final post

Final post:

I learned that a blackboard course can be more than just sixteen DB posts and a research paper, and be informative at the same time. I learned more, at least about myself, than I ever have in any other online course. I have reinforced many opinions I'd developed in my educational career regarding pedagogy and methodology for my classroom, with actual research this time around. I've learned that the addition of a yahoo messenger ID for the random "off the clock" questions is a lifesaver, and have incorporated it into my courses I teach at EKU. I learned that not every educator wants to perpetuate the system we're in, and realized, much like I have, even in my short time (2005-present) that things can be fixed with the proper fusion of technology and and applicable problem solving skills. Tech won't get you everything, but it will get you further than you already were, if used properly. If we use these toys the right way, there's no reason our educational system has to stay the way it is.


The only thing I would change is a little less emphasis on blog posts of our own, or at least the frequency requirement (not that I ever really stuck to even close to the requirements). Once a week, tops, including comments. One comment, one post, not daily.

last outpost as a reading intervention

I posted a review of last outpost, but apparently I left off a key component. Here's hoping I get this shoe-horned in and get the full credit.

I wouldn't use this to offset someone's lack of reading skills, or attempt to improve them. The frustration level with the game, from a personal perspective, would be even much more evident with a student behind academically. The fairly frequent grammatical errors in the displayed text of the game and the lack of a consistent syntax checking system-or the willingness of the mods to correct them, brings me another bone of contention. Giving a poor reader a poorly constructed text to read will not help them. If someone who knew what they were doing and were reading on-level I would consider this as an extra credit assignment, wherein they would generate a reaction paper much like mine, but I wouldn't go anywhere near this program with a student behind the curve.

last outpost vs. astaria

subtitle: if I want an online x fantasy, I'd rather be playing WOW.

I have had two opportunities/experiences with MUDS, in all their grammatically poor, low-color glory. Astaria was my first experience, and it was a miserable one. Maybe I was expecting different, but I guess MUDS just arent my think. Last Outpost is a much more well constructed online experience, and the help system, both in-game and web-based, was much more efficient, effective, etc. I suppose I have a vivid imagination, because the descriptions lept off the page, and I could often picture myself going through an old middle-ages village. Astaria's lack of help, and limited resources frustrated me at every turn. I was only told to play the game, not to reach a certain level before going on to the assignment aspect of the game. Had that been the case with Astaria, I would have failed it. Last outpost was constructed enough that once I got used to the shorthand and the command system, I figure I probably could have gotten along well myself. Dr. Lowell was a tremendous help, and I wouldn't have made it to the forest to get leveled up before the deadline without his assistance. I would have wandered around, eventually getting to level five but not nearly in time enough to get the assignment done. The text based s/v command system was a bit clunky, and a complete list of every term on a web-page outside of the game that I could have toggled between would have been a boon to my existence. Get/put/drop , and get.all were some terms that at first were highly foreign syntactically, although the flow of the game moved quicker once I learned the shorthand commands for the shorthand commands NWSE instead of the full directions, for instance. I logged off the game immediately after hitting level 5, but, unlike the miserable wart on the back of the MUD universe that is Astaria, I might just head back into Last Outpost and play around, once Christmas break comes, of course. I've got too much other to do to devote to significant forays into that MUD area at the present time. The ony regret I have, is my username. As I loaded up the login screen early on, I mis-typed my usual password as the username, so instead of something awe-inspiring, like the darkknight of destruction or something like that, My username is also my dog's name. Not nearly as draw dropping as one would hope. The quests were a little bit lacking, but I suppose you have to build to something. As a warrior, if I was immediately able to drop orcs and other things, there wouldn't be much fun to the game. But finding a piece of bread for a janitor was a bit lame as a first quest, I felt. I suppose it was just a practice for the getting used to the command structure, but I would have rather done something a little more challenging (although that first quest did take me quite some time, longer than I had expected, so maybe I'm not as good as I thought.)

I am not at all a mideval fantasy kind of guy, and if it comes down to it, I would rather go for something with a gui that I can see the image unfold in front of me. Give me Sim City, Call of Duty, and my Wii Fit board first, but if I've got no other options, I might just go hang out in last outpost.

