Just a post for fun

I'm now finished my degree but have grown attached to my blog and would like to continue to write on it. I've been enjoying my return to regular life after school. I've been back into the role of mother and paramedic again and reading books for pleasure. I just finished Jodi Picoult, The Tenth Circle. It was quite good, but books about teenagers having sex at the age of 14, and being raped always make me a little squeamish! I know I'm old fashion aren't I? I do have several other books that I would like to read and am happy that I now have the time. I would also like to play my guitar again and to help my son learn how to play as well. So much to do but always such little time. If anyone has any book recommendations I'd love to hear about them.

Later

My teaching professional growth plan

I think the first part of my growth plan is to take a step back and reflect on the last two years. I'd like to then take that reflection and decide what it is that I really want to do now. What kind of teaching do I want to do and what student population would I really love to work with. I know I don't have a choice in all of these matters right away, but I think it will be important for my future goals.

The following goals I will hope to achieve within my first year of teaching:

1) Maintain my blog. I've really enjoyed having a blog. I find it a great tool to use for reflecting on what I've done and I think that I would love to have a blog for each year of school to use as a communication tool for students and parents. I also love looking at and reading other blogs as a way of getting new ideas and I would someday love to share my own ideas.

2) I really want to explore some of the technologies that I've learned about this year but have not yet had the chance to tinker with. On the Spark podcast that I listened to yesterday, they spoke of the idea of tinkering with technology or anything to learn how to use it. They said the art of tinkering is being set aside, but I disagree with that because I know that's how my kids learn how to use and do things. I want to incorporate tinkering into my life and learn about these technologies so I can use them if they fit with what I'm teaching.

3) When I do get a job at a school, I would like to find a mentor in the school. I would really love to have a mentor that is using inquiry in the classroom so I can team up with them and learn and share ideas with them. I would love to be a part of a collaboration and create meaningful work for my students to do. I think a team approach to inquiry is a great way to make quality projects.

4) I want to actively seek out PD sessions or conferences to go to that will keep me current with new trends in teaching, technology and inquiry. I would like to be always using current research to support my teaching and challenging me to be the best teacher I can be.

5) One thing that I'd really like to learn more about is outdoor ed. One of my peers gave her exit presentation yesterday and she has a lot of experience in this area, she reminded me of how valuable it is to students. It is something that I think I do with my own children and I think would be a good fit for me as a teacher.

I'm definitely looking forward to the new challenges that I will be facing in the next several years and to the change in career for me. I hope that I can make a difference for the children that I will be teaching as I know they will make a difference in my life.

April 11 2011

I wasn't able to be at the peer evaluations of our IO student inquiry projects, but I did get a chance to look at a couple that have been shared with the class. They look really good, and I'm very excited to have been able to try creating a project on IO and be part of a group to do that. I learned a lot about creating inquiry projects on IO and look forward to learning more and becoming better at creating the projects. I really think that I will use that process to create my own projects in the future. The one thing that I hope is that I can be a part of a group when creating projects because I think it is very valuable to do this in a group. I really found that my group worked well together and that they kept me on track as I tend to worry that things aren't the way they should be and want to change things too often. I thought this was a very worth while assignment and I've learned a great deal, and am sure that things will improve the more I create inquiry projects.

April 1st 2011

Assessment for engaged learning:
"Feedback is the most impactful elements of students learning"
The film that was shown that was produced by a grade 8 school was amazing. I only hope that I can help my students to create such amazing peices of work. These projects show what great work students can achieve and be engaged in. In a project that is so involved the amount of learning that took place was evident in the films. I also really thought that the documentry style of the film was very professional which seems to parallel the academics of school.

The students are encouraged to make their work public. They bring the work in progress to the group for feedback to help to make it better. By sharing the work with others and the group as a whole the other students learn about the information that each group is doing. This way the students learn about all areas of the unit of study from their classmates. They become experts in their chosen area, but still learn about the other areas as well.

The use of rubrics and creating them with the students was very helpful. The suggestion was to create one area of the rubric at a time and have the students work with that section of their project. They are not given the rubric at the end of the project after all the work had been done. They use the rubric to help with there learning as they work through each portion of the project.

The idea of teaching kids how to give useful feedback is very important. You have to show them that they are critiquing the work not the person. Also to teach them that they have to give comments that will allow the person or group to improve their work. Is the comment hurtful or helpful, these are what they need to think about while commenting on work. This preteaching students of how to give feedback reminds me of what Dr. Pam Bishop said in case class last year, "you have to loose time to gain time". She was saying that you have to front load your projects with teaching the students about how to do these things and build relationships with the students so they feel safe to participate in a community like this. I think that the word "loose" might not be the right word because teaching these skills is as important as is the curriculum.

