Reflection on the effect of the ecconomy on online learning

This economy has severely hurt the education profession and I don't think it is done yet.  in the last two years it has been really hard for an educator to get into a position where they are able to have a steady job.  I know from friends in the profession who just started teaching and were let go at the end of last year that finding a teaching job with some form of job security is really hard nowadays.  I read an interesting article earlier today about the rise in online courses taken in High school.  And while the article is mainly on the online classes and what that means to the students, I see this as a way to save the state money and to get rid of teachers.  If you assigned a group of student to a 'teacher' to monitor them as they go through the online courses you have no better than a counselor.  The teachers role in all of this is background and there is no real feedback.  My brother took an online civics course in his senior year and the teacher who was overseeing the program didn't have (or take) a whole lot of time to interact with the students whether by email or otherwise.  While I am all about saving money in a hard economic time I don't think that it should be done at the teachers or students expense.  We should first cut the salaries of the politicians.

Reflection on the Education panel

Last weeks class where we had a panel of Alums from NU come in and talk about their experience in their first year of teaching was very enlightening.  At times it may have seemed like they didn't like their jobs and certainly they didn't like aspects of it, but on the whole you could really tell the heart of the people as they endeavored to serve their community through teaching.  It was somewhat alarming to hear the things they talked about in terms of the certifications a teacher needs to get after college though not impossible.  It further ingrains in my mind the need for hard work and effort in school to get where you need to be for later life.  Make no mistake, becoming a teacher is going to be hard work and there will be points where we will want to give up, but the rewards the teachers spoke about make it all sound worth it. 

Reflection on a school with virtually no technology

Well this past week I had the opportunity to go to a private school in the Kirkland area and they had almost no new technology.  From the classrooms that I saw they had no projectors, no smart boards.  This was a different experience than what I am used to having grown up at least through high school with all of this stuff.  What I looked at though was the effectiveness of the teaching being done even though they had no technology.  The math teacher was using an overhead projector to great effect with the students and they were learning just as much as they would have with any other technology.  I think this goes to show that technology, while preparing our kids for the future, isn't the catalyst for learning.  It is the love for learning and the want of knowledge that will keep our kids in school and learning effectively. 

Final Project

So this is my final project.  This includes three different lessons about the Constitution.  This is a change from what I stated in my project proposal.  I was originally going do do a series of lessons on the American revolution and quickly realized that was unrealistic for the amount of time I could give to this project and therefor switched to a more manageable project.  These lessons attempt to provide the information about three different aspects of the constitution.  First, the background of its writing with an overview of the Preamble.  Second a look at the separation of powers that give our government three branches.  Third the first ten amendments that give us the bill of rights.  I attempted to do this in the least boring way possible as this topic is generally understood to be boring (can't imagine why).  I included several activities to get the students involved in the learning of this topic.  The class would create their own constitution based on the principles found in the preamble they would play a group game with fellow students about the three different branches of Government, and lastly they play a bingo game based on the bill of right as well as completing a worksheet about the ten amendments.

This has been fun and at the same time challenging to create, I hope you enjoy it.

Assignment #3, a review of three sites from my tool box

The first site is http://www.apples4theteacher.com/.  This is a fun little site that provides several tools to teachers such as free printable worksheets for several different subjects that could be used in a variety of grades, from kindergarten to upper middle school.  This site also has some fun interactive games for students.

 The second site is http://school.discoveryeducation.com/schrockguide/ this is a very helpful site for teachers and has different tools for teachers.  What I noticed most about this, and what I would probably want to use this for is the section on resorces for educators.  This section has everything from back to school checklists to fun ideas for a first day back from summer break.  All in all a very comprehensive looking tool.

The third and final website is http://www.mathplayground.com/.  This is a fun website that has very useful tools to teach math to kids.  I found one game in particular that caught my eye.  It was not so much a game but a tool to model math problems using blocks.  This 'game' (for lack of a better word) has a word problem on the screen and asks the kids to model it out and then asks them questions that lead them to figure out the problem.  This was a really cool modeling tool and can make learning this stuff fun and interactive.

Assignment for Week 10: 3 Questions

Question 1: How do you see technology being used in the future?  meaning, will it be a supplementary tool to aid the teacher in teaching the students or will it be the focus of the education?

Question 2: What are your views on using investigations (group work) to teach subjects.

Question 3: In your opinion, given how many teachers have been laid off in the last year, how will the job market for education look in the next two or so years?

Technology Project