Lesson 12-Time For Reflection 3

I am already doing so many new things as a teacher assistant and personally because of my exposure to this class! The lessons have forced me to try many tools that are available on the computer which I was either afraid to use or didn't understand. The more I learned, the more I wanted to learn. Do you think the kids would feel this way about their classwork too, if we were using new technologies ? Wouldn't that be great?
Mostly I am investigating blogs, wikis, websites, webpods and people's bookmarks when I am looking for information to help the kids with papers, research, and math problems. I am passing this new information along to the students. I am also talking to everyone who wants to listen about this class, and the conversations have sparked interest in not only the class but have spurred an interest in adding technology to enhance their teaching. I have even been accused of being a computer "geek" by a friend who has known me for 15 years and knows how much I hate change.
Thank-you Lori for this new-found knowledge and for helping me get excited about my job again.

School 2.0

I was at first struck by the actual "look" of the model of tomorrow's school. It is set up like a city, which I assume was the organizational plan to facilitate the whole system. This "city" depicts the whole community and the way they could interact to accomplish educational, business and social goals. It would take a tremendous amount of discussion and orchestration to make this operational, but on paper it sure makes a strong case for 2.0.

I love how everyone is working together, using their specific skills and technology to make it run as if it were a machine producing a product. I guess the 2.0 system could be a metaphor for a machine if it was working properly, efficiently and diligently. This would require a lot of maturity, passion and accountability on the parts of all of the group including students, parents, policy makers, teachers, administrators, community, and tech personnel. I really liked that it included mentors and co-op type settings, as I don't believe we are doing very well in that area right now and the kids (at least the ones I work with) don't seem to understand the expectations of the actual work-world that they will be entering. Most don't understand the amount of competition they will encounter for jobs. Many don't seem to know about meeting deadlines or the level of personal morality and responsibility necessary to be a good citizen and employee.

I wasn't thrilled with the idea of less money for books and more for technology because I am a book lover, and often books are the quickest way to get information for students who have a hard time ciphoring through a bunch of information on websites.

Reflection on Dr. Zhao

Dr.Zhao has exposed me to a new kind of educational thinking of which I was not aware. As much as I knew that technology was being used more and more, I had no idea to the degree that other school systems have implemented blogging, videos, and wiki and del.icio.us techniques to enhance learning.

I was uncomfortable with the idea that the whole system of education needs to be revised-it is obsolete- as that is a daunting challenge and very scary to me. I have to say that everything he said made perfect sense to me if we are going to keep up with our global neighbors and allow students to learn and teach in the style to which they have become accustomed.

Collaborative Project

The presentations by Kevin Honeycutt, his funny, entertaining stories and examples of how students learn were great illustrations of the differences in the old way of learning compared to the learning being done by modern students. I liked the idea of letting the kids lead the way, talk together, and create freely while the teacher acts as a guide or facilitater. He seems to "get it" when he says that kids want to be the hero in their own story and want to do and learn in ways that make sense to them and the technological world in which they live.

I don't know how I could use the virtual hands theory in my work as a TA, but perhaps some of you could assist me to develope the idea I DID have. One of our English classes is reading the book THE TIPPING POINT by Malcolm Gladwell. This is a non-fiction book explaining how we are all communicators and have different styles of communicating. One is either a Maven (idea personality), a Connector (one who has lots of social connections) or a Salesman (one who is good at promoting ideas or trends). Social behaviors, biases, trendy ideas or new popular products can be developed and spread when the right collection of personalities are working together as a unit and the timing is right.

After much examination of who they each are, as individuals, the students have formed groups of Mavens, Connectors and Salesmen. The kids have decided to target the "smoking corner" near the high school by starting a "virus" against smoking. I believe that technology could be very useful in supporting their pursuit.