Shout out to Ms Pawlick's grade three class at Acadia School

Hey Ms P. I just wanted to say thanks to you and your class for allowing me to come in and teach the kids about media literacy. I feel very passionate about this subject and believe that it is paramount for our kids to have media literacy skills to be able to navigate through today's technologically saturated world.
I had a great time in your classroom and the students rock! You are all very bright and really enjoyable to be around. I can't wait to come back and explore some more ideas around media literacy. Thanks room 20!!!

March25 2011

The smart board for math was really great information. I like using the smart board and I see that the kids really like using it as well. I'd really like the opportunity to learn and play with a smart board on my own so I can figure out how to use the smart board and all of it's functions. I think that if your very comfortable with technology you can utilized all of the functions more effectively for you teaching. The smart tech exchange on the web site seemed to be a good idea for people to exchange lesson ideas with other teachers.

(www.exchange.smarttech.com)

The comic life tools looks like a great idea. I think that kids would really love to use a program like that for story telling, or presenting information in a project. I really like the different styles for presenting what you know, it makes the projects seem more interesting and fun to do. The point raised that technology engages students is so true. I feel that when I write papers using different formats, I feel more engaged in what I'm doing. I've also noticed that in the classroom when kids are using technology they too are more engaged. You just have to ensure that the students are on task, but by allowing them to make decisions about how they will express what they know and what technology they want to use or not use, when given the choice students can be empowered over what they are doing.
Throughout the presentation I kept thinking of great ways the I could use comic life in various class rooms that I may be in.

This is worth a read

I found this in part of my research for my inquiry and I think it's worth it to read. This psychologist has some really great ideas around technology and the amount of time we are spending with it. If your interested you can watch the documentary Digital Nation which is where this interview originally came from.

Digital Nation

March 21 pro sem

The conversation today was linked to my inquiry project about media literacy. It was funny to listen to everyone talk about the social impacts of the use of technology, and that we should be teaching the students the ethical use of media and technology. I just finished writing my paper about the effects of media and that there are positive and negative effects of using media. By teaching students how to deconstruct and critically analyze media we can better construct meaning from our media exposure. This was very reinforcing the importance of my inquiry project.

I also started a twitter account today because we were asked to do so and I've been throwing the idea around for some time now so I'm happy about it. I think I'll give it a chance for a few months and see if I find it useful or not. One useful tweet I found was following CBC in french, I've been trying to improve my french for some time now and I thought this would be a good way to read french every day might help with the vocabulary part of learning.

March 18 2011

Movie making with Imovie is a great tool and I have not yet had the time to play with it on my mac. I really enjoyed the video of how to make it and I think with my experimenting with podcasting will carry over to using the imovie feature. I am planning on using my time when I'm finished school to actually explore many of these great tools that we've been introduced to.

Digital story telling, as I'm learning, is a really awesome way for children and all people to tell their stories or things that are important to them. I've been researching media literacy for my inquiry project and have come across some really empowering stories about digital story telling and how it is helping people to tell their truths or things that they think are important for others to know.

The drop box was a great idea. I love using google docs because you can access it anywhere from any device and drop box is the same, which is great. This is very timely for me because we are going to Australia this summer and it seems like a good idea to use drop box for our trip. (dropbox.com)

WebQuest - webquest.com. This is inquiry based learning that is using only the internet. This would be great for students in all grades. I know that my son would love to do something like this. I've been working with his class and this would be a great way to do a lesson or a unit on media literacy. Atlantis.crlt.indiana.edu/ This is a game sort of like second life or war or world craft where the student gets to explore a world that has information about a particular topic. This way the students get to learn about something in a real like context. The students have to complete tasks throughout the site, and then complete an assignment for the teacher at the end of the unit.I know that, again, this would be something that my son would love, and I'm sure that other kids would love it too.

Peer review of blogs - I always find this a little nerve racking at first but I do love it when people comment on my blog, even wen I don't like what they say. I really tried to be honest because I find that most helpful to me and my learning. So give it to me honestly!!!

Drive

I just finished reading, well listening, to the book Drive By Daniel Pink. The book is about motivation and how humans are naturally intrinsicly driven to be productive and creative, and that the world we live in is focused on externally rewarding people for work or products which is squashing our ability to produce and be creative and to achieve mastery. I thought it was a really good read/listen and could be very useful as new teachers. I can really see the benefit of schools embracing this philosophy, from the top down. If anyone else has read or listed to this book I'd be curious to hear what you think about it.

