Reaction to Howard Gardner’s Lecture on Multiple Intelligences and the Promotion of Good Work

I was glad I got the opportunity to see Howard Gardner’s lecture on Multiple Intelligences and the theory behind his Good Work Project.

I was most interested in the Good Work Project because I had never heard of it before, and am always excited to learn new theories and ideas.

The Good Work Project asks the question, "How much of the work we do is really meaningful?" "How many feel that they are doing their best work?" And, "How is that work impacted by society as a whole?"
Those are some deep questions to ask yourself when thinking about your career. As a teacher, these questions should be easy to answer if we are doing our jobs right. My main reason for becoming a teacher is so I can answer those questions truthfully without hesitation. A teacher’s job is meaningful and impacts society forever. And, a teacher should constantly question their work and assess themselves to answer the Good Work’s question of, “Do you feel you’re doing your best work?”

From what I gathered at the lecture, The Good Work Toolkit really revolves around Morals, Ethics, and Values. In certain times in any career, a scenario might come up where a person’s morals, ethics, and values are tested. The toolkit goes through these possibilities and discusses what one might do in certain situations.

Dr. Gardner spoke of the Boutique (sp?) Model Of Change, which explains the principle of a role model’s impact. For instance, if a teacher is engaged in the students, the curriculum, and has positive feelings toward the school, community, and education as a whole, it will rub off on other teachers and thus create an impact where those other teachers will change in a positive way. However, if a teacher is burnt out, has negative feelings toward the school, community, and education as a whole, it will rub off on other teachers and students to create an impact where they might change in a negative way. This model shows how the impact of a role model is so strong in any career.

In all, I see the Good Work Project as a great toolkit for teachers. It may be useful for new teachers who are just coming into the profession, where they can develop their own code of conduct. It can also be helpful for veteran teachers, to remind them to reassess their own work to rediscover if it is meaningful and if they are really doing their best work.

Source:
http://goodworktoolkit.org/

The Dumbest Generation? A segment from the documentary, Digital Nation

In a segment from the documentary, Digital Nation, asks the question, Is the Y generation the Dumbest Generation? Kids are learning differently than they had in previous generations because of technology. In the segment, one student said that he has never read an entire book because he doesn't have time. Instead, he goes to Spark Notes and reads the book in 5 minutes. Other students explained that when they are writing a paper for class, they will stop to check Facebook or play a game and then go back to writing the paper. Instead of having one big idea, they are writing with a lot of smaller ideas meshed together.

Professors that were interviewed about this question explained that they believe students aren't as prepared coming into college as they were 10 years ago. Students today can't read of write like previous generations could. Most people are blaming technology for this problem. Or is it a problem? Maybe education needs to adapt to the new way students are learning and living. One professor said that just because the "noun" is changing from reading a book to now watching a short clip, doesn't mean that it is neccessarily wrong. Educators just need to understand how to use the resources that are available and adapt to the new way of thinking by changing the verb!

I do agree with this. However, I also believe that this generation could possibly be the dumbest generation. In an article from USA Today, Mark Bauerlein, author of The Dumbest Generation, believes the cost outweighs the convenience in technology. "Kids are writing more than ever online or in text messages, but it's not the kind of narrative skill needed as adults, he says. Those forms groove bad habits, so when it comes time to produce an academic paper or when they enter the workplace, their capacity breaks down."

It is scary to think only 6% of professors believe college students come into their classes well prepared in writing, as it was noted in the documentary. I believe educators need to integrate technology into learning because it is the way students learn today, BUT, educators also need to understand that the technology distraction can take away from actually learning content. That is the hard part. It is a scary reality today.


Source:
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2009-06-03-dumbest-generation_N.htm

Using Personal Learning Networks (PLNs)

Using Personal Learning Networks (PLNs) has been a great benefit to me in my student teaching experience so far. I see the value of it in education, especially for staying current with other teachers in my field as new technology comes out, or to get ideas for a lesson I am planning. I think PLNs are especially resourceful for Business Education teachers, because technology and what we have to teach is constantly changing. There is no way we could keep up with everything that changes day to day, so using a PLN is what can help keep us updated and current with all of the changes that take place so frequently.

