Edu Blog

I came across a really interesting blog this weekend that I would highly recommend for everyone to check out. Its called The Jose Vilson and is a blog about a math educator/activist/speaker in New York City N.Y. While Mr. Vilson does devote many of his blogs to things that are happening inside the classroom he also talks a lot about the elements outside schools that still have tremendous effect on them. These topics range from race all the way to fundraising for school districts.

I would say that after reading a few of his blogs that he is definitely up to date on technology trends happening in the classroom but at the same he is just really aware of his environment on a local, state, and national level with a focus on high needs areas. I felt that I could relate a lot to his blog due to the fact that I grew up in the inner city and that is where I would like to teach after the MAC program. Since my school placement is one of high needs I have already found interesting concepts that I would love to try for my students.

I also felt that I have very similar goals to what Mr. Vilson wants and is doing with his school. While school is now a place where students come to simply receive education, it doesn't necessarily has to be the same way in the future. In fact schools, along with their administration, can be the platform in order to institute real change with any given community. Furthermore, a school with these traits can serve as a model for what other districts should look and feel like. Just an idea in the grand schemes of things.

What I also really enjoyed about Mr. Vilson's blog is that instead of just making it a top down process, where he talks about a multitude of things from his years of experience, he instead has his blog set up to facilitate a discussion between himself and the different readers and users he has on his site. There were a few different blogs of his that I saw where he simply would ask anyone on their thoughts on the subject by just commenting below. I really enjoyed this characteristic he displayed because instead of being someone who thinks they have all of the answers this is someone who is a life long learner and is still searching for better answers and is willing to incorporate anyone to do so.

The way I had found out about Mr. Vilson's blog was through a book he help authored called This Is Not a Test. In this book Mr Wilson highlights race, class, and education and how all of it is linked for people going through the K-12tth school system. While I know our time is extremely limited within the MAC program I would highly recommend that people pick it up and check it out. If anyone plans on working in inner city and high needs areas this book is the one for you.

Here is the message I sent, I still have not received a response

Mr Vilson
I found your blog a couple of days ago and I wanted to mention how helpful it has been for me. I am currently a master's students/student teacher intern at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor, working in a high needs school for my placement during the duration of my program. You mentioned in one of your blog posts about having students realize the importance of voting as certain people have died in the past to be able to have this right and making sure that we are taking careful consideration of the people we elect into office. I think this is of extreme importance as it connects the students to the world that they live and realizing the importance of being engaged, especially in the political realm. I know you have a lot of experience under your belt but would you have any tips for new teachers coming into the field.

Thank you for your time

Best
Muneer K.

http://thejosevilson.com/this-is-not-a-test/

Technology in the Placement

Technology in my placement has been extremely interesting to say the least. This has been due to a number of reasons, one is that there really isn’t any reliable wifi networks within the area to use. We have been thrown back into 2005 where if I actually wanted to show a simple YouTube clip I would need to disconnect the Ethernet cord from one computer and put it in to another that has the video projector. 

Besides a video projector that really doesn’t work as well as it should, there really isn’t any form of technology in the classroom. Teachers have their own personal computers to take attendance and such but even those don’t necessarily work as well as they should. Ironically, teachers are given iPads because they are apart of the Berkley school district, which I find extremely ridiculous since they don’t have any internet to do half of the functions on it.

There are about two small media centers that have about 20 computers each.  Unfortunately many of the programs don’t really work, this has to due with the fact they both have been abused and not been given updates, some are still working on the Windows 2000 operating system. Teachers have to reserve the media center ahead of time since there aren’t any mobile media carts.

What makes this placement even more interest is while there really isn’t a lot of technology, almost every student has a form of smartphone that they often use within the class. There is a policy that they can also use their cellphones within the class which makes matters even more complicated.

Given all of the complications that this placement has I am extremely excited to be there and am trying my best to work with everything given. For example, every time we have had a presentation showing the different tech tools to use, I always got extremely annoyed due to the fact that these were items that I thought I could never use in my classroom. A few weeks in however, I decided to not let the handicaps I had within my placement stop me of still trying to instill some of these really cool tools into my classroom. Instead I just need to be really creative, and I did.

