Chapter 8 Presentation

In class, the next group presented chapter eight, The Organization of American Schools.  There were many topics in the chapter that they covered.  For example, what is a school, school personnel and the physical plant.  I really thought it was interesting to learn about the different kinds of schools and the pros and cons to each.  The videos did an immense job pulling the information together for a better understanding.  The group also talked about some of the characteristics that are needed in order to have an effective school. Overall, this group did a great job presenting chapter eight in our text.

How was my school organized?

How was my high school organized?  First off, I went to Eden Valley- Watkins High School.  We went to school 5 days a week and had school from 8:30a.m.too 3:12 p.m.  I wish that our school would have gone year around but it didn’t.  There are so many benefits if our schools would go year around.  This originated from when most kids lived on farms and their parents needed them in the summer.  We aren’t like that anymore, three months is to long for a summer break.  My junior high and senior high school students were in the same building.  So, many of the teachers that taught junior high students also had classes that were for the senior high students.  Block scheduling was not in our school and I wish that it had been.  I really liked my school but I wish that there were some changes.  For example, the block scheduling would have been a great idea, school going year around, and our school was a little larger.  I know that the last example a person can’t fix, but our school would have been able to offer more classes in different areas.  There are some other little things I would like to change but the ones that I listed were the more important to me. 

Education Nation- Chapter 5

Chapter five in Education Nation, is called the Co-Teaching Edge. It mainly talks about how teachers, experts and parents need to work together as coeducators.  Yes, it’s true that teachers are a very important factor in a child’s education but parents are also just as important.  Here are the five main points that I feel were the most important in Chapter five.

1.                            “Teachers are prisoners of time.”  Our system doesn’t allow teachers to learn new teaching styles that are needed for the twenty-first century. 

2.                            Co-teaching with other subjects can be very effective.  The book used the example of using opera to help students write. 

3.                            Parents need to become involved in their students academics.  They’re the third leg of a three legged stool.  Where one leg is the teachers and the other leg are students. 

4.                            The internet should link school and home.  So parents know what’s going on at school.  Teachers can post information about assignments and other activities on the internet for parents and students.

5.                            Superintendents are important in schools.  Those that are effective are the ones that are true leaders of their schools. 

“The Co-Teaching Edge is about forming closer partnerships between the adults in children’s lives: their teachers, parents, caregivers, and others in the community.”

2 Million Minutes

Today in class we watched a documentary called 2 Million Minutes.  It followed six student’s lives, two from the United States, two from India, and two from China.  This movie was a great eye opener for me.  I didn’t really know much about the education systems in either China or India.  The name 2 Million Minutes is the name because the average student spends 2 million minutes at high school.  Americans aren’t globally aware about what is going on around in other educational systems.  They don’t have nearly as much homework as China or India students.  It seemed to me that American students don’t really know what they want to go to college for unlike the other two countries.  There were many interesting statistics that this documentary had.  For example, China’s school year is a month longer then America, and the student there spend twice the amount of studying then American students during their time at high school.  China and India spend most of the spotlight on the sciences and mathematics; where as the United States’ focuses on other things such as the arts and sports.   There are also other differences as well; the parents of Chinese students invest so much more into their children because China has the rule that one child per family.  It seems to me that not all parents of American students help their children with their education.  Overall, I really enjoyed this movie and am eager to learn more about other countries educational system. 

Let Kids Rule the School

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/15/opinion/15engel.html?ref=education

Obama stated in a recent speech that nearly a quarter of American students are dropping out of high school.  Our school system is failing to educate students not just for college but for everyday life.  The education system is only letting students have little opportunity to explore the world of learning.  This is why we need to rethink the way our schools work.  In this article, a woman follows a group of eight students around in a high school in Massachusetts.  These students basically ran there own high school classes.  They had the guidance of teachers but the students monitored each others work through out the semester and there were no grades.  Coming up with their own set of curriculum about they wanted to learn was one of the biggest advantages.  They got to read classic novels, cook, and learned different topics in math and science.  Some of the students that were part of this group were students that were considering dropping out but by the end they couldn’t stop thinking about school.  I really liked this different way of learning for children! If we could change our educational system to be more like this, I feel that we would be helping our students out a great deal more. 

Group 4 Presentation

Today in class the fourth group presented chapter seven, Educational Philosophy.  They talked about the four main areas of philosophy of education.  They were Perennialism, Essentialism, Progressivism, and Social Reconstructionism.  Then they went on to explain in detail what each one of them was.  Perennialism focuses on enduring ideas.  The teacher teaches by lecturing, questions the students and has discussions.  It really focuses on academic work.  Where as Essentialism’s goal is to have students acquire the basic skills to survive in the world today.  Progressivism is student-centered and the students learn by doing.  The teachers like to have problem based learning.  The last of the four is Social Reconstructionism.  The curriculum is geared toward social issues.  The goal is to have students understand their role in society and how they can improve the world around them.  Then they showed us two videos to go with two of these different areas.  This really helped me better understand what each of the two areas are and how it actually applies in the classroom.  They had many great quotes throughout the presentation too.  In addition, I thought it was great that the group made each of us take a quiz that examined each of our own beliefs.  It asked us questions and then at the end it had points depending on your answers, it then would place us into the areas of philosophy.  This will be a good source to go back to when we are writing our own educational philosophy papers. 

