C4K Summary for November

#1

One kid that I commented on his blog was Damon. He is in Mrs. Lieschke class and his blog was about the Typhoon that hit in Haiyan. He is a very nice kid saying that he was thinking and wishing good luck to all the people that had to go through all that disaster. He says they are going to help out by bringing clothes and other stuff to help out. It was a very nice thing to say and to do to help people that are going through something like that. I can only imagine how awful that would be to be going through something where you lose everything and losing people you know and that you are close to.





#2
Another student's blog that I commented on was Losehina out of Mrs. Jenny She's class. I watched two of the videos that she made. One was a popcorn animation where she made a video that showed a popcorn machine popping pop corn. It was very creative. The other video that I watched and commented on of Losehina's blog was the one which was titled I can Animate Movies. In this video she made it where it looked like a toy giraffe was walking inside of a classroom. It was pretty neat because she made it where you couldn't see the person moving the toy it was just like walking itself. She did a great job on this.

C4T #4

#1

The first teacher's blog that I commented on in the month of November was Michael Gorman. In his blog Math and Project Based Learning 22 Sources he had links to PBL websites where it used technology and math in one.I thought that was a great idea because just trying to learn math by itself can be tricky. I checked out some of the links that he had and I found out they were quite useful by intertwining math and technology and I will be sure to use them in the future. His blog is helpful to anyone that needs help in math or needs to find out another way of doing it so it's not so hard on them.




#2


For the second blog I commented on in November was Allanah King's about LIfe is not a race to be finished first.  In this blog he explains how you should always ask for permission to share a picture of someone on a website such as Facebook, twitter, or any social media where anyone can see it if they are a friend of yours. For some people putting their picture up on websites is scary because you really don't know who is looking at pictures of you on the web. King always says to ask for permission to put up a picture of anyone besides yourself and I like that idea. It is a good way to keep your identity safe and where you live.

Blog Post #14

Becoming a Special education teacher is a lot of different from being any old teacher. Most special education students aren't able to use technology like a normal kid would and be able to interact with it. There is a new thing out for kids with disabilities on the Ipad where students can write what their thinking or maybe see a picture of it and click on it and its able to describe what they are thinking. This is a way for kids that have autism and other social skills problems to have a ways around speaking in public without being socially awkward. The idea is called See, Touch, and Learn and it is an app on an Ipad for kids that have special needs it helps them communicate in ways they couldn't before and easy ways of learning. This is a way to improve learning for special education students and even students with disabilities all over the world. This is an Introduction to See, Touch, Learn.

Smartboard Project #12B

Blog Post #13

Alison Gopnik's "What do babies think" by Jake Dukes 

In the video What do babies think by Alison Gopnik, she explains how babies think and how they learn. She explains how babies think as if you were in a new place and you're just trying to learn your surroundings for the first time. In an experiment that Alison conducted, she used broccoli and goldfish crackers on a 18 month old child. The first thing she did was ask the baby which one they wanted and of course they wanted the crackers. The next time she did the same experiment but then switched it up. She tried to fool the baby by acting as if the broccoli was yummy by eating and saying that it tasted good. Then she ate the goldfish and acted as if they were gross and said that it didn’t taste good. This didn’t fool the baby she again asked which one they would like, but the baby still went back to the goldfish. By this experiment she found out that babies already know at 18 months old that not all people like that same things. Alison says that as babies grow, they try to figure out how things work and how the world works. Another experiment she did was done on a five year old boy. This experiment involves a child putting shapes together in a particular order to make a light come on inside of a box. One of the sides of the box was already lit up, to show how it is works. After a couple of tries the kid was able to turn the light on in the other box by just placing the objects through a series of trials.






