Technology and Innovation of Teaching

It's a wrap-up time, at the end of the term.

We learned a lot of technologies, webblog, website, podcast, webQuest, Wikispot, GoogleApp. digital tools for story telling and etc. It is a wonderful new world in beautiful colors. And the technology is powerful. "It surely can stimulate students' interest in active learning", you might think this way.

But wait, what is the major task of education? "Engaging them, guiding them, and helping them".
In the reading of “Thinking (and talking) about technology in math classroom”, I realize that technology now influences math teaching very much as “one of the strongest forces in the contemporary growth and evolution of mathematics” and “the computers have fostered entirely new fields”. Under this situation, an educator should keep the mind conscious and not be addicted to technology.

First of all, no matter how fancy the technology is, it is only a tool for teaching. We can only use it for “our own classroom goals”, and “the purpose of the lesson”. Technology, if it is not under control, a teacher, as human beings, is easily to be addicted to it since it is really bring us a lot of convenience and fun. Therefore, applying technology in the math classroom need to be mindful.
The too flourishing features of novel technology also might cause problem in students’ learning since they might be attracted by their fancy features rather than how to use it to achieve the mathematical understanding. Further more, some math procedures, such as the decimal repetition may not be shown by using technology tool, thus it’ll cause the students’ learning incomplete. In addition to the deficiency caused by the intrinsic characteristics of technology, the “market driven” effect is also a big issue. “The initial push for technology did not for the most part come from the classroom”. The developer of technology always targets at the market and the profit first. They are not educators, and thereafter they won’t be able to understand the complexity in education process, including epistemological, pedagogical, methodological and psychological issues.

So, as an educator, we must keep alert to any “innovations” in the classroom and don’t be just addicted to the technology. Not only applying to the math class, but also applying to all subjects' class. This leads us back to the origin when we just started. "We need to focus on what we need to teach rather than technologies only. We need to emphasize the big picture of our teaching". At the end of the term, after "swimming" in the tech pool for a cool immersion, we may keep consciousness to choose what we need carefully.

Technology and innovations in teaching: it a good meal but don't be rush into it:-) This is what I'm thinking now.

Garageband- another powerful tool

It's another powerful tool for story telling and music designing.

It covers so many wonderful features; everything is similar to iMovie and windows Movie maker, but it's more powerful especially in music design.

It is for every people who enjoys music: If you are professional, you can write your own song; if you don't have any training or experience in musical composition, you still can choose different songs/melodies from the listing.

Of course, it'll take time to become skillful of using it. However, it'll another strong tool for us as teachers, to introduce another strong tool for story telling, and enjoying musics. If it is used skillfully and properly, it is good for engaging students, especially can active science teaching in the class. (I think for historical story telling about science evidences or events)

The only possible issue is it is built for Mac, not PC. It's not convenience for our PC user.

It's another proof that high tech can change everything! Even you haven't been trained in music composing, you still can compose music, by using high tech simply.

Pure world - Full version

This is a translation version from a Chinese story. I only use it for opening a small window of the Chinese world, a genuine, pure and peaceful world, of course, in long long time ago, maybe thousands years ago...................Maybe this is a dream for all nations. (it can be with music, but if I do it, the size of the file is too large, so I didn't add the music.)

透明的世界

一群美丽的蝴蝶住在那里，他们的身体都是透明的，能看见彼此的心，没有猜忌，没有怀疑。蝴蝶们一代一代地就过着这样简单而自足的生活。

有一天，来了个魔术师，他仿佛是走过了很远很长的路，眼底满是疲惫的沧桑。他惊奇着这个善良而单纯的小世界。他说，在他所生活的地方，人心是如此的狭小，妒忌的弟弟如何用诡计骗走了哥哥的财产和爱人，学不会隐藏自己心思的人如何在社会中举步惟艰。离开之前，他留下了一瓶魔水，必要的时候，可以帮助他们把心隐藏起来，不受伤害。如此天真的透明，太危险，他说。

很多年后，魔术师又回到了原来的地方。那里已经没有了透明的蝴蝶，空气里弥漫着他在人类社会中所熟知的浑浊。每一只蝴蝶都有了黑色的身体，保护着自己，也在伤害着别人。魔术师忽然意识到自己犯了一个多么严重的错误。他拿出解药，可是没有一只蝴蝶愿意去喝它。

“他们再也找不回原本透明而简单的心情了。” 他叹息道。

Pure World

Long, long time ago, there is a swarm of beautiful butterflies living in a forest. Their bodies are transparent. They can see the heart of each other; they can share everything with honest. No suspiciousness, no jealousy. Age to age, these butterflies live in such a simple and satisfied life.

