not what we were supposed to do, even though she did have the right answer at the end. Students should feel comfortable enough in their classroom environments to feel that it is OK to think differently and OK to be wrong sometimes. To be wrong means that you will ultimately learn from your mistake, and eventually be right. To be comfortable with being wrong means that you will take chances and risks. All scientists and engineers need to be comfortable with being wrong, because the majority of the time they are! To make our students believe that they need to be right all the time, diminishes their risk taking and subsequently squanders their imagination and creativity. They are too scared to think 'out of the box' or come up with something that the world views as out of the norm or impossible. If we continue to make our students believe that wrong answers are bad ones, then we are killing the next generation of engineers, scientists, doctors, authors and all other careers that need imagination. I also completely agree with his theory of academic inflation. I feel that our society stresses way too much on the importance of getting a college education. In all honesty, I feel that I could have became a successful teacher without going through four years of college. Being in the classroom learning about how to do your job has suddenly become more important than actually being out in the field practicing the job itself. People learn from doing, not memorizing and taking tests on how to do. Our schools are built upon the idea that they need to educate students in order for them to be successful in college. Rather, I think our schools should educate to create well-rounded exceptional human beings instead. Our world would be a much kinder place if we emphasized the importance of human behavior more than human achievement. I completely agree with all aspects of Ken's statements, including the statement that he thinks creativity is just as important as literacy. In reality, we would not have literacy without creativity. Someone had to come up with the letters to the alphabet, and that required original thought. All writers are writers because they are creative and have original thought, or else nothing new would ever be published. We expect our students to write creative stories, but limit their imagination and creativity by giving them constant boundaries and telling them what is right or wrong. We put so much emphasis on grammar, but its the fact that the student is expressing themselves that is important. Many famous authors have absolutely horrible grammar. What attracts people to new books is the plot point, the creativity of the story itself, not how the sentences are structured. Fortunately, my education provided me with ways to express myself other than in the form of writing and academics. I enjoyed being 'different' unlike most students and I was able to experience gifted and talented classes, which always sought out to harbor our inner creativity. The gifted and talented students were able to put on plays and create inventions like Rube Goldberg machines. Unfortunately it was only the students who excelled in the 'regular' academics of English and math that were allowed to experience other ways to express yourself. In reality, the students who needed that other means of expression to boost their self-esteem by possibly finding something that they excelled in, were trapped in the classroom doing what they did not excel in. However, they were allowed to join band in fourth grade. I began to play the flute and explored other instruments until our band class was dropped due to finances when I was a senior. The most important class that I feel I took my entire high school career was drama. That year they had an extra slot open during the day for the juniors because they had dropped an SAT preparation class, so they put all juniors into two drama classes. We explored famous plays and were taught how to express our emotions on stage. At the end of the year we put on a play for the entire school, which each member of the class participating in some way (the one student who did not want to be on stage, controlled the lights and camera). I feel that every student should have to take a drama class at some point in their education. Drama teaches you how to deal with your emotions and put pain/negative emotions towards growth and positivity. The arts and shop classes allow those students who do not excel academically to find something that they do excel in, an important thing to find during your adolescent years when you are searching for your identity.