Sharing Resources
Using a personal learning network is a great way to share resources with other teachers in your field. So many times I find myself "drawing a blank" when it comes to creating an exciting intro to a lesson or finding a way to make a certain topic "stick" with the students. And when I get those mind blocks, I always go to the PLNs to find resources to help me get back on track and create a great lesson for the students.

Staying Informed & Current
With so many changes in the business ed. curriculum and technology, using a PLN is vital to stay informed on those changes and staying current with technology. I read many blogs in the technology field, and have joined groups in Diigo to stay current with technology. Without using PLNs, it would be much harder to keep up with all of the changes that happen.


Staying Connected
Using a PLN is a great way to stay connected to other teachers all over the country. As we saw when we presented the webinar, there were teachers from all over the country in the webinar. What an easy way to stay connected with other Business Education teachers! Instead of having to fly across the country to share and present ideas and resources, we got to choose where we wanted to be during the webinar, and still were able to share valuable resources and ideas with one another.


The PLNs that I am enjoying the most currently is using Blogger and Diigo. I will continue to use these PLNs and others when I go into the teaching world after student teaching.

Should Cell Phones Be Used In Learning?

With technology being integrated into our lives in everything we do, the new question in education is, “Should cell phones be used in learning?” My position is No. I think using cell phones in the classroom are more of a distraction than an educational tool. Even if a lesson is planned integrating a cell phone into the lesson, students would get off task and the cell phones would create more of a detriment to the classroom than a benefit. There are many tools that you can use to integrate technology into the classroom that are available to teachers, I don’t think a cell phone should be one of them.

The three main reasons why I think cell phones should not be used in the classroom are:

• Text Messaging: Sending friends text messages during class time, including sending or receiving test answers/cheating. Cell phones in the classroom could create more cheating on tests and/or cheating between friends. It can also be just a plain distraction between students texting eachother. Imagine how hard it is to keep a student's attention without their cell phone in front of them!


• Privacy Issues & Inappropriate Use of Cell Phone: Taking and distributing inappropriate digital photos of students and/or teachers, video recordings. I would feel very uncomfortable knowing that a student in my classroom had the ability to take a picture or video of me. What if a student recorded a video of another student? The school is responsible for that. Every year, parents have to sign a media release form and choose whether they want their child to be photographed or used in any media in the school. Many parents sign the form, but what about the parents who do not want their child exposed in any way?

• Bullying or harassment via unwanted text messaging. Students would be more capable of finding another student's cell phone number and bullying them if they wanted too. It allows for more negative communication in the classroom, and once again, another potential legal problem for the school.

Using cell phones in class could create a major legal problem. What if you are having the students use their cell phone for a lesson in class and then something happens in the classroom that is illegal? For example, harassing through text message, taking pictures of someone in the classroom, etc. Whose responsibility would that be if something like this were to happen? Afterall, the teacher warranted the use of the cell phone in the first place. I do not want that weight on my shoulders in the classroom. I think there are other ways of integrating technology into the classroom besides using a cell phone. It is impossible to police every cell phone at all times. That puts a big burden and responsibility onto the teacher, and I don’t think it’s worth that much in terms of educational substance to bear that potential problem as a teacher.

An article on How to use cell phones in the classroom listed some educational uses such as: Using Digital cameras, dictionaries, internet access, and calculators. I don’t see those uses so different than using a computer, or at the very worst, using the old fashioned dictionary book or actual calculator?

And, for Business teachers who do have computers in their classroom, there is no need for a cell phone. Everything a cell phone could do, a computer can do better!

Sources
http://www.helium.com/items/1458174-cell-phones-mobile-phone-classroom-ban-affects-on-learning-learning-teaching
http://www.cellphonesinlearning.com/2008/09/new-statistics-on-teen-cell-phone-use.html
http://www.education.com/magazine/article/cell_phone_learning/?page=2

Blog Review: Cool Cat Teacher Blog

"We don't all ride camels, you know."
"We don't all act like that comedian Jeff Foxworthy says -

we're not all red-necks in South Georgia."

