534 Week 5 Blog

This week I have been adding too and cleaning up my Wiki. Of all the things that we have covered so far I feel that a classroom Wiki is probably the most useful tool we have discussed and learned about. They are such a great way to manage content and give information to my students. I had not used them or really even heard of them prior to taking the masters program. About the only thing I knew was that "wiki" meant fast or quick in Hawaiian. The biggest use for a Wiki I see is for managing assignments with my students. I am a special education teacher and many of my students miss a great deal of school for a variety of reasons. This would allow those students who are gone to access missing assignments and even some content while they are absent from my class. This would also be an additional way to communicate with parent as well.
The last thing i just want to briefly discuss is the use of PodCasts, as an additional resource for my students. I was very impressed with the ease of which I was able to upload my recording on "Gabcast". This would be an excellent way to get information to my students who are out of my classroom. I really liked the idea for pronunciation of words too. Some of the students I work with struggle with phonics and the podcast would be an excellent way for them to hear vocabulary pronounced correctly.

534 Week 4 Blog

For this blog I want to comment on the video that Louis sent me on on Twitter on rethinking education. The video featured a gentleman from New England discussing his views on education in America. Besides some of the "cheesy" lobster scenes I took some thought provoking knowledge away from the the video. The video starts out in a harbor town in New England and discusses how back in the day people took ownership in their education. In other words their education had meaning and people could see the results and reasons for the education. Everything they did was tangible. He goes on to say that much of our education today is so obscure that many students have difficulty finding relevance in what they are doing and thus become disconnected. This is especially true for me as I teach EBD students. The next thing I wish to comment on from the video was how teachers need to be willing to give up some of the control in their classroom. Our current model for education is based on an outdated industrial model that is centuries old. What a revolutionary and powerful idea to give our students choices to study things that are relevant and meaningful to them all the while preparing them for a future. It seems to me that we are generating students that can do what we tell them and spit back information and score very well on standardized exams. However, for many of our graduates when it comes to making decisions they lack the skills as they are told what they need to do and what is supposed to be important their entire educational carer. The idea of giving up some control as a teacher is a powerful thought and one that I had not pondered till watching the "Tweeted" video.