End of Class

I am very glad that I signed up for my ECOMP 355 class and pursued it until the end.  My accomplishments and the many things I learned throughout these past few months are of the many and I believe something to be quite proud of.  I made and watched quite a few youtube teaching videos, discovered wikis, made my first blog, got to rediscover the excitement of making slideshows, learned how to make a imovie video, etc. In the future, I hope to get as much out of my future education classes as I have gotten out of this one.  It has been a blast, and although much more work than I had initially expected, well worth the effort!

Final Project

I took a couple of weeks to work on my final project.  There were many steps to achieve.

1. Check with the teacher that it was in fact all right to video tape within her classroom.
2. Double check with the principal that she was on board with my plans.
3. Triple check that all the forms were signed with the students so that they were available to be video taped in the first place.
4. Tape random shots throughout the week of the children at work as well as ask for volunteers to be interviewed during recesses.
5. Upload the video to a mac computer.
6. Organize the video to make my project into the best it could be.
7. Upload the video to the internet.
8. Present the video to my ECOMP 355 class.
9. Make the video available for Ms. Grant’s Grade 1/2 class to watch.
10. Burn the video to disk for Ms. Grant’s Grade 1/2 classroom.

Top 10 Things You Don’t Learn About Teaching in College!

This video gave me a good chuckle so I thought that I would share it to make someone else’s day too!

Top 10 Things You Don’t Learn About Teaching in College!

10. Why are the bad kids never sick?

9.   No matter how sick you are, it’s easier t come into school than write sub plans.

8.   When students tell you they really have to go to the bathroom, always believe them!

7.   Forget your college friends and loved ones. Who’s your new best friend? Wipes!

6.   How to disarm the school alarm system on the weekend!

5.   You’ll get so sick and tired of hearing your last name, you’ll want to change it.

4.   Your fitness program will consist of carrying your bags to and from school

3.   Two words… Differentiating Instructions

2.   The principal’s office is still scary!

1.   Always be good to your Superintendent!

Why I Teach?

“Why are you becoming a teacher?” This is a question that we should all ask ourselves.

The following is a stereotypical form of a teacher’s career. They usually start at 9:00am and end at 3:30pm. They have all the yearly holidays off, as well as other random days throughout the year to chill. To top it all off teachers have two whole months of summer holidays to relax and do nothing. Sounds good does it not? If only…..

Teachers are there to be the family that children may not have to go home to, to give a special place for students to go to where they fill loved. It is a teacher’s job to be a teacher, a parent, a role model, and a friend all at the same time to each and every student of the classroom. Teachers are there to help set goals, and make dreams not to demolish them. They are there to educate students according to their level and to help them each succeed in their own individual ways. Being a teacher is not a job where you can give up because of exhaustion; a smile needs to always be present along side encouraging words. Giving up as an educator to a student means you are giving up on them as an individual; it just cannot be done. Students are their top priorities above everything else including themselves.

Teachers make a difference not only on a world scale but more so within each individual child’s world. A true educator’s job does not end with the hours of their shift, because a teacher is always learning as well as teaching, day in and day out.

It is believed that “those who can’t, teach,” but in reality “very few can teach!”

Pay Attention

“Engage them, don’t enrage them” says the video “Pay Attention”.

Almost 50% simply don’t graduate in the United States, an alarmingly high number to say the least. “Pay Attention” suggests to me that through new digital media forms such as podcasts and text messaging, the youth of today can be harnessed into a unit of smooth-working and higher-learning individuals.

Suggesting that technology will be the root of all learning in the future, this video is an eye-opening demonstration of a multitude of facts and statistics that seem to back one thing: complete technological dominance in the classroom is inevitable if we want North America to remain competitive on the world scale.

There are a plethora of new technologies that we didn’t have access to even in recent years. With the advent of Global Positioning Systems courtesy of the U.S. military, text messaging development driven by a raging telecom industry, and many other new technologies, it’s not hard to understand that baptism by fire in a technological world is the order of the day for the youth inside and outside of the classroom.

One thing that I thought of is I couldn’t hep but imagine, “What if for homework, the school issued a podcast instead of a newsletter, saving on paper costs? What about assignments; instead of using agendas, the students could just plug in and download the day’s homework assignment via a podcast, saved between their favourite music folders, ready to be accessed at the push of a button…”

Engaging students will not be as simple as teachers pushing a button and walking away for an hour. No, teaching will become an art intertwined and interspersed with technological feats. Every day, we will see technology in general become more commonplace in our educational institutions. Whether this is a successful integration or not remains to be seen.

Me, I think whatever happens; we are all in for a truly interesting digital experience. Should not the kids experience it first hand?

A Vision of Students Today

When you watch “A vision of students today”, what comes to mind? A tangled web of human interaction interspersed and affected by technology, to put it lightly.

The statistics don’t lie. Despite questionable sources of the statistics in the video, the fact of the matter is that the focus has been taken off of education with the advent of technology just as much (if not more than) as it has helped to serve the educational process.

Some think technology has not helped students at all. Maybe computers are not the answer to all life’s problems, they think. This view reminds me of an Amish standpoint. I, unlike these detractors, believe technology is the answer and the inevitable investment that humanity will end up making at some point anyways.

These pessimists view technology as an enemy, as something evil. Is it really that hard to understand that with new technologies, will come new distractions?

Take the novelty Facebook.com for example. The latest, greatest and most valuable social networking site in the world, Facebook is designed to be a connecting tool for friends, but soon it will connect us to an almost demonic level of publicity. Facebook today will be the Human Resources Department hiring tool of tomorrow. In some cases, this is already a reality. I think we adapt over time to these novelties, and then to use them to our advantage. In some ways, Facebook lives up to its name… an online book for every single face. Privacy has never suffered a bigger blow.

And by the same token, Wikipedia.com is another by-product of human innovation. Ever evolving, Wikipedia is created by the people, for the people, with all the biases and human tendencies woven into its intricate fabric of “knowledge”. Facebook and Wikipedia, to name a few, continue to drive what I like to call webolution.

When I think of the words web and evolution, it’s easy to figure out what webolution is, and when you look at facebook and Wikipedia it’s not hard to see how

Advances in computing will bring the human race to new levels and for every increase in processing power of the newest computers, human intellect will rise as well to match and exceed that power. We develop the technology, and therefore we are infinitely more powerful than it is.

It takes a computer to learn to mimic and imitate. It takes a human to innovate. Computers will never innovate… but they will take the innovation of today and mimic it tomorrow.

What remains to be seen is how much (or even whether) infinite human innovation can be matched by machine imitation.

Welcome and thank-you for visiting me, Lindsay Rogers, at my personal blog.  I am currently twenty years old and in my third year at the University of Regina in the faculty of education.  This blog was created as a means of learning for my ECOMP 355 class; however as time has passed, I now understand it to be for more than just that reason.  A blog for a teacher, I have come to understand, is a very economical way of life for the present time frame.  Students are developing new ways of learning and need guides (teachers) to help them along the way as much as possible.  Too many teachers are caught in the gutters unaware of the world that is changing around them.  Technology that students have available to them in this day and age should not be shunned, but instead be relished and accepted as new means of learning.  As the saying goes, if you can’t beat them, join them!