Final project

I decided on a final project, trying to tie in a computer program I have had success with in a collaborative classroom method, to a distance learning model. I have used Sim City, in conjunction with social studies classes, as a way for students to get a small opportunity for creative expression, while learning simple economic principles like the effects of taxation and demand on a society. Sim City 4 is the best one-on-one model for a classroom-wide project where the kids build a city, and try to reach a particular set of goals- X number of people, Y number of jobs, at Z tax rate, etc. The only limitation is that you can't take the city online. The new Sim City, Societies, allows you to post your progress to a page on the EA (game publisher)'s website. This way, you can keep track of all the previous goals, although it is not a live look, like spore or other online games by EA. It is still passable enough to allow a teacher to check progress, and in conjunction with a blog page where the students post a reaction, it allows for a lot of interaction between teacher and student.

On a professional level, I feel like there could be more I could be doing, and so I actually asked my lead teacher why we do what we do, in the way we do it, last week. She called me into a meeting with the principal. I sent a series a questions as to our instructional methodology via email and we went down the list. I had a positive experience. I kept insisting that I didnt want to be a bad guy and didnt want to cause trouble, I just wanted to know why we do what we do, and why we can't do some things differently. The meeting was productive. I had essentially no prior experience with IEPs and the like prior to this year- I had one student with an IEP, and it was to allow him to do his math on a calculator. I taught freshmen english, so his accomodation didn't apply.

is Distance ED part of the solution?

I teach part-time at Eastern Kentucky University, in their English/Theatre department. I teach English 101 and English 102. Two sections of 101, one of 102-I've only got an MA, so I don't get to do more. I would love to, but thems the rules. Anyway, I digress. My english 101 class reads from a book called "World of Ideas" by Lee A. Jacobus. In it, there are selections from all the great minds-Machiavelli, Plato's allegory of the cage, etc. We just went through a couple of discussions in a row from the unit of the book on "education." The unit includes essays from Maria Montessori, Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Dewey, Paulo Friere, and Frederick Douglass, all of whom share their thoughts and experiences with education in the United States. ALMOST ALL OF the essays call for reform, and for a move from a "deposit" form of education, a passive experience for the learner, to a learner centered model (emerson's essay is about 160 years old and he advocates that, and reform, moving away from the prussian model), where problem solving and real world skills are paramount. I look at the educational system I am a part of, and realize just how little we have done to accomplish ANY of that. It frustrates me beyond all measure. Every day I feel like I should abandon my path and strike off on my own, design my own model school in my way, but I do not know if I would survive if I did it, so I keep perpetuating the same inadequate system. I think that distance ed, and techology, used properly, has some benefits for a move toward that kind of system, but it doesn't hold all the answers either. We're not even close.

attending a conference

This week I "attended" a conference for K-12 educators. Entirely Online. It was a new experience, and in a lot of ways, more informative and better in the long run for me. I got to pick and choose the content that was relevant. I liked that concept. The conference officially closes this week, but the content stays up for a while. I learned about it from the RSS feed of Generation Yes! blog.

k12onlineconference.org is the site. check it out.

book/project idea

I have had the idea in the back of my mind for roughly a year now to come up with a kind of a memoir/self help manual for first year teachers, based on my experiences in my first year. I think it would be beneficial for those coming into school districts locally and perhaps nationally, to get a new taste of what a first year can be life, if done wrong. would anyone out there be willing to critique my work as I create? anyone interested just leave a comment.

learning vs. teaching redux

this quote goes back to a weeks-past discussion about learning and teaching, but I ran across an interesting quote from homeschooling/unschooling proponent John Holt this evening looking for info on my end of the semester project

"The most important thing any teacher has to learn, not to be learned in any school of education I ever heard of, can be expressed in seven words: Learning is not the product of teaching. Learning is the product of the activity of learners"

I was out of town for most of the week/weekend: when 88 year old grandma writes you a personal letter and the last two lines are "come see me. i miss you", you go. I'm trying to nail down my last project, I think something easily adapted to a regular classroom. I suppose I'll have to look at the syllabus for more particulars before I proceed. I'm working on the last major project for my other class. hopefully they'll both tie in together when all is said and done.

Not sure what to post about

I got a little off track this week-my aggregator decided not to update properly so I got out of the loop a little bit. I think the general discussion around the place was the potential extra credit assignment, I will be participating, but not yet. I had a wedding to be in this weekend which precluded me from much of what little time I would have had to do anything like that. I am apprehensive about starting this MUD. I took Gaming and Sim last fall and hated every single second of my MUD experience, so I am not to keen on having to start it up again, but I need the points. I am still unsure as to what my end of the term project will be, but I suppose I will try and lump all the personal projects I've got going with my special needs kids and get a grade for it. I'm working on a grant proposal for my research class that should tie into it as well. It will all come together in the end, I'm just not sure what it'll be about just yet.