Friday, January 29, 2010

Technology Experiences...
"Reflect on your own experiences using technology for learning. What technologies were used when you were a student and how were they used? How were technology-related skills taught to you as a student? What was emphasized? What skills and knowledge do you already possess to help you meet the challenges of effectively integrating technology into instruction. How did you learn those skills?"
To be honest, my first experience with computer technology was extremely horrible. My pre-kindergarten classroom was equipped with some of the first classroom computers. These computers weren't very complex- they had a screen, a power button, and three choice buttons (A, B, and C). They were pretty much a computerized example of a multiple choice exam; the computer would show you a question concerning a picture, pattern, or word and you would have to press the button representing the choice with the correct answer. I used this computer maybe once or twice with the help of my teachers with no problems. However, this soon came to an abrupt end when I observed two of my classmates using the computer to do their work. It was the end of the school day and everybody was already lined up and some were even boarding the bus, but these two students were not because they had not finished their work yet. In reality, these two students were probably getting picked up by their parents and just playing on the computers while waiting, but I thought that they missed the bus because of the computers and were now stuck at school. I conceived an absurd conclusion that if you used the computers you would not be allowed to go home, therefore developing an extreme paranoia and refusing to touch any of the computers for the remainder of the pre-k year.
My kindergarten year the school supplied the classroom with eight new computers. These were extremely similar to the computers we have now, other than the fact that there was no access to the Internet. After many bribes from my mother, including a Lion King poster (it was my favorite movie at the time), I finally began using the computers again. We mainly played pattern games using a variety of shapes to make up a picture or practiced our typing with the "Touch Typing" program. We continued using the "Touch Typing" program to enhance our typing skills throughout first and second grade. Teachers insisted on our fingers always being on the "home-row keys" and some students even received detention when they were caught 'pecking' instead of using the "home-row keys" technique. From third to sixth grade we had 'lab time', in which the entire class went to the lab and played educational games (Carmen Sandiago was extremely popular) or worked on creative stories using word processing. I was not a part of bilingual class, but those that were used the Rosetta Stone program as well. On a personal note, sixth grade brought with it our first home computer that could access the Internet, introducing a world of online gaming, e-mails, downloadable music, and chatrooms.
In seventh grade we moved from the elementary school to the middle/high school. The middle school wing had their own computer lab, which was used for the same things as before along with the new addition of the Internet. Now we were able to research and play games on the Internet, along with using a translation program for our french class. There was also a mandatory year-long class that taught us how to create professional letters and business documents, along with more practice with typing accuracy and speed. That year a member of my class broke the school record with a typing speed of 108 words per minute, a characteristic of the new 'chatroom' generation. Eighth grade was the biggest turn around- all of the seventh graders got their own laptops through the Laptop Initiative Program. Although my grade did not receive laptops at first, we began to experience changes in our classrooms. Teachers went from using overhead projectors to PowerPoint Presentations and Internet projects were assigned on a regular basis. The emphasis on how to correctly use a computer and how to type correctly was finally gone. The teachers were now finally emphasizing what we could learn by using the applications on the computer/Internet and incorporating that in their lesson plans.
Ninth grade brought laptops for the entire high school and middle school. We were one of the first schools in the state to have laptops for all students in grades 6-12. An entire day was designated for the high school students to learn how to use the laptops with the help of technicians from the Apple company. The atmosphere of the entire school changed. Now not only the teachers were using PowerPoint, but students were expected to for projects as well. Every piece of writing in English classes had to be typed and research projects with at least three Internet resources was always expected. Pamphlets were created as a part of projects, usually to supplement a written report using our creative side. Technology was also introduced to the music room as well, with an electronic gadget to tune the instruments. Teachers began to experiment with different web programs, including my eleventh-grade Advanced Math teacher who showed us how to use 'SecondLife', an online community. In SecondLife we could create our own buildings, furniture and even clothing using geometric figures and formulas. Our junior year also brought a new online SAT training program along with a portfolio project that we could use during college interviews. The most important and influential technological addition during my high school career was the SmartBoard. The SmartBoard is in its essence an interactive marker board. The SmartBoard is connected to a laptop and a projector machine projects whatever is on the laptop screen onto the SmartBoard. Whatever a student 'writes' on the SmartBoard using a fake marker is digitally added to the laptop. You can also play interactive games using the SmartBoard and instead of using a mouse to click or move the cursor, you can use your fingertips! The SmartBoard is especially useful when it comes to uploading whatever you do in class with your students. My physics/chemistry teacher used the SmartBoard to go over homework problems and each student would be able to go up and demonstrate on the SmartBoard how to do a specific problem. Afterwards the teacher would upload it to her class website and then when we studied for the test we could download all of the homework problems that we had done step-by-step in class.
I think that my experiences in elementary and high school are going to help me immensely when I begin teaching and trying to integrate technology into the classroom. I can use everything that I've learned from my teachers with my own students. I've had the most practice with PowerPoint and those skills can come in handy for lesson plans, lecturing and for interactive projects. I think the most important thing that I've learned is that technology can be integrated into ANY subject, you just have to search around and try. In college classes I've learned the importance of a 'hook' to catch your students interest at the beginning of a lesson, and what better way to hook your students then by using a video on YouTube or an interactive application. You also need to keep your students interest in mind and try not to get into a habit using only one program (PowerPoints are great, just not over and over again!). I love to make learning fun and integrating technology definitely helps to achieve that, so it is something that I'm excited to learn more about!

