A website, a notebook, an essay, a picture and a PDF all walk into a bar...

       This week we had the opportunity to explore the online world and play with different programs and applications to "organize our online life."  I had the task of playing with Evernote and providing a 25 minute "How to" to two other members of the cohort who tinkered with Google Drive and Blendspace.  After playing with Evernote, I found out that you can use it as a virtual folder, that keeps practically any document (website, notebook entry, essay, picture, and PDF).  I thought that was specifically useful for when us MACer's have research papers, and we can organize our sources and websites, and even annotate those sources in Evernote as well.  Furthermore, if we saw something in the field, we could take a picture and send it to Evernote through our phones using an application.  Additionally, Evernote has it's OWN email address, so anyone can send documents directly to your Evernote without having to dig through an e-mail.   All of this proved to be very useful, and helped me understand the importance and stretching out my online life organization choices.  

       I also was introduced to blendspace, which is particularly interesting for lessons that would involve technology.  Blendspace is literally a space where you can blend different videos and pictures onto a canvas and play them in any order that is useful for your lesson.  I found that this will be particularly fun to use in a class that I would have on presenting a topic that can be made comprehensible through pictures and Youtube videos.  I hope to incorporate all of the online applications into my classroom to appeal to many different brains and audiences.  

Why did the MACer Take the Bus? To Connect His Discipline on the Other Side.

                 When you go to New York City and you take the subway for the first time, it can seem a little confusing.  Why would you take a train when you can easily hail for a yellow taxi cab?  Isn't it faster to take the cab?  Well, even though the answers to these questions involve convenience, it is still quite costly to take a cab (especially in NY...going two blocks in any direction can cost 10 bucks!).  However, the subway can be a lot cheaper.  Although taking the subway can be a handful, you can, with practice, learn to maneuver how to get around NYC, and add to your bank of knowledge with commuting.  This brain expansion can hep you in the long run in shaping your skills.

                 I've taken the NYC Subway system for almost 20 years.  I have to say I didn't really perfect the art of subway riding until I was 19, but, of course, perfection takes time.  With these skills of being a commuter, I was able to commute anywhere, in any state, and not be worried or dependent on having a ride.   When I visited my friends in Boston, I would have no problem taking the T (the name of the train system in Massachusetts).   The subway map had different names (and colors), but I was still able to use my prior knowledge of commuting and get myself anywhere around Boston.  I still find myself commuting in Ann Arbor with no worries and having those commuter skills being useful in the long run.

                But wait, what does this have to do with our Connections Across Disciplines Assignment?  I got the opportunity to work with Katie and Lulu, who definitely have different mind sets when it comes to teaching.  Katie, being  a future math teacher, and Lulu, being a future biology teacher, had some different spins on how to run a lesson.  And these "spins" are things that I wouldn't have imagined in putting in my classroom.  But now they have helped me think I outside the box.    The major example is how Katie included a video of Spongebob in our lesson; a non-conventional video for a conventional classroom.  But it's effect on learning would be huge.  I hope to find cool cartoons to include in my future chemistry classrooms.  Tying it back to the beginning, working with Katie and Lulu were the "inconvenient, cheaper subway ride."  I would normally like to do a lesson my specific way, but it's easier (cheaper) to work in a group because it lessens the amount of work that needs to get done.  However, in working with Katie and Lulu, I have definitely added to my knowledge bank and shaped my skills as a future educator by expanding my brain.  This interaction will definitely help me in the long run.

Mid-Saturday's Lament on the Addiction of Cell Phones

Where the heck would I be without my cell phone?!  

                  

            What time is it?  How do I walk 2 blocks to the right, and 3 blocks forward without a cell phone?  How do I tell Rachel I might be late to her party?  What room is my EDUC 504 class in today?  What time is the bus picking us up?  How much is a laptop?  Are there any apartments available?  How much will a cab be?  What is Kimberly posting in the Facebook group?  Did someone post something good in Instagram?  Is there anything new and funny on I-funny?  Did I get more e-mail?  What time should I set my alarm to be?  How many alarms should I set? Is my Spotify working?  Does Ke$ha have a new song?  Why do I have a lot of Beyonce songs in my playlist?  I wonder if the new episode of the Real Housewives of New Jersey is up?  How much money is in my bank account?  Who is going out tonight?  Who is going out tomorrow?  Who wants to go out at 3 AM on February 30, 2014?   Why are there so many questions?  Where the heck would I be without my cellphone?!

