My Mentorship Experience

I had the pleasure of mentoring with two classrooms this semester, and have learnt a lot from both classrooms.  Two two classrooms were very different in the content that was posted, but it made me able to see two different ways in which I could potentially use a blog in my classroom.

The first blog was the 4th grade classroom of Meli Launey, Dorry Lopez, Angela Phillips and Rick Pinchot.  In this blog, it was wirtten by the teachers for the students and for the parents to keep up to date as to what was going on the classroom.  There were also fun links to engage the students are well.  In this blog, I commented on alomst every single blog post, and provided feedback on what they were doing in the class.  For this blog, I also created a video at the beginning of my mentorship to introduce myself to the class, so they would have a little bit of understanding of who I was.

The second blog was Chris Harbeck’s four grade eight math classes from Winnipeg.  For this blog, the students made a daily scribe post to reinforce what they had learnt that day in class, along with the homework for that day.  I really liked this idea as it is something that all of the students can refer to if they missed that class, or did not totally understand what was taught that day.  It is the student’s resonsibility to ensure that the work is correct and easy to understand since it is their own classmates that will be referring to it.  In this blog, I tried to comment 3-5 times per week on each class’ blog, but that goal did not always follow through.  When I commented, I tried to provide positive feedback for the student who wrote that scribe post since I think that positive feedback is essential for students to recieve.  At the same time, I would explain an aspect that they could possibly work on, if there was one, for their next scribe post.

I think that I did a good job keeping in contact with these two classrooms, and have learnt a lot of useful information for my future classrooms.  I would give myself an 8 out of 10 for my mentorship since I believe that I did a good job in commenting, but jsut like my social learning, I could have worked towards commenting more often.

Social Learning

Social Learning was a new term to me, and I was a bit nervous at first since it was a totally new concept to me.  However, over the semester I have not only had the opportunity to understand what social learning is, but also contribute to a social learning environment.

From my first blog post, I have had comments from people who were not in the class, such as the following comment from Ian H.

Good for you for considering both the up- and downsides to technology in the classroom. It is not a panacea, and anyone who thinks so will undoubtedly trip themselves up at some point by introducing something that either has no place in a school, or that isn’t ready for student use.

That said, things like being distracted by text-messaging and Facebook probably reflects more on the user than the technology, don’t you think?

Anyway, it’s good to see beginning teachers already thinking about where and how to use technology in the classroom – that’s a great place to be starting from. Good luck!

At first, I will admit that I was confused as to who this person was and why they were questioning what I had to say in my own blog post. But, the more I thought about it and became aware of social learning, this is exactly what was happening: I was being challenged to think of another side of what I had to say by someone who had interest in what I had to say. I then replied to Ian to make him aware that I had considered the other side of the argument, and explained how I felt about it.

Furthermore, I do believe that I helped to contribute to other people’s social learning by responding to their blog posts, and answering any questions that they possibly had as a part of their blogs, especially when they were regarding the class. I also tried to post blogs that would be engaging to anyone reading, and possibly evoke a response to what I had to say. However, at the same time, I could have contributed more to the social learning of the class and other people who’s blogs I read by posting more comments or more questions about what they had to say in their blog.

Overall, I would give myself an 11 out of 15 marks due to the fact that what I contributed towards my own and other’s social learning was of faily good quality, but I could have done more to contribute.

Final Project.. completed!

I am happy to say that mine and Jordan’s second attempt at creating our video was a success! We met in an empty classroom in the education building to film our video.  We sat and discussed exactly what we each would say, and how our video would look after we filmed and edited it.  We decided to not create a video that was just on how to find the slope of a line, we created a bit of a story line and incorporated the educational aspect of it.

We were all done filming it, and went to edit it using Windows Movie Maker, and then realized that you cannot rotate videos.  A couple of our shots were sideways, so we went back to the education building to re-shoot those shots.  We then editted it, and success: a video on how to find the slope of a line!

In case that does not work, I also uploaded it onto youtube.

Now, we just have to e-mail it to Rushton Hurley, who is in charge of Next Vista.

In four years, I hope…

As literally everyone else in this class, I am feeling the end of the semester pressure with realizing that I only have four more days of classes and a week until I write two of my three finals (definately nervous for that!) However, I have left my last two tech tasks until the very end.  Actually, it was a sense of frustration with the podcast that has prevented me from completing that one (tomorrow I am going to work on it until it is completed).

On to my ideal classroom! I have put a large majority of thought into this, and have come up with what my dream classroom would consist of:

First of all, physically, I want my classroom to be brightly coloured.  I am a fan of brigh colours, and believe that it is a much more inviting environment than bland colours.  In addtion to this, I also want to have my desks organized in a unique manner, which I have not completely decided upon yet, but definately not the boring manner of having them in straight rows.

More in depth, I want my students to have access to individual laptops for whenever they needed them, whether for assignments or for instruction.  I am going to allow my students to bring in an mp3 player to listen to music while they are working, since I, myself, can concentrate so much better with music.

