Pre Service Teaching Placement

So student teaching is drawing very near and I met with my cooperating teacher for this term. I am in a grade 7/8 classroom which is a little bit intimidating coming from a grade 3/4 classroom first placement. I will be primarily teaching Social Studies and Math but my cooperating teacher seems very flexible and wants me to get as much out of my placement as I can. I am a physical education major so he says I could even spend some time in the gym which I was excited for. We discussed various things about the classroom and the students but one thing he brought up was that it would be nice to incorporate technology aspects in lessons and that it is something he has struggled with. So the challenge is on, I'm going to be on the lookout for how to use whatever technology I can to assist in my teaching this placement. There is a smart board in the classroom so I assume most of my lessons I will try to it that aspect into it but Ipads are available in the school for the students to use so that is also an option.

Tomorrow is the first day of m placement and I am nervous and excited all in the same time. I know going outside my comfort zone will be a good thing for me so I'm looking forward to the experience.

The Power of Advertisements

Flappy Bird. Do I need to say much more? Whether you have an addiction to the game or missed out on downloading it before its removal from the app store, I have a pretty good feeling you know what it is.

The attention this game has gotten blows my mind. I'm not a huge gamer to begin with but the concept of this game does not peak my interest whatsoever...there's no winning! It seems that everyone around me of all ages is in on the craze and frequently post their high scores on social media showing off to their friends. I often joke to those who play the game that I'm going to play duck hunt with Flappy Bird..... (Possible idea for a new app!?)

With all the hype around the app there's been much discussion on how much money the creator of it was making on ads every day. Ads! Which leads me to thinking about how many advertisements we’re exposed to every day in the media. Use an app on your phone, watch a YouTube video, go on Facebook or twitter, turn on the TV, open a newspaper or magazine- paper copy or online etc…we are surrounded by them. Because they are everywhere are we desensitized to them? Or are they subliminally catching our attention and are the drive behind why we do and buy certain products? Take notice of where the ads are, who they’re targeting and how they’re targeting them. How often have you seen a funny commercial or advertisement and had to share it with a friend? How many stories have you heard from someone ordering something they really don’t need or want based on the commercial “sucking them in”? During the Super bowl, it cost 3.5 million dollars for 30 seconds of commercial time, they are the some of the most watched commercials.

So, just for fun, I want you to take notice of what advertisements pop up around you that you otherwise wouldn’t have noticed, who’s exposed to them, who they’re targeting and how they’re doing it….I’m sure you’ll be surprised!

Philosophy of Education

In a couple of my classes we are being asked to reflect upon our Philosophy of Education. Why we educate, what is important, what we hope to accomplish, why we do what we do etc. In creating this, I did not want to get stuck in a long winded essay mentioning every single thing I hope to achieve. I wanted to mention a few broad key points that having meaning to me and that I believe to be vital in my responsibilities as an educator. So here is what I came up with. My Philosophy of Education...

I believe that each student is a unique individual that has their own motivations, interests and goals. As a teacher, my responsibility is to provide these students with the opportunity to discover themselves, their surroundings and the interactions around them and to construct knowledge that is meaningful and relevant to their life and interests.

It is important to provide a safe, respectful environment that is inviting of new ideas. Feeling safe and respected and giving respect creates a dynamic of comfort among one another to share ideas, feelings and thoughts. Student input is crucial to a successful classroom. Developing lessons and units with student input has them become invested in what they are learning and in turn they become more motivated to reach goals.

Students need to have compassionate, strong, and dedicated individuals who are excited about working with them. Children are our future, and they all have the potential to bring something new to the world. It is my goal as an educator to assist students in reaching their highest potential.

Useful Websites

Within the last few weeks in my ICT class we've been creating a number of mini projects and i'm learning about a few websites that do some pretty neat things. I want to share them with you!

www.weebly.com This website allows you to create your own website. It has a very straight forward set up and there's many templates to choose from that you can customise to your liking. I've recently had to set up a classroom website using weebly. You can check it out at www.discoverourclass.weebly.com I am also in the middle of creating an eportfolio using Weebly as well.

www.animoto.com This website makes it extremely easy to put together an animated slide show video. For class I created one on my family's trip to Las Vegas you can check it out at
http://animoto.com/play/qtcaux70l5Fg2vChml2LIg or just scroll down to the bottom of my blog to watch it!

www.pixlr.com and www.ipiccy.com/ are both photo editing sites with more options than you'd know what to do with. It was pretty amazing to play around with them and see what I could do!

www.compfight.com You can find tons of pictures and clip art here and all the necessary info you'd need for editing and photo credit. I used this site for a few of the pictures on my classroom website.

www.prezi.com A cool way to make presentations that is different from the traditional slides. I recommend checking it out!

www.wordle.net is a site to make unique word clouds. If you go to my classroom website the word cloud on the homepage is made using wordle.

I found these websites all fairly straight forward and easy to use. I can definitely see ways of incorporating them into the classroom. I really enjoyed creating all these projects and the ease of them makes its fun to do! I recommend trying some of them out!

The Mozart Effect

Very recently a friend got me thinking about the effects of listening to music while studying. I know for myself I was never one of those people that could listen to music when I needed to get some serious work done. I'd get sidetracked singing along with Destiny's Child instead of learning the phases of cell division....okay, maybe not Destiny's Child...but whatever song it was had nothing to do with Prophase, Metaphase, Anaphase and Telephase...