Friday, January 22, 2010
"Introduce Yourself..."
"Introduce yourself. I want to know about you as a person and as a learner. Tell me the ways that you learn best. What has your experience with technology been like up to this point? Cite examples from both your personal life and your educational life."Hello! My name is Kelsey Smith (soon to be Parent!) and I'm a student in the Secondary Education: Life Science program at Husson University. First of all, I would like to do a casual introduction of myself. I was born and raised in the "County" of Northern Maine in a small town called Van Buren (population about 2,500). I have an older brother, an older half-sister, and two younger step-siblings (a sister and a brother). I attended SAD 24 and graduated from VBDSS in 2007 as Valedictorian. In high school I was class treasurer, a member of the Drama Club, National Honor Society, Varsity Softball team, and Varsity Basketball teams (manager for both girls and boys) along with being a devoted sports fan and taking part in Project Graduation (which included doing a lot of 'stage' acting including a Comedy Night and Mr. Van Buren fundraiser) . Now that I am at Husson, I spend the majority of my time studying and doing homework, and spend the rest of my time with my husband, whom I married in August of 2009. For fun we enjoy watching movies, playing intramural sports and watching professional sports on television (we're big Laker and Arsenal fans), and visiting local restaurants during "Happy Hour" to take advantage of cheap appetizers! We really are not 'party' people (neither of us drink), so on weekends we enjoy 'movie nights' with friends and just relaxing. As for my personal characteristics, I'm a t-shirt, jeans and sneaker kind of girl. I don't spend more then an average of 5 minutes doing my hair on any given day and the extent of make-up that goes on my face would be powder. I love books, music and the arts (I absolutely love watching plays). As you will be able to tell by the end of this blog I also enjoy writing, something my professors often dislike for I write much more than needed! I am content and at peace when I relax with a book or am at the local lake back home in Northern Maine with my family. God is first in my life closely followed by my family, whom I am extremely close to. My best friend in the world is my memere (french for grandmother) and I absolutely love spending time with her and my extended french family. My Franco-American heritage is very important to me and I enjoy listening to my family members speak the french language, eating 'Valley' food (ployes and poutines!) and visiting Canada (I am especially fond of Quebec) whenever possible. When it comes to learning, I tend to be extremely obsessive! I often make the mistake of putting school first in my life and I spend a lot of time studying and doing assignments. As a third grader I made the promise to myself that I would become Valedictorian and that state of mind has stuck with me. My mind is determined to excel no matter how many times I try to tell myself to 'relax'! I have reached the stage where it is more important for me to do what I want to do rather than what I have the potential to do, which is why I am majoring in education (instead of Pre-Med like everybody around me wishes I would). I absolutely love to learn, but I absolutely despise school. The pressures of test-taking and assignments drives me nuts and I wish that I could do independent study for every class (just give me a textbook and objectives and I'll acquire whatever knowledge you want me to!). This is one of the reasons why I want to become a teacher- I hope to create a classroom that is as stress-free as possible, where my students can enjoy learning instead of being pressured into learning. When I am free to learn on my own (during winter and summer break) I often become entranced in a topic that I find interesting and spend hours researching and learning about it. For example, this past winter break I read a fictional novel based on the factual history of the Tudor Court (more distinctly King Henry VIII of England) and became so obsessed with the topic that I spent hours reading biographies of each family member (and any person associated with the family), figuring out the family tree, and watching the Showtime series 'The Tudors'. Most of the time my obsession with learning revolves around human anatomy and what happens when something goes wrong with the body (I am a devoted watcher of 'Mystery Diagnosis' on Discovery Health and 'House' on Fox). As for learning styles, I prefer a variety of different techniques. I especially enjoy hands-on learning, but I don't mind visual and auditory learning techniques. My hope when I enter a classroom is that the professor will use as many different learning styles as possible to keep the class exciting and non-habitual. When it comes to learning about technology, I think I will definitely prefer hands-on learning. Personally, I do not really have that much experience with technology. I know the basic stuff that every college student knows- how to surf the Internet for information, how to download and upload documents, how to create PowerPoints, and how to get on Facebook (which I do have, but its for family and close friends only!). My husband works at BestBuy so of course we are up-to-date with everything, including an LCD television and a BluRay player. Other than that, I have a four year old Walmart brand one gig MP3 player, a five year old Canon digital camera, and a Dell Inspiron laptop but that would be about it for my personal 'technology' expertise. Fortunately, I was able to experience the Maine Laptop Initiative when I was in school, for my high school was one of the first schools in the state to have laptops for all students in grades 5-12 (I was a freshman at the time). At the time we mainly learned how to do PowerPoints- there were really no exciting applications like IMovie or GarageBand at the time. I am extremely excited to learn more about the different Apple applications in this class, especially the two just mentioned. I look forward to being able to incorporate as much technology as possible into my classroom, especially since I will be a high school science teacher. In my biology classes at Husson I have been able to experience microscopes being hooked up a projector so the slide could be shown on the 'big screen', along with 'virtual' dissections instead of real ones. I would love to put techniques like these into use in my own future classroom and hopefully I will learn about new things that I can do as well!