As for the learning environment in which I will teach my classes, I want it to be a very welcoming, and open environment.  I want everyone to feel as if they are equal, and to not feel afraid to ask me any questions that they have.  I am going to do my best to work to incorporate all of the different multiple intelligences that exist within my classroom.  I hope to incorporate technology for the more hands on learners so that they will be able to do the work right in front of them.  I also hope to have both individual and group work assignments for the intrapersonal and interpersonal people.  These are just a couple examples for the multiple intelligences.

Overall, I hope to incorporate all of the positive aspects of the classrooms that I have been in when I have my own classroom.

It’s not as simple as it seems!

For my final project, I have teamed up with Jordan to make a video for the webiste Next Vista.  We had it all planned out, and the plan seemed rather flawless; however, when we went to put the plan into action, we had one large difficulty: neither of us are experts at using a smart board.  We could not figure out how to record what we were writing, or how to save captures as actual picture files on to the computer.

Therefore, we decided to come up with a new plan for our video.  I must say, I am thinking that our new idea is even better than the first! Here’s to hoping this plan is able to be followed through!

Where did the time go?

Here is something that has always baffled my mind: how does time seem to go by so slow at certain point in time, but go by so quickly during others? When in fact, time always passes by at the same amount of time.

I’m not too sure how I began to think of this, but one day I thought of it, and have not been able to understand it.

I sit in class every day, and think the time is going by extremely slow.  I feel the same way when I am waiting or anticipating something to happen.  However, when I look at the larger picture, I cannot believe how fast everything has gone by.  I cannot believe that this semester is almost over; it feels like the time has flown by so fast.

Does anyone have a possible explanation for this? Or is this another one of life’s mysteries?

Pondering the Future

I am currently in EPS 100 this semester, and am really enjoying it (especially the field experience aspect of it).  However, there is one part that has been bothering me the past few weeks.  I enjoy that we have weekly guest speakers, and I think that they have very important information to share with us.  I have noticed, however, that we have not been given any information at all about the different learning disabilities that exist.  I really, and honestly believe that disabilities should be focused on just as much as the aboriginal content.

I’ve been thinking about this for quite some time.  EPS 100 is designed to help us in all aspects of our future teaching career, from what I understand anyway.  Therefore, I think that disabilities should be focused on as well in this class.  Not only are we, as teachers, going to have First Nations and Metis students in our classroom, but students with disabilities as well.

I completely understand that we live in a province with a high population of First Nations and Metis people, so I understand why it is important to focus on the differences that they have as students.  But, at the same time, I also believe that we should be aware of the differences that come along with having a student with a disability in the classroom.

What do you guys think, do you agree with me, or am I completely wrong?

Podcasts!

For my educational podcast, I watched “Math Guy Podcast” by Seth Sorensen.  I chose a this podcast for two reasons: one being that I am a math major, and the second being the fact that this podcast was short and got the listener involved.  Seth’s podcast was about a fun way to use your phone number and some other numbers, and getting your phone number as your answer.  First he gets the listener to use their calculator to figure it out, and be amazed by the results.  He then goes through each step once again, but this time in terms of “x” and “y”.  It is actually quite interesting how it turns out to be your phone number (I have to admit, I tried it for myself).

As for my second podcast, I chose to listen to one about hypnosis entitled “Hypnosis Explained” by John Morgan.  I have always wondered about hypnosis and how it works.  I find it really interesting to listen to, and find out exactly how hypnosis works.  John Morgan is a hypnotist himself, and he calls hypnosis “excellerated learning”.  He talks about how hypnosis puts you into a trance so that you are subconciously learning.  According to him, the most effective learning happens when you are in a subconcious state, which hypnosis puts you in, since you are not focusing on anything else at the same time. 

Now, time for me to make my own podcast; if only I knew where to get started!

Help?

I began taking a look at the different types of podcasts available for me to listen to, and have chosen two to write a review on.  However, this made me realize that I have absolutely no clue on how to make a podcast of my own.  I don’t know how to get started, so I was wondering if anyone else in the class knew how to and would be able to help me out? Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Expanding on Pre-existing Knowledge

For my third video that I watched from the k-12 Online Conference was the video entitled “Video Conferencing It’s Easy, Free and Powerful” by Brian Crosby.  In this video, Brian Crobsy talks about the different uses of video conferencing in classrooms.  The uses that he has used it in his classroom were: to include a sick classmate who could not be in class; sharing an expert or guest speaker with another classroom; practicing oral language skills through the making of videos; and collaboration with other classrooms.  Brian shows very clearly different way to use a free aspect of the internet to highly benefit all the students in the classroom.  Video conferencing makes it possible to connect with classrooms from all around the world, or even a classroom that is right next door. 

This content of this video was slightly familiar to me already due to the fact that we use a form of video conferencing in our ECMP 355 class.  However, the fact that Brian Crosby used video conferencing to include a student who could not attend class due to her medical treatments was very creative I think.  It gave the girl a feeling of being included in the class dispite her illness. I think that this is one thing in which teacher can learn from, and take into their own classroom if it is possible.  This video has many great points to it, and helped me to expand on whta I already know about video conferencing.