Best Time of the Year (minus the rain)

For my second #dailycreate assignment I chose to send flowers to someone.  This spring and early summer's weather has been less than ideal...I know, I know we need the moisture, but I am over it! One of the great things that came from all the rain however, was my garden blooming.  Today I dedicate this flower to all of my classmates in #INTE5340 as we move through this journey together, for me, the last class of my masters!!!!  Here's to navigating our way through week 1!

A Motto to Live By!

A Motto to Live By...

I chose this Ted Talk because I am a huge fan of Carol Dweck (thanks to John McDermott, my pedagogy professor, for introducing me to her book) and I think all teachers need to live by her words.  Her book is an easy read and it worth your summer reading list!

Carol Dweck: The power of believing that you can improve

Transcript

Three traits were chosen from Jason Ohler’s rubric to use in order to critique this story (each worth 10 points):

1.       Content Understanding

2.       Media Grammar

3.       Media Application

1.  Content Understanding- did the speaker understand the content?

Comments:   Yes, the speaker understood the content very well, as she is the author of a book on the subject.  Some of her researcher is older but she followed up with more recent research when she paired with scientists from the University of Washington. 

Score: 10

2.  Media Grammar- how ‘bumpy’ was the story?

Comments: Compared to other talks I have seen, this one was very smooth.  You could tell that the speaker has given many talks and was very comfortable speaking in front of an audience.  She spoke slowly and deliberately and gave proper wait time for the audience to view the screen and soak in her words.

Score: 10

3.  Media Application- was the media appropriate for the story?

Comments:  As much as I love Carol Dweck, someone needs to help her with her power points!  I appreciate simplicity and speakers who don’t read directly from their power points word for word, but a few visuals never hurt anyone.  She had some interesting pictures of the brain and neurons but not enough to keep my interest.  A few times the words on the screen were sideways which isn’t the easiest to read.  Overall, I think she needs to stick to the talks and her younger interns need to make the presentations.

Score: 6

Overall Score: 26/30

Other Comments: I teach her philosophy of the growth mindset to my thirds graders and it is amazing to see how their minds remember to say the word yet.  I haven’t quite seen the transformation of worst to first as Carol Dweck discussed but I do think it is good for kids to think with a growth mindset.  One way to make this talk better would be a better visual presentation as I mentioned earlier.  Also, she is a little dry in her speeches.  Talking about brain research isn’t the most exciting topic, but to a group of educators, what she has to say is exciting.  She could be more enthusiastic when talking of the successes she is seeing.

Oldie but Goodie

Salman Khan- Founder of Khan Academy:

Let's Use Video to Reinvent the Classroom

* if you are a reader not a viewer, here is the Transcript from the video.

Three traits were chosen from Jason Ohler’s rubric to use in order to critique this story (each worth 10 points):

1.       Story

2.       Research

3.       Voice, Creativity and Originality

1.  Story- was it well articulated and compelling?

Comments:   Yes, I believe the story was well articulated and compelling.  He started with how he came up with the idea and gave viewers good examples of actual comments from users on YouTube.  He then moved to the progression students will see as they work through the program and then the data/reports teachers can pull to help plan accordingly.  While working through the slides, he talked about how we can “flip classrooms” and use Khan Academy to transform the traditional classroom, which I loved.  I recently started using Khan Academy in my classroom to help struggling math students and I really enjoy it.  I believe what he was saying was 100% accurate and have not yet dug as deep as what I saw in the video, but plan to next year. 

Score: 10

2.  Research- was it clear, thorough and integrated?

Comments:  Because the speaker was the founder of Khan Academy, yes the presentation was well researched.   It wasn’t as thorough as I believe he could have been though.  Because I have used Khan Academy before, I knew a lot of what he was referring to and showing.  However, if someone has never seen the program before, he moved very quickly and it could have been confusing.  He could have made this better by slowing down a bit or showing viewers where he pulled the data from or the homepage where it shows all the skills kids can choose to work on. (Perhaps this wasn’t meant to be a Khan Academy 101 and he didn’t have time.)  I did like how he integrated screen shots of data teachers can pull and incorporated actual videos and tutorials from the site.

Score: 8

3.  Voice, Creativity and Originality

Comments: He seemed to be a bit nervous while speaking, stuttering and stumbling some.  I did like the creativity because he came up with this glorious idea all on his own.  With that being said, it was also original, especially because it is completely free (I’m still wondering where the money comes from to develop all this.)