One day, there is a magician coming by the forest. It seems he walks for such a long time on a long way. He’s full of tiredness, and full of exhaustion. He amazes such a pure and nice small world. He says, he hasn’t seen anywhere like here. Everybody is so pure and simple, living in such a peaceful land. He said, at where he’s living, the people are narrow-minded. The jealous younger brother used tricks to cut out his old brother’s property and wife. It’s so hard to do anything in the society if you don’t know how to hide and protect yourself there. He says, it’s not possible to live there without knowing how to cover your heart. Before he leaves, he leaves them a bottle of magic liquor and hopes that it’ll help them to hide their heart if it is necessary, for avoiding hurts from the others.

“You are too clear and naive”, he says, “It is so dangerous”.

Several years later, the magician comes back to the forest. He finds that there are no more transparent butterflies there. The dirty smell fills in the air, as smelly as in human’s society. Every butterfly has a black body. They protect themselves and hurt the others; no one likes to be honest and pure. The magician realizes what a big mistake he made. He takes out antidotes, but it seems no one likes to take it...........

"They cannot resume their original pure and simple mind". the magician sighs.

The end.

Digital books: several facets

Last week, one group presented a technology lesson on "digital books". In this modern world, digital era, the digital book and its applications will bring a new window in learning for all the people, including students.

As Kevin introduce to us, there are a lot of applicable features built in google. Google book is one of them, which provides a very good online library for teachers and students, especially for newly published books for "preview" purpose. As long as the teacher can carefully choose the good book and recommend students to read it, definitely it'll benefit to students' learning.

I actually have been beneficial from reading "digital books". I accidentally found the online version when I couldn't get my favored book. Usually, some hot-topic book is hardly to get from libraries. Either it is already lent out, or you receive "re-call" notice from the library soon after you get the book even you haven't finish reading. It is a kind of hectic and headache. But if the book is digital, everybody can share online. To teachers, to students, to everybody who wants to read that book, the publication of the digital version of that book will be a great news without any question. It is just as same as that word "Sharing Resources". Besides, in this world, the natural resource gradually becomes more and more scarce, such as the resource of energy and resource of forest. If the paper printing is changed into digital publishing, it obviously will save natural resources. So, the publication of digital books is not only for the readers' sake, but also for the publishers' benefit.

Of course, digital books bring the readers a lot of convenience for reading in this digital era; digital books provide more fancy features to encourage reading; digital books make the knowledge be global. These benefit is not for our teachers, our students, but also for our communities, our society and our world.

I like digital books. I appreciate all the effort that google promotes in education, technology and daily life for "resource sharing", for being globally united into one world.

My digital reading journey, as well as my attempt to promote my students for digital reading, will start from google books.

Digital books in digital world, will benefit us as educators, no matter if we are digital immigrants or digital natives.

Favored book found in "google books": Mad about physic, The force of nature and Error Analysis; Zero.

Resources, wikipedia and google scholar

Last week, we did wikipedia editing.

After I edited, I felt something wrong. The topic I wrote is not what I was familiar with. I had to search Internet to find some reliable (relatively) resources. This made me feel bad.

I'm used to trust the publication as being authorized. And I ranked Wikipedia as reliable knowledge pool before. But now, it seems I'm not right.

In the class, Kevin tell us that Wikipedia can be used as a resource, for starting up. But it should not be used as the only resources.

It's a bit clear. At least, I think in high school level, I can encourage my students using it. But I'm not sure if we can use Wikipedia as a resource for the high level scientific research.

In addition, Kevin suggest to use google scholar. The resources there is more scholarly. I checked it, the google scholar can reduce about 85-99% in the amount of info that we get from google search. This is a big difference. Also, the university library is a more reliable resources for scientific research, although the authority to use it online is limited.

