Chapter 10: Going Beyond The Classroom

On page 176, there were two students who talked about how they went outside in science class and played dodgeball to learn about mass and motion. This was a weird concept to me.

I feel that activities such as this will not help the students learn. I, for one, would probably end up focusing on playing the game and not the science behind it. Games that are normally used for recreation should no tbe used to teach. Games that are normally used to teach are okay to use in the classroom, however.

Chapter 9: When Things Go Wrong

On 164, there is a list of things to ask students before the grading period ends and after the report card arrives. An example of on for each is, “How do you feel you are doing so far?” and “What can you do to improve next time?”

I liked this section because the questions given were all valid and encouraged a meeting between the teacher and student. When I am a teacher I want to have portfolio conferences that will have these and similar questions addressed. If teachers and students can not give each other feedback then the education system is not working right.

Chapter 8: Teaching Teenagers who are still Learning English

On page 154, Andres says that when teaching, do not be afraid to let them use their native language to figure things out.

I feel that this is very important because the confusion factor is taken out of the learning in this case. This is especially a good idea for a teacher who has some background knowledge in the student’s native tongue. Bilingual teaching may help students learn English faster and help them succeed in school while learning the language.

Chapter 7: Teaching Difficult Academic Material

On page 124, there is a small section called “Find out what we know already”. It talks about pre-assessing the class so you don’t go over material they already know.

I liked this section because I plan to do this at the start of all my units. If the teacher does this, it could potentially be a time-saver and could mean that the students could learn even more about the topic at hand.

Chapter 6: Motivation and Boredom

On page 101, Andre says that he goes to school because he likes to learn new things and even though there are classes he doesn’t like, he takes them so he can reach his full potential.

This caught my attention because it reminds me of myself. I loved going to school to learn and be social but I took classes I didn’t like so I could better myself and graduate from high school. All kids know that they have to learn subjects they do not like if they want to learn more and become better people in the long run.

Chapter 5: Teaching to the Individual, Working With the Group

At the very beginning of Chapter 5 there was a list of types of students in the typical classroom. These types are: the eye-roller, the wallflower, the hand-waver, the dreamer, the con artist, the goof-off, and the workhorse.

This jumped out at me because this ties into MI and DI in my opinion. I feel like if you can categorize students into these types along with the strengths in MI you can better reach this student. I will keep this section handy when I go back into the schools.

Chapter 4: Creating a Culture of Success

On page 64, a student named Mahogany says, “If a teacher doesn’t think you’re smart, they won’t call on you. They’ll pay you very little attention.” This is something that I have unfortunately seen in a classroom.

I hate teachers that are like this. These teachers either hate kids or have lost the will to care anymore. A teacher needs to pay attention to all students because maybe that one "dumb" kid has the potential to be a great student but is just falling through the cracks.

Chapter 3: Classroom Behavior

On page 40, a student named Vance talks about the importance of the hook in a lesson. “We were prepared to get on my teacher, but he grabbed our attention from the start, and we were with him for the rest of the class.”

This jumped out at me because Dr. Grace has stressed the importance of having a hook in our lessons. This book just reinforced that idea and I’m glad to see it reiterated. I’m starting to feel like the hook is as important if not more important than the lesson itself.

Copyright and Fair Use LR

In the previous post, I mentioned that I was talking about 8 of the 9 questions I got wrong on the quiz. Here I am going to talk about the question I did not mention. The question is number 16.

I do not think buying machines that defeat the copy protection should be used.... ever. I hate the fact that this is considered legal. If CDs and DVDs are copy protected, it is for a reason and people should not be looking to undermine that wish regardless of how helpful the information should be.

Copyright and Fair Use SR

After taking the quiz, I got 9 out of 20 wrong, so my 8 responses will be on 8 of the ones I got wrong.

Question #1: I was surprised the answer was True. I thought that all copies of software were illegal except for backup copies made by the company itself. Apparently I was wrong.

Question #8: I feel that if you cite where you got something off the web, you should not be in any kind of trouble. If the web site is at fault, you should not be as you did everything legally.

