Bad Teachers

A new movie with the main characters portrayed as teachers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hb9Bk2POpmw&feature=pyv&ad=11196671618&kw=bad%20teachers%20trailers

Wonder why they created a film to show "teachers" doing these things? Because of all of the teaching problems and politics out there right now, by creating a movie that highlights the negatives of teachers the general population will only see teachers as they are represented in this movie.

To Be or Not To Be Radical about Education

Today I read the article in the section of Bloggers Beats: To Be or Not to Be about Education Reform? The topic was that on educational Reform; thus, should we change it or leave it along? The article introduced two heavy hitters in the world of Educational Reform: Nielson, author of 20 Ideas for Parents Sick of Waiting for Superman and Tired of Having their Children Race Nowhere; Bill Ferier, author of Sustainable Change in School. I haven't heard of either of the two lobbyist, not sure if they are celebrities in the educational world, but I'm sure they are very important. Nielson's essay stated, "adolescents who explained how school led them to develop anorexia, cut themselves, consider sucide..." This was a very powerful passage from her document Race to Nowhere. Her view on education really sends the current system through a loop. It's pretty upsetting to say the least. She talks of parent's not having ownership over their children's education. I don't agree with this statement; it blows my mind that a parent can't have ownership over their child's education. On the other end, Bill Ferrier argues that a paradigm shift in the way our schools operate " is a recipe for disaster." He talks about " Out of the box thinking isn't going to get us anywhere in education," I'm not sure what out-of-the-box thinking is? "is thinking on the edges of the box." I do agree with this. He wants to change, or make smaller changes that will help out the institution of the school. As a society we need to make small steps towards the bigger picture. Do I know how to get these small steps, no. It may start at the top: Corporate America, The Government, Other highly powerful influences in the United States.

Web Site

Added a Google Calendar to my website. Seems pretty cool; I can update this as need. Have been looking through the help site on Weebly to add more things to the website.

P.E. Bring your sneakers, Rackets, and iPad!

Looking at the past few years and all the innovations that have came to be I don't think anything has hit fire like the iPad/IPod I feel that this tool is going to be very similar to the PC. People were a little hesitant at the beginning, but I feel as most people are with anything new they will be scared but slowly give in. Talking to workers at Best Buy, Target and other stores they say it's impossible for them to keep these on the shelf. With all of the tools, apps and programs that this "computer" can do it crazy.

This article that I read talked about a teacher using some of these basic apps to help teacher her class. Through the miracle of technology she is able to take attendance, record grades, show videos and movies, and use hundreds of apps at her disposal.  

I don't have an iPad, but I am very familiar with them. I have a smartphone which is like the Ipad's little brother, but it works well for what I need it to do.  I'm able to streamline all of the data that I need to on a consistent basis.

Should Schools be held responsible for cyberbullying?

This article is pretty interesting. The author of this piece takes two different views, the first part takes the side that the schools need to be involved and take measures when a student is bullied. They point out what several different groups around the school should do and what measures need to be taken. I think that the schools should be involved, but what point do they become to involved and cause more problems is over my "paid grade." The second part of the article focused more on that fact that the parents of the bully need to show more love and caring-ness for their child.
   With the influence of technology over the past few years and all of the 2.0 tools, I can see how it was be easy for students to pick up after school hours of bullying by using these tools. Facebook, IMs, Myspace and other places that students or children can easily access. I think the best approach to teach people is not to put information out there to draw attention to yourself. With many different types of thread-web-pages, you can post anonymously, and hide behind a false name. These are the place that students need to understand that they should never put down any private or public information, because these places are a hot-bed for this type of actively. 
   Its sad that this happens, but we need to make sure that these students know what the cause behind these people are. Its easy to delete the information (on most sites) but as long as the student that is getting bullied is able to stand up for themselves and others, the parents/teachers/school staff have done a great job raising a fine student.

Weebly Pro

I updated to Weebly Pro today! Sent a link to my friend so I could get a free month trial of it. So far I have upload a few videos from our track meet this past weekend. I have password protected it, the password is otterbeincardinals20. So far I like this,  I see this being a good tool in the future. Plan on reading some ISTE tomorrow!

Web Site 3.0

http://otterbeintrackandfield.weebly.com/

Web Site 2.0

Starting to figure out how to use weebly! It's a really cool website, I think it will work well!

#Otterbeincardinals

Web Site

Started creating a website for the track team! Plan on using video and pictures to keep it exciting and something cool for the athletes to look at. Also I can post the daily information on what needs to be covered.

Get your students moving

I read the article, Get Your Students Moving, the major concept of this piece is getting your student to become more active during their daily class routine. Ms. Fish the author of this article first took notice of her students coming to class droopy eyed, and looked as if they were completely exhausted. From here she saw that the students were energized by heading to P.E. She then started to implement some of the tactics and philosophies of the general P.E. class. By having the students work in team actives she was able to refocus the group.
   From there she started to film the students during these actives which led to even greater results. The motivation of the students greatly increased, they seemed eager and excited to watch the videos she stated.  She saw that they enjoyed watching themselves on film and by doing these games they learned how to deal with people between and work on interpersonal communication.
   She incorporated a unit about the Olympics by letting students pick the countries of their choice. To follow up with the lesson she finished the unit by having a skype message with members of the U.S. Dept of Media committee.

I found this article to be pretty cool! I like how she was able to get across the tech and student barrier. By having students work with each other and by filming it seemed from the article that the students were able to progress and it enhanced the learning. I feel that I could incorporate this easily into the mathematical content and just my pedagogy in general.  

Xtranormal

Played with xtranormal for a few hours during the latter part of last week. Most of the time we (Track team) have a meeting the day before a meet, and normally Coach just talks to the group. So I thought it would be fun and entertaining if I created a video using xtranormal. It was a lot of fun to sit down and try to figure out the code/ and ways of getting things to line up right.  I see many different ways of using this during a term of school.