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