Question #11: I answered false here, but the answer was true. I thought that you could not tape tv shows without consent of the program and that it was definitely illegal to edit these for personal use.

Question #12: On this question, I just assumed it was illegal to make digital copies of movies. I have no issue with this however and I may use it in my classroom.

Question #14: It is not for educational purposes, but if somebody buys a video, they should not get in trouble for showing when they please. Only if they do not pay for it is that not okay.

Question #18: I guess the copying of the CD is okay, but it depends on what kind of CD in my opinion.

Question #19: I think using background music in something like a yearbook video is all right as long as the music is credited at some point.

Question #20: I think that schools should not be able to make money off the CDs but I still believe that this should be legal.

Creativity Exercises

I read the Thursday sample that was given on the site.
The activity I did for my right brain was "The Coffee Drinker: A man in a restaurant complained to the waiter that there was a fly in his cup of coffee. The waiter took the cup away and promised to bring a fresh cup of coffee. He returned a few moments later. The man tasted the coffee and complained that this was his original cup of coffee with the fly removed. He was correct, but how did he know?" The puzzle made me think but the answer turned out to be something I would not have thought of. This helped my creativity because I realized I did not think outside the box enough for this question and the right side of the brain is the creative side.

For the left brain, I read: "Throw it Overboard: A boat floating on a lake has some heavy pieces of iron in its hold. If the iron is thrown overboard, does the level of the lake rise, stay the same, or fall?" I thought I would get this correct but I failed again. I do not think this helped my creativity though as this question made me think logically.

I do not know how the humor and inspiration helped my creativity but I enjoyed reading the two sayings and I am not unhappy for reading them. The site says creativity is stimulated by laughter but have yet to really see and/or realize that so I can not agree right now. Inspiration could lead to creative thinking, however, reading an inspirational quote does not really inspire me to be creative. Seeing someone's creativity can inspire me to be creative, however.

How to help someone use a computer

Thing I have to tell myself: "You've forgotten what it's like to be a beginner." This quote speaks to me because I have forgotten what it is like to be a beginner. I have been using computers for over 10 years now and I am way past beginner. When showing people how to use a computer, I tend to be unhelpful because advanced terms seem to be novice terms to me as I have been around the terms for so long.


Important Rule: There tends to be at least two or three ways to accomplish something on the computer. For example, there are three ways to print a Word document. One is control-p, another is the printer icon, and the other way is in File-Print. I have always used my special "easy way" to accomplish things while my parents use the longer method to get the job done.

The information will not be helpful teaching most kids my age or younger but for people who are not used to computers this site will be very helpful. I can use this information in a myriad of ways.


Information cited from: http://polaris.gseis.ucla.edu/pagre/how-to-help.html by Phil Agre

Focus the Nation

I could not attend a Focus the Nation event, and since I have seen the movie “An Inconvenient Truth”, I decided to research more on global warming and greenhouse gases. It was hard to find something new, but I did find three things.

1. Examples of things releasing carbon in the air are using cars, coal-fired power plants, and heating oil.
2. Carbon dioxide has increased 31 percent since the Industrial Revolution,
3. 137 countries have signed the Kyoto Protocol, but the United States has yet to sign.

To connect global warming to history is something that I think would be easy. I could show how the global temperature has fluctuated throughout history and talk about the Industrial Revolution and how it caused the spike in temperature in the last two hundred years. After going through all this, I could have the class talk about ways that we could fix the problem in our own way. Personally, I feel that global warming is a serious issue and needs to be combated swiftly in order to keep catastrophic events from happening.

Web 2.0 Educator

For my Web 2.0-using educator I chose "The Tempered Radical", also known as Bill Ferriter. Ferriter won the "Best Teacher Blog" for the 2007 Edublog Awards. He teaches 6th grade in North Carolina and was named teacher of the year for 2005-06. His speciality is using "tech tools" in his classroom. Ferriter is a huge advocate for technology in the classroom. All of his blogs are about using technology in the classroom and how wonderful it is. He hates how standardized testing is ruining education in general. His students used to do terribly on standardized tests but exceled in the classroom. While hating the idea, he used "drill and killers" to teach his kids and his kids' test scores vastly improved. He likes using higher order thinking activities and seems to be the epitome of what this class is trying to show.

