For one of my mentorships, Teri Leuke and I have been connected to Seth Dickens class in Italy. One of the ways he suggested for us to get involved in his class was to teach his students some type of a lesson. After discussing it together, Teri and I decided a lesson would be an interesting way to get involved in his class. We also spoke with Dean Shareski and got the ok for our lesson to also be our final project. Dean also gave us a couple suggestions on how to make it more relevant for our final project. Instead of doing one longer lesson, we decided to split it up into two shorter ones. That way we would have a chance to reflect on the first one and improve for the second one.
After discussing some possible lesson topics with Seth, we finally settled on a statistics lesson focusing on normal distribution. This idea seemed straightforward enough and Teri and I got to work on it right away. Due to the time difference, we knew it was not possible to teach this lesson live so we had to come up with a way to present this lesson. We decided that we were going to use Google Docs to create a slide presentation then upload the presentation to Voicethread and record comments on each slide teaching the material.
After we decided on the format of the lesson, we got to work on the content. Our lesson was focussing on normal distribution so we had to decide how we were going to set up each slide and how we were going to split up the information. Seth Dickens suggested to keep the language relatively simple as he reminded us that for his students, English was their second language. This was one of our biggest challenges. We found it difficult to know what would be considered simple language without feeling like we were talking down to the students. Because we had never met the students face to face or talked to them live, we were not exactly sure what level their English was at. After creating the presentation in Google Docs, we shared it with Seth to get his feedback before we posted it for the students. Seth suggested defining a few key terms before the students viewed the lesson. These terms included average, symmetric, forever, and property. After finishing the presentation we uploaded it to Voicethread and added comments to each slide. One of the challenges in making our comments was trying to make sure we did not use “slang.” We knew that for people learning English, slang would be very confusing to understand. We also had to be aware of the speed we talked at making sure we were not talking a mile and minute! We also created a Google Form for the students to fill out after they viewed the lesson. Part of the form asked questions that we would be using in our next lesson. The second part of the form asked questions about how they felt about our presentation. This is the first lesson. Enjoy!
This is the Google Form we created for the students to fill out after they had viewed the lesson:
After we posted our first lesson, Seth gave us some wonderful constructive criticism on how to improve for our second lesson. The biggest thing was about “grading our language.” This meant cutting out all the “metalanguage” we use such as “you know when you” or “it’s kinda like” or “so this is sort of.” These were phrases we had used on almost every slide in our last presentation! Phrases that to us were so common we did not even think of how difficult they would be for a non-English speaker to understand. We legitimately thought that by saying “this is kind of like when you do…..” was helping the students understand the concept better. This was definitely good to know and we made a conscious effort in our second lesson not to do this. Seth actually made us two short videos describing what he meant. The first video gave us an idea of what it would be like to hear a presentation not in our first language. The second was a video that explained more about grading our language. Both were extremely helpful and we used a lot of what he said in our second lesson. This is our second lesson.
One of the biggest challenges I found in teaching online was not being able to use my body to teach with. By this I mean, not being able to point specifically to something on the slide to ensure the class knew what I was talking about. Many times when we were recording the comments in Voicethread I had the urge to point to a number or section of a diagram and had to remind myself that the students would not be able to see me pointing. We had to be very ingenious in our descriptions to make sure the students knew what we were talking about.
Another general challenge was not knowing if the students had understood what was said on each slide. When a person is teaching live, students can stop and ask questions and get something explained again. When it is a pre-recorded lesson, students can’t do that. One of the reasons we chose to use Voicethread was we thought that if students had questions on a particular slide, they could add a comment right on the voicethread and we could hopefully answer it for them in another comment.
This past week in my ECMP 355 class, the topic of our digital footprint was brought up. I had never really thought before what type of footprint I was leaving on the internet but after my class, I started to think about it.
