The Sleeping Teacher

I can understand getting away with plagiarism.  That is sneaky and there are ways to cover your tracks.  A good teacher will do research at the first hint of plagiarism.  But a sleepy teacher may let it pass.  This really does harm the student.  To allow a student to think they are beating the system will someday catch up with them.  However, the cheating stuff, I found a little crazy.  What teacher is going to let a student look at a phone or listen to the i-pod during a test.  If they do allow it they deserve to be cheated on and cheers to the student smart enough to beat the lazy teacher.  I don’t think technology is the worry for cheating.  I was more impressed with the old school forms of cheating.  The rubber band trick is a good one and the writing on clothes or a water bottle could work.  In my career as a student I have tried and been successful but the worry and anxiety that goes on was so tough I should have just studied.  As a future teacher I will be vigilant in my quest to knock out cheating.  During test clear desks, walk the room, have students move to a different area, be creative and be awake.

Starstruck

I had the pleasure of going to Martha’s Vineyard last summer and enjoying a week with family.  The whole time I was there I kept saying that I wanted to see James Taylor.  He lives on the vineyard and has been known to be very nice.  He is also my absolute favorite recording artist.  Well my week came to an end and I did not get to meet my idol.  However, as I was waiting for the ferry back to the mainland, who should come up and stand right next to me but Carly Simon (ex-wife of James Taylor)and her son (with James Taylor) Ben Taylor,who happens to be a up and coming recording artist.  I played it wicked cool and left them alone so I would not be considered stalkerazzi.  When we all got on the boat I conveniently decided to take my son for a walk around the boat.  I passed Carly and Ben and noticed they were working on a computer.  On my second pass I noticed they were composing or tweaking their music using, you guessed it Garageband.  So this is a long way to go just to relate a story about the new technology learned about in class, but I though it was neat to know that professional musicians use this piece of software that we now know about.  So as you do your podcasts pretend you are your favorite musician because you never know maybe your favorite song was mixed using Garageband technology.

Cardboard vs. Computer

I have the opportunity to take a graduate class that is located at a local elementary school.  This is a great situation as we do grad school work then go to individual classrooms and observe teachers and students.  After the observation we go back and meet as a class to finish up grad school work.  Last week I watched the teacher I observe instruct her class using a homemade jeopardy game.  She had constructed this huge game board out of cardboard and had questions the whole nine yards.  The students were engaged and having fun.  The students were also learning from each other answers and mistakes.  What a great teaching tool with no bells and whistles.

Then I went back to my grad school professor and watched as she tried to show/teach us something on live-text using a smart-board.  The problem is that she had not used a smart-board enough or ever.  She seemed to be fumbling and making mistakes, and at one point accidentally signed herself out of live-text.  This teaching method caused me to glaze over and never really grasp what she was trying to teach us.

The moral of the story is that technology can be great but take time to learn how to use it before trying to teach a class full of tired hungry grad students.

Technology Fish Bowls

Last week in Literacy class we discussed technology and the classroom.  Three people in the class did teaching presentations either using or introducing educational technology.  First a student did an impressive job showing off Voicethread.  She did a nice job showing the class how a program such as this can be used in a classroom to peek student interest and involvement.  Next a student who has not even taken Ed. Tech showed us Kidspiration.  He had found the program while searching on the internet and was amazed at the ease of use.  He went on to show features of the program and gave examples of its use.  Third there was a very basic showing of power point (nothing like were learning about).  However again the information was not so much what the program can do but how to incorporate it into a lesson plan.  It was nice to see information crossing content areas and have people talk about how to use these programs in classrooms