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.