- The Flat Classroom Project

Cool Cat Teacher Blog

Author Information:
The author of this blog is Vicki Davis; high school teacher and IT director at Westwood Schools in Camilla, Georgia. (It does not note what courses she teaches.)Vicki co-created four award winning international wiki-centric projects, the Flat Classroom™ project, the NetGenEd™ Project, the Eracism Project™, the Horizon project, and Digiteen™ with teacher Julie Lindsay. She is also cofounder of the Flat Classroom Conference to be held in Beijing, China in February 2010.

After browsing through hundreds of links to education-related blogs, Cool Cat Teacher jumped out at me. The blog originally started after Ms. Davis went to a conference on technology back in 2005. Since then, she created this blog, and has won numerous awards for it, which made me want to read on (it has to be good to win that many awards! i.e. 2008 Edublog Award for Best Teacher Blog.) I frequently stopped to read her posts as I was skimming through, and as I did there was a central theme I found: introspection, self-awareness, positivity. Her thoughts and ideas make you stop and think once and a while about what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. Not to mention that she also gives many helpful links to other sites, strategies, ideas, and opinions. I also was drawn to her because I read in her bio about a Flat Classroom Project that she founded. I immediately thought of one of my favorite books, “The World Is Flat”, by Thomas Friedman. Her “Project” is based off of his book. So, I found we have a lot in common and read on.

The posting I selected is related to the Flat Classroom Project. Ms. Davis wrote this with her co-founder of the project, Julie Lindsay, back in April of 2010, entitled, The Flat Classroom: Mobile and Ubiquitous. The blog posting explains the flat classroom project:
“It is a global collaborative project that joins together middle and senior high school students. This project is part of the emerging trend in internationally-aware schools to embrace a holistic and constructivist educational approach to work collaboratively with others around the world in order to create students who are competitive and globally-minded. One of the main goals of the project is to 'flatten' or lower the classroom walls so that instead of each class working isolated and alone, 2 or more classes are joined virtually to become one large classroom. This is done through the Internet using Web 2.0 tools such as Wikispaces and Ning. The topics studied are “real-world scenarios based on the book ‘The World is Flat’.”

Go the project's website to find out more information! Very interesting..

Do Learning Styles Really Matter? Yes & No

One should teach in the manner that the topic demands. Another way to put it is, the way one learns is topic dependent. Curwin, 1999

Do learning styles really matter? Yes and No.

Yes learning styles matter, because they are real; they are the way we learn! They must matter. The idea of learning styles has been around for a long time; Visual, Auditory, Reading/Writing, and Kinesthetic are the Top 4 styles. But, does it mean that a teacher has to shape each piece of information for each student a different way because of their “learning style”? Perhaps it would be beneficial to survey each class to see what the learning style is for the majority of the students. If the majority are visual learners, then the teacher can use more PowerPoint in her instruction. However, if the majority of the students were Aural learners, she could lecture more, and still be effective (If you believe in learning styles).

Next is my No argument: The article we read in class last night takes the example of the color of a pea and the color of a Christmas tree. If a teacher was trying to explain the difference in the shade of the color green, it wouldn’t matter that my learning style is auditory. If the teacher said the color was different, and tried to explain how by reading about the color, it wouldn’t be too effective for the student to learn what the difference is. The only effective way to teach the difference would be to visually show the students the two different shades of green. Another example is if the subject is geography and a teacher is teaching the shapes of the countries in Africa. Then they should teach in a visual style, even if we know that the student is an aural learner.

This excerpt from an article in the Washington Post gives a great example of why learning styles don’t matter:
“Consider this analogy. Watch kids on a museum field trip and you’ll notice that they stop to look at different paintings: some like cubism, some like impressionism, some like the Old Masters, and so on. You would not conclude that these kids have different visual systems. You’d figure that these differences were due to the children’s backgrounds, their personalities, tastes, and so on. The same seems to be true of learning. Some lessons click with one child and not with another, but not because of an enduring bias or predisposition in the way the child learns. The lesson clicks or doesn’t because of the knowledge the child brought to the lesson, his interests, or other factors.”