Free Post...

Tell me about your final project/portfolio..how is it coming along? Do you have any problems?

To be honest I haven't had much time to work on my final project and the portfolio. With the weekly assignments and the blog, along with work from all my other classes, all I have been able to do is the work thats been assigned to be passed in. I have done the first lesson plan, which is an internet workshop, along with the actual handout that will be passed out to the students to do the internet workshop. I have also started the overview/narrative for the final project and I signed up for the date that I will present. I'm still not quite sure what activity I will present for the class. The internet workshop is all finished and ready to do, but it isn't as exciting as the Amusement Park ride that I'm planning to finish the unit on the digestive system. I've been able to explore the SketchIt program a bit, but I haven't written the lesson plan or designed the handout for the students yet. I think it would be really neat to present the Amusement Park ride activity to the class because it covers a program that we won't be covering in class (and a program that I think is super fun).

I've also decided to try and incorporate the Inspirations! program, mainly because it has an excellent template for structure/functions that I can definitely use in the Digestive System Unit. I'm debating whether or not I want to tie it into the Internet Workshop, the Amusement Park Ride activity, or make it a lesson plan all on its own. I think that the best way to incorporate it would be during the middle of the unit as a lesson on its own, but I don't think I'll have to time to create a whole new lesson plan.

Time Time Time!! I need more time :)

I haven't had time to work on my portfolio either, other than the small amounts that we have done in class creating the actual page and titles. I'm still somewhat wary as to what to write for a paragraph on the different title pages, but that will be something that I'll have to sit down and really think about. I have been trying to figure out which project should go where and I have attached a couple of projects already. I'm looking forward to having more time in class, rather than weekly projects to work on both the final project and the portfolio.

The Reluctant Learner...

"How will you handle the reluctant learner? This week, we talked about the learner and learning styles. We addressed the fact that there are many different ways to reach students. For this week's blog, I want to give you a fictional situation. You are the teacher of an 8th grade English class. Your class is reading the novel "Huck Finn" by Mark Twain. You have a student named Renee in your class that has some significant challenges. She is living in her 3rd foster family in the past 4 years having been removed from her birth family because of severe neglect. She has been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder and is receiving speech and language services for a speech/language disorder where she has a difficult time processing what you are saying to her (receptive language). You do note that she has a significant strength in math. You have assigned the class the task of creating a keynote presentation that highlights the main events from each chapter. You have broken the class into groups of 3. Each group has 4 chapters they need to present. Their task is to find a picture online that could possibly illustrate an event or character in that chapter and to note the most important events of the chapter. When this project is complete, your hope is that you can put all of the chapters together and have a keynote summary of the text. Renee is working with a girl named Liz who is a straight A student and a boy name Josh who is the class clown. Renee is refusing to engage with the other members of the group. She says that the activity is "stupid" and she doesn't like the other two members of her group. What do you do? What action do you take to try to get Renee to engage?"

First of all, putting an attention deficit disorder child in a group with the class clown is a really bad idea. Josh, the class clown, will most likely distract Renee and make things that much harder for her. Renee also may be intimidated by Liz, who is obviously a better worker than she is. Although Liz may be able to supplement/aide Renee, Renee is to much affected by other people to find that helpful. Instead, she probably sees Liz as not only intimidating, but a constant reminder that she is inadequate. It is important for Renee to experience teamwork, but it is especially hard to make her work with others at this time. Renee has not felt kindness or love from other people, so she will probably feel that nobody cares and the everybody is against her rather than helping her. Renee also has a hard time understanding what you say to her, so it would be very important that you supplied her with a written copy of the instructions. A bulleted list of what she needs to do to accomplish the project might help her see the big picture.

I think a better idea for Renee would be for her to work independentaly on her own work, and then when she is done she can present her work to the other members of the group. To provide some socialization/team work, she can discuss with her group how she can incorporate her own independent work with the work of the other two members. Renee has a strength in math, so instead of presenting the material using a bulleted list or paragraph summary like the other kids will do, it might be easier for her if she did something like a timeline or graph. Its essential to find some way to incorporate her strength of math into the project to make it less challenging for her to do and to get her more engaged. By allowing her to do something that she is good at instead of something like a Keynote presentation which will further show her ADD and speech/language disorder, she is more likely to be engaged and enjoy doing the work. Also, when she finally completes the work, she will feel more proud of herself for doing a good job then she would if she provided a project that wasn't up to par. Instead of working with Keynote, Renee could design a timeline of events over the four chapters or create a graph that shows specific parts of each chapter. For example, the graph could contain categories like characters involved, setting, conflict, resolution, and exciting events. After doing the graph, either by hand or using the computer, the members of her group could incorporate it into the Keynote presentation. This allows Renee to be a participant of the group without being distracted by them or having to communicate verbally a lot to with them (she can communicate visually instead).