Shukla Bose’s “Teaching one child at a time” by Katlyn Lusker 

In Shukla Bose’s video "Teaching one child at a time" she tells the story of her Parikrma Humanity Foundation that is growing more and more each day. This foundation brings hope to the Indian slums by “looking past the daunting statistics and focusing on treating each child as an individual.” Shukla Bose began her speech in this video by explaining what led to her forming a foundation. She explained that they first walked through the slums of India. Of course, they could not go to all of them, but they tried to cover as many as they could. As they walked through the slums, they tried to identify houses where children would never go to school. They were excited about doing something, to bring them education, and then the numbers finally hit them. She said, “they’re 200 million children between ages 4-14 that should be going to school, but do not, they’re 100 million children who go to school but cannot read, and 125 million who cannot do basic mathematics.” Mrs. Bose also said that one in four teachers in India do not go to school the entire academic year. They have absent teachers, and that is harmful to children's learning. These numbers are overwhelming! She said it is hard not to get worried and scared about them, but instead they should and they want to focus on taking one child at a time. To make sure that child completes the circle of life. 

The first Parikrma school was started in a slum where there were 70,000 people living below the poverty line. In this first school, they had 165 children attend. After six years, 4 schools, 1 junior college, and 1,100 children from 28 slums and four orphanages have developed. English was taught, and they adopted one of the best curriculum's possible. The curriculum is tough, some believe it is too tough, but the children actually do very well. Through this foundation, they have also started many programs for the children’s parents, as well. Many of the parents want to learn, and after-school programs have been developed just for them. They have started all kinds of programs just to make sure the kids come to school. Mrs. Shukla Bose started this thinking she wanted to transform the world, however, now she believes she is the one who has been transformed by the impact the children have played in her life. I have learned a lot from Mrs. Bose. She is very inspiring. Her dedication and commitment to helping these children is so moving. “Educating our poor is more than just a number game.” Instead of trying to reach as many children as possible, it may work so much better to help one child at a time, to make sure that what they are being taught is working and it is effective. Many children go to school, but not all of them learn.




Shane Koyczan "To this day... for the bullied and the beautiful" by Tarcela Kohn 

In the video To This Day… for the bullied and the beautiful by Shane Koyczan, he shares his own experiences in a beautiful poem. This video was very moving, funny, and relatable. The way he opened the floor with “I’ve been shot down so many times I get altitude sickness just from standing up for myself,” was a part of his poetic journey in his video. Shane expressed that we are told- “to stand up for ourselves, but that is hard to do if we don’t know who we are.” However, to do this, he explained that “we are expected to define ourselves at an early age, and if we don’t, others will do it for us.” Shane uses the names "nerd," "geek," and "fatty" as examples of others defining us. 

Shane Koyczan then went on to explain his childhood. When Shane was a kid, he wanted to be a man, and he wanted to shave. However now that he is older, he does not want to shave as much. By the time Shane was eight years old, he thought he wanted to be a Marine Biologist. When he was nine years old, he saw the movie “Jaws” and drastically changed his mind about becoming a Marine Biologist after all. Shane Koyczan had a very rough childhood. At ten years old, he was told that his parents did not want him anymore. At the age of eleven, Shane just wanted to be alone. When he was only 12 years he wanted to die, the next year he wanted to kill a kid, and at age 14 he was told to “seriously consider a career path.” Shane replied that he wanted to be a writer, and the response was “choose something realistic.” So he answered, “professional wrestler,” and the response then was “don’t be stupid.” Shane explained a great point: “We were being told that we somehow must become what we are not, sacrificing what we are to inherit the masquerade of what we will be.” This statement was a beautiful analogy; and is true. We are dismissing children’s dreams, to tell them what they want to dream. 

Shane said, “at the age of 15, poetry hit him like a boomerang; the one thing that he loved came back to him.” He remembers the first thing he wrote, “I hated myself for becoming the thing that I loathed: a bully.” The words “Standing up for yourself doesn't have to mean embracing violence,” from Shane himself, are very positive and everyone can learn from his statement. Shane Koyczan, then delivered his poem about two kids, one a girl and the other him. The little girl was called names and was made fun of only because she had a birthmark on her face. Shane expressed that because he was adopted, he went to therapy and had a “personality made up of test and pills.” He was called a “popper,” and because of the cruelty, he wanted to end his life and he actually tried too in the 10th grade. He explained that they are not the only kids that grow up being bullied this way , and that it still goes on today. Another great message that we can receive from this video is when Shane said, “I want to tell them that all of this is just debris left over when we finally decide to smash all the things we thought we used to be, and if you can't see anything beautiful about yourself, get a better mirror, look a little closer, stare a little longer, because there's something inside you that made you keep trying despite everyone who told you to quit. You built a cast around your broken heart and sign it yourself. You signed it, They were wrong.” This video would be worth sharing with students to stop bullying and to show kids that are bullied that they are wanted, and there is something special about them! 