So, now thing's getting more clear. Wikipedia can be used at a rich resource for starting, even in a rigorous research. Or, we can use Wikipedia as a good resource for normal level research, such as elementary or high school. For high academic level research, after starting with Wikipedia and google scholar, we probably need to seek more reliable research results from academic orientated library, quoting on more specific and more recent research results with a carefully identification.

I'm happy for knowing more about Wikipedia, through the Wikipedia writing. And I'm happy for knowing more about learning resources. Those inexhausible resources will moisten our knowledge field.

Elluminate - Online Learning Experience

July 2nd, we're gather in the online classroom, hosted by Kevin. The Online classroom has a good name: Elluminate room

Kevin starts review the article about "assessment", then turns to show us what's happened in last week in Washington. Everybody seems so excited. We're listening, watching, clapping and chatting.

One hours passed very soon. Everybody feels so satisfied. It's a class, like in a real classroom; it's not a class, we can do listening and chatting at the same time!

What a wonderful platform! It's a very good experience. It's much better than the last time I was at EnglishTown. The audio is so clear and the image is so steady. Also, the features and functions are much more advanced. "Elluminate room" does illuminate us being willing to study online.

There is tiny, tiny issue: it's too easy to be distracted, by everything, includes the fancy features (you can do a lot of "trials" and your teacher can't see:-) Oh, too bad), the free discussion setting, and the free chatting by typing (we chat / discuss too much, I even couldn't catch up with these rolling messages).

Probably, this is because it's the first time for online class in Educ 482, and everything is interesting at teh first time: Everybody meets online as if meets in the real classroom; there are too much things to learn and to try. These are possible reasons. It seems everybody feels very well and different. Anyway, we're so excited. I believe the distraction will be eliminated with the time going.

Thank you so much, Kevin! It is engaging! It is fun!

Assessment

Today's topic is tough. I got headache for a very long time about it.

Assessment. It's such a big topic!

In 401/402 study, we learned about two forms of assessments, formative assessment and summative assessment. At that moment, this issue seemed so clear. Now, it turns back to chaos in my mind.

As I knew, there are several "realities" related to the mark:

1) "No zero mark" rule. This is totally make sense to me. The students' mark reflects their learning progress. According to the pedagogical philosophy, school is a place that people do something for students, and students are the centre of the school. thus, "zero mark" means the student didn't learn anything this term in the school. It turns out that kind of question: what does the teacher do in this term?

2) There are certain limitation line for the average mark of the students to enroll the certain university. And also, there is certain mark required to keep your qualification studying in university. It does mean the "grade" and "mark" are objectively influence students' future.

So, As high school teacher, I have a lot of questions.

1) I want to know "does the grade matter?"
2) "Does the assessment have any standard?" If Yes, what is about? If No, then why? and what are the SAT, Provincial exam and term exam for?
3) I agree that "mark shouldn't be the only standard to evaluate students" and assessment should evaluate students from many angles, such as skills, multi-intelligence, social abilities, etc. However, I just want to understand clearly, is there any standard system to assess students' efforts and progress in equality? This equality is a protection for students' equal right to enroll certain levels of universities and it is so important to students.

Also, before we want to create something new, I think we need to have a relative mature idea to create the New first, then destroy the old one. I really struggle with the novel ideas when they are only some pieces of segments. We need to think ahead of time, but the reality is, if there is no better solution to replace the old one, we'd better to keep it. Although criticism becomes more and more fashion now.

Online Learning and Learning Online

The most interesting point in today's class is the introduction that kevin give us about online learning and learning online.

It's not a tone twister. It is different. Online class is Online learning, and using the online tools assisting learning is learning online.

Kevin said, learning online is a good support to students' learning. But it is challenging to both the teachers and students if they take online class.

Surely, learning online is a strong support to students' learning. They can use all resources worldwide. As long as the teacher gives them a proper guiding, students will get a lot of supplement learning materials, practice questions and even historical knowledge about the current learning topics. Some websites like WolframAlpha, physicsclassroom, learnersTV, etc. will be very helpful to students understand the concepts and stimulate their interest.

For online learning, my idea only a piece of thread. I hope it can elicit you big idea with your comment and discussion.

In my opinion, choosing online learning means flexibility and risky to students; and the teaching becomes either too easy or too hard to the teacher. It's depend on the teacher's quality, motivation, and consientiousness.