Lastly, you need to be extra sensitive with Renee. She has been neglected and she has a hard and unstable home environment. You should take into consideration that the content material might be too much for her to handle at the moment, or that some of the things that Huck Fin may be going through in the book rings too close to home for her. It's important that you give her extra support with the project, maybe providing extra time outside of class for her to come in and work on it together with you. You should be sensitive and understanding, and never ever get impatient with her.

Are Online Games Harmful or Helpful to Education...

"Are online games helpful or harmful to education? Why do you feel this way? Find an article online about educational games that supports your argument. Provide a link for it in your blog and a response to the article."

I believe that online games are extremely helpful to education. My main supportive fact for this argument is that online games provide a way for students to learn while having fun. There are so many games that are available online that provide ways for students to learn more about a variety of subject material, including physics, health sciences, vocabulary and writing skills, along with an immense number of math related games. Last semester I was placed at Bangor Christian Middle School with an instructor who taught 7-9 science and pre-algebra. She was mainly a science teacher and she was stuck with a random math class that was out of her comfort zone. However, she was extremely open-minded to different ways of learning and in her science classes she used labs to create motivation for students so she sought a way to create motivation in her math class as well. At least once a week she would break the students up into groups (either by skill level or by mixing skill levels so that the high achievers could help the struggling students) and created stations throughout the classroom. At least one station would incorporate an online game that she would project using the SmartBoard and the students would be able to play on the big screen. The students absolutely loved using the online games and learned more than they would have if they were just given worksheets of equations. More often than not the students would fight to stay at the station longer and complain when they had to move on so the next group could have a turn.

I've also experienced a multiplayer online role playing game as a student in an Advanced Math class. Motivation was extremely down, mainly due to the subject matter and the fact that almost half of the class would be leaving early because they were seniors and had the last two weeks of school off for their finals and graduation walking practice. Instead of giving a final cumulative exam that covered the entire year (which had been interrupted for over a month for the Juniors to undergo an intensive SAT math prep program- it was the year that Maine made the SATs the junior level standardized test), the teacher decided to assign a huge project that would be created using the program Teen SecondLife. Using SecondLife we had to create our own houses using geometric shapes and textures. This program integrated business (our teacher had his own beauty salon that actually made him real life money by creating and selling nail designs that rich women would purchase for their avatars), geometry, engineering, geography, communication skills, art and technology. This program allowed the students to learn so much more than we would have if we just had stayed with the textbook. Although the content material was not identical with what the textbook covered, we still learned a massive amount of geometry and engineering skills, along with a whole new technology skill using the program. We were not only learning and having fun while doing it, but motivated to work on the project during study halls and after school! After we finished our house that was complete with color schemes, full bathrooms (luxury bathtubs included), designer kitchens and living rooms, and our ideal personal bedrooms (what student doesn't want the ability to design a perfect bedroom!) we were so proud of our projects that we tried to show them to as many people as possible.

I think that online games are an excellent way to introduce students to new topics or support material that's being covered in class. They boost motivation and allow teachers to integrate several subjects, while giving students a chance to work on computers. However, online games do need to be carefully monitored- the games that students are playing should be content-related, educational, and appropriate. Students should also only be playing the games when the teacher deems it appropriate, and not during lectures or other class periods. Online games are only harmful to education when they serve as distractions to the students rather than supporters and motivators of their learning.

The article that I chose supports multiplayer online role-playing games like SecondLife for education. It states that it boosts motivation and supports a varied assortment of learning requirements from geography to engineering. Programs like SecondLife also provide a way for students from all over the world to interact and learn from each other. Students from the study included in the article stated that the online role-playing game helped them to develop an awareness to natural resource decision making, benefited their team building skills, and supported their electronic communication skills. The study states that online games could provide training and learning in groups in a wide range of subjects areas.