Type I and Type II Technology

Type I: Using things like rote memorization and mundane techniques to teach the material.

Examples: Language software where you click on an item and the program tells you the word in the target language; playing a PC game like Dora the Explorer, where once you answer a question, there is about 3 or 4 minutes of the game being acted out without help from the user; a math program where you simply answer what you are being asked and then receive another question to answer, without the fun of a game.

Type II: Using a program that the user controls completely. If it is a game, the game never has the same ending as the user determines the course of action throughout the game. If it is language software, the questions get progressively harder as you answer the questions correctly.

Examples: If you had a game that was like the "Choose Your Own Adventure" book series; designing a basic computer program; the PC sim game Civilization IV, where you control a civilization throughout the course of time and historical events are specific to your moves in game and the AI's moves in game and not pre-determined by the game.

My MEL Experiences

• Environment: Student/Teacher Relationship- About 95% of teachers I have had brought a positive attitude to class. However, for a specific example to part of this, Dr. Melcher brings not only a positive attitude but an amazing sense of humor that makes his class fun and a joy to be in. His class may not have been a strong point of mine but his teaching style gave me the motivation to try in his class.
• Motivation: Interest- In 8th grade I had a teacher (who shall remain nameless) who was not at all interested in the other students' but just gave us the information we were to learn and did so in some of the most boring ways possible. Students had no input or bearing whatsoever on what or how we were taught in that class.
• Motivation: Avoid Rewards- Here I am assuming he means do not reward your student for every little thing done right. I had a teacher who only gave rewards for doing something really well. Rewards were only given out if you won a competition (based on learning the material given in class) or if you were the student of the month. This way, most students were motivated to do well in order to get the reward that was seldom given out.
• Meaning: Connections- My AP U.S. History teacher would often connect things in U.S. history to things we were familiar with, sometimes basing a chunk of class on it. An example is the Wizard of Oz and how it is a political commentary. As most of my classmates were at least familiar with the story if they had not read or seen it on video, all the ideas from the book were easy for the class to understand and we gained a lot from learning about it.
• Experience: Hands-On OR Meaning: Context- As I feel my experience could go under either component, I decided to list both. In high school I took a class called World History: Ethics, which was a world religion class. We learned about many of the major religions in history. To tie this class up, an option for a final project was to create a religion making sure that you incorporated key components from other religions (like having a festival day or a sacred text). Doing this let us understand the differences between religions and how to make a religion based on our own belief system.

This inventory I took is from the learning-styles-online.com website. I think that this inventory of my learning styles is fairly accurate. I think that the social, visual, and aural ratings should be higher and I think the questions were a little too specific to get the best results. I know that I am a highly visual learner so to see my score for that area be low was shocking.

Chapter 2: Respect, Liking, Trust, and Fairness

The section about teachers needing to know their material jumped out at me. Seeing the kids comment on this reinforced my belief on this matter.

The fear of not knowing the material I will be teaching has haunted me for the last few years knowing I wanted to go into this profession. I have always felt that the teacher needs to have mastered the subject that they are teaching. When I come out of college, I want to be able to know my subject well enough so that my future students will come out of my class feeling like they learned something and that their teacher knows what he is talking about.

Chapter 1: Knowing Students Well

Bosung’s quote was the one thing that really jumped out at me in chapter one. He said that teachers are there to teach and guidance counselors are there to help with students’ personal problems.

His quote jumped out at me for a few reasons. One, I find that teachers are just as capable as guidance counselors to help students. Two, guidance counselors usually have at least twice as many students as any teacher does. I would like to be a teacher who students can feel comfortable talking to and I want them to feel like they can approach me with anything. Teachers have responsibilities outside of teaching a class.