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.