Link to Article:
"Online Gaming as an Educational Tool in Learning and Training"
http://web.ebscohost.com.prxy5.ursus.maine.edu/ehost/pdf?vid=10&hid=106&sid=2509330f-5ab2-4fd3-9030-3d2386d7373c%40sessionmgr112
( I don't' know if this will work or not because it was a PDF document)

Class Progress...

"Please let me know how you feel you are doing in the class so far. Is there anything that you are struggling with? Is there anything you would like to learn about that we haven't learned yet? What are some things that you have learned from this class? How are you planning to put these things to use in your teaching? Is there anything I can do as a teacher to better support your learning?"

The class has been extremely interesting so far and I think that I am doing fairly well with my assignments. Although I wish that I did not have to come to Husson every time I wanted to do my homework, I've still enjoyed the work that we have done and I have learned a lot. The first two assignments were things that I had done before, but had done through the use of different programs such as PowerPoint. I'm not quite sure if I prefer Keynote to PowerPoint yet, but it was very easy to use and I enjoyed the simplicity of it. The templates that Pages provides are amazing and I'm excited to explore with the different lesson plan templates when I become a full time teacher. I've been curious about the GarageBand program ever since I first saw it as a student in the ninth grade, but my teachers never allowed us to use it or even try figuring out what it was. I was super excited when we got to explore the program and create a song, although I would have preferred picking a poem of my choice (I'm quite partial to the sonnets of William Shakespeare!).

I think that I might struggle with the most recent assignment, the digital story, because I have never used anything similar to the IMovie program. I'm finding it difficult to organize my thoughts into a storyboard and bringing all of the pictures together to create 'emotional content'. I normally don't organize my work into something like a storyboard, and I probably would find it much easier just to do it rather than outlining everything out first. If its ok, I will probably do the storyboard after everything else is done, because thats how my mind works (please let me know if thats ok?!! I really need to get all of the pictures first before I can figure out a storyboard, so I definitely will have a hard time having that done for Tuesday). I would have loved to do something super controversial, because I tend to get extremely passionate when I argue for something that I believe in and that correlates into great emotional content. However, I'm going home this weekend to visit with my grandmother and I'm hoping to get some great old black and white pictures to add to my IMovie to add more emotion. I think coming up with a song will be more difficult then I want it to be, because I'm quite the perfectionist when it comes to things like that (I'll want it to be 'just right'). I'm thinking about maybe even creating my own song using the GarageBand program, but we'll see how much time I actually have! I'm not quite sure that I will have as much done as is expected for Tuesday (especially the storyboard!), mainly because I need to go home (four hours north) in order to get a lot of the pictures that I need, but I'm sure I will have it done by the due date.

I think I'm also going to struggle big time with the online portfolio project. I think that its a great program, but I just don't know enough about the ISTE-NETS to be able to connect the assignments with them. I think it would help a lot if we took time in class to go over each standard and what exactly they mean. I don't know how to write a description about each standard if I'm not quite clear on what they mean. The entire aspect of the content of the portfolio confuses me a bit, but I am extremely glad that we are doing it so we can be better prepared for our online portfolios during student teaching seminar.

I love the fact that examples are available for almost every assignment. The IMovie example was simply amazing (by the way, I absolutely love Steven Curtis Chapman, and I saw him play that song live! It was amazing :) ) and I'm glad that I actually got to view one before I was assigned the project. I'm also excited about exploring with the Sketch program for my final project. I loved creating things using SecondLife in high school and this seems like the perfect way to create a 3D amusement park ride. I think that I'm also going to incorporate the Inspirations program into my final project as well, possibly as part of the Internet workshop or a follow-up activity before the students are expected to do the Ride project. There are so many different programs available on the Macs that I've never seen before, and I'm excited to explore the ones that we won't be covering in class.

In my future classroom I hope to incorporate what I've learned so far in this class as much as possible. I definitely hope to have a SmartBoard in my classroom, not just for my benefit but for the students as well. Its great that whatever you write on the SmartBoard can be uploaded to the Internet, because that is such a great resource for students to go to. I fully agree with Authentic Lessons, especially when it comes to science. High school students ask 'why will we ever need this in the real world' more often then not, and authentic lessons almost completely prevent that. As a hopeful future human anatomy teacher authentic lessons will be essential to creating an exciting classroom environment. I hope to do plenty of diagnostic work with the students, because you have to be knowledgeable in how the body systems work normally before you can understand how they can be dysfunctional. Microbiology is also a great subject to create authentic lessons, and I hope to use the SmartBoard to help me with microscope projections. Nothing irritates a student more then when they are trying to find something on a slide using a microscope and they have no idea what they are looking for. By projecting the teacher's slide, everybody knows what they are looking for and how to get there. I think Pages, Keynote and the Inspiration program will be great for student projects and as learning tools. I think GarageBand might be a little bit harder to incorporate, but I'm sure that I'll find some way to use it!

