Thursday, March 7, 2013

It is all over...Or is it just beginning??

Well I4ed is officially over and hopefully the wonderful and brilliant Mike Nantais will grant me a p+ for the course (that isn't sucking up, is it??).

Actually I really enjoyed the course and looking back over it and also the last 2 years of my education degree I really have learned a lot.  Even now as I am preparing for my last student teaching placement I find myself much more confident and using better teaching methodology within my unit plans then I did when I started.  Another thing that I find myself doing is waiting to plan my units.  Why you may ask? Well unlike in my first placement, I want to wait and get to know my students before I plan to much.  I want to see how the interact, what learning styles they have, and what each student brings to class before I plan too far ahead.  For this placement I find myself gathering strategies rather then specific resources for my units.  Yes I have basic unit plans and timelines but nothing concrete and even what I do have "planned" I plan to change as I get to know the students.

This is the most important thing that I have learned in my education...

The student lead the learning, the teacher simply guides them in the right direction.

Technology is great in aiding me with this.  I know that if a topic comes up that I don't know a lot about but the students want to learn about, I can easily have access to the information and possibly network with experts to guide them to through the learning.

I plan to use technology in my future a lot.  It causes tons of engagement by the students and allows me to connect with educators teaching the same things that I am.  This makes my life easier and the education for my students better so I feel it is a win, win, win!

Also I plan to keep blogging through my placement about what goes well and what doesn't.  I am also planning on posting my lessons, notes and resources that I use for this placement on here that I found to be successful.  I hope by doing this that whenever another teacher is teaching what I am they can come here and gather some ideas and resources.

Creating lessons can be very time consuming  Lets save our energy for what we all love to do, teach!! No one honestly loves spending hours planning but we all love watching our students learn.  This is why I believe in sharing what we do in class.  This will save everyone's time for what they really love to do!

Lets work smarter not harder!  Save our energy for what is really important...Our students!!

Monday, March 4, 2013

Summative Piece!

Here is my video for my summative piece for I4ed, I can't believe my career as a student is over and my one as a teacher is about to begin.

Anyway I hope you enjoy the video!


Friday, March 1, 2013

The future: The Entrepreneur

What does the future in education look like?  Well if you look at the Horizon wiki and read some articles from there you realize that everyone has a slightly different idea of where education is/should be going.  Two things everyone agrees on is that what is going on in schools today needs to change and that this change will come with the use of technology.  I believe these things too, but I will get back to them later.

What I really want to talk about in this post is about jobs.  I was listening to the radio the other day and I will admit it was an AM talk radio show (in my defence it is the only radio station I get when I travel to visit my fiance).  Anyway I was listening to the radio and this young 22 year old guy came on complaining that there is lots of jobs out there but not that many careers.  He worries that even when he does school he won't be able to get a reliable, well paying career job that he can raise a family on.  This got me thinking, is this true and if it is, how can we, as educators, prepare our students for a world like this.  The conclusion I came up with is that we need more entrepreneurs.

The best way to predict the future is to create it. 
– Peter Drucker

Being an entrepreneur takes many characteristics like: bravery, interest, passion, commitment, critical thinking, creativity, problem solving, money management, marketing, networking and hard work.  It also takes understanding hard times and that not everything is going to come easily.  It also needs a person who can deal with failure and grow from it.

The most valuable thing you can make is a mistake – you can’t learn anything from being perfect. 
– Adam Osborne

Do you think our system is preparing our students for these things???  I don't.  Entrepreneurs are the backbone to every society.  They are the ones that create new jobs, challenge establish business to do better and allow people who enter the company to move up the ranks and have good paying jobs/careers.  We need these people but our schools are not inspiring or preparing students for this.  The no fail policies and virtually no penalties for handing work in late is not the way to make independent, accountable and resilient entrepreneurs.

I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work. – Thomas Edison

So how does technology in education fit into this??  Well I believe that with the use of technology in our classrooms we can foster creativity, interest, and problem solving skills within our students.  Technology allows us to assign different kinds of assignments other then essays and powerpoint projects to show their knowledge.  They could make videos, write blogs, create websites, infographics, cartoons(even if they can't draw).  They can also get knowledge through novel ways like emailing experts, skyping in other classes or polling people(i,e, create a poll everywhere, print it on paper and set it up around the school, mall ect. and collect data on your poll everywhere site).  We no longer have to rely on secondary sources of information but can find primary ones if we only use our creativity, problem solving and (here is a new one) networking skills.

The other thing the internet allows is for the students to find their interests and passions within a subject.  I think everyone can become interested in any subject but maybe not every topic so with the use of the internet the students can research a topic they are interested in within a subject instead of learning with whatever topic you, as the teacher, choose to teach the content with.


So I hope it is clear, but I really think that if we use technology appropriately in the classroom we can inspire students.  We need to do more then just for streaming YouTube videos, but need to get students creating things, networking and gathering primary information in ways or on topics that they are interested in.  This way the next time I'm listening to boring old AM talk radio I won't hear about a poor 22 year old who can't find a career because he would have created one for himself!

The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary. 
– Vidal Sassoon

p.s.  If you ever want to find some good quotes on entrepenuership and motivation chack out these 2 websites!

http://www.minterest.com/99-inspirational-motivational-quotes-on-entrepreneurship/

http://www.glidedesign.com/50-great-entrepreneurial-quotes/