Well, I have started to look through this website and, while it may be because its after a full day of work and the gym and cooking and cleaning, well, its a bit confusing. I understand their mission is to help students learn the skills they need for success in the real world. I never spent much time thinking about the fact that we are not fully preparing our students for whats to come. True, I have spent some time wondering why the students need to know the government of random countries in Africa, or why students need to memorize the Chinese Dynasties, but I never thought about the stuff that was missing. This site shows me what we are lacking. I do feel like we focus a lot on problem solving, as it is an idea that lends itself to any subject and any topic, but what about the others? Communication skills could greatly help our students. How many of them miss out on jobs because no one has ever taught them to interview? Interpersonal skills...amazing! Students need to be able to self direct and that is something I find that they are not able to do.
I love the idea of getting business to work with our students. People who work in the business world are much better suited to teach about these skills then we are. I cannot teach how to communicate with professionals outside the education world as well as others can. How amazing is it to have a place to go to find these resources.
This website has worked to build 21st century skills into our everyday core subjects. What a great way to teach all of our students need. I feel that unless we think more about this and dive deeper into the idea of 21st century skills that we will be giving our students a disadvantage.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Monday, January 12, 2009
To blog or not...that is the question.
Today I spent some time with our LSTC discussing the ideas for using blogs in the classroom. The same problem kept arising. How do we allow our students to blog, and blog safely? She informed me that this has been a continuing problem at all the county meetings she attends. We want to use blogs, she says, but the county discourages us from doing so due to liability issues. She told me that there are certain blog sites that allow for an adminstrator to check all posts and comments before they are allowed to be posted on the blog, and that this is the only way we could possibly use this wondeful asset in the classroom. This is a bit discouraging because honestly, who has the time to check every posting and every comment that comes through the blogs of the 120 students I teach?
All that aside, I would really like to use blogs. I belive that we could incorporate them into the classroom in many ways. I could possibly make it an alternative way of communication between the students and myself. Maybe students would feel more comfortable asking questions when not faced with, well, face to face contact.
Perhaps we can use blogs in the classroom to allow students to show what they understand in a more creative way. They can post their comments and thoughts on subjects and other students can respond.
In my school, students are required to create a portfolio with artifacts from each subject along with rational about their material. I really think that a blog would be a great place to do this. At the moment, we have trouble maintaining the paper portfolios for each student because it winds up being a lot of material, along with a lot of work for the teachers having to shuffle folders between themselves. We do have the electronic option, but as computers do, we often have crashes and all of the students work is lost. On top of the frequent loss, maintaining 1000 students work can be overwhelming for both the system and the system maintainer. How wonderful would it be to blog this material?! Students could scan their material and then blog their responses. The reviewers could then make comments and post their ideas on that information. The more I talk about it, the more it totally seems to make sense!!! The blog would never "disappear" and could follow the student all the way to college! I love this idea and can't wait to share it with my administrators.
All that aside, I would really like to use blogs. I belive that we could incorporate them into the classroom in many ways. I could possibly make it an alternative way of communication between the students and myself. Maybe students would feel more comfortable asking questions when not faced with, well, face to face contact.
Perhaps we can use blogs in the classroom to allow students to show what they understand in a more creative way. They can post their comments and thoughts on subjects and other students can respond.
In my school, students are required to create a portfolio with artifacts from each subject along with rational about their material. I really think that a blog would be a great place to do this. At the moment, we have trouble maintaining the paper portfolios for each student because it winds up being a lot of material, along with a lot of work for the teachers having to shuffle folders between themselves. We do have the electronic option, but as computers do, we often have crashes and all of the students work is lost. On top of the frequent loss, maintaining 1000 students work can be overwhelming for both the system and the system maintainer. How wonderful would it be to blog this material?! Students could scan their material and then blog their responses. The reviewers could then make comments and post their ideas on that information. The more I talk about it, the more it totally seems to make sense!!! The blog would never "disappear" and could follow the student all the way to college! I love this idea and can't wait to share it with my administrators.
Sunday, January 4, 2009
And the vacation is over...
How fast did Winter Break go this year? I feel like i just said good-bye to my students for the holidays and now here we are, less then 15 hours from being back at work!!! I am looking forward to seeing my kids. We start our new unit and I am busy thinking of all the different ways that I would like to share Africa with my students. But before I get into the units I am going to teach, I am going to take one last night to sit back with my husband and enjoy the quiet.
Thursday, January 1, 2009
My first Blog
My name is Arielle Book and this is my first blog. I am currently working towards my masters degree at Walden University in Intergrating Technology into the Classroom. Blogging is new to me and I am excited to see what it allows me to do!!
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