March 11, Our showcase presentation

We had a show case prior to ours today and it was great because it was about making movies on xtranormal. I've been trying to find this site to show my son because I've seen movies made on this site before and loved them and I know that my son would really like to make these types of movies. Then we did ours on podcasting. I've learned so much and have had a lot of fun making podcasts. I've made two so far that I've posted to my site, which is linked at the bottom of this site. I'm not too happy with my portion of the presentation. I really thought I had it all ready for my part today but forgetting to change the file to an mp3 really threw a curve ball at me because then I had to do that in front of the class. I guess it was good in a way as well so that I really make sure that I have things prepared properly for my teaching. I actually practiced last night but I didn't want to have too much done so that I couldn't show everyone how to do it, but then I still forgot to do a step anyway. Oh well, thanks to Sean for knowing more than me so we could still figure it out. The following is our presentation about podcasting.

Technology PD from the Calgary Catholic Board

I really enjoyed the enthusiasm and excitement of the group of teachers in this PD group. I feel excited that there are teachers that are learning, teaching and incorporating new technology and inquiry into teaching BUT; I mentioned to one of my friends who teaches in the Catholic Board, that we had this workshop with this group and she was very negative about the ed tech group and said their workshops are @#$%. Having experience the teachers leading the group first hand I'm able to form my own opinion and I think that they have a lot of great information for teachers, I'm assuming a lot more than we were exposed to, and that my friend is one of these teachers who have been doing the same thing for several years and has no desire to change. I also understand that she is over loaded with paper work for every little thing or problem that her students have that she is finding it hard to have time to teach her students, and that she has no time to even want to change. How many teachers are like my friend?

So I ask what are we doing as teachers, what are we giving the students, does having to fill out 10 pages of paper just to refer a student for help encourage teachers to help them or to not help them so they don't drown in paper work? Is this why in our practicums we didn't see many teachers using inquiry? Is this why teachers feel that they are being squeezed like a lemon for every last drop of juice out of them? Is this why there is no energy lest for teachers to change their ways?

I also know of another teacher who was teaching in an inquiry style and she was snuffed out by her administration and other teachers in her department because her students were too engaged and too many students wanted to be in her class. Now she if forced to follow the same teaching style of the other teachers in her department so that the exams can all be the same. I was so confused by this, I don't understand why as an administrator you would not encourage what she was doing and spread that engagement throughout the school. I fear that when I start teaching I'll be demanded to follow these old ways of teaching and I'll have to conform to what all other teachers are doing. What do you say to an administrator who thinks that any assessment other than exams are just fluff??

Not all help is equal

I'm working on my showcase project and am feeling like poking my eyes out at times! I'm enjoying learning to use the podcasting tools, but NOT ALL HELP IS EQUAL. I'm using the help button in blogger but it is lacking in some areas. So I decided to ask a human to help me because there is something about collaborating with someone to figure things out. We worked on it together for a couple of hours, passing ideas back and forth and finally figured it out using some help from other web sites and our brains together. It made me think about how important collaboration is and that technology is good but only when you can use it properly. Some tech geeks explain things in a limited way assuming that we all understand at the same level. Anyway I just wanted to highlight the importance of us still working together as humans and talking face to face to collaborate rather than just using technology as in Google Docs, human conversation can lead to great accomplishments. I think we are loosing that a these days.

Great Task Self Evaluation

I really liked the way we presented the great tasks today in that it was almost like a science fair where you go around and look at what other people have done. It was a little different for us since we were giving feedback on only two tasks but I still found time to look at other tasks that I was interested in. The points brought up in the discussion after were the most valuable because it reinforced the purpose and the value of using peer feedback for the students and the teacher. I was really curious about what was said about our task and how it could be made different. One of the best parts for me was the discussions we had when looking at the other tasks and how we each had different perspectives of what was done.
The challenge with doing this in a classroom with younger kids is that you have to put in a lot of time at the beginning to teach them how to give informative feedback. To make it useful for all of the students. I think this is valuable time to lose at the beginning in order to make great gains in learning in the end. I think that this is part of the challenge of inquiry work, that we have to teach the students in the beginning of how to do it and maybe that is why some teachers don't do it, because it's easier to do what the students are used to and not teach them how to learn in new and interesting ways. The first step with using peer feedback will be to make the classroom a safe place where the students feel that they can give their honest feedback, and to hear feedback from their peers.
Over all I really liked participating in the peer evaluations and I think it was useful for us. I think that we need to start teaching our students at a very young age of how to do peer evaluations so that those skills can grow with the students as they enter higher grades.

Great Task Survey

Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey, the world's leading questionnaire tool.