Flexibility to the online students is obvious, students can choose the online course in their spare time, especially for those 24-hours a day, 1-hour-shift courses, such as Englishtown - an ESL online class. On the other hand, since most of online courses are worldwide, the levels of the students are varies; the culture backgrounds are different; the learning progress will be different and somehow risky to the students. This diversity leads the difficulty for effective communication, which is very important in class discussion or other kinds of incorporation in the classroom, and therefore limit the learning outcome. In another words, the learning outcome becomes somehow risky in online learning. Besides, these diversities bring up a big challenge to the teacher who hosts the class.

The effective and interactive communication will be the biggest challenge to the teacher in online learning. This is required to hire high quality teacher. The "high quality" here means being skillful and tactically flexible to flourish the classroom with a certain level of knowledge about the subjects. It includes the teacher's personality, skills and acdemic level. For example, in the ESL class I attended, the teacher's English accent, the humourousness, and strategies to organize the class influence the class critically. The students can sneak out anytime if they feel unconfortable with the teacher's English level, include speaking and writing; if they don't like the lesson (if it is dry and boring); if they don't like the personality of the teacher who shows humorless or brainless. So, , in the class, the tone, the manner, and the way of talking will determine wether the students stay or not. If the teacher cannot grasp the students' interest in about five minutes, the students have just gone into "air"! Therefore, the teacher's quality is so important. A teacher can motivate the students, inspire them to follow him all the way down to the end of class and guide them learning in fun if he want to, love to, provide students a good lesson consciously; or, he can just get his money and play the teaching as a "money-driven job" and turn the class "meaningless". One words describe this as "who cares" mode. In this mode, the teaching is "too easy" to a teacher but "so risky" to the students.

That's why I say "it either is too hard or too easy to a teacher" and online learning is risky to the students.

So, online learning has a lot of advantage and I want to advocate it. However, choosing the online teacher needs to be mindful. Online teacher should have high motivation to teach; should have better communication skills to be able to teach; should have a humorous manner and personality to teach; should have a rich arsenal (strategies and knowledge) to teach. Otherwise, eventually, 'they've all gone". haha.....

Of course, another point, the payment for online teaching should be higher! It's so important to US!

Welcome comment:-) Especially different opinion.

Story telling -- Amazing Smilebox --Thank you!

Make a Smilebox slideshow

This is amazing. It's so easy to create a story telling by using smilebox. It's a fantastic tool and good for our teaching for sure. How pity that we couldn't use it for FREE! Poor educator, it seems we are lack of money at our packet. (I use a free trial for only 14 days from today. I don't know when they will close it)

Story Telling by using PC Movie Maker

I made a digital story by using PC Movie maker. It's almost the same as Mac iMovie that Kevin introduces to us today. My method is not very smart but it works well.

There are several steps:

1. Prepare all the pictures and video segments well. Be ready;
2. Open a new project page in PC Movie maker; pull all the pictures into the project page; if it is a video segment, you should only pull one piece a time.
3. Drag these pictures on story board and arrange the certain time span for each picture; if it is a video segment, then it automatically has a certain time span.
4. For the video, after you drag one segment on the story board, you can pull another segment into the project page and arrange it on the story board.
5. Check everything is ready, then trun on "narrate timeline" icon (a small microphone icon at the lower left). Start to record.
6. After finishing the record, save project first; then save the data by "save movie file". Until now, eveything is done.

Let's share my digital story with you below. I'm a little nervous when I recorded. So, there is a lot of mistakes in the audio. What makes me so happy is it works!

Welcome comments and I like to share your skills as well.

Short Story by Using Cosmic-Life

Cosmic Life, it's an amazing tool for creating story! I believe my students will love it.

Introduction of several new technologies

Today's class is really excited.

Starting from the energy-saving light bulb, Kevin introduces another new high-tech tool that can be applied in teaching, document camera. It is also called digital presenter. This allows a teacher, lecturer or presenter to write on a sheet of paper or to display a two or three-dimensional object while the audience watches. This product is available in Smart Technologies.

The most impressive character of this camera is being able to display real-time images of any static or moving object onto an interactive whiteboard for your entire class to see, instantly. You can also capture images with Notebook collaborative learning software and use them to create interactive lessons. In the class, Kevin shows us how to use this digital presenter combined with labtop computer and projector to organize a fantastic lesson. Just using a simple switch, he can manipulate this system easily and smoothly.