I know friends, classmates and students that listen to music while doing homework but I've never really thought much of it before. As a teacher, it intrigues me now more than ever. Why not play music in my classroom if it helps students work better? So I looked to Google to find our more!

Many articles that I went through had very consistent information. What I came across is known as the "Mozart Effect".

When you write, you trigger the left hemisphere of your brain. When you’re listening to music, you’re triggering the right hemisphere of your brain. When there are lyrics in a song, the left side of the brain becomes divided. It tries to decipher the school material and analyse the words in the song at the same time. It is done completely subconsciously, and is essential why music is not good to listen to while studying.

However, if the music doesn’t have any lyrics, then the left side of your brain no longer has to split its attention.

Listening to music without lyrics will still stimulate the right side of the brain.  When both hemispheres work simultaneously, they work better as a whole. As a result, non-lyrical music actually increases your ability to memorise and retain information.

Classical music is the way to go. Hence, the "Mozart Effect".

Now, I realise everyone is different and what works for some may not work for others. Along with the fact that although I'm musically open minded when it comes to genre, classical music is one that is not on my Ipod.

After years of struggling with studying, I've found a way that works for me that does not involve classical music and naturally one might think don't fix something that's not broken... but why not make something good, great? Its worth a try.


...and okay, maybe it was Destiny's Child.

http://ucdavis.uloop.com/news/view.php/3436/music-studying-good-bad
http://www.phoenix.edu/forward/student-life/2013/08/should-you-listen-to-music-while-studying.html
http://education.seattlepi.com/listening-music-doing-homework-affect-grade-school-1365.html

A Bit About Me

So, my last post left me thinking that with all the outdated technology that was used in my classrooms growing up, people arent going to have a clue when I was actually in grade school. Time to fill you in on me!

I am currently 24 years old, born in 89, late birthday in September, graduated highschool in 2007, which had me being one of those 17 year olds starting University and missing all the fun 'kick off the year' type celebrations that required you to have an 18th birthday. I grew up and went to school in Thompson, Manitoba and then moved to Brandon, Manitoba to attend University.

I'd love to tell you that I knew I wanted to be a teacher my whole life, and everything's been butterflies and rainbows....not exactly the case. Throughout most of elementary and highschool I was pretty much the ideal student, and I had a great experience, had many friends, was at top of my classes, captain of the sports teams, participated in extra curricular activities, recieved athelete of the year and acedemic awards and never got in any sort of trouble. But even with all those things going for me there was never a point in all my life that I had the slightest idea what I wanted to do when I graduated.

Fast forward to fall 2007, classes at University begin and i'm in a bunch of random classes I just chose based on interests. I find myself dropping out shortly thereafter to work for my parents,whom owned a resturant at the time. Needless to say my parents weren't thrilled. (about me dropping out of school, not me working for them!)

I'm a huge believer in everything happens for a reason and thus starts the "rainbows and butterflies" portion of my story. A job oppoutunity came up to work for the City of Brandon at a youth activity centre. Without much experience with youth at the time I soon came to realise I had a knack for it. I went back to school with teaching in mind, graduated with my Bachelor of Physical Education, minor in Biology and applied for Education. Other than some indecisiveness about what stream I wanted to enter into everything went quite smoothly.

And here I am and loving it. I'm probably in the best place in my life I have been in a long time. I still work for the City as i'm attending school, running youth programs through the school year and a summer program as well. That job has opened so many doors for me I can't even begin to explain.

To find out more about the awesome free program I run, click the Youth Activity Centre (YAC) link and check out the video below!

Evolution of Classroom Technology

 

 

First blog of my life. Never thought I would be a person to write one. I'm taking a course where it is the option for an assignment and after giving it some thought it actually sounded like a good idea. It couldn't be more perfect that I'm taking an ICT course in University this semester. In my first teaching placement I found myself always wanting to do fun and interesting things with technology in the classroom, I just didn't have a whole lot of knowledge on how to do it. In my lifetime, the varieties of technology that I've seen used in a classroom has made leaps and bounds. In grade 5 I sat in my classroom watching a slide show of projected pictures along to a cassette tape, when the tape beeped the teacher pressed a button to change the picture. I couldn't even tell you what that gadget was called. If anyone knows, please tell me! It was a treat when we watched the videos on film...ooo moving pictures! A nice amount of time was wasted on the teacher setting up the reels on the machine. And then who could forget the excitement in the room when the big TV and VCR wheeled into the classroom. Some things have surprisingly lasted....overhead projectors...still used in my current University classrooms. Not to mention all those notes taken on a chalk board, it was a pretty big deal when a classroom had a whiteboard. I'm sure some individuals my age did not have the luxury to use some of these outdated items, but for those that did, I'm assuming we can agree that if a smart board was set up in our grade 5 classroom we would have fallen off our chairs. I remember hearing about them, but the first smart board I actually ever seen and worked with was my second year of University! During my first student teaching placement we were lucky enough to have a brand new smart board installed...no board necessary, just a projection on a surface was enough for it to have all the usual touchscreen smart board capabilities....like wow! There's a number of items in a classroom we could compare to what we have now...computers, tablets, smart phones, the use of wifi, emailing, social media etc. and I want to be able to make use of them in the classroom effectively. So I'm hoping to learn as much as I can and keep you updated along the way. Just to further jog your memory on past classroom technology check out this video!http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFwWWsz_X9s