Learning v. Teaching

Learners and teachers are the same, essentially, just modify your own perspective. The Greek word for teacher and learner is the same, after all. Or so I've been told. Learners have a need for more information, or a skill, that they percieve that only the teacher can provide (Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglass, probably Ralph Waldo Emerson would disagree, based on their educational progression, but I digress). On an individual basis, A learner has a goal in mind. A teacher is sought to help the learner reach that goal. Mass public schooling essentially works in reverse. The goal there is not for the learner to learn what he wants, but to be shaped into something the society at large percieves that it needs to maintain cohesion. Learning is a process that is determined by the needs of the individual. Learners are people engaging in that process. Teachers are there to provide the requisite skills or information that a learner believes neccessary to reach a goal for themselves.

ZPD

I'd heard of Vygotsky before, but I'd never really thought of him as the genesis behind the concept of "scaffolding." Maybe my instructors weren't clear, or maybe they were and I just wasn't paying much attention. I suppose his concept, connecting your knowledge with something outside yourself that you do not neccessarily know makes sense. I think the bridge analogy works better than the scaffold. When I think scaffold, I think upward. I suppose the direction of the knowledge connection doesn't neccessarily matter, its a mental picture kind of a thing. Vygotsky generates a picture of one guy reaching a book off of a shelf into someone elses hands to me, a horizontal motion. Scaffolding is a stacking off stuff ontop of something else that already was there. There may not exactly be anything to neccessarily build upon, depending on the learner.

role of a teacher

I would have to say that there is not one definable role for a teacher. Obviously, the traditional prussian school public school model is the one who imparts knowledge into the empty cup of a student. Today's teacher has to adapt to many changes within a given day, and must accomplish many things, while appealing to many different requirements, many of which may not actually have to do with the delivery of educational content. We are required to wear many hats, in a school, but to me, anyone can be a teacher. Anyone who imparts knowledge, in any way, in any situation, is a teacher. As long as learning takes place and both parties are enriched through the process, you are a teacher.

I am going to try an experiment with my legally blind special needs child. I am going to use my ipod and audacity to record the chapter for the next unit, and see if he responds to it. My low-IQ behind reading level sighted students may benefit as well, but I only have one iPod to go around. Maybe I can convince my local wal-mart to donate to the cause. I would only need seven, and they wouldn't neccessarily have to be ipod touches,although a touch surface may help the legally blind child. I could use an ipod shuffle, its physical control interface is fairly rudimentary. Simple enough for them to stop, start, and adjust the volume.

engage

I constantly struggle with the concept of engagement with my special needs kids. I just know by the look on their faces that in the normal classroom, thanks to their limitations, they're not engaged at all, at least with normal delivery methods. i am working on a few new ways to engage them but time will tell how effective they are.

GATTO'S 9 ASSUMPTIONS

another article from Gatto, take a look if you'd like

Its called 9 assumptions and 21 facts about compulsory schooling.


http://www.spinninglobe.net/9assumptions.htm

tools and a little rant as well

Well, as far as I can tell, a good resource for a distance ed course would be something that might eliminate the impersonal aspect of the distance ed class would be a video chat system. I only know one other person from the class, so otherwise I have no idea what you look like or act like in person-a verbal description doesnt cut it. A webcam system might be impractical, but there are a few systems like WebEx that makes a video conference system doable, albeit somewhat cost prohibitive.

OK, on topic discussion over.

I am finding my job as an instructional aide more challenging and rewarding at the same time, with every passing day. I find the labelling and quantifying of students a bit on the dehumanizing side, and I am convinced that one of my students isn't actually disabled, but has learned how to play the system, as have his parents. they both have bought into the label, on different sides of the coin. One student works his butt off, and succeeds, despite being almost completely blind. It is truly touching when the students in the regular class he is in watch out for him. The other day one girl piped up when one of the other kids tried to push him for getting too close to in line "she yelled "Tay, you just be nice!! He can't hardly see nothing."

