Thing 7a: Share the reader, “Students as Meaningful Contributors”

Students as Meaningful Contributors by Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano

The following article started be describing the past, and how students were given jobs in the US farming environment where they were responsibilities.  Because these jobs were practical shildren could see how their jobs were functional and meant something to their family.

     However, in today’s society children don’t have these tasks to do.  Today they are learning how to do things in school that don’t have this immediate functionality and purpose that they had in the past.

What the wuthor tries to do is to state in class activities that students can do that will in some way model this ‘farmers’ immediacy and functionality in their schoolwork.  As a teacher that monitors student’s community service hours I found the “Contributors to society” section useful and enlightening.   “Kids are heroes” was a website that was dedicated to kids doing things in their communities to help out locally and internationally. 

http://www.techlearning.com/blogs/29086

Thing 5: Connected Teaching

The title of the blog that I read had to deal with connected teaching and the benefits that accompany being connected.  It outlines how teachers can communicate with students, parents and other teachers while not in the classroom.   The article outlines ways that teachers can extend communication time via the internet.  While this sounds similar to Edline he’s talking about a more interactive version in which parents, students and other teachers can add their input into the educational process.

The second point that the author states is that this process is not easy.  It is a process that involves personal development and a change in perception.  That teachers need to change and start to see themselves as students again, by investing time into their own learning.

One of the things lacking about the article was that he didn’t give any examples of what this connected teaching is in regards to actual application.  There were no examples of how the writer actually implemented this connected teaching philosophy into his classroom.  So it more of an article about philosophy rather than practicality.

http://weblogg-ed.com/2010/connected-teaching/

Thing 4: Blog writing

I noticed for blog writing it is a lot more informal.  As a teacher you have to proofread their material.  I currently use blogs in my Old Testament class.  The assignment is for them to summarize a section of a book in the Bible.  I only allow the students to post blogs after the students have turned in their assignments.  I don’t make it a personal opinion assignment or an open comment assignment.  I think one of the purposes of blogs is for people to vent.  Since this is not constructive in a classroom setting, I don’t let the students use blogs this way.

     I think that the more structured the assignment is the better.

Why I don’t assign homework?  I only assign homework for big projects.  So I give them a paper assignment every 2-3 cycles.  So other than that I don’t really assign homework.  What I’ll do is if they do the assignment I’ll give them a passing grade.  What I’ll do next is give them a separate grade for how well they did the assignment.  Personally I’ve always enjoyed homework when there is some self exploration involved or that gave me freedom to research things that I was interested in.  I know for them to develop an interest in things in a subject area a basic knowledge is required.  So a paper assignment will generally be something that’s personalized in some way.  As an example I jsut gave them a paper assignment that required looking at how the Old Testament is used in modern day society.  An example was that if they were interested in art they could do some research about the Sistene Chapel and how a lot of the content comes from Old Testament stories.  So I also allowed them to choose something that they were interested in.

Most challenging habit for you

I think the most challenging habit is really finding a technology that is useful and that you can use for an extended amount of time.  There are tons of different ways to integrate technology in the classroom and no one wants to go through the process of learning technology and then having to scrap the old program that you learned because a newer/better program comes along. 

For teachers to integrate technology it needs to be almost bullet proof in regards to its reliability, since no one wants to have a class full of students with the technology not working.  Even with something as simple as putting a powerpoint up on a projector is sometimes probematic.

So having technology be long lasting, reliable and will save time is something that is difficult, but would be ideal.

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