wii smart board

With the minor problem of adequate funding, many teachers have to make due with their creativity and with the limited supplies they have. And many of us can only dream of having a smart board in our classroom to enhance the learning for our students.
I found this video on teachertube.com, and it displays the creativity and the (amazingly) intelligence of one teacher who made a smartboard with a Nintendo Wii. It goes to show how helpful teaching sites such as this one is for sharing knowledge- I know I would never have thought to do this, let alone know how! He builds a breaksdown the process of building a smartboard with a Wii controller, and says it costs less than $70! Of course, he assumes that the teacher has (or should go out and buy) a Mac laptop, which would alter the price significantly.

http://www.teachertube.com/v.php?viewkey=63eb4e7649bf5513038d

What are some of the advantages/disavantages to implementing a smartboard into your classroom? Is this something you would try in your own classroom? Or does this "simple" strategy seem too complicated? Would the $70 investment (plus perhaps the purchase of a Mac) be worth trying?

Plethora of resources...

We are so lucky to be in a generation where information and technologies are so easily and readily accessible. I love learning about new technologies from others and implementing them into my own aspiring profession. This leads me to http://teachertube.com/ . It provides a plethora of resources through videos from other teachers. It is the sister site to youtube.com, and provides more specific topics related to teaching--from technologies in the classroom to teaching strategies to tips for classroom management.
Of course, with any website, there is the issue of validity and legitimacy-- how do we know if their information is correct? With unregulated sites, we always need to be cautious of the information that is one the web. As long as we are able to decipher the junk from the useful, I think that this site can provide a lot of resources for us. What are your thoughts about these types of sites? Do you think they will be useful in your teaching career? Do you have any doubts or hesitation?

Art and Writing

Most of us have taken Art 350 and learned that art is an important thing for children to explore. It provides a means of expression when they can not do it verbally, and helps them think of new ways to explain different feelings. Also in Teaching Writing, we used art to help our writing skills and learned that this is excellent for young writers to use as well. Sandra Young is a second grade teacher and a lover of art, and now of writing. She has created this website to encorporate writing, art, and literature all into one lesson. There are lessons available on the page paired with examples and step-by-step instructions on how to teach each lesson. I feel that these lessons would not only be fun for the students to partake in, but also would be a great way to introduce art lessons to them. Really each lesson combines three subjects in a way that is fun and that allows the children to be inventive.
http://www.writingfix.com/Classroom_Tools/Art_and_Writing.htm

Use the above link to explore the site and a few lessons and see what you think. What is your opinion on using art to teach other subjects? How can art help writing skills? Do you remember using art in your elementary school in relation to other subjects, or was it completely separated? Do you want to use art in your classroom-- why or why not? How plausible is it to use art and meet all of the standards needed?

"I Am" Poems

http://score.rims.k12.ca.us/score_lessons/symbols_freedom/pages/i_am_poem.html

http://washingtonelementarypoetry.blogspot.com/2008/01/5th-grade-i-am-poems.html

Here is both a format that is perfect for "I Am" poems in the classroom, and also some examples of actual poems that have been used in this particular classroom. Why do you think poems like these are not only great to write and have as a teacher, but also to use in the classroom?

E-Portfolios

Want to know a little bit more about e-portfolios? Check out this cute video! It tells you some of the things you can do with them, and may get you thinking about making one for your future career!

Wall Art Quilts

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6AZmpC_JPE

Go to this www.youtube.com site and check out these beautiful wall art quilts to help inspire you for your own quilts. Unfortunately, the author disabled the embedding, so please go to the site to check it out! They are very beautiful!

Digital Teaching Portfolios on the Internet

While digital teaching portfolios may seem complicated, the following web site, Digital Teaching Portfolio Workbook Activities, provides examples of portfolios assembled by preservice teachers like yourselves that provide some interesting examples of their attempts at reflecting on standards, assembling artifacts, and explaining pedagogical approaches that conform to those standards for teacher preparation.

You'll notice, for example, that these portfolios, like the portfolios you'll be creating, reflect on the ways in which the writers' learning relates to standards for teacher preparation. According to their web site, the standards referenced in these portfolios, the INTASC Standards, were authored by INTASC, or "the Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium . . . [to] reflect the professional consensus of what beginning teachers should know and be able to do. The standards and the key indicators associated with them . . . . provide the framework for the rubrics used to assess the products." After you've had a chance to look at some of these portfolios, how would you evaluate them? Which did you think provided the most appropriate and inspiring approaches to teaching? Which responses addressed most directly and convincingly the standards they were meant to illustrate?

Healthy Schools, Health Minds?

Go to watch this video....


Healthy Schools, Healthy Minds?

Recommended...
Watch 4:00min-9:45min
Watch 13:00min-18:20min
Watch 22:30min-24:20min

I found this video on making schools a healthy enviornment. They are talking about schools in Canada, but I feel the same concepts apply for education here in the US as well. The video itself is 28 minutes, so I recommended pieces to watch above. Todays youth are becomming more and more obese as time goes by. As the percentage of obese children rises, the amount of time spent participating in physical activity is decreases. How can we ignore this as a nation and as educators? The answers are right infront of us. The three woman interviewed in this video admit that creating a healthy enviornment in our schools is time consuming and involves a lot of planning. The problem with obesity is only going to get worse if our communities do not step up and make changes!!