Feb 11 2011

The use of Smart Board technology is really great. I've seen them used a lot in the last placement that I was in and the teacher used it a lot. I don't think she used it very interactively with the students, she used it more like a traditional white board. I loved that I got the change to try it today, thanks again for letting me throw the bunny at the board, it was fun!!
Prezi, I really like the idea of it but I'm not sure that I would take the time to learn it. I'm more of a show me how to do it and then I'll do it. Maybe it would be something that I can do over the summer when I have some time. I really like the idea of using someone's already made prezi and that I can modify it, but it feels a lot like cheating! The use of displaying student work was really great not only for your self as a teacher but also as a way to show your class work to parents or admin. It seems that prezi would be useful but it also has some limitations in it's use.
There was some talk about assessment and some of the things that stood out for me were, "if there's only one way to be right then we will exclude some of the students?" This really made sense to me, I'm not sure that it would be easy to implement in the classroom, but I'm going into this assuming that nothing is going to be easy. This is something that I want to keep in my mind so that I can use it to help students who might not fit into the typical mold of the classroom. I like the analogy of a tool box. We use that in paramedicine a lot, in that as many different tools or treatments we can have available the better we can help our patients. The idea of filling the tool box with many, many tools to enable you to teach and help all children.

Why don't kids today want to or are able to make decisions? My partner and I had this discussion just the other day. It seems to me that students aren't given the opportunity to make decisions in their assignments. I think that this is a very important reason  to implement the inquiry style of teaching into our schools. Students will have the ability to practice their decision making skills throughout their school careers.
I watched the TED talks on robots that Michelle sent out via email. I watched it with my son and daughter, which is quite informative for me. They both loved it and were talking about the robots the next day and which ones they would want to have. I find it so amazing to watch and learn from them, seeing things through their eyes. I think this will be helpful to me as a teacher because things that they think are really cool are often different from what I think is cool. They can keep me in the loop of what students are interested in and I can use these ideas in my teaching practice.  I've never seen the use of robotics in the classroom but I think my son would really love working with them and this motivates me to learn more about it myself and how to use it in the classroom.

Feb 4th class reflection

I thought todays presentations by both groups were really helpful. I'm going to check out some of the sites from the first group about learning languages because I'm desperately trying to improve my skills in french. I have some friends that I play hockey with that are from Quebec and I have an opportunity to use them to immerse myself in the language but I'm lacking time to do it. Having said that I wanted to say that I do use google translator when I'm emailing them so I can say what I don't know how to say in french. The girls always let me know if the translation was not correct or a better way I can say it. So I guess that I'm not totally relying on it but it does give me a place to start and learn from.

 The Calgary Public Library stuff was also very useful. I've never used the elibrary before but I will be using it now! The jing and the video downloading site was awesome too. It was funny because while I was watching the presentation about the library I was thinking how did they make this video? Thanks for showing me how!

The conversation about inquiry and why teachers aren't doing it, and administrators not allowing teachers to do it etc. was interesting because I think that it's up to us to take the risk and start teaching using inquiry when we can and change the culture of education one person at a time. The reason teachers don't do it is because it's hard, and it takes a lot of time. My partner was talking to some teachers about this and why they don't use inquiry, and this is what they told her; There is already such a demand on the teachers time so if they start to use inquiry they have to redo all their lesson plans and re-plan how to teach units that they already have the resources for. So I think if we go out there and start by dipping our toes in and do inquiry here and there, gradually getting better at it and gradually adding more and more of it eventually other teachers will have to get on board. They will start to notice that kids in our classes are engaged and learning and having fun doing it, they will then wonder why it's not happening in their classes. If you can, recruit the teachers in your discipline and have them collaborate on the projects with you. If you have new and older teachers collaborating together I'm sure you can come up with really amazing things. I can't see how any administrator can fault you for trying to engage the students with exciting and worth while projects.

The reason why there hasn't been a change in the culture of education is because people before us have not taken this risk, they have fallen into the old habits of the culture of the school that they are working in. Imagine getting a job at the Calgary Science School and trying to teach by just delivering information and having the students regurgitate the information back in the form of a test. I think you'd probably be fired! This is because the culture of that school is different from most CBE schools. So I think one teacher at a time, one school at a time, we can change the culture of teaching in Calgary. (or where ever you work)

