I really enjoy the practical tech skills that we learn every class. The pinnacle moment of Friday's session was when I linked to my blog and embedded my aviary audio file on my new online portfolio/website. The key now is to not lose knowledge of these skills. I hope to keep refreshing them by working with these tools in a few creative projects.
What new creative projects should I partake in? Feel free to chime in, blogosphere . . .
I think there is a good chance I will employ the use of online websites/portfolios during my teaching career. I was surprised at how easy it was. The wide world web is really a place full of wonder . . . as long as you can avoid the spider. The most problematic thing seems to be the bit about posting student work online. I guess I work make it optional but just highly recommend it. As I commented on another blog, this online portfolio would have definitely motivated my adolescent self. I hardly ever showed my parents any of my work. If I was made to put it all online in a cool looking, sleek web portfolio, I would happily send my parental units the link. It's actually a reason for them to look at it. I'm sure many of you had different experiences, but thinking about mine, an online portfolio would definitely enhance my parent's interest and involvement in my work.
The presentation from the former sMACer, Tom (was that his name?), was cool. The real question that it brought up was how much time are you willing to sacrifice to actually make a lesson interesting . . . ? A teacher always needs to be mindful of the curriculum but simultaneously mindful of how much droning a student can take before they die of boredom. In 10th grade, I used to walk into my American Democratic Society class (Civics) and say to my buddy, "what are we going to do today, brain?" And he'd say, "the same we do every day pinky . . . vocab and busy work."
The kids in Tom's classroom are going to remember their lesson on parabolic equations years from now. How much else will they remember? Probably not a whole lot.
Hey Matt! So I definitely related to what you were saying about the students in the former MACer's classroom and the angry birds lesson. What he told us about the tradeoff or "sacrifices" that he made by implementing a lesson like the angry birds one really made me think. It made me question the whole idea of how much do I really put my own twist on assignments? My initial reaction is not very much, but there is definitely style and tricks that are going to pop up the longer we teach. It was awesome to hear that Tom thought of such a great, fun lesson so early on. That took a lot of creativity and nerve, to some extent! It makes me excited though for all of the possibilities for fun learning in the classroom.
ReplyDeleteI also think your interest in the online portfolio and the ways to use it were interesting. I never thought about how nice it would be to be able to easily share my information with people like my family, but that is so true. Especially if I end up moving far away from Michigan, which is sort of the plan right now. It would be nice to be able to keep them updated with my accomplishments and stuff easily through the portfolio. Also, it would be a cool way of maybe sharing curriculum ideas, sort of like the Tweet Deck phenomenon that the former SecMACer talked about also. Sharing portfolios like the Weebly one in a school system could make it easier for teachers in the same school to connect over similar past achievements or interests. This actually could come in great handy with teach teaching. My mind might just be wandering here, and maybe I am not making any sense, but basically I never thought about how the portfolios could be useful with sharing info.
Matt! I think that friday's class on organizing your online life will be very helpful when you decide what new projects to start :) I think that evernote will be SUPER useful in a classroom (so hold on to that thought!)
ReplyDeleteAnd i think that students will ABSOLUTELY remember what they learned in the big production of Angry Birds. I remember the random facts I learned during "Que dice la gente" (Spanish family feud) - for example, that in Mexico, they think that purple is the worst color for a car. What I'm trying to say, is that I think by making learning fun like the MACer did, the students are more engaged, and learning more.
I agree with Lauren that today will be jam-packed with new things to think about and try. Holler after that if you're still hungry for more!
ReplyDeleteJust checking in ... still looking for more things to try? If so, how about something out of the box like making infographics: easel.ly, visual.ly, piktochart.com?
ReplyDeleteI too enjoyed integrating a number of the things we had done in class onto the Weebly site.... But, I didn't like the formate of Weebly in general. It makes webpages much easier to create than anything else I have used in the past, but is also the most limiting and prone to error. I would suggest eventually creating buying a url and making your own website. HTML coding, while daunting, is not difficult and will make the creation of more elaborate webpages a breeze. Programs like Dreamweaver are sort of a middle ground, but a definite improvement over Weebly. For the most technologically challenged, however, it is not a terrible option. The end product is just not as impressive.
ReplyDeleteJack really wants to learn HTML coding and how to program ...
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