First off, I tried Googling my name to see what Google would find. My Facebook page comes up, but without a picture and even if you click on it, my actual profile does not come up. Other than that, there was a few pages that came up for another Denise Phaneuf. So I tried Googling my name and the city I used to live in. I got a few more accurate hits. One of the search results was about my graduation awards, another was about a dance competition I competed in every year in North Battleford, and the rest were about other Phaneuf`s in Prince Albert. Surprisingly, this blog does not come up in any of the searches I tried in Google.
I realized that my current digital footprint would not tell people a whole lot about me. On the plus side, the information that people can find about me is positive information, but on the down side, there is a lot more to me than can be found on the internet.
On one hand, I`m ok with this. I`m proud of the information that can be found and would not mind people finding this out about me. I`m very careful about what I post about myself on the internet and especially on my Facebook page. On the other hand, I do believe it will serve me better in the future, in terms of employment opportunities, if there is more positive information about me on the internet for future employers to find.
At the moment, I think I will leave it as is. This is still my first year of university and my first year out of high school. There is time to experience new situations and have new opportunities to be able to share more about myself. A lot of the information about me on the internet right now is about things that happened in high school. Although these are still important, there is opportunity for my digital footprint to include my university years as well.
This past Wednesday in my ECMP 355 class, we had the opportunity to hear from three guest speakers, all of whom are teachers using technology in their classrooms.
The first teacher we heard from was Darren Kuropatwa, a math teacher from Manitoba. One of his claims to fame is being one of the very first math bloggers out there. In Darren`s classrooms, Smart Boards are utilized to teach lessons every day. All of his lessons and presentations are uploaded to slideshare.net so that his students can go back and find Smart Board presentations from all their classes. As well, one of Darren`s main goals in the classroom is to maximize the amount of time the students are on the Smart Board. He believes in the philosophy of “watch it, do it, teach it.” One of the most interesting things he told us about was what he calls Scribe Posts. Each day, a different student is responsible for writing a summary of the days lesson. This is called a scribe post. The scribe posts are all compiled online and become a textbook for the students written by the students.
The second teacher we heard from was Kathy Cassidy, a Grade 1 teacher from Moose Jaw, SK. Her presentation dealt with 5 Myths About Primary Teaching and Learning. Her first myth was that it’s easier to teach primary students than older students. Her reason for this being a myth is that primary students are just learning to read and write so they can’t respond the same way older kids can. Myth #2 was that five and six year olds are too young to use technology to learn. Kathy uses web pages with symbols instead of words, blogs, wikis, and video in her classes. Myth #3 is that primary students should be using pencil and paper only. Kathy believes there needs to be a balance between traditional learning with pencil and paper and newer forms of learning with technology. Myth #4 is that its not safe for young children to be online. Kathy uses the idea of teaching kids how to be online safely instead of not being online at all. Her last myth is that young children learn best from their teacher. Kathy believes that children learn best from a wide range of people. One example she used was that when her class was learning about rocks, they used Skype to talk with a geologist who was an expert in the field.
The third and final teacher we heard from was Clarence Fisher. Clarence is a Grade seven and eight teacher in the town of Snowlake, MB. One way he utilizes technology in his classroom is through a class blog and the comments he and the students leave on the blog. It gives the students a sense of community and the students see it as a place for something new. He also uses a class wiki. The wiki is used as the “textbook” as it is a gathering place for information. At the end of each year, Clarence does not empty the wiki, but instead allows the class the next year to continue building on the information from the previous years.
One of the ideas that struck me most was Darren Kuropatwa’s scribe posts. I am in the secondary education program with a major in math, so I can definitely see myself using this idea in the classroom once I have become a teacher. I think there is a great amount of knowledge that students can learn from each other, and scribe posts is one of these ways this knowledge can be shared. I also liked Clarence’s idea of not emptying class wikis at the end of every year. Not only does it give future students the challenge and opportunity of finding new information to add to the wiki, the amount of information that can be collected after a few years is quite astounding.
