My Contributions to the webquest wiki

• Created a page with Journalistic task examples and linked it to the task taxonomy page
  
• Added to this new page a Grapes of Wrath webquest
• Added a Forrest Gump webquest
• Added journey of the journalist web quest
  

Chapter # 10 Going Beyond the Classroom

Remember that learning does not only occur inside the classroom. In fact if a break down of time is done (kids spending only 30 hours in school a week), it would stand to reason that more learning occurs outside school. A teacher should help facilitate this as Mahogany explains, "In ninth-grade science, two times a week we went out to clean up a park with a pond in it. We learned about fish and their environment."

Learning like this is always fun and rewarding. I remember in elementary school, this guy named Mr. Baco would come in from a wild life and nature foundation and teach us about natural sciences. He would do this once a month and cover topics ranging from astronomy to the dissection of owl pellets. Everybody couldn't wait for his lessons because he really knew how to make the outdoors into a classroom, and it never felt like school as much as it felt like summer camp.

Chapter # 9 When Things go Wrong

One thing in particular stood out in this chapter, even though it was a tiny bit of advice. "Don't judge your success by whether students like you." Short though it is, it is exceedingly important.

It is completely true, being a teacher is not about popularity. In my educational career, I have had many teachers that were absolutely hated by students. The classes these teachers taught were always worth while because no class time was wasted in attempts of being a best friend. These teachers were severe, often older, but always got the best results out of their students. In retrospect I like these teachers a lot more now than I did back them. I also like them more than the teachers that tried to be liked because I learned more in these more traditional classrooms.

Chapter # 8 Teaching Teenagers who are Still Learning English

ESL students can be a challenge in any classroom, but not because they lack knowledge. They are sometimes a challenge because of a language barrier. It is important to remember this and find some way to involve them in classes. Cushman recommends involving them in a lesson through what they know.

I have always been in awe of ESL students because they are able to overcome a huge barrier in language, and in many cases make it seem effortless. At my high school we had an ESL club and every student in it consistently made high honors. This tells me that ESL students, in general, are willing to work much harder than some of the other students in their class. It is the work ethic that gives me so much respect for them, but also if teachers do what Cushman suggests everybody would have a very enriching education.

Chapter # 7 Teaching Difficult Academic Material

Teaching difficult material can be a challenge to the best of teachers. In fact parts of some subjects may seem near impossible to teach, but it is important that we remember it is the students that are doing the learning. As a result an educator should take into consideration the students suggestions on how to teach the material. One such suggestion is to ask questions that motivate student thought.

In past experiences I know that I have always learned better in classes that ask questions that motivate thought. In classes like History or English these questions are all to easy to create. In Math and Sciences the opposite tends to be true. Although I must admit that I have been fortunate enough to have a math teacher that did ask motivating questions. He used to challenge us to come up with as many real life applications as we could, for the material we were learning.

Chapter # 6 Motivation and Boredom

Passion is a key component of good teaching. Students such as Vance recognize this and let us know, "The mark of a good teacher is that no matter how weird or boring you might think their subject is, their love for it is what pushes you to learn something. It could be rat feces or some nasty topic, and the fact that their eyes are glowing when they talk about it makes you want to know something about it."

Students know what helps them to learn best, so it is wise to take into account their thoughts on passionate teachers. In my own experience it helps when a teacher has a love for their subject. All of my history teachers have been completely enraptured by history, and not only did that help me perform better in the class but I am sure that it also sparked my own love for the subject. It is very helpful to see how a subject can be loved, because it gives the sense that by not loving it you are in some way missing out.

Chapter # 5 Teaching to the Individual, Working with the Group

This chapter broke down the class dynamic into different roles. These roles were the eye-roller, the wallflower, the hand-waver,the dreamer, the con artist, the goof-off, and the workhorse. Each class is supposedly made up of these roles.

I think this break down is far to general and it assumes that students are 1 dimensional stock characters, much like the ones found in commedia del arte. Students are far more complex than that, and as I have been working in the field I have been confronted with countless examples of that. The most striking example is a student that doesn't do any work at all. He doesn't goof around, he just sits quietly in the class, pays attention, but doesn't take tests or do class work. This student could fit aspects of multiple roles, but his case gets stranger still. After receiving an ISS he did all of his assigned work, and aced it. Now this student shows aspects of all the roles. That is just one example on why I think that this break down was too generalized.

Chapter # 4 Creating a Culture of Success

It is important to support students and be available to them. As Porsche recalls, "My algebra teacher, when I got a C in his class, he was upset. He just pushed me to keep my head outa them boys and into the books. He made me go to tutoring after school to keep my grades up." Porsche also points out the importance of after school help.

