CEdO525 Week 3

Strategies – Chapters 4 through 6: I have found using multimedia for graphic organizers and nonlinguistic representations to be very successful in the classroom. I tried it this year when introducing an epals unit on New Zealand to my 5^th grade students. Students would be corresponding with students in New Zealand and learning their culture, environment, etc. As we progressed through the details of the project, I showed them videos and other interactive websites portraying the history and culture of New Zealand. When students began corresponding, they had a mental picture of what their new friends talking about when describing where and how they lived. The strategy provided my students with a good knowledge base of the project and having that introductory knowledge led them to inquire deeper details from their epals. I just recently used the summarizing strategy with my 9^th grade students. Biology students are required to research short articles based on current events in science and then summarize the article into a short paragraph. I created a model that included a copy of an article where I had highlighted the important points and also the summary paragraph that I produced from the article. This assignment is always given at the beginning of the school year and this is the 3^rd year I have used the summary model. I’m amazed at how many past students still refer back to the model in assisting them with other assignments. It’s nice to see that they retained this summarizing strategy.

Compare/Contrast online graphic organizers: Bubble.Us is a free website. It has all the usual organizer features and can be shared with other people. One feature that separates this website from the others that I reviewed is that is it multilingual in some languages. I believe Webspiration is much better than Bubble.Us for many reasons. First, I like how it is categorized into professional, college, and educator levels. It provides many sample maps in these categories as well as tips, trick and FAQ’s are categorized into the three levels as well. It is a well designed website, easy to use, and is also free. One sample map that I will be researching further is the “virtual book club”. Mindmeister is the Cadillac of online organizers. It has many more features than Bubble.Us and Webspiration, however, the basic version is free. The premium versions that contain several more features have an annual fee. There are thousands of sample maps to use of get an idea on where to start your own map. The icon user interface is very easy to use and the website has a great online tutorial. Webspiration is my favorite online organizer, but Mindmeister takes first place overall.

CEdO 525 Week 1 (Research Study & Teaching Principles articles)

Student Outcome Research: This study was very confusing to me. It took a couple of readings for me to gain a better understanding of it. One point I found very interesting was the finding on the positive effects of small-group learning over individual learning. Considering this study was done 7 years ago, I find (in my district) that most teachers still do not use small group study very much. I don't know if it's because most of our teachers are nearing retirement and don't want to change up their curriculum, or if they just don't believe that students working in groups can be productive. Along that same thought, another point that was made in the study referenced that technology can help in changing a teacher's practice from teacher-centered to student-centered, where students work cooperatively, make choices and are more active in their learning. This made me think again of the teacher's I work with and how I run my own projects. I have to say that having students work in groups is something I've learned from the many tech integration workshops I've attended. I wonder though, why isn't group collaboration and technology integration taught at in education colleges? I attend UW-W in 2003, when this study was conducted, and these study techniques were never addressed. Nor were they prevalent in my student teaching experiences.

Teaching Principles: In reading over the theories and principles, I can totally relate to "effective teaching involves recognizing and overcoming our expert blind spot". This is my biggest struggle. I work with students from PreK - 12th grade. One hour I could be working with 1oth grade students on a biology research project, the next I'm working with 2nd graders teaching them fiction vs. non-fiction books in the library. Previous to this job, my experience had been with grade 6-12 students. I learned right away that when working with elementary kids, every step needs to be directed to them. Nothing can be assumed. I learned that I had to break my project tasks down to every detail in order for them to succeed at the project we were working on. It was very frustrating to me to introduce the steps were we going to take in a fun, new project - only to have blank stares on their little faces. They had no idea what I was talking about or how they were to complete the task I had asked of them because I did not specifically communicate each keystroke they needed to make on the computer. Several failed projects caused me to get ideas from the elementary teachers on how to teach the students at their level and now the fun and adventure has come back into my projects for the elementary students!