If I had this camera, I could show 2D collision in my Physics class on the glass surface to verify momentum conservation vividly; If I have this camera, I can directly use my handwriting to present equation solving without tablet computer; if I had it, ... A lot of burden on preparation of teaching would be released. However, Kevin tells us that the price of this document camera is in $800 ~ $3000 range(it depends on how many modes setting there), it's even much expensive than a smart board. So, we need to think about it.

Of course, the most important is how to use the high tech tools effectively in order to improve teaching. The lesson design and lesson content are more important than technologies itself. Without this in your mind, "You can also do silly things even you have a good tech tool".

Follow by a work sheet discussion on useful tech tools adequate to different teaching situations, Kevin explains Special Education Technologies( SET ) by using his own wiki sites. Kevin stresses again on Cosmic life, which is very useful to engage students in writing, and digital image to guide us on our digital story telling. Another software attracts my attention during the class. It is iMovie software for Mac. computer. It has similar function as I used Movie Maker in my PC, but it is said that its functions are much stronger than that of Movie Maker. iMovie is a fantastic quick tool to adding the movies. It has a great build-in sound too.

The followings are presentations my colleagues give. It's an excited time. I do appreciate what my colleagues do, they present such a "big meal" with so "rich nutrition" in front me. I'm starving:-) Thank you so much!

The first is GPS and Google Earth. GPS can be used as navigation, tracking and position measuring, it also can make lesson plan; Google Earth can be definitely applied to any of social classes and science/math class. When I hear the discussion from my colleagues, I feel so happy because, all of these is very interesting to me.

Continuously, I follow another colleague to learn how to create my own website for teaching, through goole site. Oh, my! This is just as a "meal" on my table but I don't know how to find it and eat it before today! How silly! It is a good lesson that should be kept in mind. Exploring is the most effective way to learn and we should put it as the first priority in our life. Otherwise, I won't learn anything even I am in a "treasure cave".

"Alice! Alice! How lovely you are!" Another free software that is definitely good for me in writing my digital story and it is soooooo~~ helpful for people like me, who is almost a "blind" and "deaf" in programming.

I'm going to do my "treasure hunt" soon after. Just wait, I'll show you what I can get from their "treasure cave". My exploration will bring some happiness. Don't be rush, I'll show you:-)

Enjoy and have a great weekend!

SMARTBOARD makes you SMARTER

Here are collections about a new technology used in classroom-->Smartboard, an interactive teaching tool that can foster learning and make a dramatic change in learning outcome.

Before we use it in class, we need learn some basic skills for using smartboard with other SMBtools (here too) and how to set it up. (you can also refer the visual information here). When you have basic knowledge, try to think what kinds of activities you can organize in your class. The activities are various and you need to choose something useful. Also, some activity tool-kits are available here and there.

Let's see some examples. smartboard in Physics class; Smartboard in Social study class; case study; And it works on teaching in elementary class and Kindergarten as well! It makes teachers happy in teaching! Oh, look at these animations! So cool!

Ways to reduce the expense of using Smartboard. (save the money!)

1) Build an infrared smartboard by using Wiimote.
2) See how much I can save.
3) How to use Wiimote SMB
4) Only spend $20 or less!

The expert of doing this is Johnny Lee!

Enjoy the Smartboard!

Class Note June 4th,2009

1. About the article writing:

• ­"Everything I put into it disappeared, it's painful". --> What is the collaboration? ­


• Thinking about what you can bring it in is much important for an effective collaboration.


• What is the advantage to do so? -->Everybody works together at the same time.

2. Choice for children:

• ­What is valuable?


• How do you deal with the parents who has different perspective to the education?


• Culturally, there is some challenges as changing the system. (e.g. Univ., parents, school system)This change is not only a challenge to the teacher, but also to the children.


• Children may feel difficult to make decision because they are not used to it.


• Children have choices, but they are still in the school system (rule, policies, etc)


• Choices means help students to be ready to learn in their ways (enjoyable way). -->build a flexible environment for an active learning <-- Kids have the right to choose what they want to learn.


• People work the best on the certain structure, but not for the other structures.


• Having choices provides more free space to keep students "alive":-).


• What can we make something meaningful to the students? It's our task.