I used the tech tool padlet for my 3 day teach and while I faced some problems using it, I thought it was highly successful. What I did was that I had it all preloaded before I came into class, that way I just had to use the video projector to show the presentation to the rest of the students. I was even able to show them a few videos because those were preloaded as well. I think this really gave me the boost I needed to realize that while I cant choose the level of technology I have in my classroom, I do have the choice of whether or not to have these inconveniences stop me from actually trying to be as innovative as I can.

Checkout the padlets

http://padlet.com/mnrkhalid1/it62thwy3jmd

http://padlet.com/mnrkhalid1/bgw2un1tzubz

Voice Thread

It amazes me ever week that there are all of these tech tools available that I have never even heard of. I was throughly impressed with voice threads and the many features that it had available for free. The name completely threw me off as I thought it was just something similar to Audacity of being able to take audio notes. When Jesse and others presented it last week I realized that we had a goldmine of endless possibilities.

Voice thread I feel is the combination  of the tech tools that we have already looked at. It has a very similar set up and features to socrative and padlet while at the same time having the functions of audacity. I really like the ability to use both audio and video either when presenting new information or when commenting on certain slides. A really interesting function that we tried (with Jesse) was the ability to leave a voicemail in the slide. Voice thread would literally call your phone allowing you to leave whatever message you wanted. While I don't know how much use that would actually have I still thought it was creative nonetheless.

The great thing about voice thread is that I feel it can have multiple types of usage within the classroom. One can simply type up a lesson plan for the day to present to students or embed a video with comments on a slide. If you wanted to get a little more creative you can use the tool for when students are absent by having all of the information but also adding audio and video components so that students understand what is exactly expected of the assignment. Another great aspect is the ability to put the usage of the tool into the hand of your students. I could totally see using audio or video representations when doing short assignment questions since students normally have a better time saying information instead of writing it or using it to give constructive feedback.

On a final note I really enjoyed Jesse Samantha, Jimmy, Betsy and Carl's presentation style. I felt that they had a really good grasp on the class throughout the entirety of time allotted for the presentation. This is something I felt I lacked when presenting audacity and sometimes when I student teach. I have to make sure that I am engaging for the entire time instead of just the beginning. A great presentation all around with the style and the tool that they taught us.

Hope for the Future

Tom Ward instilled a confidence in me I felt I lost 5 months into the program. This confidence was the ability to be creative. Like many other Macers, this one year program has really thrown me off my game with the amount of work I am suppose to do and the amount of information I am suppose to process in such a short period of time. I haven't been able to do what I normally like, which is reading outside of whats assigned in class and being able to just explore different avenues in general. This I feel has become even more important with the fact that I am student teaching and I would love to explore different ideas to use in the classroom. Tom said something however, at the beginning of class that help ease some of that tension in that he was in the same scenario when he was doing this program. When the program was over because he had learned what he had, he felt the need to always strengthen his craft and use different platforms as needed in order to do so. By saying this, Tom assured me that hopefully at the end of this program, I too can use the tools I have learned in it to push my way of thinking and making sure to turn over every rock to do so. Something else Tom showed me was how truly all social media sites in one form of another can help students when trying to explain a concept. While many of the different tech tools that have been presented in class I can see myself using, I really didn't see how both Facebook and Twitter could help in the classroom. Furthermore, because I have a heavy background in social psychology research from undergrad and focused a lot on empathy and narcissism, I was under the impression that these two specific sites with others, were doing a lot more harm than good. Funny enough, Tom showed through the social psychology realm that if one is truly seeing information through the lenses of their students and the background that they are coming from, that you can find tools in the least likely of places. Tom also showed how that not only one subject could dominate the realms of these social networking platforms. If one was to try using these websites in the classroom I figured that one would only do so in the field of humanities, not really giving much thought to stem, outside of just doing a video with whatever material was being covered. Mr. Ward showed, however, with the video of the basketball using geometry, just how wrong I was and even simplified a concept I had been struggling with for my MTTC Professional Readiness exam. He showed how a teacher can incorporate there own strengths (Tom being a coach) with students interest, in order to engage students in higher order thinking. All in all I really enjoyed Tom’s presentation and the aura of confidence that he showed throughout the entirety of the night (even when his presentation wasn’t working correctly in the beginning). I think he is an excellent example of how good a teacher can be with an extremely incredible work ethic and the open mindedness to explore new ideas, all with trying to help better teach different concepts to his students.

Connections Across Disciplines

A group and subject discipline that I decided to focus on was Science that was completed by Tahani, Kaitlynn, and Subha.

