Active Learning

Just as it says, active learning.  One of the best ways for students to learn is the classroom is to get up and physically do something that is related to the subject.  An example given today in class was talking about math, you can go outside and measure shadows of trees and then measure your height.  This will let the students get out of the classroom, actively measure two things, then do the computations of predicting the tree height later in the classroom.  In the last part of class we were given an example of one of the many ways to make a lesson plan.  Every school has a curriculum and as educators we have to teach lessons organized on paper sometimes.  Lastly as time was running out in class, we discussed was of assessing students progress in class.  I suggested quizzing or asking questions at the end of class, but there are many ways of doing this.  One way, which is how we will be assessed in this class, is using class participation and projects grade us.

Technology and Teaching

Today was all about the use of technology in education.  We talked about how to use various devices in the classroom such as a flip video cameras or even the new iPads.  I have an iTouch and I think it would be fun to incorporate something like that in my classroom.  It would keep the kids interested and hopefully teach them different things, too.  For the majority of class, we were given scenarios and we had to go to the corner that described what we thought: strongly agree, agree, disagree, strongly disagree.  As we all grouped up, we had to say why we chose that side of the argument.  This gave to full spectrum of what we all want in our classroom and schools.  At the end of class, we watched the "Did You Know" video from last year.  It gave ridiculous numbers and percentages about the growing use of technology in today's world.  Pretty amazing.

The TED Projector

What an awesome piece of technology.  I already want to go online and order one, but I know I have to wait.  The "Sixth Sense" is almost too good to be true.  But you have to think about the flip sides to everything.  What if you walk up to someone and it gives you incorrect information?  Or what happens when you start relying on this thing for everything in your daily schedule, and the batteries die?  Too much? I don't think so, because it's the same as if your batteries die on the iPhone.  However, this is a wonderful piece that I think can really help students learn about the environment and economy with 'outside the classroom' instruction.