In my first three years of high school the teachers were very good at being available for after school help, but my senior year the teachers were practicing work to rule to get more money in their contracts. The work to rule kept them from being available for the after school help, and thusly students suffered. Just from seeing this I really began to understand how important that help was, and how a good teacher that wants to see their students succeed makes themselves available. As a teacher I plan on being available after school for my students to swing by announced or not.

Chapter#3 Classroom Behavior

Mika says, "Make sure that everything you do, you can do. If you're sending kids to the principle, make sure it really happens. If you're saying you're going to call the parents, do it, as long as there is a parent." This statement is all about the importance of consistency, and shows that even students see it has being important.

I think that consistency is perhaps a teacher's best ally. In my own experience at my daycare job, students realize when you begin to bluff. Once this happens it is impossible to enforce the rules. So as a teacher not only is it important to carry through with what you say, but the administration must also be willing to do their job. When I was in high school we had an administration that wouldn't enforce their own rules, but expected the teachers to enforce them. It wasn't long before students realized that their actions brought no consequences.

Focus The Nation

On the Focus The Nation website I navigated my way to the forums and read a section on capping CO2 emissions and taxing them as well. I had never really thought to much about global warming, and in all honesty I was never able to see how it pertained to my subject matter. That has changed since reading the postings on the forum. I was able to see that global warming itself is an environmental issue, and doesn't truly apply to global warming, but what we choose to do about it can easily fall into the realm of social sciences. The three things that I learned from this forum are as follows:

• Solutions to global warming are being discussed from an economic stand point that primarily embraces taxes.
• Some people are advocating a tax on current gas prices.
• These proposed energy taxes would go to help low income families with their own energy costs.

Also While I was navigating this website I ran across an initiative to spread the green cause across the nation's schools. I thought that I could use this as a project for my class to go in conjunction with a unit on grass roots campaigning. The students would be given the task to set up a student organization that deals with issues like global warming, and then they would be required to attempt to network using various electronic means of keeping in touch, much like the methods that Clay Burrell uses in his classroom. The goal of this networking would be to set up other chapters in other schools. While doing all of this each student must keep in mind that they are to be doing it in a grass roots way.

Web 2.0 Educator

The Web 2.0 blogger that I investigated was Clay Burrell author of the blog Beyond School. Burrell seems to be an expert at using classroom technology to stay connected with the outside world. Clay is a Language Arts teacher that incorporates blogging, Skype, podcasts, Twitter, and YouTube to stay connected to the outside world. He also has his students use these programs to enhance their learning. In these aspects I feel that Clay Burrell is making excellent use of technology, and I am wondering if he has ever considered using a ventrillo server in any of his classes. Ventrillo is another program that is roughly similar to skype, but it is more often used in online gaming. I have used ventrillo servers in the past to speak with friends in New Orleans, Kentucky, Mexico, and even Turkey. The program essentially converts a computer into a large walkie talkie that the individual users designate their own "hot key" to press and speak directly with people all over the world through microphones and the speakers of a computer. I think that it would be a great tool to connect classrooms of students all over the world to experience collaborative lessons. Even if Burell does not use this server he is definitely making great use of the technology at his disposal.

I am a bit skeptical of Burrell's grading system though. He allows students to grade themselves, and also believes that If they fail an assignment outright, but made considerable risks in the process that they deserve an A. I'm unsure of how productive that this will end up being, although I do agree with him that it is important to let students do some self assessment, I just feel this method takes it a bit too far.

I really believe that Burrell has some very cutting edge thoughts on education, and I think that his networking assignments make really great use of cutting edge technology. While I don't agree with everything he says I do believe that he has a good handle on what it means to be a great teacher.

Type I and Type II Technology

Type I and Type II technology are different in how interactive they are with the user. Type I is not as interactive as Type II, thusly it is easier to find more creative uses for type II technology .

examples:
Type I:

many power points that are used instead of lecture notes
I've had to take multiple choice tests on line for a computer class
e-books

Type II:
Oregon trail played as a lesson
I've seen strategy computer games used to reenact famous battles
Web Quests


Maddux D. Cleborne, Johnson D. Lamont. Type II Applications of Technology in Education: New and Better Ways of Teaching and Learning. 2005. Hawthorne Press, Inc.

