Blog Post #10

What Can We Learn From Sir Ken Robinson?

After watching the video of Ken Robinson's speech at the TED conference in 2010, there are a few key points that can be taken away and applied to our future endeavors as teachers. I would also recommend checking out TED's website here.

1. Not just evolution, but a revolution is needed in education. It must be transformed into something else, completely different.

2. Human resources, or natural talents show themselves under the right circumstances. It would seem that education should promote this, but a lot of the time it hides it. Robinson also compared these talents to natural resources and the fact that both are usually hidden deep within.

3. Education needs to feed your spirit and passions. This stood out to me because this is the type of education that I have been seeking for a long time. Like he mentioned earlier, I felt that my education at earlier institutions hindered my learning because it did not feed my interests.

4. “Cannot predict the outcome of human development, all you can do is create the conditions under which they will flourish.” We must personalize education to the person/people that we are teaching. He compared this to a farmer and his crops. All he can do is provide the proper conditions and then rely on the environment to do what it will. All of those variables affect development.

Project #12: SMART Board Presentation

Project #9

Blog Post #9

What Can We Learn from Ms. Cassidy?

Ms. Cassidy uses every piece of technology and tool that she can to get her 2nd graders to learn more actively and eagerly. She uses tools such as blogs, wikis, Skype, a class webpage, and even a Nintendo DS. They played a role playing game where a group had to share and take care of a virtual pet. The students are also actively involved in the production of their videos. They can be seen holding the camera and also they are the stars as well. I like the idea of a secure class webpage for safe searching and links. I also plan to utilize blogs and Skype in my own classroom some day. One drawback I can think of is the use of the Nintendo in a 2nd grade class. These students shown seem to handle the responsibility very well, but other children this age may not be able to handle it yet. It could end up being a distraction instead of a tool. However, I would make it clear that the use of it was a privilege and if it was abused, the Nintendo would be taken up and the whole class would be penalized.

I feel that using these techniques would be a great way to get students more engaged and responsible for their own work. This would also get them to take more pride in it as well.

Blog Post #8

Find some 21st Century Learning and Communicating Tools. Tell us about them. Tell us where we can find them. Give a thorough review of at least one of them.

A tool that I stumbled across this semester was called Sportplan. I found it while doing a C4T assignment for EDM 310 on a P.E. teacher's blog. He provided a few links and I checked it out. Sportplan is a very helpful tool to both P.E. teachers and coaches. You select your sport or type of activity or drill and you are presented with various choices. This software would allow a teacher or coach to project these images and videos and save the time it would take to draw them up. It has exercises for agility and fitness and general athletics so it would be ideal for a physical education teacher. This is a European site, so there is no football as we know it on here yet, but there are drills that can be applied to it. This tool would be a change from a blackboard and might grab attention better as well. It would save valuable time during preparation and allow more time for other tasks. Here is a link to the Sportplan blog, which is full of great information. As well as one to their FAQ page.

Dylan Blain, the P.E. teacher I learned of this tool from, mentioned that an app was in the making for this software, and I hope there is. But I'm sure that there are many others like it out there already. This was just one that I stumbled across and really liked.

C4T #2

Comments for Teacher #2

For this assignment I was paired with Dylan Blain, a Physical Education teacher and coach in the United Kingdom. His first blog post I commented on introduced software called Sports Plan. I introduced myself because it was my first post and commented on various aspects of the software. It allowed for a coach to create drills and practice plans with just a few keystrokes leaving valuable time for other things. He also mentioned that an app was supposedly in the making as well.

Mr. Blain had not made a new post so I looked at his entry that was previous to the one above. He introduced Google Drive and Edmodo as tools he uses everyday in his Physical Education classes. I commented that we used Google Drive as well in our EDM 310 class and that I agreed that it was a very valuable tool for students as well as teachers.