Blog Post 11

What can we learn about teaching and learning from these teachers?

This week we were to watch several videos by teachers who are implementing technology into their classrooms.

In the first video Back to the Future we meet Mr. Brian Crosby who is an avid participator in his community. Brian uses Project Based Learning and hands on experience  to help children in his community, who are less fortunate,  learn  how to use technology in the classroom. His students are also using a blog to help them learn to communicate with other people all over the world. The world needs more people like Brian Crosby to  show a passion for motivating kids to better themselves.

The next video we were to watch, was by Biology teacher Mr. Paul Andersen called the Blended Learning Cycle. In this video we see various types of learning in his classroom. He starts out by incorporating online, mobile, and classroom learning. There are also 5 E's that Andersen lives by and they are as follows: engage, explore, explain, expand, and evaluate. Andersen also blends the acronym Q.U.I.V.E.R into his lesson plans, which stands for question, investigate, video, elaboration, and review.

The third video we were to watch was called Making Thinking Visible. In this video Mark Church describes the process he uses when he engaged his students in critical thinking skills. He gets his students to progressively write about a specific topic only to later reflect and see how their writing skills evolved.
                                       

The fourth video, Super Digital Citizen, mainly covers the concerns for surfing the web safely. I could definitely see myself using this lesson in my classroom, because it is important for children to know of the risks of using the internet. This video by Sam Pane also explained what it meant to be a responsible "citizen". Pane explains to his students through comic strips how to be a responsible citizen. With the kids newly created superheroes, they can differentiate between situations that are both safe and unsafe.

The fifth video Project Based Learning by Dean Shareski, was focused on an example of what a school did in Canada to promote project based learning. This school combined three classes into one. The subjects of history, literature, and computer we merged into one, all while still giving the students grades in the individual classes. This allowed for longer, more intense classes that generated an overall greater interest in the subjects. I think the integration of classes is a great idea, although you would have to make sure that the classes coincide.

The final video was another example of a school that uses PBL. Roosevelt Elementary's PBL Program is another example of young students being delved at an early age into the advantages of technology and project based learning. We have seen this many times now when teachers are getting students involved as soon as they are introduced into the educational system. We as future educators are going to have to know our way around this technology because the chances are that our students will already know how.