Ideal Teacher Prep Prorgram

When asked that question if I could think of an ideal teacher prep program, what would I like it to be like?  There were many different things that popped into my head.  First, I think there needs to be more time for student teaching.  I feel that students that are studying to become teachers learn the most when they are actually in the schools and seeing what’s going on.  The more hands on students can get, the better teachers they will become. That’s why I believe that more experience is required.  I also think that while we are student teaching, they should put us in two completely different schools. For example, put a student teacher in a school that has a lot of money and then one completely opposite.  Also, we could do student teaching abroad. Another thing they could add to the teacher prep program is have students take more special education classes.  They could teach students different strategies they could use in their classroom. These are just a few things that I think will help the teacher prep program improve.  I’m sure there are many other great ideas that I didn’t mention. 

Mexico Puts Its Children on a Diet

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/14/world/americas/14mexico.html?_r=1&ref=education

The people of Mexico are the heaviest in the world.  In this article, it says that one out of three children is overweight or obese.  Therefore, Mexico City is trying to put their children on a diet because obesity starts young.  So, the health and education officials are trying to stop the selling of junk food at recess (schools in Mexico don’t provide lunches).  I found this fact in the article to be interesting; nearly one third of Mexico’s health funding goes to fight diseases that are connected to obesity.  After seeing this fact, I can understand why Mexico is trying to have their children start eating healthy.  They are trying to educate students to eat healthy and to exercise. Also, I think they need to inform the students about other issues that are a result of obesity later on in life.  It doesn’t help that the schools are trying to improve the health of students when venders are right outside of school trying to sell students junk food as they are on their way home from school.  I think it’s a great idea that Mexico City is trying to do something and I hope that they will be able to figure out away to lower the number of students that are over weight. 

21st Century skills/ Tony Wagner

In class we watched a video on Tony Wagner that was called 21^st Century Skills.  He is the author of the book Achievement Gap that some of us are reading in class.  He has a list of seven skills students need for the future in order to succeed. 

1. Critical Thinking and Problem Solving
2. Leading by Influence/ Collaboration
3. Agility and Adaptability
4.  Initiative and Entrepreneurialism
5. Affective Oral Writing Communication Skills
6. Accessing and Analyzing Information
7. Curiosity and Imagination   

After hearing the list of skills that Tony Wagner talks about, I would have to agree that students need for the future.  I don’t think many schools today teach these skills and schools need to be changing with time. 

Education Nation by Milton Chen- Chapter 4

Chapter for in Education Nation is called The Time/Place Edge: Learning Anytime, Anywhere.  Education isn’t just learning in schools but it needs to be taking place everywhere a student goes.  It shouldn’t just happen when school is in session and stop when the final bell rings.  Here are the five main points that I think were the most important in this chapter.

1. Since children have to travel far to and from school, internet that is available on buses has shown that students are able to continue learning.
2. Learning doesn’t have to happen just at school.  After school programs are a great way to continue learning and a different way of learning. 
3. Summer can be “the third semester”.  If students were able to continue learning throughout the summer, their knowledge improves greatly compared to students that don’t learn in the summer. 
4. Place-based learning allows students to see how their studies apply to real life.  It permits students to go to different places in their community such as museums, parks, historic sites and even National Parks. 
5. The design of school buildings is similar to prison cells.  Classrooms need to represent learning.

Unequal Education Movie

Today in class we watched  a video called Unequal Education.  It followed two different students, one from Riverdale, Bronx and the other Southfordhum, Bronx.  It was crazy to see the difference in these two schools.  The Riverdale school is from a richer part of town and it doesn’t have a lot of diversity.  On the otherhand, Southfordhum is a school that is located in a poorer part of town.  There are many differences in these two towns.  Some of the differences consist of Riverdale having qualified teachers, outdoor track, nicer school, and positive attitudes.  Where as Southfordhum’s teachers aren’t qualified, they have negative attitudes and they don’t have microscopes for example.    I feel that these differences are due to the amout of funding that the school is recieving.  In class we talked about how it isn’t fair for some schools to have large amounts of money in their school and in other schools there isn’t enough money.  The money that a school recieves mainly comes from taxes within the community.  So the richer the community the more money the school recieves.  I’m glad that we watched this movie in class because it brought up the unequal education issue.  It really showed the differences and challenges that are occuring within schools.  This is a huge issue and I know there isn’t a simple solution to fix this problem. 

Education Nation-Chapter 3

The Technology Edge: Putting Modern Tools in Young Hands is the name of chapter 3.  This chapter talks about how education hasn't been keeping up with the growth of technology.  There has been many research projects that say that if students don't use technology to in schools they won't reach their full potential compared to if they did use it. Here is the five main points that I felt were important in this chapter.
1.  There should be a 1:1 ration, one student to one computer in schools.
2.  There are many different ways to learn language.  Students can use iPod, iListen and iRead to improve their reading.
3.  Online learning has been growing and has had many positive effects.  Such as if a student wants to take a class that his or her high school doesn't offer they can take it online.  Therefore they have the same opportunities as other students.
4.  The lectures are decreasing because there are so many other great ways to have students learn.
5.  Advances in assistive technology great for teachers and students.

