Blog Assignment #11

In my EDM310 class, I am a part of Team Tokyo. We have had many group assignments so far, and this blog post is one of them. We each took two videos and here are our responses. I encourage my readers to go check out my teammates Aaron and Leanna's blogs!

Brian Crosby, from the video Back To The Future, showed me how he has innovated the use of education to include experiments, technology, and networking to not only meet the standards, but to educate and engage the students in their own education. He reached out to others in the use of blogs. Not only the blogs his students read, but blogs twice removed from his typical blog circle. In this way, he exponentially increased his student’s networking and influence. At the start of the video, he showed how his students were unsure of the city they lived in; throughout the video he showed how he made those same students, not only aware of their city, but globally aware. Perhaps the most touching element was when they brought a typical issue of health concerns that keeps most students at home, into the classroom. Celeste was struggling with cancer and through the use of technology, she wasn’t just a student who fell through the red tape cracks. Crosby set up video sessions that kept her involved in the classroom environment. This type of interaction would have certainly kept up her morale and helped aid her recovery. “Now we are including Celeste in a regular day in school.” This simple statement from one of the students foreshadows Crosby’s follow up statement, “Not only are we learning but we are learning to change each others lives.” I wish I could do experiments in a class. As it is, P.E. majors have other duties. I have considered sending a balloon into the atmosphere in the past few years on my own. While I haven’t yet spent the time or money to learn and invest in this fun and simple idea, I’m sure, without any doubt, that those kids involved in that experiment will not soon forget it.

Paul Anderson’s video Blended Learning Cycle brought an interesting concept to bare in his AP Biology class. It is called Q.U.I.E.V.R.S. (Question, Investigate/Inquiry, Video, Elaboration, Review, Summary quiz). He starts a class with a Question and a Hook. In the video he used an Euler’s disc to both bring up the question, and by his method of presentation it creates and sets the hook all on its own. He goes through one of his lessons on evolution and shows how he uses this method of Q.U.I.E.V.R.S.. It’s a very student driven learning experience. He gives the students the content and informs them of what they are to know. If they have not met those standards by the time the quiz comes around, they are required to figure out what they are missing. He allows them to stumble on their own a few times before he intervenes. This self exploration and requirement to be self critical is essential to be an active learner. Again, if I were teaching a science class, I would steal a page from his play book. Self determination of education, is possibly one of the best things that a teacher can give a student.

In Mark Church's video Making Thinking Visible, he talked about students critical thinking. His idea was for the students to think of a banner from a video that they watched earlier in the week. In my opinion, I think that this video was talking about how the students should brainstorm things from stories they have listened to. For example, in the video the whole class reads a book and then they have to think and brainstorm on what the book was about. The teacher gave the student a piece of paper to make a banner about something in the story something that stood out to them. The question the video asks in the middle is “What’s it all about?”

In Sam Pane 4th Grade, a 4th grade teacher was talking about internet safety. To get the point across, he taught his students how to build their own superheroes on the computer. They were creating a Super Digital Citizen, then a comic in which this superhero can help them be safe on the internet. I thought that this video was very good. I especially liked the quote from Spiderman, “With great power comes great responsibility.” I also liked how the students built their own superhero and made a comic out of pictures of themselves and the superhero they built.

In the video Project Based Learning, the viewer visited a school in Canada in which they integrated History, Language Art, and Information Processing. Instead of having three separate class times, these three classes met together with all three teachers, and crossed-over subjects. By integrating each of these three subjects within each other, it created much more time for students’ ideas to develop. It also gave the teachers more time to spend time with each student to assist their developing ideas. I learned from the teachers in this video that it is extremely important to get advice from a variety of different people because this enables your ideas to fully develop.

In the video Roosevelt Elementary’s PBL Program, the teachers explained how Project Based Learning presents in-depth, “real world” problems and allows students to research their answers. It also allows students to practice public speaking at a young age, which can help develop their skills and let them practice. I learned from the teachers in this video that through PBL you can bring your community into the classroom and it is a great benefit to the students. It also creates curriculum integration, as the prior video demonstrated. Curriculum integration builds background knowledge and helps students in all areas.

Thanks for reading!

Team Tokyo