• As to allow a choice to the presentation, what should we do? --> Answer: choices for students are -->what kind of tools you can use/ how many slides you're using? However, there is no choice for doing or not doing the presentation.

3. About portfolio (9:50am):

• ­Learning is as a journey --> Writing down what you’ve experienced in this class.


• ­When the technologies fail us, how could we do for the class? (it’s for the discussion in your blogs, or in your contribution to the class)


• You can take photos, videos, anything is related with your progress, you can put in your portfolio.

4. Webquest:

• Web 2.0 wraps out of it. It's used in 1980-2002 or 2003.


• It's a guided treasure hunt.


• There is a filter to narrow down the information, not like the information got in google-search, in which you get too much information and hard to get the one you need. (Webquest is filtered)


• Turn to the website where there are many tasks for us: taskonomy.

5. Story telling(10:40am):

• ­Jason Ohler is a professor who is passionate on story telling.


• Art is critical to our culture.


• "A good dad"-->A powerful tool as a movie. It seems a good way to train kids telling stories:-) <-- speak with care.


• The next week, bring a camera and make a story.


• Write a story and it's a critical part of the story telling.


• 3 minutes story(approx: 3-page double space; be aware of this: 1 minutes resume can be done in 1 hour in a real class)


• It’s not put into assessment, it’s only class participation.


• When you have story, read to yourself for a couple of times. (record it and listen to it); work with your audio first and edit it later; as to pictures, you need to “google” it.

Front Row Product -- A dream

In the last class, a guest speaker visited our class and introduced us a new product: FrontRow sound system. (Sound Feel Portion? That was I heard) It can increase the clarity of the lecture; it can improve the quality of teaching; it can attract attentiveness of the audience; it can help the audience in word recognition; and the teacher will be more relax in the class. By the way, the company will provide 10-minutes training and help you to use the system. As a results, the studetns can understand more in the class, and teh understanding correctness will improve from 65% to 95%. I can't imagin how wonderful it is! But, I dream that there is a FrontRow Sound system in the classes I'm attending.

In one class I registered this term, there is a wonderful instructor. He can make the class active all the time, with many interesting activities and fun questions, we all love to be in his class, it's terrific! At the first class, there is only 43 students, but now there are total 55 students. I guess some students transfered to our class in the first week just because heard of his fame. Everything is excellent except.......his voice. His voice is perfectly OK if there is only 20 more students in a smaller classroom. However, now, it is a 55-students in a classroom that is as twice as large than usual! Sometimes, when we do an activitivity, (we used to do 3-5 activity every class), students have to be around him in circles. I'm not a swift person, I couldn't be in the closer circle. Usually, I could only stand out of three circles to listen to him. At that time, I always wish that he had a more projective voice with higher clarity. Then I could've catch his words more.

If there is a FrontRow system for him, what would the class be?

Marvelous! Amazing! Great!.... there is no words can describe his class then. That's too good to be true.

His raucous voice would become magnetic and sonorous, penentrating through us without any distortion; he would not need to repeat again and again for clarification to the students at the back rows; we students would just listen to him easily without struggling..........How can we say in Mandarin? "Shuang Ahh! Shuang!" Just like eating a juicy orange with cold, clear water in a hot summer day.

What a wonderful dream. I hope the dream will come true soon.

Class note May 28th, 2009- draft

• A guest speaker from FrontRow company: Introduction for a new product that can help the teacher make their voice clear in the classroom. It's called sound feel portion(?)
  


• FrontRow works in Canada for more than 30 years and the head office is in California
  


• The 1st class: Kevin talks about the project running in Surrey that is going to help student "thinking faster". It's called "Fast Forward".


• Clarify on the schedule of our presentation(Tech lesson). He starts to use the FrontRow product("sound feel portion"). It's great! His voice turns much clear although it seems he doesn't need it in our class. So cool!
  


• About "Understanding by design(UbD)"--explain the first reading:
  


• How to implement the design ; the template; the coverage; the materials<-- "ten years rule"--> "Ten years" run is very important, why?--> that "kind of damage have been done in 10 years, so... change it!
  


• How to access the persuasive? Learning plan is important.


• About "graph"; switch from European perspective to First nation then change back to Canadian perspective.


• How to balance? Past, present and the future.


• Activity should be in front of everything in designing<-- activity based.


• Passion will drive the students learning. Sometime, passion fits it the "10-year rule", sometimes, the curriculum fits in the "10-years rule".