Authentic Learning..

First, give your overall impressions of this model of learning. Be observant of how the technology is used as a tool in this kindergarten classroom. What different applications or devices were utilized? What were some ways you saw the teachers using technology with their students? How did this support learning?


First of all, I think that this model of learning is absolutely wonderful and that every single classroom should use it, if not all of the time, at least once a week! This model of learning completely exhibits the authentic lessons idea, in that everything that students do in the classroom should reflect upon an authentic experience that happens in the real world. I hope to incorporate this type of learning in my own classroom, although it will be a little harder to do with high school science then it is in a kindergarten classroom. I love the idea that everything the students do in the class is connected to every single subject (its the ideal complete integrated classroom!). The trip to Brazil lesson incorporated math skills, technology skill, geography skills, writing skills, hands-on art creation, social skills and science! The students were not only learning something from every subject domain, but they were having fun doing it. Each student was generally interested in what they were doing, because it corresponded to something they could do in real life.

I also feel that this type of lesson planning is great because it makes learning fun for the students. First of all, it is essential that students take a huge part in lesson planning in order to keep them interested in the learning and for them to feel that learning is fun. This classroom gives the power to the students, in that the students' curiosity is responsible for everything they do. A lesson is created by student questions and the teachers find ways to integrate all of the subjects into that student question. Instead of just writing about anything to practice sentence structure and letter formation, the students write in journals about an experience one of their classmates had. The students are not only taught new information, but are taught how to learn. The students in the class are not expected to go to adults to find the answers, but to find the answers themselves using resources around the classroom. This is great in establishing the basis for self-mediated learning. It is also essential that students feel free in expressing themselves and have fun learning, and this classroom supports this amazingly. The students are not expected to do everything right, but just to try and have fun trying. Students are amazed that they are actually writing and are having fun doing it, rather than being lectured every time that they spell a word wrong or write a letter incorrectly. This reflects upon my blog last week in that students should be allowed to make mistakes, because they learn from them and have more fun in the learning process. This type of learning is so important in our society today because it builds self-esteem rather than tearing it down, which is essential when so many of our students suffer from extremely low self-worth.

The use of technology in this classroom was absolutely wonderful and astounding for a kindergarten classroom. The teachers took something basic like Show And Tell that is used in almost every early childhood classroom and made it special, by giving the child who is sharing a microphone. They also used a SmartBoard which is a great tool, especially for kindergartners who can get messy when dealing with markers and chalk. The SmartBoard also allowed for manipulation of whatever they were writing (pulling the letter d onto the letter b to show that they were different), which is impossible when using a marker or chalk board. The SmartBoard also allowed projection of the Internet onto a large screen, making group work much easier (everybody can see everything) and a lot cheaper than having a laptop for every student. I love how the used the Internet to teach the children how to use the resources they are given to find answers to their questions- for example they used dictionary.com to look up a word instead of the teacher just giving them the answer. During the Brazil trip lesson, the students also role played using telephones to reflect upon the communication between an airplane pilot and the airport/weather station.

Creativity in Schools...

"Do you agree or disagree with Sir Robinson? In the video, he makes some pretty serious statements such as "I feel creativity should be as important as literacy in today's schools." Do you agree or disagree with this statement. Why or why not? What have your experience with creativity been in the past? How do you express yourself?"

The first thing that I would like to reflect upon concerning Sir Robinson's speech is his statement that "All kids have tremendous talents, and we squander them". I completely and utterly agree with this statement. I feel that all students have talents, but the majority of them are not in the areas that we consider 'important'. So many students are talented in the art and trades like carpentry and machine tool, but these subjects are barely covered in our school systems. Schools look at students who are three grades below their reading/writing levels, or extremely behind in math and see them as 'unintelligent, untalented children', when in reality most of the are exceedingly talented in other things. For example, I know of a student that is pretty average academically (she maintains a B average or so), but she captures the interest of every single person in the audience when she is on the dance floor. I also know of a former classmate who has extreme literacy problems, but is making amazing money (more than I will as a teacher!) as an underwater welder. When our schools do not support talents other than those in English, math and the sciences, we are leading these students (often the majority) into thinking that their talents are nothing of importance. I love Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences, because it supports the fact that everybody is intelligent at something!