What I learned from Neil Stephenson

Before I start with todays seminar with Neil I just wanted to say a few things about blogging and what I'm learning from that. I try to ride my bike to school as much as possible and I find that it allows me to do a lot of reflecting,  this is what I was thinking about today on my ride home. I remember last semester having to use a journal to write our reflections about our classes and our teaching experiences. The question I have is this, why did we not start a blog at the beginning of the two year program? Wouldn't it have been great to be able to look back at what we were writing about, feeling or doing in our teaching practices? Besides the fact that it would have been a great tool to use throughout our two years and would be an ongoing journal and efolio combined! I think the blog is a better tool than the efolio because it can be used like and efolio but people can also add comments to it, which would be valuable as well. Just putting it out there.
The other thing I was thinking about on the ride home is, why is this class not mandatory for all and it should be a class in each semester on campus, sort of like the lecture series. So far in the three weeks we've had in this class I've learned more about inquiry than in the year and a half prior. The information about technology is awesome but so is the information about inquiry and how to include it in the classroom. I think that after todays seminar I can truly say that I have a pretty good idea of what inquiry is and ways to use it to teach, not that I'd be good at it yet but at least I feel I can make a go of it!! Not blowing smoke up any butts but this class is it!!
Ok onto todays seminar, I felt like Neil presented inquiry in away that was understandable and useable to us as new teachers. He gave great ideas about how to form questions, what should be thought about in forming the questions, and how to use technology in completing a task. I also really liked that he emphasized not to use technology when it has no use in certain scenarios. I sort of feel a bit bombarded with the whole technology thing and he cleared that up a bit by saying it should only be included when it truly fits. I like the idea of not forcing it in any learning situation. It was great to see his ideas and technology used by real students and what they were able to do with it. I really need to see things to get a full understanding of their uses.
I'm glad that I was able to talk with Neil after the class about the RSS feeds. I immediately changed my home page to igoogle and added the google reader to it so I can have RSS feeds right on my home page. I'm very excited about it.
The other thing that was really inspirational in Neil's presentations was that the teachers at his school collaborating to make these lessons work. The fact that his school has built in the collaboration time into their day so they can plan more engaging work for the students should be and inspiration to all schools. It feels like we talk about how this should happen but I didn't see it happening in the schools that I did practicums in.
Well that's it for now, later skaters.

Google DOC's and Story telling

Wow, I too love the Google Doc's stuff! It's pretty easy to use and I love that it is at your fingertips when ever you need it on what ever computer you have access to. The Forms document will be really great. I just want to make up some survey or something just to try it out. I think that it will be great for use by students and throughout the school by the staff as well. The ability to collaborate without meeting face to face seems to be what people want in our society today. Kind of sad but true.
I also really enjoyed the prezi (sp?) site as well. I like the presentation in a non-power point style. I'm a bit bored with the same old style, and this is just a new and different way to see a presentation.
I really like the idea of the story telling work. I think that a lot can be learn through story telling. Whether it is about yourself or about another topic the idea of learning something and telling someone else via a story is a great learning experience. Darcy's presentation of the class that he is taking was very interesting. The class seemed like it was more for people just taking it for fun. I'm not convinced of the lack of structure of the assignments and the assessment of it. I'm open to learning more about it though because I think if the student were allowed to make up their own assignments in high school they might be more engaged in what they were doing. Perhaps you could have some loose parameters  that the students had to follow just to ensure that curriculum was met, other wise the students had the freedom to display their learning as they chose.

Homework assignment 1

To state my strengths with regard to inquiry and technology will be very short, I'm willing to learn as much as possible as my experience is none. Being in the secondary phys-ed stream I have no experience using inquiry in my placements, not that I don't want to but it was just never done and usually frowned upon by teachers I've been working with. I'm not sure exactly how it would fit into phys-ed but I'm sure there is a way, which I would like to find out. Not that I'm stuck like glue to phys-ed, I actually hope to teach science or biology as well since my schooling and my work as a paramedic for the last 10 years would apply to this subject nicely. As well my strengths in technology are quite limited, but I can say as a strength that when I want to do something I put a lot of energy into doing it so I think I will be able to learn a lot in this course.
My learning needs will be quite extensive, but I think when pointed in the right direction I'm able to learn and figure things out and probably learn to take it further on my own.
I'm very interested in educational technology because I think this is the key to education in the future. I can see how my two kids are very engaged in computers, IPODs, WII, and anything else that is computer like and feel that I need to be able to use that interest and include it in my teaching to keep pace with our children in schools today.
Some topics that I would be interested in are: incorporating technology in phys-ed, media and digital literacy, assessment and technology, making productive lessons with technology.

My very first blogging post

Hey there out there. I've just created this blog for a class at school, so I'm very new at this. I'm very excited about this class, and I think that it will be very useful for me in my future endeavors as a new teacher and possibly in other things I do as well. I look forward to adding to my blog as time goes on.