• The reflection part will show you what you did wrong, we want they reflect themselves and get feed back to themselves. "Students will follow you because they feel passion on your lesson".--> you can't manage the classroom if you can't teach.


• "If I don't understand, I don't want to be here", it's a common result.<-- So, you need "thinking of this and thinking of your students" as an educator. <-- backward design;


• Some page is missing ? Piece-picking results?

• The 2nd class: Engaging/Enraging article discussion.

• We can teach the students to use things, such as cell phone, ipod, etc in a proper way.


• Engage them to learn by teaching them, but not over beyond the limit.


• Generation gap: don't use your view to justify the new generation. Put your foot at their position. (?How do we make it easy to do?) "They need their own generational needs". Kevin says.


• "Entertaining kids is the same thing as engaging the kids". Josh says." playing with them with a clear purpose. Engaging is not necessary to be entertainment.


• Reflection discussion: How does the voice impact the class? (Impact the class? Just need to project your voice, but it shouldn't be emotional. Be careful on this because it's easy to "enrage' your students if you cannot handle it properly) How does the voice and video impact the class?


• Some ideas to impress the students and engage them: Smartboard-->You can download software from your district for free if you get a smart board. --> using a dice or a spinner to set up options, play with protractor builded in the smart board and measure angles. --> Smartboard Activities: using magic pen, magnifying, lining up the objects or put them together.


• Activity in the class: changing the world, constant commitment. (30min.) We'll stop by 12:00pm.


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Math is Fun!

Welcome all teachers, especially math teacher, com on in! Get some fresh air in Math forest.

Do your students feel headache on quadratic equation? Let's enjoy the song of quadratic equation!

How to teach the linear equation with fun? Join them for skiing.

Do your studetns have trouble on inequality? Let's shade together.

Trigonometric function? What does it look like? Enjoy the Yo-yo.

Ohhhhhhhhh~~~ how powerful it is! It turns mathematics into song! Let check Youtube!

Class #3

This class runs way faster than what I can catch up with.

We start from how to build a better blog. In the blog, the "critical thinking" and " deep questions" related with what we learned are more important than fancy tech showing in the blog. We should pay more attention to the content.

The IRP introduction is followed by a discussion on "how to apply one high tech to the class to achieve the teaching goal". It is very helpful for us to practice what we just learned.

The most interesting part in this class is the "10 tools to engage writing" at Kerin's literate blog. From "storyboarding", "mindmaping", ......to "Book Making", everything there attracts me so much. By using "Comic Life", "Inspiration", and etc, a book can be made easily and well.

It turns to a question. Since the high tech can help people express their oppinion in such a simple and well organized way, is the fundamental training for spelling and writing (or we can say, traditional way for literacy) still neccessary?

During the group discussion time, we still keep talking about this. In my personal oppinion, the fundamental training is still very important. I conclude on this because I believe the knowledge pool is built through the talent from all individuals. The fundamental training on spelling, reading, and calculating is essential to develop abilities and skills of an individual. Without the contribution from our individuals, it's not possible to further develop our human society.

From this point of view, I don't encourage younger kids manipulate high techs for learning before they have proper training on traditional skills; I don't like to see such as a 3-4 years kid learns new words through typing in computer but spelling by hand; an elementary kid play calculator rather than using their mind for simple calculation, etc. High technologies can be tools for the teacher to encourage the student who feels no interest in learning; high techs can be good tools for the student who has difficulties to do writing/calculating due to birth defect. However, high techs cannot be everything. Since high techs come from human knowledge pool, if our descedent adhere to high techs only, it's not good for developing their creativity and intelligence. Therefore, we need to think how to avoid the adiction to younger kids for playing in high tech instead of learning basic skills in traditional way(that way has been proved as an effective way to teach our kids well and lead our society forward).

Children is our future. As educators, we are responsible to help them to do right things and learn in right ways. Thus, I think we need to be careful and be aware of the negative effect causing by introducing high techs into the classroom, although I believe the high techs will motivate our students and stimulate them in active learning.

(Welcome comments and discussions)

Videoes for Physics teaching

Look at here:

The Wonder and Beauty of Teaching Physics
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJVvtOy-ukE
How do you think? Is it cool? or.......