Project #10 - Teacher Interview Movie

Blog Post #12

"LEARNING FROM SIR KEN ROBINSON" by: Jake Dukes, Katlyn Lusker, and Tarcela Kohn
 
"Changing Education Paradigms"

There were so many things to learn from the video Changing Education Paradigms by Sir Ken Robinson. A few things we learned from Sir Ken Robinson were; “Every country on earth at the moment is reforming public education,” “The current system was designed and conceived for a different age,” “Kids now are living in the most stimulating period in the history of the earth and we because of this we need to make some changes,” and “We need to go in the opposite direction of school conformity and standardization.”

The first thing we learned from Sir Ken Robinson was “Every country on earth at the moment is reforming public education.” The two reasons for this are economic and cultural. This video asks the questions, “How do we educate our children to take their place in the economies of the 21st century?” and “How exactly do we do that when we cannot anticipate what the economy will look like at the end of next week?” We think these are two very important questions to ask ourselves, especially knowing how the economy has been going lately. We aren't guaranteed anything, so these questions are valid. Sir Ken Robinson put it best when he said, “One big problem we are facing is that we are trying to meet the future with doing what we have done in the past.” People who went to school a long time ago were told that if you work hard, do well, and get a college degree, you would get a job. Kids now a days do not believe that, and they have every right not to. Sir Ken Robinson said, “You are better off having a degree, but it does not guarantee you a job anymore.”

The second thing we learned from Sir Ken Robinson, which is a continuation of our last point, was “The current system was designed and conceived for a different age.” Sir Ken Robinson explained this by saying, “Public Education, paid for from taxation, compulsory to everybody, and free at the point of delivery, was a revolutionary idea.” He also said many people group other people into two categories based on “Academic Ability.” He said those categories are the “academic or smart people” and the “non-academic or non-smart people.” This creates a problem because many brilliant people think they are not because they have been judged on this particular view of the mind. Public Education being made up of economic and intellectual categories has caused chaos in many peoples lives. Some have benefited from it, but most people have not.

The third thing we learned from Sir Ken Robinson was “Kids now, are living in the most stimulating period in the history of the earth and we because of this we need to make some changes.” Kids have so many distractions “from every platform” now that include computers, phones, advertising, and television. We agree with Sir Ken Robinson when he said, “Children get to school and their teachers expect them to focus on ‘boring stuff’ for the most part.” We agree with this because we have witnessed this happen and we can testify to this ourselves. In this video Sir Ken Robinson continued by giving his views on ADHD and how lots of drugs to treat ADHD shut kids senses off, deadening them to what’s really happening. He said, “We are getting our children through education by anaesthetising them, but we should be doing the exact opposite.” We need to wake our children up to what is happening inside of themselves.

The fourth thing we learned from Sir Ken Robinson was “We need to go in the opposite direction of school conformity and standardization.” Children have basically always been put through school in “batches” according to their age, but is that really what’s important? Is that really what we want our students to think is the main thing they have in common with other students? One of the most impacting things we thought Sir Ken Robinson said was, “If you are interested in the model of Education, then you don’t start from the product line mentality.” Sir Ken Robinson believes we need to go in the opposite direction of school conformity and standardization, and that’s exactly what he meant by “Changing the Paradigm.” In order to make this change we must first, think differently about human capacity and get over the old conception of academic, non-academic because all it is is a myth and secondly, we have to recognize that greatest learning happens in groups, collaborations is the stuff of growth.


