An educator is a guide. They do not have all the answers, they prompt you to think. They help us reach our full potential. An educator is not nessassarily a teacher. Anyone who helps us discover ourselves can be considered an educator.
My view of education takes place both within and outside the classroom doors. There are an exponential amount of life experiences that can educate you. The role of an educator such as a class room teacher is to aid in these life experiences. By giving assignments that actually make students think, they can apply what they are learning in a classroom to what they have learned by simply being alive. It is this sort of higher level thinking that will lead to success. Education should provide a student the ability and skills to think and make decisions for themselves that will help them reach their full potential; it is not just memorizing and spiting back globs of information.
Technology as a whole is growing, and quite possibly it's most important feature is that it links people together. I have friends now who are students in Romania, Italy, Japan, and Korea, thanks to modern technology. I know how different forms of education work, how daily life differs, and how alike and disalike we really are. This video clip shows that we are teaching eachother through technology. It helps support the ideals of higher level thinking, and allows us as both students and teachers to reach our potential while helping others reach theirs. All these educators, education as a whole, and the ability to link us all together are great benefits to our society as a whole. Being successful is a goal. With these prompts and guides, it is an obtainable one.
Monday, January 25, 2010
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Reading Other Teacher's Blogs
http://jtspencer.blogspot.com/
http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com/
Overall, reading these blogs and our first class meeting has done little to change my opinions of using technology in the classroom. I have always prefered classes that allowed laptops and internet access as opposed to simply copying notes. It has also been very apparent to me since high school that even though technology is being used in a classroom, it does not always do what it is intended too. For example, my World Cultures class constantly used videos, podcasts, and powerpoints to help us learn. Even though we were required to create our own projects using technology and use technology as a learning tool, there was no higher level thinking required to pass each test and ace each project. In my AP English course, however, we used a SmartBoard to make word webs, which always started with a quote or word or event from one of our readings. Upon finishing our word web, we would keep a weekly blog relating what we read to something going on in our lives. Using technology to help connect our everyday experiences to the events of our readings did in fact produce higher level thinking and resulted in more discussion and critical thinking in class. Though our first class meeting and the blogs I read were both very interesting, so far, it's all information and conclusions I've already known.
Upon reading Musings and Cool Cat, I realized that alot of methods teachers use in the classroom are repetative attempts at creating something students will actually pay attention to. Cool Cat's poem, "Never Just a Teacher," was by far my favorite post. Many members of my family are teachers, and I've had very close bonds with my high school teachers. I know how underappreciated most teachers are, and how many hours they put into their work outside of the classroom. As far as exciting things I cant wait to use in the classroom, I must admit that I am not very excited at all by the aspect of becoming a teacher. I know that if my career path does lead that way, I will be intuitive and helpful, one of the good teachers who expects students to actually use their brains, but I haven't really given much thought to my classroom. For me, teaching is a back-up plan. And frankly, many of the ideas in both blogs are ones I've seen and experienced before. The complaints about the restrictions on what can and cannot be taught on Musings are very commonplace to me; I hear them at every family gathering. As seen on Cool Cat's blog, I know it is sometimes hard to produce what types of lessons you want to due to time and money constraints. The lessons both of them used were sound, and required some higher level thinking, but they were neither original nor exciting. I will admit, however, that the thing I look forward to most about being in a classroom is getting to know my students and helping them cultivate their minds.
The most interesting blog post, however, was the first one I read on John Spencer's Musings, about teaching his 4 year old son about buoyancy. As a rule of thumb, teachers are expected to have all the answers. In reality, teachers are human beings, just like everyone else. Still, I remember being surprised every time I saw one of my teachers at the grocery store. A lot is expected of a teacher, very little of which they ever get credit for.
But just because you're a teacher doesn't mean you have all the answers.
http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com/
Overall, reading these blogs and our first class meeting has done little to change my opinions of using technology in the classroom. I have always prefered classes that allowed laptops and internet access as opposed to simply copying notes. It has also been very apparent to me since high school that even though technology is being used in a classroom, it does not always do what it is intended too. For example, my World Cultures class constantly used videos, podcasts, and powerpoints to help us learn. Even though we were required to create our own projects using technology and use technology as a learning tool, there was no higher level thinking required to pass each test and ace each project. In my AP English course, however, we used a SmartBoard to make word webs, which always started with a quote or word or event from one of our readings. Upon finishing our word web, we would keep a weekly blog relating what we read to something going on in our lives. Using technology to help connect our everyday experiences to the events of our readings did in fact produce higher level thinking and resulted in more discussion and critical thinking in class. Though our first class meeting and the blogs I read were both very interesting, so far, it's all information and conclusions I've already known.
Upon reading Musings and Cool Cat, I realized that alot of methods teachers use in the classroom are repetative attempts at creating something students will actually pay attention to. Cool Cat's poem, "Never Just a Teacher," was by far my favorite post. Many members of my family are teachers, and I've had very close bonds with my high school teachers. I know how underappreciated most teachers are, and how many hours they put into their work outside of the classroom. As far as exciting things I cant wait to use in the classroom, I must admit that I am not very excited at all by the aspect of becoming a teacher. I know that if my career path does lead that way, I will be intuitive and helpful, one of the good teachers who expects students to actually use their brains, but I haven't really given much thought to my classroom. For me, teaching is a back-up plan. And frankly, many of the ideas in both blogs are ones I've seen and experienced before. The complaints about the restrictions on what can and cannot be taught on Musings are very commonplace to me; I hear them at every family gathering. As seen on Cool Cat's blog, I know it is sometimes hard to produce what types of lessons you want to due to time and money constraints. The lessons both of them used were sound, and required some higher level thinking, but they were neither original nor exciting. I will admit, however, that the thing I look forward to most about being in a classroom is getting to know my students and helping them cultivate their minds.
The most interesting blog post, however, was the first one I read on John Spencer's Musings, about teaching his 4 year old son about buoyancy. As a rule of thumb, teachers are expected to have all the answers. In reality, teachers are human beings, just like everyone else. Still, I remember being surprised every time I saw one of my teachers at the grocery store. A lot is expected of a teacher, very little of which they ever get credit for.
But just because you're a teacher doesn't mean you have all the answers.
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