Immediately when I saw that the group was going to integrate student’s cellphones in the lesson of explaining electromagnetic radiation, I knew this was going to be a great lesson plan. The reasoning being that they would have students interests almost without even trying because of the fact that cellphones are so common and people are normally eager to participate when they already have the materials to do so. Furthermore, this lesson plan helps with integration into the students own lives which is normally asked either by the students who is completely bored with an assignment they do not like or by the teacher who is trying to find ways to raise motivation among students in the classroom.

Electromagnetic radiation can be an extremely large and broad subject but Tahani, Kaitlynn and Subha did an excellent job of giving very simple and easy to follow steps to complete the assignment on the students end and the lesson plan on the teacher’s side. This is important because instruction isn’t affected if for some reason the teacher cant be in class on a specific day and a student also knows what exactly it is they are working towards and what they will learn as a result. Another aspect that was great was the use of group work and actually having an assignment that would require both to use the entirety of the time in the class as well as something that was challenging but not impossible to do across the board for students. Often times in schools students complete assignments before a period is finished and as a result of that students disrupt the class or become disinterested in the class subject altogether, which is bad for both the student individually and the class as a whole.  Since this assignment is a little difficult in nature it forces all students to work together to foster a community of learning but at the same ensures that they will be busy throughout the entirety of the class.

The only question that I had about the lesson plan was why have the youtube video and determining whether or not it was real or a hoax? I am a little unsure on how whether or not it works relates to the lesson plan.

An important detail that I learned after reading through this lesson plan is making sure to be clear as possible. This is something that I believe I will really have to work on as I am not clear often times on giving directions as well as teaching certain content in the English concentration. Furthermore, I need to make sure that I am engaging students on a metacognitive level with the questions that are being asked as they pertain to the subject. Failure to do so will result in not only disinterest from the students but also a lack of trust in me as a teacher in delivering the content in a way that the students feel that they are actually benefitting from. All in all, a great lesson that I cant wait to use certain aspects from in the future.

Online Tools of the Future

For the online assessment, I was glad that I was given a tool that I had not used before while at the same time having some idea of how exactly it worked. While I consider myself someone who is up to date with the latest fads in technology, I have to say I was pleasantly surprised both at how well the application worked and the fact that I had never thought to use it before. After reviewing and using the application Evernote for our class discussion, I am happy to say that it is now something that I use often within all of my classes and have downloaded both the desktop and iPhone app.

I am a big google drive user across my phone, tablet, and computer but often times I have problems with the synchronization across devices. Additionally when I use google docs on my phone and iPad I also have problems formatting or opening up certain tables. When I tried writing a few different tables on Evernote however, I didn't have the same problem. Evernote is also great for web clipping content directly from different sites and the applications features are pretty much the same across all platforms. The ability to also import previous note or word docs to share on Evernote specifically with the format that it was already in is also amazing in that I can use old documents that are still relevant to me and my studies.  Evernote has worked so well I have been thinking about upgrading to the Premium option (something I never do) to try out all of the additional functions available.

The one thing I also really enjoy about certain applications is accessibility. How easy is it to use, not necessarily for myself but for others. I am use to having to figure out pretty difficult software and applications but its great when I don't have to have a list of complicated instructions when I want to share something with family and colleagues. Evernote serves this problem in that it is extremely easy to use or to learn to use. Furthermore, Evernote seems to constantly be updating its platform while google drive will normally only do this once a year or not as often.

Finally, I loved being able to hear about the other two applications as well. I learned some pretty neat tools that I didn't know about Google drive and Blendspace, which I think is just awesome. I can totally see myself using it in the future to create lesson plans and to have the students more engaged. I was really worried since I had never done lesson plans before and really thought that was where I was going to have problems, however now that I have access to this tool I feel a lot more confident in my ability to set up curriculum that hopefully my students will be able to benefit from.