               I do not know if anyone of the Secondary MAC'ers are addicted to using their cell phone or may have asked themselves one of the many questions (above) I ask myself on a daily basis.  But if you are addicted or ask those many questions that you rely on your phone to answer, I'm right there with you.  I know, and have seen, a large majority of people in my life who are constantly inseparable from their phone.  I definitely fall under this category.  I'm doing it right now as I type this post!  

              

             I grew up just as cell phones were becoming popular.  My first cell phone was a pre-paid Kyocera 2325 (seen below).  I paid for it with the money I earned working in a bakery.  My parents refused to enable the my siblings to have a cell phones and the ability to talk on the phone (texting was NOT big when I was 15).  My parents acted in this way because they first purchased my older sister a cell phone and she ran the bill way up (as in accrued a large amount of charges).  I decided that I wanted to be cool and get a phone (without having a bank account), so I worked hard and purchased a pre-paid phone.  For those of you who do not know how a pre-paid phone works, it's actually pretty nifty; you purchase these cards that have a quantified amount of minutes and you input a code into your phone and voila you have minutes that expire in a year unless you use them!  I'm thinking about going back to this soon.

              

              This week I attemped to NOT use my phone as much as I usually do.  In volunteering at Scarlett and trying to role model, I found it easy to focus and make sure my cell phone was either off or on airplane mode at the start of the day at 7:30 AM.  But the moment the day was over at approximately 1:30 PM, I was all over my phone.  It really made me think though.  If I could barely contain myself for 6 hours, how do I expect my future students to do the same?  Over the next couple of weeks I am going to challenge myself to stay away from my cellphone and other distracting technologies.  In doing this I hope to devise some strategies for my future students.  I know in discussing the BYOD article, my biggest concern was the distraction measures of students bringing their own devices.  I think the best thing I can do is relate to my students and not be hypocritically harsh.  As a future educator, I would like to challenge myself to make my class so interesting that the distractions will be unnecessary.  That or I can allow "text message breaks" so students can slowly ween themselves off of texting/media during class and even maybe trust my judgement in such.  I'll report back more later on the status of my challenge!

          

Standards-A Necessary Evil?

If there's going to be an SAT, it's probably practical to invest in a book or perhaps in a course, but I'm sorry to say, I went to some classes that my kids took and it was clear in school that what they were doing was just SAT training.

Robert Sternberg

             I was looking for a good quote about the SAT, the standardized test I took before I went to college.  This quote is perfect and wraps up a big problem in education and that is "teaching for the test" and wrapping our lessons around certain standards.  We discussed this in class, and Grace recognized this as disheartening.  I am very familiar with feeling this way, but as I was harshly informed by a Title 1-Public School English teacher, my response was "That's your job."     After critically thinking about those words, this English teacher was right.  Teaching is NOT easy and it's part of my job description to connect the standards to my lesson planning.   

For a long time I always considered standards and standardized tests to be bologna.  The main reason for this is because of the hysteria of "teaching for the text."  I think we, as teachers, have a huge responsibility; to educate future youth and expose them to all four knowledge dimensions (factual, conceptual, procedural, and metacognitive).  I think in effectively setting our global, educational and instructional goals, the objectives we have for our students could be more clear and make learning meaningful.  

           As far as computers and their use on standardized tests, I would say there must be a consistency between the schools form of assessment versus the states form of assessment.  I would think if a public school uses all paper tests for assessment, then the standardized test would most likely need to be paper. And if...computers...then,....computers.  I say this because if any of the former were criss-crossed, then results may be drastically changed due to the "extra stress" of the non familiarity  For me, consistency is always key!.  

Resident Evil 4-METASCIENTIFICAL!

         
            Growing up, I was always a huge fan of the Resident Evil series.  A virus that breaks out...becomes a pandemic that infects the whole world....turns them into zombies.... and starts an apocalypse?  Sign me up! After being given this assignment, the first game that popped into my mind was Resident Evil 4 (RE4)!
              Here's a little background information for those of you who do not know RE4: the Umbrella Corporation is a huge conglomerate that has many different businesses throughout the world- department stores, food stores, pharmacies, etc.  The corporation was actually also secretly into testing bioweaponery (weapons made from genetic mutations) for war.  They had labs that would test many virus' that you would inject into animals and mutate them into weapons for war.  Of course, as any apocalyptic story beings, there was a spill, a spread of the disease into the area, and ultimately an outbreak.  The outbreak went viral and global and turned almost all of the human race into the walking dead.  The games go from the point of view of some of the survivors of the "ground zero" that is Raccoon City.  Resident Evil 4 is from the point of view of Leon S. Kennedy, one of the only survivors of Raccoon City, on his mission to find the core of the Umbrella Corporation and take them down.  Leon has some insight that directs him to a rural European country that is most likely Spain due to its currency (pesetas) and the Spanish uniforms of the cops.  I chose Resident Evil 4 because it is the first Resident Evil that is first person shooter and incorporates a co-op mode and other changes as compared to the other third person shooter games.  In this game you have the opportunity to earn money by killing zombies, purchase weapons, weapon upgrades, and skills with this money, face options and situations that lead you on different paths, and work in tandem with another character to achieve tasks and goals.

