ED 240 #5: Who cares?

So I've been trying to answer the question that I try to answer for my students when I prepare a lesson plan: "Why do I care about what's being taught?"

This program has thrown us a lot of fast balls, more than a few curve balls, and a couple of wicked knuckleballs...and honestly it's been really difficult to even get a hit, let alone a home run. Well, okay, I can't say that I've completely struck out, but it has been challenging.

So baseball metaphors aside, why do I care? Is it because I want the prestige of a Master's Degree? Do I honestly care about bettering myself and "mastering" the skills I need to become a passionate, powerful teacher? Or do I just want the pay increase? Or is it a little bit of everything?

I find that, as long as the content seems relevant, I enjoy learning. I honestly enjoy stretching my mind, my intellect and doing the work that will improve my understanding of my new profession. I wish I had been like this during my undergraduate days. My grades would have been a heck of a lot better. Be that as it may, I have honestly enjoyed learning about the technology tools available that I can use to better instruct my students. I would have never used Powerpoint to create an adventure type presentation...because I would not have known that was possible. I now use Google docs for just about every assignment in all of my classes. In my other classes I have learned how to conduct my own research and how in many ways science had changed history and how history has driven scientific discovery. As long as it is relevant I stay interested and I try to learn it.

I guess that is the lesson for me over all, and the one I will take into the classroom with me. The content being learned has to be RELEVANT to the students in order to keep their interest. It seems like a simple concept. Keep it relevant. But as a wise many once said, it is the simple things which are the most difficult to accomplish.

ED 240# 4: Cheating in Atlanta Schools...by TEACHERS!

This week I read a story about cheating in Atlanta schools. This cheating was not by students, it was by teachers and administration! Apparently folks in the Atlanta Public Schools were so concerned about their districts' performance in state regulated testing that they felt the only way to keep the state off their necks was to change the answers on students' scoresheets. Dozens of teachers and 38 principals (yes, THIRTY-EIGHT!) were found culpable in a 428 page report carried out by state investigators. Some teachers interviewed in the report said that "APS was run like a MOB" and if you did not go along with the cheating to improve school scores you were threatened by administration in some cases. Although this is an extreme case, it illustrates to me just how harmful state testing can be. The teachers felt so pressured to improve their scores they cheated.

The question I have is this: why didn't they feel they could increase learning in their classrooms and improve their scores honestly? Why didn't they trust their own teaching skills? Why didn't they trust their students to learn? In other words, why be a teacher if you don't believe you can teach?

Most of the candidates in the program here want to teach because we are passionate about learning. We believe that we can make a difference, and we can encourage our students to be better, to WANT to be better. Apparently, this is not the culture former APS Superintendant Beverly Hall promoted in her district. She recently retired after 12 years on the job, but she denies that she had anything to do with the district wide cheating but teachers and administrators. She DOES admit that some of the people who worked for her did cheat...but of course she had nothing to do with it, nor did she create a culture of cheating. It's just that THIRTY EIGHT PRINCIPALS in her district decided they would all alter their schools' score all on their own.

Sometimes when there's smoke, there's a fire.

ED 240 # 3 It's all a balancing act...

Today has been a lesson in time management. It's like God is testing my tensile strength and waiting for me to snap.

But I refuse to.

So it's bad enough that this year the MAT program has been compressed into 5 weeks from 10 weeks. But I was expecting this, so I've been mentally prepared for it and have been dealing with it pretty well. No big deal. Two of the classes are great. One class is a joke. I stress more about the joke class because I can find meaning in the work given to us in the great classes. I can't find any meaning in the work given to us in the joke class. It just makes me mad. But I still cope.

Finding time to do homework between bottle feedings, naptimes, walks, and all the other things that raising a baby entails is challenging, but so far, so good. I haven't been getting much sleep, but I also expected that, and I still cope.

Finding time to do homework, take care of a baby, and raise a teenage daughter is REALLY challenging. Especially when you have to find time to make sure that your teen is not getting into trouble during the summer, all the while taking the time to make sure that said teenage daughter does not feel neglected because you are spending too much time doing schoolwork or caring for an infant son. But I still cope.

Finding time to do homework, take care of a baby, raise a teenage daughter, and make sure your wife still remembers who the heck you are...well, that's just icing on the cake. I think she still remembers what I look like, I mean, it's only been two weeks, right? So I still cope.

Today, I finally made an appointment for my son at the doctor. We noticed a few weeks ago that one of his eyes looked kind of "quirky." My wife took him in while I was in class today. To make a long story short, he's got a tumor in his eye. Not sure what it is yet. He's got an appointment with a specialist at Children's Hospital next week. Since we're not sure it's cancer (yet) I can still cope.

We'll see what happens after the appointment next week.

But I still refuse to snap.

Suckerpunch!

So I just watched it, and I get it. Zack Snyder wanted to make a film that let us all know what I have known for years: That the only thing keeping us down, keeping us from living, keeping us from being better....it's ourselves. So fight for what you want.

I get it, and I get the metaphors in the movie, and I really enjoyed the fight scene on the train. Would have been awesome in 3D. Sweet Pea is my favorite character...that girl looks GOOD handling an M4!

BUT...

The way he tied the story together at the end, you never really lose that sense of hopelessness he wanted you to feel right after the climax of the movie. And because of that, even though the end is supposed to be a victory of sorts, the audience doesn't feel victorious. Instead, we are left wanting...and what we want is for the villains of the movie to suffer...and they never do.

Also, he tries to pull off this dream within a dream type thing throughout the movie, but that never really comes off that well. It's just window dressing that leaves us all a bit confused. Best leave that stuff to the Inception folks.

All in all, worth waiting for on DVD, if you have a 3D TV it might be better, but I guess I'm glad I didn't pay money to see it in the theater, I would have been disappointed.

ED 240 # 2 Reflections on Google

I have, for years, depended on Yahoo as my primary search engine. The reason for this being that the Yahoo Home page was, to me, the most relevant to me and my needs. If I needed email, it was right there. If I needed news, it was right there. If I needed to do a search, the tool was right there. I used it for travel directions, to find movie times, basically everything. I ignored Google because the home page is sooooo plain and boring.

I was an idiot.

Learning about the different research and search tools Google has to offer has literally changed the way I look at the internet. I did not realize how exceptionally useful Google is. I was literally amazed by two things today: Google Translate and the Wonderwheel. I was especially impressed with the wonderwheel because it is such a simple concept that organizes your search for you. It's quick, comprehensible and incredibly useful when researching a complex or extensive topic. Today, I can say Google is changing my life.

Okay maybe that's taking it a little far, but in all seriousness, learning about these new tools WILL change the way I research information online.

ED 240 #1 My Educational Experiences with Technology

I was fortunate enough to have been born in 1972. What that means is in high school my "word processor" was a typewriter and only the very, very wealthy had a Macintosh with a dot matrix printer to write with. Very few people knew what a computer network was (Heck, computers only existed in Star Wars) and the internet did not exist. (Al Gore hadn't invented it yet.) I talked my Dad into buying me a Commodore 64...but I had no clue what to do with it.

It was not until I reached the university level that I really began to use technology. Even then, I only used my Mac to write papers. I didn't have any games (that's what the arcade was for), and the internet was only available to the geeky engineering majors. This state of affairs basically lasted until I graduated in 1995.

Imagine my sense of culture shock when I began the credential program in 2009. Holy crap! I began using EEE to turn in assignments and schedule my days. The internet was my best friend when it came for researching. and I used email and Google applications to plan and complete group projects. I used Video Cameras to document my TE. I used my Mac to schedule all my classes, assignments and important dates. Technology is cool.