My Future Classroom

When I first decided I wanted to be a teacher way back when I was little I will admit that I figured I would be teaching the exact same why my teachers were teaching me. I figured I would be teaching on a chalkboard with a bunch of handouts and desks all in a row. After starting university however, I am able to see that our world is changing rather fast and by the time I am actually teaching in my own classroom things will be completely different than they are right now. I know that my future classroom will hopefully consist of multiple computers that will be available to the students. I know that I want to have apage for the students to blog on in my classroom, but the thing is that I don’t want to make blogging an extensively large part of my classroom, because I feel for the students that don’t actually have a computer at home, and can’t spend massive amounts of time working on their blog page or commenting on other peoples stuff. I know that in my classroom the desks will not be in straight rows, but in small groups or angle rows so that everyone can look at each other and engage in a conversation whenever it is necessary. My classroom will also consist of many pictures and posters for the visual learners, movement activities for the students that prefer to be hands on etc. I know that I will be reaching out to all the different types of students no matter what.

After watching a video on gaming in Education I now also am able to see how important games can be in a child’s education. Games and videos are able to teach children in different ways instead of the normal stand at the front of the room and teach a lesson. I know that games and videos on the Internet will not be able to help every student, but I know that they can help certain ones, and the students that prefer not to use these methods there will be alternative methods brought into the class.

After doing my EPS 100 fieldwork and spending some time watching the teacher teach math, the subject I want to teach, I am now able to know types of things I want to incorporate into my classroom. The teacher used things like number lines, integer chips, and fraction circles. i think these types of additions allow the students to see things a lot more clearly and they will be able to possibly achieve more.

Another thing I want to have in my classroom is a smart-board, or I at least want access to one. I haven’t spent that much time on one, but the little time I have learned about them I have been able to see just how useful they are. There are games, and they enable students to get involved in a way they aren’t really used to. I know that not every teacher is able to have a smart-board, but I hope that I will be one of the lucky ones, and I look forward to learning how to use it alongside my future students.

This is a start to what I want my future classroom to have, but as you can see there isn’t much there. This is because right now I’m not to sure what I want it to include. I always have known that I wanted to become a teacher someday, but I never put much thought into what i want my classroom to look like. I know that by the time I will teach I will have a lot of ideas in my head, but I know it will take a lot of time and work in order to implement them all into the classroom. It’s just one of the joy’s of being a teacher I guess. I’m going to cherish every minute I spend developing my classroom.

Podcast

Gabcast! ECMP 355 #1

Mentorship classes

So a long time ago we were supposed to make a post about the classes we were going to mentor and forgot to do it and I know it’s late into the semester now but I figure it would be good to still do it.

 

The class I spend most of my time blogging on is Eldon Germann’s ELA 10B class. This class has been spending their time focusing on the abnormal things in life and they have been doing researching projects as well as writing narrative stories on the topic that they chose. The students stories are very interesting and they have wrote about things like ghosts, vampires, and even haunted houses. It is really neat to read their stories and talk with them about them.

 

The second class i spent some time on was Mrs. McLeod and Mrs. Ross’s 2nd grade students. This class hasn’t really posted a lot of new content on that often, but it was really neat to read the stories of the students past experiences. It was really neat to read them because it allowed me to think back on when I was little and all of the things that made me happy.

 

All in all, i have been having a pretty good time mentoring my classes, and I enjoy getting feed back from them and I enjoy giving them my input on the questions they have.

The joys of being from a Ukrainian Background

 We all know that Ukraine is famous for many food dishes, and one of the bigger ones being perogies or in Ukrainian pyroghy. I come from a family that I would say is fairly Ukrainian. I mean being in Canada now they don’t follow all of the customs, but we do follow a few traditions. Now to get on with my story. My grandma makes tons of perogies and cabbage rolls for our family Christmas supper so this past weekend me and my mom went out to my grandparents farm to help make the perogies. When I first walked into my grandma’s house and saw the big bowl of potatoes and the massive ball of dough I thought we were going to be there forever. We did though finish in about 6 hours, which was still pretty long. This was the first year I actually helped out with the perogies and I have to say it turned out to be a ton of fun. I wasn’t very good at it at the start, but I eventually was doing pretty well. I don’t know for sure if learning how to make perogies was a good idea because that means I’m going to have to help out every year lol, but I guess one day a year making perogies won’t be that bad and it is one of the joys of being from a Ukrainian family.

Podcast Reviews!!

I know that it has taken me a hile to get thing task done, but at least i got to it. The first podcast I chose to watch was one called Cell Phone Use Endangers Boneheads. This podcast was only 60 seconds as it was under a category called 60 second science. The description of this podcast from the website is that driving while on the phone is risky, but emergency room cases reveal lesser-known dangers of moving while talking. This particular podcast was done by Steve Mirsky and throughout it he talks about how most people think that driving and talking on the phone is risky, but talking on your phone when your on an escalator or when your riding a bike or simply even just walking and talking injuries still occur.  It was neat to see how come of the injuries occur, I never would have thought they were even possible.

The next podcast I watched was one on the TV show One Tree Hill. One Tree Hill is one of my favorite shows and I thought it would be interesting to see what other peoples thoughts were on the episode that was on Monday. It was neat to see that other people had the same opinions on the show as I did. It was an episode set back in time that kind of portrayed the story of all the characters lives. The crazy thing was that in this episode a lot of people died and it was all really unexpected and weird, but it was still an amazing episode.

If only….