Before I started as an aide for disabled students, I must admit I do not buy into any diagnosis other than a physical handicap being a reason for accomodation. ALMOST ALL current disabilities-dyslexia, ADD/ADHD, have some sort of tie to exposure to media during time when the brain is still being developed. Essentially, watching TV while your brain is still mushy permantently wires it to respond in short bursts, generally the attention span is equivalent to the average television networks commercial break- 1 minute per age, stopping at eight. A 30 minute show has 3 8 minute segments with 3 2 minute commercial breaks. Incompetent parents have sacrificed quiet children as babies for disruptive and restless preteens. There are other things that affect a childs development- second most important would probably be diet. If you pump your kids full of sugar, your body doesnt have the resources to process it properly as a child, and you suffer the consequences. Limiting or eliminating television before age 5, and feeding a child non-processed natural foods instead of sodas candy and fruit snacks all the time would go a long way to reducing "disabilites" of those kinds.

I daily struggle with my role as an aide, and how much of the assisting I am supposed to be doing in the class, and how much they're truly retaining/learning. I really think the shifting between classrooms and attempts to mainstream students while accomodating them at the same time subconsciously trains the kids to underperform. They sit in the classroom, not really absorbing the content that is on the same level as they are, while pretending to listen and follow along. Then they split, and the teacher says "even though you sat through exactly the same info as the other kids, you do half the work" (even though, if you left the kids alone and helped them at their pace, they probably could do all ten math problems, or read the whole page in the text, or find all five terms for social studies, etc). The systematized, processed goals based instruction is failing those kids, who would be fine if you took them through it individually and slowly. We added a new student today to our group. He demonstrated a lack of effort, was behind reading level and was generally unable to focus on a task. I worked with him 1ON1 for an hour with his math, and I learned something. The moment someone actually truly gave him individualized instruction, he was fine. He gets to learn the process and suffer some consequences for not being organized (apparently he has no consequences for anything at his house, so he doesnt learn how to be responsible), and before the end of the year, he will be in the regular classroom on his own. I will see to it.

Anybody else find frustration with accomodations and IEPS?

More from Mr Gatto, NY STATE Teacher of the Year Twice.

here's an additional story- his "six lesson teacher" with an additional new lesson

http://hometown.aol.com/tma68/7lesson.htm

After the chat session last night, I realized a few things. Most people don't have much experience with systems theory, equilibrium, and organizational structure. My first MA was primarily focused on that, but within the media as an enterprise. The goals may change but systems theory is systems theory. If you want to learn more, take a course in organizational communication. Dr. Larry Albert at MSU is probably the best in the region when discussing it.

One of the ways systems keep things in check is by managing time and using symbolism to signify and elicit change in their members. The following is an interesting article by former NY teacher of the year John Taylor Gatto. It is on the underlying subconscious effect of the bell system on your students. I think you might find it enlightening.


The Six-Lesson Schoolteacherby John Taylor Gatto, New York State Teacher of the Year, 1991

Call me Mr. Gatto, please. Twenty-six years ago, having nothing better to do, I tried my hand at schoolteaching. My license certifies me as an instructor of English language and literature, but that isn't what I do at all. What I teach is school, and I win awards doing it.
Teaching means many different things, but six lessons are common to schoolteaching from Harlem to Hollywood. You pay for these lessons in more ways than you can imagine, so you might as well know what they are:


ha ha fooled you. read the rest at this link...., but come back to comment here.
http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html?seenIEPage=1

here is a longer link, an article he wrote called "against school"

http://www.spinninglobe.net/againstschool.htm

what do you think about a state-wide two time teacher of the year winner writing an article called "against school"

Also, you can read his book "The Underground History of American Education" online at his webpage http://www.johntaylorgatto.com