My MEL Experiences

Student/Teacher Relationships: I have always felt that this was a very important part of learning, as I have always noticed that teachers who are more comfortable with the class tend to have more luck reaching more students. I consider myself lucky because I have only had a few teachers that were terrible establishing strong relationships with their students, but out of all of the good ones I have to say that my creative writing teacher was the best. I had Miss. Eshelmen in my senior year and she was able to create a very safe environment for our weekly writing critiques by submitting her own work to be criticized with the work of all the students. Her reasoning for this was if she expected us to put our writing, pride, and feelings on the line it was only fair that she did the same. Her doing this really helped me out when it came to the memoir unit because it was nice to know that our teacher was putting her personal experiences out their to be judged just like I was doing with a memoir about my great grand father's funeral.
Autonomy: This is another teaching strategy that depending on the subject really helps me to learn and to get higher grades. I can remember having to jump through all sorts of hoops while writing my first research paper. I had to turn in so many note cards by such and such a date, and I had to submit an outline, then a rough draft, and ultimately hand in a final copy. I knew at the time that the rigid scheduling was only in place to help the students to know that we were still doing all the work correctly, but I couldn't think of anything but the multiple deadlines, and ultimately did not do as well on the final draft as I would have hoped. Although when it came time to do another research paper with another teacher, and he told us to have the entire paper done by a certain date I was able to pace myself and I ended up getting an A+ on that paper. It was the autonomy that helped me to know when I would do my best work on the paper and that is when I would work on it.
Context: Is something that I found out I needed while I was taking a physics course my senior year. In this physics course we would use many of the same equations that I had struggled through and ultimately failed to grasp completely in a pre-calculus course that I had taken the semester before, but the difference with this course was the fact that my teacher, Mr. Lybarger, was able to provide a context for those equations that I had never fully learned to use before. It was the context on how these equations would work in the real world that made them finally click. It made sense to me that a certain equation be applied to a car speeding around an icy corner because I was able to visualize an actual object for the coefficients to all the variables. It also helped me because I would be able to check my answers to a realm of possibility. I knew that it was impossible to throw a baseball at seven hundred miles per hour so I would go back and rework the equations until I came up with a plausible solution.
Helping Students: This is something that all teachers should be willing to do, but some that I have had, would outright refuse. Interestingly enough it as always been in my worst subjects that I have had teachers that would refuse to give students help. In middle school I had an algebra teacher that called home and forced me to drop the class because I had a B- in his class. I wanted to remain in the class and I asked him for help, but he refused to help me after class and ultimately called me up to the blackboard to do out a problem. After making me rewrite the problem four or five times because my handwriting was so poor, he informed me that the problem was wrong and told me to go sit down and called on his son a, "competent student" to do the problem "legibly and correctly." It turns out that I had only forgotten a negative sign out of nervousness. I switched into a different class a few days later. If I had been able just to talk one on one about what I was doing wrong I know that I would have been able to fix the problem. I know this because I did just that with the same subject and a different teacher.
Connections: It is the ability to connect history to all other disciplines that drives my passion for it. Everything has a history, and I have had quite a few teachers that knew this and used it to engage their students. I have had countless numbers of history teachers that would start a class off with a list of "this day in history" type trivia questions, and they were able to touch on the history of all sorts of different subjects while giving out candy or even extra credit points. By doing this all students were able to see how to connect history to their interests and hobbies. Also whenever possible they would do small tangent lessons that would cover the history of sports, medicine, music, etc. of a time period or civilization that was being covered in class.

Learning Styles Inventory Results

I would have to say that this is a very accurate portrayal of the way I learn. It also was very much in sync with the assessment of the multiple intelligences that I took in Dr. Ward's section of practicum. The only part of this that seems to be a bit high for me is the 8 that I received in the physical portion.


graph from: www.learning-styles-online.com

Chapter # 2 Respect, Liking, Trust, and Fairness

QR#2

On page 30 of Fires in the Bathroom a quotation by a student named Mahogany gives some advice to teachers as something that should never be done. She tells the story of a teacher that would humiliate the students in front of the class by calling out poor grades in front of the class.

This is something that, speaking from experience, can cause a lot of discord in the classroom. This discord shows up between students with good grades and students with poor grades as well as between student and teacher. This sort of inappropriate behavior is something that in my opinion is a form of mental abuse because in high school most students care a lot about what students think of them and if it becomes public knowledge that a kid is getting mostly Ds the other students most likely won’t let that pass without some sort of teasing. I feel that students should have someplace to report behavior that is demeaning. Although unless it is made widely known I feel that most students would prefer to suffer in silence rather than draw further attention to themselves.

Chapter # 1 Knowing Students Well

QR #1

On page 13 of Fires in the Bathroom, Kathleen Cushman is talking about how to connect with students. Her suggestion has to do with linking a student’s interests with the teacher’s subject matter.

I think that this is a marvelous idea, as it helps to show a student that what they are learning has a practical application and it is indeed pertinent to his or her life. While this is an excellent idea in some cases it could be very hard to make the connection especially if a teacher doesn’t know enough about each of his or her students. This one little part of this first chapter is a perfect strategy for any and all teachers to keep in mind to provide an engaging classroom that is inclusive of all the students. While thinking about this as it would pertain to my particular concentration, being history, it opens up countless avenues to explore. Since there is a history to everything that exists it wouldn’t be too difficult to include the history of whatever particular interests the students have.