If only I could have stayed. In March of 2008 I went on a tour of Italy with my school. It took a lot of time and many fundraisers, including cleaning up the garbage at the Craven Jamboree,  in order to go on this trip but it was well worth it. Italy was a place full of many interesting places and people. Venice was amazing. It was my favorite place we went to and I have to say going on a gondola ride was probably one of the biggest highlights. Throughout our week adventure we visited Venice, Florence, Siena, Rome and also many other places along the way. In Rome we got to see many things like the Colosseum, the Trevi Fountain, the Pantheon and many of the other huge attractions. To this day I still cannot believe that I was able to witness all of these sites and I don’t know how many people have seen the movie Jumper, but it came out after I went to Italy and during it the guy goes to Rome and goes to many of the places I went. It was crazy to be able to say I’ve been there. I hope that someday I will be able to return to Italy and do some touring of my own.

Bullying Etc

The topic of bullying was brought up today and I can’t believe everything people have gone through. I personally was never really bullied as a kid, I mean I was teased a little as a kid, but once i hit the older grades and high school I was never really bullied. I did however witness a lot of bullying, and I wished I could have stopped it in some way or another, but it seems like it is to big of an issue to help solve. Another thing i want to make mention of is the fact that there are other things that make people hurt even if you aren’t bullied. I mean everyone knows those few girls in their class that were the more pretty ones, and I know that everyone will say you are all pretty in the same way. Although I now believe this is true, back when I was little I always wanted to be one of those girls that were popular and I never really was, my two best friends were and I kind of tagged along, but you can only do that for so long. I think the key is developing who you are as an individual and not looking at all of the people around you. I know that with bullying that is not easily done, if it can be done at all. I personally feel really bad for everyone that has been bullied and I know apologizing won’t make things better, but I really am sorry that everyone that has been bullied has had to go through that and I hope it one day gets better.

Oh the Possibilities – K12 Online Conference

The video Oh the Possibilities by Lisa Parisi was a video on Project based learning (PBL). It was a guide to turning your classroom into a project based learning enviroment without going through all the stress you thought you would. In a classrrom the contains PBL you give your students a real world problem and give them multiple choices on how to demonstrate their knowledge of what they were studying. Lisa stated that in order to create a classroom like this you must spend a lot of time planning, but if you plan it good the first time you will have it for the next year and the next after that etc. you must also keep your projects simple at the beggining, because it is a completely new concept for your students. The other thing about a classroom like this is that you have to develop a toolkit list. This list consists of all of the tools you use throughout your projects, and underneath each tool there will be a few students names that will be considered “experts” of that tool. Lisa said that in order for PBL to work you must make the students experts and not yourself. In her classroom they go by the saying See three before me. The teacher is the last resort if you need help, you must work together as a class before seeking the teachers assistance.

I thought this was a great video for helping someone set up a PBL enviroment. I personally didn’t really know they even existed to this extent. THey seem really neat, but I do understand how it could be a very stressful move to make. This video was very informative and just focused on the key points, which was good. All in all it was pretty good, but I think it could have used more images or examples of created projects from her class.

“What Did You Do in School Yesterday, Today, and Three Years Ago?” – K12 Online Conference

I decided to watch the video the video “What Did You Do in School Yesterday, Today, and Three Years Ago?” by H Songhai because the title really interested me. I remember being a little kid and coming home everyday and being asked the same question..What did you learn at school today? and the answer was always nothing. The thing is that there is always something you learn, but like H Songhai said in his video we just don’t have many ways to document it.

Songhai said that everywhere in the world everyone is using gadgets, like cell phones and MP3 players, but nobody is using them for the right reasons. Nobody is using them to document places they’ve seen, people they’ve met, or things they have learned. To document the things that we are learning every single day we need to start making digital records. For instance if you blog, save links, and bookmark sites your work and research will never go away. H Songhai made a comment that you can teach a class with tons of paper, but where does that paper end up, it usually ends up in the garbage by the end of class, but with a blog the work you have created will be saved forever. Using all of the gadgets everyday student’s now have may even allow some student’s to graduate. By taking photographs of the lessons, or recording lessons, they have information to fall back on and it will never be lost.

At the conclusion of his video he gave off a list of programs on the computer that every teacher should have knowledge of. Here is a few:

• Delicious
• Skype
• Wikis
• Twitter
• Google Notebook
• Google Book Search                                

I think this presentation was able to open up my eyes to using many programs to help student’s succeed. He made a lot of points throughout his presentation, while also backing them up with a lot of facts which added a bunch of reality. I think this is a video everyone should watch this video to see just how important their cell phones, or other gadgets can be in helping them succeed in the future. It was a great video.

Games in Education – K12 Online Conference

The first video I chose to watch was one on games in Education. The video was done by Sylvia Martinez.The description of this video from the site is: It sounds like a simple idea– kids don’t like school… kids like games, so if we sneak some educational content into games, won’t everyone benefit? This session will explore what’s right and wrong about this idea, and how educators can discern the difference between the hype and the promise. I believe that although some of the promise has been oversold, there is much to learn from exploring the educational promise of games in the classroom.

To watch this video for yourself, here is the link: Games in Education by Sylvia Martinez

After watching the video I was aware that there are some games that are really good and great for educating, while others aren’t so good. Sylvia stated a quote from Freud and it said “Play is a child’s work.” In order from young kids to learn there has to be some play involved. Sylvia also stated the fact that 99% of school games don’t actually allow students to learn. I had no idea that that was the fact. Another problem with games is that if you are going to involve a game in your teaching you have to make sure that you have enough time in your unit to use it. Playing a game once will not have any impact, it needs to be continuously used. Another thing she said was that children should make their own games ” They need to control the computer, not the other way around.” This video was very well put together with facts, and images, and she kept you hooked throughout the whole video, not just the first while. After watching this video I know that I am now going to think twice before I bring a game into the classroom as a teacher, they need to be fully examined in order to see what exactly they will teach, and then they can be brought into the classroom.