When watching a few of the TED talks this past week from the 2009 TED Conference, I stumbled on one by David Hanson called Robots That “Show Emotion”. This short presentation was dealing with robot technology. At this point, technology has gotten to the point where robots can actually recognize specific facial expressions on people and copy that same emotion on their face. They are also able to choose their own emotions. A special material called “Frubber” is used on the faces of these robots to allow them to show a full range of human emotions.
Up until I saw this video, I believed that there was one superior quality in human beings that could never be duplicated in a machine. Although technology has made machinery and electronics able to function at a high level and take over some jobs from humans, such as in production factories, they still could not show emotions and therefore in my opinion could never be considered even close to a human being. But with this new technology, it has allowed robots to look and act even more like real people. If robots continue to become more and more like humans, will there eventually become a time when robots begin to replace people? It makes me wonder, to what point will this technology be taken? What use will it serve? Will there be a point when people say enough is enough, this has gone too far?
So far with my mentorships, I have only really gotten connected to Seth Dicken’s classroom in Italy! Right now, his student’s and I have been blogging back and forth, leaving comments on each other’s blogs. It has been a really interesting experience so far, as I am learning about students from another country. A few weeks ago, his students attended BlogFest. This was a conference on blogging and technology. The students posted to their blogs about this experience and I found it really interesting what they had to say about it.
I`m looking forward to getting more involved with Seth Dicken`s classroom!
Podcasts were something I had heard of before being a topic in my ECMP class, yet I had no idea how many different podcasts there actually were out there. For our assignment this week in that class, we were to download and review two different podcasts, one for our interests and one educational.
The educational podcasts I downloaded is called Grammar Girl Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing. Each episode in this podcast series deals with a different grammar problem and how to fix it. Writing and grammar is not my strong suit so these podcasts will be greatly beneficial to me. These are audio podcasts but still very easy to follow. I watched one episode on using italics correctly and another episode on when to use “which” and when to use “that.”
I love to bake and cook so the other podcast I downloaded was Kraft Kitchen Recipe videos. I love these podcasts! Each two to three minute episode is a different recipe and are full of great tips and tricks. My favorite one I watched was Cheescake Basics. I also watched one on making Chicken Parmesan. These are video podcasts and are easy looking recipes.
In my ECS 110 class a few weeks ago, we watched a couple videos on White Privilege based on Peggy McIntosh’s “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack”. I’m not sure if anyone else has either read or seen any of McIntosh’s work, but for me, the videos were real eye openers to things many of us take for granted on a daily basis. They really got me thinking about what White Privilege means. Here is one of the videos. I thought other people who may not be in that class would find them interesting as well.
The main questions I remember people asking in my high school math classes was “when will we ever use this in the real world?” and “what does this math problem have to do with anything interesting?”
Because I plan on becoming a math teacher, I know these are questions I am going to need a response to. Luckily, I think one possible answer is Real World Math. This site’s purpose is incorporating Google Earth into the math curriculum. Within this link, are a multitude of lesson ideas for creating a more dynamic and interactive math class. It also hope to engage students by creating situations of real world math. Thus answering the question “when will we ever use this in the real world?”
This link could be very effective in the classroom. I would use it to teach students a variety of different concepts, hopefully giving them a new perspective and way to look at things. This link could be used to engage students and help show them the connection between math and the “real world.”
For this week’s ECMP assignment, the goal was to start building our own personal learning networks. To do this, we were to subscribe to atleast five new blogs. One of the new blogs I subscribed to is Making it Interesting. This blog deals with making learning interesting for students. The first thing about it that caught my eye was the first post I saw. It was titled “The Coin Problem” and was about this teacher’s first attempt at using one of Dan Meyer’s math lessons. This was one of the main reasons I added this blog. I too believe that learning needs to be interesting for a student to be engaged in it. As well, Dan Meyer did a presentation in my ECMP class about teaching math which I found extremely interesting. I hope that from this blog I will learn new strategies and find new resources that I will be able to use once I become a teacher to help make learning interesting for students.
For this week’s ECMP assignment, the goal was to start building our own personal learning networks. To do this, we were to subscribe to atleast five new blogs. One of the new blogs I subscribed to is 