Even proponents of learning styles have said that learning styles change over time. They are not static. There is no way a teacher can constantly test a student to see if their learning style has changed, and then adapt the lesson to their new learning style.
Maybe educational researchers and everyone involved in education are putting way too much emphasis on learning styles. In my opinion, adapting to learning styles, in all reality, would make a teacher’s job much more difficult, without any real benefit being given to the students.

Sources:
http://www.learningstyles.webs.com/
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/daniel-willingham/the-big-idea-behind-learning.html

In Reaction to Arne Duncan's Remarks

In reaction to: Beyond the Bubble Tests: The Next Generation of Assessments -- Secretary Arne Duncan's Remarks to State Leaders at Achieve's American Diploma Project Leadership Team Meeting

The article, Beyond the Bubble Tests: The Next Generation of Assessments -- Secretary Arne Duncan's Remarks to State Leaders at Achieve's American Diploma Project Leadership Team Meeting, relates well to our last class discussion, greatly in part to the issues of standardized testing. Many students cannot be accurately tested with norm referenced tests for many reasons. For one, many students get nervous when taking a standardized test, also, the tests are very “black and white” and do not have much dimension or show other higher-order thinking skills that students may possess. These types of assessments serve their purpose mostly for accountability, to prove that it was taught by the teacher, but just as students cannot be accurately assessed with these types of tests, neither can teachers. These types of tests don’t “prove” what other skills or concepts the teacher might have taught.

I think the new “2.0 Assessments” will be a major positive step for Business Education. Recently, funding has been taken away from Business Education programs in schools because they are relying so heavily on what is being tested in the state assessments. The idea of a more well-rounded curriculum that supports not just Math and Reading, but other subject areas as well, is a huge step in the right direction for Business Education. It was even noted in the article that, “The administration has proposed to spend more than a billion dollars to support a well-rounded education in high-need schools—including $265 million in grants to strengthen teaching and learning in the arts, foreign languages, history, civics, and financial literacy.” I was so happy to see the words "financial literacy". This proves that the education administration believes business ed. courses are just as important as the core subjects! I think this will bring more awareness to business education and hopefully shed light on the importance of personal finance and other courses. In the 21st century, students cannot afford to go without these classes, no matter what their future plans are.

The First Days of School..

One of the most useful and influential courses I took at Bloomsburg was Classroom Management & Effective Discipline with Dr. Gates. In this class we learned about how important the first days of school are for a teacher. He often referenced Harry Wong's book, The First Days of School, who said that the first day is the actually the most important day of the school year. Harry Wong believed that what you do on the first days of school will determine your success or failure for the rest of the school year.

Did you know that the single most important factor that governs student learning is classroom management? An article from Educational Leadership found 28 factors that influence student learning, and classroom management was #1. That is why the first days are so important. If expectations are not set in the first week, students will not change months from now when the teacher realizes that something isn't working- perhaps the students aren't learning and the teacher has no control of their classroom.

Harry Wong, author of The First Days of School, believes what is most important and needs to be established on the first days of school is: Consistency. Students want to know exactly what they will be getting and what will be happening. This prevents the never-ending, "What are we doing today?" questions. Teachers need to spend time organizing and structuring the classroom so the students know what their role is in the classroom. Teachers also need to teach procedures that create consistency. They should then go over those procedures many times in the first weeks so the students understand.

Some tips that I found helpful from the First Days of School book are specifically for Day 1:

• Stand at the classroom door and greet students with a smile.
• Have your room ready, with all materials, and seating chart. (Ex: Have names on place cards at their desks.)
• Have the first assignment ready. The assignment should be short, interesting, and easy to complete. Bell-ringers or ice-breakers are great assignments for the first day.

Ice-breakers & Bell-Ringers

• I found some great first-day activities, (geared more toward the elementary classroom, but could be useful for any age group) including ice-breakers, in the link below: http://www.cbv.ns.ca/sstudies/activities/1rstday/1rst.html
• More useful activities for first day are in the link below: http://www.proteacher.com/030005.shtml