Week 5 - Wiki and Personality Types

I think very highly of Wikis and approve their use both in and out of the classroom. While wikis can be altered and the information in them wrong, wiki does an excellent job of spotting these mistakes and correcting them in a timely manner. Wikis are a good source of information and provide students a valuable resource for student research and the search for knowledge. I believe I would be able to use wikis in my classroom, but only for informational purposes because they do a great job of giving out complicated information in a format that a student can understand.

For learning approaches both a learning community and traditional instruction go hand in hand. Often times in traditional instruction, a student maybe struggling with a concept they can't understand and often times gets left behind. In a learning community, a student can hear listen to their peers and learn from them by looking at different perspectives and often times a peer can explain a concept better than the teacher. Not to say that traditional instruction is bad because teachers are an important part of the process. Teachers have been taught for many years in their field so their knowledge of the subject is invaluable and provides a basis of learning concepts for a student when they are taking that particular class. My belief is confirmed in the fact that when I go to class, my professors provide a basic concept for me to understand and I internalize and apply my views and experience to that concept. Once I step outside the classroom and begin talking with my peers, I better refine that concept because I receive input and ideas from my peers that might change the way I think about that particular concept.

Yes, personality types have a great affect onl learning styles for a student. For someone like me, I am a very hands on person, but I must have all the information on something before I jump right into it so that requires a teacher to thoroughly teach me something before I begin a project or homework. After I understand everything about that particular problem, I can see it from all different angles and figure it out. Other students may require more hands off projects or a different type of teaching style for them to learn the concept the teacher is trying to get across to them. Knowing a student's personality is key in getting them to understand, internalize, and adapt the information you are teaching them. I believe by having my students take a personality test it will help me better understand the student and how to deal with them when they don't understand something or teaching them the subject matter another way. By having them take a personality test I can understand the ways in which I need to teach the subject material so they will understand and be a succesful student.

Week 4 - Using Excel in the Classroom

Microsoft Excel is a great program that can be used in many different ways for the classroom.Using spreadsheets in the classroom can be very useful for keeping grades, attendance, or listing activities and work that you do over the year. You could also use a spreadsheet to develop a homework assignment for the students, or as a list of activities your class will be participating throughout the year. I would use a spreadsheet as a gradebook or to keep track of work we have done over the year, such as papers, essays, or journals.

As teachers, we use spreadsheets as a tool to enhance the learning experience and to help teachers keep track of information on their students. Spreadsheets have the advantage over calculators because it allows you to quickly find averages for all your students. Most teachers have around a 100 students they need to have grades for, so by using a spreadsheet we can efficiently and effectively get their grades tallyed up and report it back to them. The three primary functions of a spreadsheet include storing, calculating, and presenting information. I think these three primary functions are the most effective functions for a spreadsheet and using these in the right way will provide a tool for teachers in the classroom. I cannot think of any other functions for a spreadsheet other than what I have above.

Week 3:Inspiration in the Classroom

I found the software program Inspiration to be useful for many situations, but counterproductive for some instances where more in depth thought and critical anaylsis is required. The drag and drop feature, organizational tools, and image association are interesting tools that could help teach students how to research and compile information together. Inspiration could be used in the classroom for research papers, history projects, or science experiments. I think Inspiration would be best used for history assignments, e.g. making timelines or using primary documents, and also for science to map out the experimental process. Inspiration could be effective for writing papers, but it would disadvantage the student because part of the writing process is actually writing and correlating all the information together at the end. Using Inspiration would be counterproductive in a situation where a student just collected a bunch of information and using the program, just put it all together instead of trying to write it out and make it fit together.

Writing activities such as going to the library and researching information make great use of technology. Also, in group writing activities technology is effective because it allows the students to interact with each other and compile their information into one big presentation. Technology gives students the tools, ability, and information to write all different types of essays, papers, and journals especially in this day and age.

Peer review sessions and allowing other people to read your work is the only way to effectively critique your work. Getting students to work in small groups with different people allows them to get a different perspective from each person about their paper and ways to improve it. Technology like blogging and the internet would allows students to communicate to each other what they think about a paper at different times and without having to actually be in front of the person you are critiquing. Sometimes, it is hard to give someone feedback about something they did wrong when you are right in front of their face so using technology would allow for this.

Comments On Using Blogs for Education

I think that using blogs in the classroom can be very helpful to the educational process. While I believe this, I also have many reservations about using blogs for education. To use blogs, one must have the availability of both a computer and the internet at home. Yes, we do live in a technological society where mostly everyone has the availability of both a computer and the internet at home, but there are still some families that either don't have a computer, or they don't have access to the internet. This only makes it harder on low-income families to get their children a good education. Some families cannot afford to buy a computer, or spend money every month on the internet when they are more worried about feeding their kids or paying the mortgage on their house.

With that said, blogs could have some use in the classroom for educational purposes. Teachers could post assignments online, remind students about special events, and foster communication outside the classroom environment. It would also allow students to express themselves in a way that everyone can see and unique to them. Teachers would also be able to express themselves, interact with each other, and close the gap of distance between a teacher and their students.

With blogs the way they are now, using them in the classroom could be a waste of time. Using them for classroom activities could be fine, but actually using them in class would take away the point of having a teacher. Nothing is better for a student than to have personal interaction with a teacher, and using blogs in the classroom would take away from that interaction.

I respond by saying that blogs are still a new thing, and must be monitored closely when used in a classroom setting. Like any other thing, using a blog has both positive and negative consequences.

Blogging would be an effective tool for journals and creative writing assignments, and would save massive amounts of paper by posting online, and using wikispaces for handouts would enable students to work on their homework anywhere their is an internet connection. Using blogs would also enable the teacher to help students from their own home whenever a student needed help, without having to actually go anywhere.

Introduction

Hello,

My name is John Austin Pierce and I was born in Boston, Massachusetts. I am an English major working on my teacher's certificate for Secondary Education. I am also interested in Physics, Philosophy, and Engineering.
My family is a working-class family; my dad runs his own mechanic shop and my mom is an assitant librarian at my former high school. I grew up in Bandera, Texas about 50 miles northwest of San Antonio.
I am a writer, musician, and I love rock climbing. I also work for the Outdoor Adventure Department at the Campus Recreation Center and build routes for the rock climbing wall.