I love Ken's statement about children that 'if they don't know, they'll take a go'. Children are always guessing at things, because they do not have the knowledge yet to know the right answer. Children use their imagination to come up with the answer to something that they do not quite yet understand. Our schools, however, frown upon the use of imagination to reason something- they want 'critical thinking' skills instead. They put so much pressure on students to be right, that slowly this wonderful skill of imagination is dead, with logical thinking in its place. In order to keep creativity, it is important not to concentrate so much on the 'right' answer, but the fact that they thought of an answer and were courageous enough to take the risk on it. Giving a wrong answer, or even just an answer that is different from the norm, opens the eyes of people. When the first person suggested that the earth might be round, everybody thought he was wrong, but in the process he opened the eyes of others to get them thinking. This is an extremely important process that we need for the future- people need to open their minds to possibilities that are not possible yet! Students need to feel that it is OK to be wrong and that sometimes wrong answers turn out to be not-so-wrong. Even if the students are wrong, it should be stressed that people learn from their mistakes and they grow as a person. If you never made mistakes you would not know what it would be like to learn.

Everybody has a different way of thinking and brains work in different ways. One of my best friends in high school had a thought process that was extremely different then everybody else. In physics, she would often times come up with the right answer but she had used the most original means of getting that answer. The method that she used could have been viewed as 'wrong' by the teacher because it was not what we were supposed to do, even though she did have the right answer at the end. Students should feel comfortable enough in their classroom environments to feel that it is OK to think differently and OK to be wrong sometimes. To be wrong means that you will ultimately learn from your mistake, and eventually be right. To be comfortable with being wrong means that you will take chances and risks. All scientists and engineers need to be comfortable with being wrong, because the majority of the time they are! To make our students believe that they need to be right all the time, diminishes their risk taking and subsequently squanders their imagination and creativity. They are too scared to think 'out of the box' or come up with something that the world views as out of the norm or impossible. If we continue to make our students believe that wrong answers are bad ones, then we are killing the next generation of engineers, scientists, doctors, authors and all other careers that need imagination.

I also completely agree with his theory of academic inflation. I feel that our society stresses way too much on the importance of getting a college education. In all honesty, I feel that I could have became a successful teacher without going through four years of college. Being in the classroom learning about how to do your job has suddenly become more important than actually being out in the field practicing the job itself. People learn from doing, not memorizing and taking tests on how to do. Our schools are built upon the idea that they need to educate students in order for them to be successful in college. Rather, I think our schools should educate to create well-rounded exceptional human beings instead. Our world would be a much kinder place if we emphasized the importance of human behavior more than human achievement.

I completely agree with all aspects of Ken's statements, including the statement that he thinks creativity is just as important as literacy. In reality, we would not have literacy without creativity. Someone had to come up with the letters to the alphabet, and that required original thought. All writers are writers because they are creative and have original thought, or else nothing new would ever be published. We expect our students to write creative stories, but limit their imagination and creativity by giving them constant boundaries and telling them what is right or wrong. We put so much emphasis on grammar, but its the fact that the student is expressing themselves that is important. Many famous authors have absolutely horrible grammar. What attracts people to new books is the plot point, the creativity of the story itself, not how the sentences are structured.

Fortunately, my education provided me with ways to express myself other than in the form of writing and academics. I enjoyed being 'different' unlike most students and I was able to experience gifted and talented classes, which always sought out to harbor our inner creativity. The gifted and talented students were able to put on plays and create inventions like Rube Goldberg machines. Unfortunately it was only the students who excelled in the 'regular' academics of English and math that were allowed to experience other ways to express yourself. In reality, the students who needed that other means of expression to boost their self-esteem by possibly finding something that they excelled in, were trapped in the classroom doing what they did not excel in. However, they were allowed to join band in fourth grade. I began to play the flute and explored other instruments until our band class was dropped due to finances when I was a senior. The most important class that I feel I took my entire high school career was drama. That year they had an extra slot open during the day for the juniors because they had dropped an SAT preparation class, so they put all juniors into two drama classes. We explored famous plays and were taught how to express our emotions on stage. At the end of the year we put on a play for the entire school, which each member of the class participating in some way (the one student who did not want to be on stage, controlled the lights and camera). I feel that every student should have to take a drama class at some point in their education. Drama teaches you how to deal with your emotions and put pain/negative emotions towards growth and positivity. The arts and shop classes allow those students who do not excel academically to find something that they do excel in, an important thing to find during your adolescent years when you are searching for your identity.