Blog Post #11

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

Brian Crosby- In his video, one of the main things he made clear was that he wanted his students to be active and engaged in the learning process. In his class, he likes for his students to express themselves through videos and blogs. This way they can share whatever they are thinking, and can post it online and in return have someone comment on it. Another technology he liked his students to use is Skype, he calls this network this type of network personal learning networks. He advises his students to set out for help in answering questions they my have in the classroom through the blogs, this way students from around the world can reach out to them. This is a wonderful message he is sending to his students, for them to be able to express themselves and not be afraid to get feedback from others. Also in his video he shares that in his class, all of his students are not 100% comfortable with the language. He has some second language learners in his class. He found out for himself that all children are different, have different cultures, beliefs, histories, etc. It is important for him to keep a diverse mindset and try to be considerate of all of his students. Because of this he expressed the importance of making sure the curriculum abides by this. I learned a lot of great things from this video, and a lot of his points and interests made perfect sense. It was an entirely new way to think!

Mr. Paul Anderson- This teacher is a high school AP Biology teacher in Montana. In this video the concept of the "Blended Learning Cycle is presented. With this online, mobile and classrooms learning techniques are all combined. With this being said he shared that the five E's that have to be incorporated into the learning cycle are: engage, explore, explain, expand, and evaluate. QUIVERS, this is the acronym that he uses to describe the following six steps: having a good question in order to engage your students attention and interest. Understanding of the concepts is also something very important. Inquiry learning allows other concepts to derive from this one and therefore the learning process continues. Videos, educational of course, can be a great source for students to see things in a different way than just in the classrooms. They hear things from someone else for a change, which can sometimes help for the information to stick. Elaborating, or further explanation/review is then necessary. This is very important because if you as a teacher moves to a different subject, and the student is still lost from the previous topic then they will continue to be behind. The last step in the process is to take a quiz. Here the students will be tested and graded on their performances on what they have learned throughout the process.

Mark Church-In his class he likes to have his students get into groups and work on things in the class collaboratively. He thinks kids work better this way, and in the end get more out of it. They need to make sure to all do a part and for the experience to be equal and education for all of the students. He believes that with all of their minds being combined that they can think more about the questions given and can get past the generic answers. He wants his class to be creative and think outside of the box. I like the idea of kids being in groups, and feeding knowledge off of each other.

Sam Pane 4th grade- In this classroom the first thing I noticed was the eagerness his students has to learn. They were excited, and ready to go to school. This is not the normal mindset all children have in the mornings, but in their case their teacher makes things very interesting for them by having them develop super hero characters. This concept is being used for their lesson on Internet Safety. Instead of them listening to their teacher tell them the basics on internet safety in a lecture form, their super hero they make up is the one protecting them from all the bad things potentially on the Interet that they do not need to be involved with. This is fun for them, and gives them a chance to use their creativity. I think this is a wonderful lesson, and seems to work! This is by far my favorite lesson!

Project Based Learning- This video is different than the rest because in the previous videos we had one teacher express how they have been doing things in their classrooms, here we have the minds of three teachers combined in one classroom. The combined courses were English, History, and Technology in Canada. These teachers goals were to combines the curriculum for the three different subjects and have the students develop projects in groups. This gave them a wider range for the material they could use. This also gave them a challenge, they had to incorporate more things this way, and ultimately learned more than they would have if just one subject was used. Project Based Learning is great for many different reasons, I did not grow up doing things in groups. My classmates were always shy and would rather work by themselves than with others. Now a days they would rather talk than be quiet, and make new friends by working with others! This is so great, the kids at this young age have personalities that are starting to shine, and they need to be told that what they are thinking is wonderful and have encouragement from their peers.

Roosevelt Elementary's PBL Program- In this video group work is also a big part of the video. Not only do the students need to talk it out and work together with each other, but they need to be able to ask their teacher along the way if any questions come up. In Education so many different ideas are always thrown around, and because of this educators need to work together and share things with each other. Whether this is face to face, via email or some form of technology, or even the teacher themselves looking up ideas online to share with their students. This is the fun part, finding new materials and ways to do things is one of the many things that keeps things interesting. If the students mind wonders, or they get bored it is really hard to capture their attention again.