Online Courses and Other things

The most recent phaedrus post mirrors, in my own experience, what happens with a lot of people who are new to technology and have to take an online course. The article also mentions the obvious point that those most in need of an education, do not have access to the newest way that most of our educational resources are being devoted toward. We need to meet those students where they are, not force them to come to us. Free GED courses, taught in person, during odd hours because most of the people who need them don't have the education to land a traditional 9-5 job, are a god-send and one of the main reasons that in-person classes will never die. What we need to do as teachers is, just like the instructor who taught the dyslexic man to read by thinking visually, is to ASK THE STUDENT the 5 W's and the H, about their own education. If they only want to get enough education to fix cars, then point them in the direction of the nearest GED Center and a training/tech school such as Universal Technical Institute, or their own nearest community college. If they want to do more, we address those needs as they come up. Not everyone wants or needs a full college degree to get what they want out of life. While there are a lot of media and creative positions being developed in the new economy, somebody's still gotta be around when those people who are being creative have their car's transmission go out, their A/C freeze over, their toilet backs up, etc. I worked at a school a few years back where every kid hated traditional reading and writing but could diagnose problems with vehicles just by the sound it was making. I began to feel like the traditional model was doing them all a disservice. Maybe we can modify some of the voucher programs people talk about to, lets say, at 16, the student can opt out of the last two years of school, get a certificate, and then go on to a tech school. It is much better than forcing them through the high school meat grinder and then having them so turned off they either drop out when they hit the legal age and get on the government dole, or worse. Let them do what they want, and be productive, break the generational cycle of ignorance rampant in many of our rural areas.

My students

I have one goal with this semester we are currently in, from a personal perspective. Survival in 685, and a workable grant proposal in my other class that will allow me to get some money to purchase some much needed equipment for my classroom. I have been exposed to the smartboard, and I really don't think I would be able to fulfill my teaching style as well as I could without it. I'm a connected kind of guy, I use multiple methods to get my point across, and the smartboard seems to be the nexus of the next wave of instructional technology. It would really improve my engagement in the classroom, but at the same time, I realize that its just a modern whitewash of an old tech standby, maps/charts/paper/pencil/chalk/chalkboard. The only techie-ness about it is that it makes all the old stuff appear new.

On another level, I have one other goal for this year. To help one of my students, Josh, see better. He is legally blind, can only see about 5%, and what he does see is b/w. He has a device that helps him see a little better, a camera attached on a level about eighteen inches above his desk, tied into a flat-screen monitor that allows him to write and see fairly well. Its not perfect by any stretch, but using it, he is fairly well able to function. Until, of course, someone stands, leans forward, or raises their hand in the path of the camera. then he's sunk, and I can see his demeanor physically change when that happens. It upsets me, and I'm going to fix it. I also want to figure out a way to allow this device to run on battery power. First, though, an extra set of articulation joints should allow the camera to be moved UPWARD, so he can be over the kids in front of him. I have an uncle who runs a welding/machinist shop. we may be able to come up with something, putting our heads together, to improve the design. My father in law suggested a different kind of mount for the camera housing as well.

the following link details Josh's machine. http://www.clarityusa.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=23&Itemid=38 if you think you might be able to help me out or have a suggestion for improvement, drop me a line.

I haven't read the syllabus for this course, and I've only really been communicating to Dr. Lowell, so those of you out there who are wondering who this guy is and if he is dead, as Mark Twain once wrote, The rumors of my demise are overstated. I suppose since everyone else has put together a critique of the class I should do the same. I think this course has a lot of potential. I am learning a lot, if even just from reading the interesting articles. I have an extreme distaste for the methodology used at times, I spent too many years in the private sector working with people and fixing the problems of people who were "always on" and "always connected" to where the information overload and the neccessity of connection to everything all at once while getting no real depth of knowledge burned me completely out. Having to keep track of 23 different people at 23 different times with daily assignments that seem to have no correlation between the others at their present point in the timeline of the course is extremely frustrating, but as long as I take it one day at a time I am ok. The problem with taking it one day at a time is that I really only have two days to do the coursework. I work two jobs, and I am very active in my church, so the only real days I have to do anything are friday nights and saturday mornings. To look in feedreader and see 350 unanswered posts is incredibly discouraging, but I can't exactly tell the three sections of university students I teach, plus the two fourth grade and two fifth grade classes I work with on a daily basis "I have to catch up on an article for a course I am working on" at the same time. I am afraid that I will end up dropping the ball on this course like I did with a course or two with my MAT program. I will get used to the daily grind eventually, and work out a happy equilibrium, but I am one that wishes that like most of my other online courses, I would just get a list of 16 blackboard discussion prompts, a term paper rubric emailed via MS Word, and be done with it on my own time. The post about sylvia martinez mirrors EXACTLY what I want to do with my classrooms, should I ever get the opportunity to be a fulltime high school teacher again. The analysis of a traditional classroom and its efficacy is a neccessary one, as it appears that the larger the district, the larger the outpour of public funds, with increasing diminishing returns- Metro D.C., DETROIT, et al, I am looking in your general directions. I think I am done ranting, now.