Questions to consider...
Why should schoool be responsible for encouraging healthy lifestyles?

How can we, as teachers, make time for physical activity during school without taking away
from the time needed for academics?

How does having physical activity involved in the students day help with learning in the
classroom?

Arts for Academic Achievment: Observational Drawing

I came across this video, and it gives an interesting picture of a teacher who incorporates drawing in her biology class. The students were able to gather specimens from field trips to the stream, and as the students observed them in the lab, they drew in depth pictures. An art teacher was brought in to help show students how to draw in more detail, and to show students how to pick up on small details. One of the things that I found most interesting is the way that drawing enhanced the way that the kids were thinking about the subject. This teacher found a way to engage children, and she stated that kids didn't need a specific amount of drawings for a certain grade. This is a part that I liked best about the video, and although the students didn't have a specific amount of pictures to draw, the ones that were drawn were very detailed.

After watching this video, what do you think about the teacher and her way of introducing art into the classroom? Do you think that this is something you can see yourself doing? Lastly, what other things would you try to do in order to get the kids involved in a similar manner?

NCLB: Is it working?

While we are looking at the current trends in education, the No Child Left Behind Act is a major part of education today. As most of us will go into the classroom within the next few years, NCLB is a major piece of legislation that can affect us all. The are many critics and proponents of this act, but disregarding them and looking closely at the results, the question is does the NCLB work? According to the article NCLB: Is it Working? by Alain Jehlen, it is not. This is due to the following:

"And we do hear that in many schools, teachers are getting out of their silos and working together to help all children achieve. What's more, scores on state tests are definitely climbing. So-is that proof of success? No, it isn't, according to leaders in the science of testing. Scores always rise when you put high stakes on a particular test, whether or not students actually know more. This phenomenon even has a name: Campbell's Law. Harvard University Professor Daniel Koretz, a leading test researcher, explains it with an analogy to polling before an election. Pollsters can't call every voter. Instead, they choose a small sample. Let's say a campaign polled 1,000 likely voters and poured all their energy into winning over just those voters, ignoring everyone else. They would probably see encouraging gains among the 1,000 voters-and then lose the election by a landslide.

Koretz says a math test works the same way: No test can cover all the skills from every angle that students should master, so the test is just a small sample. If you focus on teaching kids to correctly answer problems that use a particular question format and only cover a narrow range of skills, students will do better and better-that is, until someone asks them questions in a different way, or measures a different set of skills from the larger curriculum. Koretz carried out an ingenious demonstration of this phenomenon in the 1980s in a school district he had to agree not to name. The stakes on test scores in that district were "laughably low compared with today's," he says, but teachers did feel pressure to get scores up. When the district switched to a new test, Koretz says, "scores dropped like a rock." But over the next four years, they rose steadily. Now comes the clever part: Koretz gave students the old test, the one that no longer carried high stakes so teachers didn't prep students to take it. Their scores plummeted. His conclusion: Four years of rising scores did not reflect real achievement, just teaching to a new test. Research on scores on high-stakes tests in Kentucky and Texas also showed Campbell's Law in action. So to see whether NCLB is really boosting achievement, we can't rely on high-stakes state tests. We need to look at scores on a test for which students don't get prepped."

I found it very interesting that students failed at new tests, and that if in order to achieve, there needs to be four years of failure before students eventually reach the level that was achieved previously. After reading this part of the article, what are some ways that teachers can help their students achieve good scores on the tests? Also, what are some things that teachers need to do in order to make their students better learners? If we are only teaching to the test, then what happens to the material that will not be included? Does that make it any less important, and for that reason should it no longer be taught in school? Lastly, do you personally think that NCLB is working in schools today.

Science and Jobs

Science has been in the news lately, what with the various stimulus initiatives that focus on green technology and energy, and as you'll notice in your syllabus, I've asked you to locate some science articles, either on the Internet or in newspapers and journals, to bring to class to share. I've been following the news on the hopeful partnerships that might be forged between science and a green economy. You can imagine my delight, then, when I found this interesting article, "A New Economy Has Already Begun." What really caught my eye was the connection that the author made between solving the jobs crisis (especially the exporting of jobs to other countries) with the climate and oil crises. Here, for example, the author explains the dyanamics of these new "green jobs":

"The Green Job Corps began at the Ella Baker Center in Oakland, inspired by Van Jones, author of The Green Collar Economy (Harper Collins, 2008). Green collar jobs are "career track jobs," says Van Jones. They're family-supporting gigs that contribute to preserving and enhancing the environment. Installation of solar panels, construction and maintenance of wind turbines, urban agriculture, tree planting in cities, weatherization and retrofitting of buildings, remediation of brownfields (cleaning up abandoned, often-contaminated industrial sites), recycling and reuse of materials - these are jobs that generate local revenue, save energy, clean the environment, and cannot be exported. For the first time in their lives, many impoverished youth are gaining a tangible stake in climate solutions." (Rockwell, 2009)

Could this be a solution for so many communities--to encourage energy autonomy and at the same time develop, subsidize, and implement green technologies locally? Does this sound like a plausible solution to you?