Reflections on Self Assessment

While I was not in class for the second meeting, after reading everyone else's blog there seemed to be a focus on self assessment. What comes to mind and other points that people brought up with regards to self assessment is motivation, standardized testing, and content knowledge. The fact is that I really can't teach motivation, although it is something that is extremely crucial for one to succeed. If students don't have motivation then they will never push themselves to excel. This is extremely scary because while a student may have a great year of learning what if something happens in the environment or psyche that makes them lose motivation as a result. How can one expect to truly understand why it is a student may have lost that motivation and furthermore to help them regain it? How can one expect to monitor motivation for maybe past  students who are now in a different grade level but had the goal for them to help within the community or to attain higher education? A goal that has now been lost because that student lacks motivation. Its almost as if an educator doesn't teach mindsets along with content then students will never be able to navigate education which is more than just knowing material and can have even further implications for certain ethnicities, SES, etc.


With regards to standardized testing and how they are deemed extremely important in school districts, I always fear that I will only be teaching students for taking a test and not actual content. The reason being that often times schools place such an emphasis on testing in order to reach certain benchmarks for a certain year. As a result teachers are hard pressed to make sure students reach these benchmarks instead of teaching for fear of losing their job. I don't want to become one of these teachers because I don't think there is a focus on the students and instead teaching them to truly regurgitate information. But how I am suppose to change this? For one I feel as if I never have the time now with trying to make lesson plans and staying on top of catering for the students, how I am suppose to find extra time in helping to reform standardized testing. Furthermore I feel as if I would be angering a lot of people with this system already set up in place. While I don't mind upsetting people it becomes hard if you are the minority for a long time.


For content knowledge I question if I can truly help students with the content of English. For one I only have a year to hone the skills needed for teaching students and I feel I will need at least 3 years after to actually make sure that its helping students. But what about the students that have me as a teacher for the first 3 years? Will they simply have an ineffective teacher or just be more or less ginea pigs in a bigger experiment? If so then I am not doing my job for the students. On the other hand Im also worried that if I find a niche for teaching my content area that I will become lax in making sure to update my curriculum for a new class of students. Just because one idea is effective with one group of students doesn't mean that I have a model to teach all groups since each group of students are different. Can I really help each and every student exceed that come in to the classroom?

There are still 11 months left in the program so that provides some relief in that maybe I will get some of the questions I need answered. One thing that I will just have to come to terms with is that I probably won't get an answer to all of my questions. While the MAC program Im sure will give me great insight and tools necessary to be an effective teacher, they can't teach me everything and there will just have to be a few things I learn as I go and I have to learn to be OK with this and not just deal with it. I think perception is extremely important and how I decide to respond maybe to certain scenarios with some of the problems listed above, will mean the difference of me helping students and them failing.

Assasin's Creed

One game that I thought could relate to education was the Assasin's Creed franchise on the Xbox 360 console. The franchise is a historical fiction third person action-adventure open world video game that has had seven installments. The reason I thought this would be an excellent game to relate to education, specifically within the realms of history, is because it actually puts the main character into different parts of factual history with the characters of that time. Different games covered aspects of the Third Crusade, the Italian Renaissance the American Revolution, as well as the French Revolution. Characters such as Leornado di Vinci, George Washington, Christopher Columbus and others make multiple appearances within the different games and are integral parts to the main story. 
 


Even professors are saying that Assasins Creed can help with educating. “I believe that video games do indeed excite students about history and encourage them to learn more–for myself, I am certain that playing Dungeons & Dragons as a teenager ultimately turned me into an academic and a historian as an adult,” said Timothy O’Neil, professor of History at Albion College. “If I taught US history, I would most definitely find some way to use AC III in my classes.”
O’Neil cites another educationally-applicable aspect of the game: questioning. Beyond simply just having players play in the past, the Assassin’s Creed franchise is all about challenging the accepted story. These games weave a secondary narrative throughout history that certainly asks players to question the history books and what exactly is written in them and more importantly to open up different narratives.


This aspect of presenting the past in a way that can be questioned, I believe, is very important to a students education and provides the difference of just memorizing dates and actually know exactly why history turned out the way it did. It provides a higher level of learning and teaches students to truly become critical thinkers. Furthermore, because its in the form of a video game, a platform that many students already prefer to doing homework, I think can help with getting students to play which in essence helps in getting them to learn.

I believe this goes hand in hand with point that Gee was trying to make in that video games are universal. Because they are played by students globally, a platform has already been given to educators in which to work with instead of reinventing an entirely new one. Additionally video games can help in the shift of just regurgitating information to actually problem solving which can help because this form of learning is intertwined within different concepts of education. All in all Gee states that there needs to be a level of innovation that needs to happen for education and video games may be a critical tool in which to do so.