Second class - website

May 14th, 2009

Ta...Ta....

"Fancy smart board! Impressive!"
I can only say this words.

As I said last time, I'm new to the information technology. And I'm very easy to get lost here. In the first class, I learned a very useful website that can store many information with Tags. It is http://delicious.com/; so, I registered and setup my account. And, I created the blogs from goole. I'm a little happy now, although I still feel that the class is a bit faster than what I can catch up with.

Starting from the brief introduction of smart board, Kevin repeats how to use delicious account and tag your favored websites as bookmarks. After that, a very useful technique - embed a link or a tag under wiki is introduced. I practice it and feel so well when it works. This makes me more confident.

Kevin explains something in the reading - "Setting the Big Pictures" and emphasizes that we need to focus on what we need to teach in activity designed in the class rather than technologies. I totally understand how important it is. No matter how fancy the technology is, it's only a tool to serve in teaching attractively and learning effectively.

The daily discussion in the class is so interesting; it's related the interactive working vs. one-way working in the classroom. The discussions are post spontaneously on docs google at http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dd3qwvmg_5fctskmf4&invite=858953971, and I name it as a "discussion platform". (DP) On DP, I find sometimes, if there are many people work together, the message I typed in is easily to be inserted in other's words. Interesting. I'm so admire that my colleagues could type in big blocks of message while I could only give a piece.

The most interest part in this class is the introduction of some websites, which are recommended to us. I list all as following:
1) http://allaboutexplorers.com/: introduce explorers
2) http://easywhois.com/: find people
3) http://youtube.com/kevinamboe: Kevin's post inYoutube
4) https://www.photoshop.com/express/landing.html: free online photo editing site
5) http://taggalaxy.de/: animated icons as search engine
6) http://zapatopi.net/: a interesting website of Zapato productions for children
7) http://martinlutherking.org/: website for social study teacher, I believe.

All above are very useful websites, I am sure it'll help us in our teaching.

Any suggestions? :-)

First Class of EDUC 482

Reflection #1

The first lesson of Educ_482 on May 7th gave me a little shock, because it seems I knew little in this area. There are a lot of new technologies which I heard of them but not use them very often in my life, such as web Blogs, Internet, Pod casts, Wikis, etc. Mr. Kevin Amboe presented brand new scenery to me and I think I can learn more from this class.

At the beginning of the class, we were explained the textbooks we need to read(it’s a little scary to me), the course outline and something we need to know about this class, such as learning attitude, etc. At least, we need to have a positive attitude to the new technologies. We should positively think how to employ technologies as teaching strategies rather than “but, but, but...”; we should try experiment for innovations. After introducing some of the course outline, assessment and evaluation, we’re asked to write some self-assessment tool kits and edit the blog he created. It’s jittering time to me! I read the required content on dflit, but I didn’t do very much practice before the class since I didn’t know how. It made me confused and lost my way. Fortunately, with help of my colleague, I understand how to do it at last.

With the deeper discussion on the important value of the tools and the influence of the high technologies to the world, Kevin lead us to the world of new technologies. The most interesting discussion is on “How are students different today than 10, 20, 50 years ago? How does it impact in teaching?” These two topics lead us to think of innovations on teaching. How to teach the students in 21 century? With a lot of new technologies developed, the teacher becomes more like facilitator than knowledge carrier, while the student has more ways to learn various kinds of knowledge and possibly know more about new technologies than the teacher. These changes require the teaching approaches and strategies innovated and developed. All above discussions open a window for me. Peers discussion and group work are really helpful and broad my view.

In the class, I realized that I need to become more familiar with these new stuff. Otherwise, I won't be able to catch up with the class. This made me to think about practicing more on Internet. It resulted that I spent almost the whole evening over midnight on Thursday and it also sucked up my Friday. It is really fun. I enjoy the class and I need to learn how to employ these new techs to apply in my future class.

Education starts here

Hi, everyone,
Welcome to Shannon's Education blog.
In this blog, I'd like to invite everyone who has interest in teaching, to share teaching experiences and resources, develop teaching strategies, post some innovations on teaching, discuss some problems existing in classroom, enjoy and channel the emotion on teaching.
With the effort of everybody, I hope this blog will become a platform of teaching that can help me improve on the teaching and inspire me devote myself to teaching.
Thank you, and welcome!
Shannon