                                                  The T-Virus and Anti-virus used to mutate genes in living tissue to create bioweaponery

So where are the implications to science education?

             In the preceding paragraph there were some buzzwords to science education: virus, bioweaponery, and genetic mutations.  These words have almost immediate connections to science.  The actual game play, you might not realize it, is bursting with scientific inquiry.  When you play RE4 you do not know where to go and what to do.  You may have some goals and goal locations to get to, but it's up to the player to figure out how to get there.  A long the way, you face obstacles, blockades, hardships and, of course, tons of zombies!  This type of game play can emulate a scientific laboratory setting.  In a laboratory setting, you could start with a problem.  This problem may have one clear outcome or goal.  It is up to the scientist to figure out what to do and where to do it in order to figure out how to solve the problem.  In both cases, a procedural knowledge would be used and constructed in order to reach the end goal.

                                       (Inventory needs to be organized and fit in a limited space.  The money, in pesetas, is shown in the upper right hand corner, and is the money you need to purchase items.)

How do I bring this to the classroom?

           In playing a game like Resident Evil 4- a science student can build is scientific inquiry, where the student can challenge the boundaries at which he is given.  I already have an idea about a lesson involving this gaming environment.  I would suggest that at least 1 week before my class' first laboratory experiment, the activities involve games that require strategy and inquiry to achieve success.  As the week builds on, I would have games that involve science and scientific terms (you can find anything on the internet), as a sort of toe-dipping into what I would ultimately want them to do by the end of the following week.  By the next week, as they begin their first experiment, I would hope to have imposed on their brains an inquiry and scientific model to help guide them through the scientific experiment.  Of course this would have to be more specific and would take time, but it's the beginning draft of an idea!

What do you think?

There's Something Different About Dewey.

unconsciously                                                    social situations                                   mental powers

barren                                                                 social institution                                      present life

evil                                                                               passive                     continual and sympathetic observation       sentimentalism                                                            God

-Vocabulary words taken from My Pedagogic Creed by John Dewey

School Journal vol. 54 (January 1897), pp. 77-80

                  Listed above are a couple of  professional vocabulary words (at the time) that jumped out at me from Deweys Pedagogic Creed.  I deemed these words as preternatural due to their odd nature.  When I think about the topics of education, school, and subject-matter, the above terms are not prevalent.  As I was reading this creed, the vocabulary was giving me a sense of who Dewey was, and to be honest, I was not really into his vision.  When I see school and education, I do not see it as unconscious and socially centered, as Dewey seems to stress.  Where I really thought Dewey went over the deep end was in his last lament:

"I believe that in this way the teacher always is the prophet of the true God and the usherer in of the true kingdom of God."

The moment he brought God into education purposes, the teacher, school, and social progresses, his credibility was lost in my eyes.  Who is his Dewey character?  There's Something Different About Dewey. 

            When I made my way to the article revering John Dewey, my spirit was lost for this man. As I was reading the article, this predisposition made me feel a certain way in reading this homage.  And although I tried to remain open-minded, I came up with one positive and one negative response to this article.  First, the positive item is that it is clear that Dewey was all about student-centered learning and this idea that students are sense-makers.  This term "sense-makers" I've heard in Charles EDUC 511 class several times.  It was actually today when we were talking about the four different knowledge in Bloom's Taxonomy, that students being sense makers is at the center of everything.  So Dewey relates to this idea, and it's quite coincidental that all these thoughts formed today.  On the other hand, this article claims to be about advances in educational technology because of Dewey's influence, but not one single piece of technology was referenced nor were there any explicit examples of technological instruction.  Why the heck is this article called as such?  Do we have to jump to our own inclusion that technology helps students because self, sense-learners?  The articles title does not match it's purpose, and that was an homage to Dewey and his idea about guided inquiry and student centered learning.