Saturday, April 4, 2015

Blog Post 11


http://connectandspreadlove.com/motivation-inspiration-for-the-soul/teacher-inspiration

What can we learn about teaching and learning from these teachers?

1. Back to the Future by Brian Cosby
     In this speech, Brian Cosby is speaking about a class that he once taught. He shares about a time that he asked his students questions like, "What is your address?", "What state do you live in?", "What country do you live in?", etc. When he asked his students these questions, surprisingly, so many of them did not know the answers. Cosby also knew that he had students in his class that were mostly second language learners. He began to get his students engaged about science through using technology. His student were using project based learning with technology through blog posts and as he called, "High Hopes" projects. Cosby gave a lot of new ideas and thoughts that made me think. He pushed the thought that we can not create passion with creativity. I learned that there are no limitations when it comes to teaching and there are definitely no limitations when it comes to learning. The learning atmosphere and opportunities that he allowed for his students were incredible and I hope I can be a teacher that allows my students to grow and learn.
2. Blended Learning Cycle by Paul Andersen
     Paul Andersen is an A&P biology teacher. He is a teacher that likes to create acronyms for his students to help them remember what they have learned. In this video he uses an euler's disk and spins it on the table. The disk will spin for a long time without stopping and starting again. He uses these acronyms to get his students attention. He then tells teachers to as a question. Make the students' minds wonder and be curious. He calls these questions, investigations, videos, elaborations, reviews, and summary quizzes, "Quivers." He shows the importance of incorporating all of these into daily plans for the classroom. I learned from Paul Andersen that it is okay to use other sources from around the world to incorporate learning into my classroom. Yes, I need to be creative and teach according to my students' needs, but I can use other sources to help me be more successful. I also learned that incorporating quivers, as he calls them, helps my students to learn on a better level. It also helps me to see and know how much they truly absorb and learn. 
3. Making Thinking Visible by Mark Church
     Mark Church and his students in this video created a banner that in a few words described what they already know about human origins at the beginning of class. He allowed them to hang their banners at the front of class and discuss what they know. At the end of class, after they had learned more about the human origins, he allowed them to write another statement on their banner. I like this method of teaching a lot. I learned that teaching with this type of method the students realize they have learned a lot of new information about the topic within a short amount of time. It caused some of them to want to change what they had wrote on their banner at the beginning of class. It is a great way for students to realize that they can always be a learner and that they do not always know everything about everything. 
4. Building Comics by Sam Pane
     Sam Pane in this video is teaching his students how to be safe with and on the internet. Pane has his students create a Digital Citizen Superhero. He wants his students to be a good technology citizen. He wants to teach them to take care and to take pride in what they do. Pane does a great job incorporating other subjects into this one subject. He incorporates language arts into technology. He allows them to do peer reviewing through comics. The students are so engaged and it all seems so fun. I have learned how important it is to create students with good digital citizenship. I want to create this in my classroom one day. I also hope to do fun things such as comics with technology with my students. 
5&6. Project Based Learning by Dean Shareski and Roosevelt Elementary's PBL Program 
      Videos five and six are about Project Based Learning. Project Based Learning is a great way to combine learning math, science, language arts, and history all into one place. It is also using technology which is automatically a great way to get students engaged today. In this video, a school in Canada combines these subjects for their students. The teachers quickly realized that their students were understanding and learning so much more because it was joined together. I feel like through these two videos I have expanded my knowledge about Project Based Learning. Over this semester, I have viewed a lot of videos about Project Based Learning. However, I continue to see and learn the importance of it. It keeps the students engaged and brings learning to a whole new level. I cannot wait to incorporate it into my classroom one day.

2 comments:

  1. Courtney,

    I really like your post! You gave a summary of what each video was about and then proceeded to tell us what you learned from each video as well. The layout of your post is great, because when you number each section it becomes really easy for me to understand. I believe that engaging the students and keeping them interested in the topics that are being presented to them in class makes a great deal of difference with their performance. Students should always be excited to learn, and I believe that you want to make that happen in your classroom someday!

    ReplyDelete