Score: 10

Overall Score: 28

Sidebar- My biggest fear with Khan Academy is teachers will use it as a means to be lazy and let students teach themselves and each other.  (Don't let this be you!)  However, if used as it was meant to be used them it is a great asset to the classroom.  If you have never seen Khan Academy before and you are a teacher, check it out, it is really cool and has a lot to offer! 

Chapter 1 Response

For my first response, I am going to focus mainly on the first two questions:

• What are your main insights and ideas from the given L&K chapter?

• What unique terminology, jargon, buzzwords, and other concepts appear in this reading that required your careful attention and definition? What are your interpretations of these words and concepts?

The first thing that came to  my mind while reading chapter one of New Literacies by Lankshear and Knobel was how much has gone on in the last 30-40 years in terms of policy changes, definitions of literacy and general viewpoints.  While reading, I couldn’t stop thinking about my very first course at CU Denver on my road to becoming a teacher.  I had to read chapter upon chapter of texts telling me about the achievement gap and how low income most always correlated with low achievement.  I had such a hard time believing that as I continued through the course.  I kept thinking to myself, ‘yeah but if someone really wants it, they can go to college and be successful’.  It wasn’t until I stepped foot in my first internship at my current school that I fully began to understand what all the achievement gap stuff truly meant.

As I continued to read, I kept thinking about the term ‘illiterate’ and how its meaning has changed over the years in some sense.  In the 60s and 70s, if you were ‘illiterate’ it meant that you couldn’t read or write and that typically you were of the lower economic status.  Lankshear and Knobel state, “'Illiteracy’ and ‘illiterate’ usually carried social class or social group connotation.  Being illiterate tended to be associated with being poor, being of marginal status, and so on” (p. 12).  After my second year of teaching in a low-income school, I 100% see the achievement gap and how it affects my students.  I have many students who, in third grade, can’t read or write but I have never or will ever call them illiterate.  They have many skills that will help them on their road to becoming literate.  But there still is a correlation, in my eyes, between being illiterate and economic status.  I had one parent tell me she can’t really help her child because “I can’t read good or do math good myself because I only made it to 10^th grade.”  I will never forget that conversation because it made me so sad and this parent wants to help her child so badly, but she doesn’t know how.    

However, I feel the term illiterate has taken on a more laid back, casual meaning in terms of ‘new literacies’.  For example, I hear my dad say all the time that he is technology illiterate or cell phone illiterate.  I don’t feel the term has such a negative connotation anymore in regards to new technologies, or maybe the term is just a generational thing...

Two of my students working on a research project 

Finally, as I was reading about the standardized tests internationally, I was getting frustrated that we are trying to compare ourselves with other counties.  There are so many factors that play into international comparisons that I feel it is like comparing apples and oranges.  Some countries only test their top 70% of students; some countries have longer school years or longer school days, some countries value education more than others.  I think it is OK to compare our students within our own country, but it is a sticky situation when you start throwing in different countries!  

I look forward to your thoughts!

Sweet Message

Good Morning,

Today my sweet message goes out to my mom living in Madrid, Spain.  She is the strongest, most confident women I've ever met and has given me the strength to be the person I am today.  Thanks mom!  There are a million more things I can say about how wonderful she is, but I will keep it short and simple :)

Isle of Capri, Italy- March 2015

Me in a Wordle

My life is full of adventure, there is never a dull moment, and I love every minute of it!  Here is my life in a nutshell...

(Word cloud created using Wordle for DS106 Visual Assignment) 

Are MOOCs the Future of Education?

You might be asking yourself, what in the world is a MOOC?  You are not alone, until recently I had never heard of them!  A MOOC is a "Massive Open Online Course" and while they are still very new, they seem promising.  There is not a lot of research on these courses yet so time will tell.

Put simply, MOOCs are online classes open to hundreds or thousands of people who work together to create learning goals based on common interests, skills and prior knowledge.  They are free and the only requirement is the desire to learn and an internet connection.  I am not sure if this style of learning is for everyone but it's worth investigating further.

Here are my thoughts...

Pros to MOOCs:

• Cost to join is pretty much free (with the exception of internet and a computer)
• MOOCs are open to anyone and everyone who has interest
• Allows continuing education with out the limits of time demands, geographical, financial restraints

Cons/Questions to MOOCs:

• Are they sustainable?
• Are they well known enough to gain strong support?
• What are the logistics of organizing up to thousands of people and creating a platform to support them?
• Accreditation...will these courses be recognized as legitimate?

Here is a list of the current and upcoming MOOCs:  https://www.mooc-list.com/

Here is a recent article from PR Newswire on MOOCs if you want to know the current conversations.