Atomic Learning

We went over in class how to use Atomic Learning.  There are so many great tutorials that I can use through out school and my career.  I really like how we can click on the tutorial, for example I want to learn more about powerpoint, so I click on it and it will have a list long of options I can choose from. I wouldn't have to watch and hour long video just to get to the one little thing I want to learn about.  They have many great programs that I don't know how to use, so I'm excited that there is a place I can go to learn more about them.  Even the day in class I took 5 min and I learned a lot about Blogger.  This is a excellent tool and I plan on using it a lot.   

Education Nation by Milton Chen- Chapter 2

This chapter talks about how education needs to be more hands on.  We need to have different and more up todate learning styles, not the ones that are parents used back in the day.  There are so many different ways that we can teach our students with all the new technology that is coming out.  Here are the five main points that I feel impacted me the most in this chapter.
1. Education needs to be more project-based, research has shown that the achievement is higher in students.
2. We need to think globally by understanding and addressing issues in other countries.  Becoming more knowledgable is also another example.
3.  Film and music should also be included in schools. These two things can bring together many topics that are being taught in class.
4.  We need to understand that students bring their hearts and their minds to the classroom. 
5.  we have to know more and understand assesments.  Assesments and testing are not the same thing. 

Second Group Presentation Chapter 5

The group that gave their presentation was on chapter 5 Student Diversity: Development, Ability and Exceptionalities.  At the very beginning they did an activity, they would ask questions and if you applied to the question you stood up and then you could see who is like you.  I thought this was a great idea; this showed alittle bit about others in our class! Then they did the same sort of thing as the first group did by showing a Youtube video about what it would feel like to be a student with a learning disability.  They then passed different hand outs such as an IEP.  I have never seen one of these before so I thought that was a great idea.  They mainly talked about Special Education and what it is and then finished up with another video that descriped learning disablities from a different perspective.  I thought this was nice because then we could compare the two; the student vs. the teacher. Overall, it was another great presentation where I learned a bunch of new things. 

Group Presentation on Student Diversity Chpater 4

The first group presentation really set the bar high for the rest of the presentations.  I really liked how they showed a video about what they were going to be talking about at the beginning so we could get the feel about what they were going to talk about.  They talked about concepts such as what is culture, cultural diversity, ethinicity and mulitcultural education.  They gave us great information about how we can incorporate differenty cultures into the classroom, and not just doing every now and then.  Torwards the end of the presentation they showed us a youtube video named Did You Know which provide really interesting facts. Then to make the presentation a little more interactive we played the game Jepordy with the information that we just learned.  Overall, it was a great presentation and really exceeded my expectations

Speaking in Tongues

Today and in Tuesday's class we watched the movie Speaking in Tongues.  It was about immersion programs in public schools.  I think that these programs are great!  Becoming bilingual, studies have shown that our students brain capacities increase.  It not only does that, but it will help them in their future careers. Also, the students are becoming more aware of other cultures. Some more information we found out in class that there are only 13 schools that have immersion programs and 6 of them are here in Minnesota.  I hope that in the future more schools will have immersion programs.  If there was an immersion program in the area where I grew up, I would have wanted to go to school there.  I think they are a great idea and it will only become more important that our children become bilingual. 

Snow days virtually eliminated with Web tools

http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2011-02-08-1Asnowdays08_ST_N.htm

This article talks about how schools are using Web tools to accommodate with snow days.  I think it's a great idea to have students use the Web to continue classes when we get big storms like we did this winter.  It would work great for when schools are shut down for multiple days.  A professor delivered a lecture in his pajamas, while the students were at home on their computers watching.  Also, the Web tools such as Skype is being used in public schools to connect with other schools across the world. Of course there are going to be some flaws such as not all students aren't going to have high speed internet at home.  Also, not all students are going to go online and check to see if there is something going on in class.  I feel that right now there are some glitches that need to be worked out, but in the near future I feel there are going to much more of this sort of thing happening, especially on snow days. 

Internet Cheating Scandal Shakes Japan Universities

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/02/world/asia/02japan.html?ref=education

This article's main idea was about how a number of students that were taking an entrance exam at Kyoto Univerity in Japan were cought cheating.  The students must have taken photos of the questions or wrote them on the internet to get answers.  The cheaters did this while the testing was going on.  The question was brought up about how are Univeristies and schools going to monitor this type of cheating.  I feel that this isn't just an issue that is happening in Univerities but is happen in High Schools and even younger grade levels.  This type of cheating is going to continue with the advancement of technology and the growing number of students in classrooms.  It is hard for teachers to monitor everything by themselves.  I hope that in the soon future we can come up with ways that will be effective that will eliminate cheating in schools.