 “How to Escape Education’s Death Valley”

In the TED Talks video; How to Escape Education’s Death Valley by Sir Ken Robinson, there was a lot of information that we found useful. Sir Ken Robinson started his video by saying that the No Child Left Behind is an irony, because approximately 60 percent of kids drop out of high school, and in the native community about 80 percent of the kids drop out. We were unaware that when a student drops out of school, it cost an enormous amount to clean up the damage. With this dropout crisis, it does not factor in the students that are disengaged, that don't enjoy school, and the students who do not benefit from school. Sir Ken Robinson stated “that this is the reason our education is going in the wrong direction.”

Sir Ken Robinson explained that there “were three principles on which human life flourishes, and work hand in hand by culture of education under most teachers have labor and most students to endure.” The first of the three principles that Sir Robinson explained that we learned was that all humans are different and diverse. Sir Robinson made a great analogy, he asked the audience members if they had kids, grandkids, or have seen kids. He then goes on to ask the parents of two or more children and makes a bet with the audience members that the children are different from each other. There is no way of confusing them with each other. “Education under the No Child Left Behind is based on not diversity but conformity.” One of the effects of the No Child Left Behind has been to narrow the focus on the STEM disciplines. Sir Ken Robinson said that the STEM discipline was very important; however, a real education has to give equal weight to the arts, humanities, physical education, and to the kids.



 

 The second of the three principles was curiosity. Sir Ken Robinson explained that if you light the spark of a child’s curiosity, they will learn without any further assistance, very often. He continued by saying children are natural learners, and curiosity is the engine of achievement.
Lastly, we learned that teachers are the lifeblood of schools, but teaching is a creative profession. Sir Robinson stated that “to teach properly; it is not the delivery system that you just pass on received information. However, great teachers do pass on received information, but they are mentors who stimulate, provoke, and engage. We have also learned from Sir Ken Robinson that the role of a teacher is to facilitate learning, and that is it.

"How Schools Kill Creativity"

In the TED talks video How Schools Kill Creativity by Sir Ken Robinson, we learned a lot about creativity. Sir Ken Robinson began by saying, “creativity now is actually just as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status.” He explains that as kids we are more creative because we are not scared to be wrong. As we grow up we are more likely to be less creative because we are frightened of being wrong. Sir Ken Robinson also said, “we are now running national education systems where mistakes are the worse thing you can make.” This results in educating people out of their creative capacities. One specific thing we really liked in this video was when Sir Ken Robinson quoted Pablo Picasso saying, “All children are born artists, the problem is to remain an artist as we grow up.” Creativity is a good thing because it separates us from the rest of the people in our classes, making us unique. Sir Ken Robinson concluded his speech in this video by saying, “We need to see our creative capacities for the richness they are, and see our children for the hope that they are.” Our task as teachers should be to educate their whole being so they can face the future, and to help them make something of it.


 

Blog Post #11

For this post we had to watch "Little People, Big Potential" This is about Ms. Cassidy's first grade classroom. She is a teacher in Moose Jaws, Canada. She hasn't always used technology in her classroom it was about ten years ago when she started putting it in her classroom to see what students were able to do with it. Once she started used technology she used everything you could from blogging to skyping to using a Nintendo DS in her classroom as technology. The students would have access to the schools website wherever they went so if they wanted to show there parents what they have being doing in class they could with a simple log in.

 




In the interview with Ms. Cassidy "Part One about Technology" she tells how she got involved with technology. It all started ten years ago when she received five computer. Once she got the computer she had an idea to incorporate technology into her classroom which she wanted to do, but which the computers that she got she couldn't download any of the stuff that the students needed to teach kids about technology.  In Part two of the interview with Ms.Cassidy she talked about how you shouldincorperate technology into your classroom.

In the third video Ms. Cassidy was answering questions from Dr. Strange's students. In this interview she explained nothing was planned she went day by day if the students needed more time on something we'd stay on it longer and give them time to do it. She said one year one of the classes blogged everyday in class but another one just blogged every week it all is according to the class because every class is different.