I attended an award night to accept the monies for my SmartBoard & Projector that was held by ExxonMobil. I always see many teachers I know in the district... especially those who work hard to write those grants!
It was great... such a rewarding experience to be a part of developing children's minds about the world around them through the Internet. See more on the WP blog site.
At the award ceremony, I saw Kristen Zukley from cadre 9. It was good to catch up with her... every once in awhile we run into one another (literally, I was out for a run one afternoon and passed her!).
Showing posts with label 638b. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 638b. Show all posts
Saturday, November 17, 2007
Teaching, Grad School, Thanksgiving update
I am feeling very excited about the culmination of our 1st real semester in grad school! I don't feel like the summer semester counted too much as it was really short. I am enjoying learning so much... and never being bored. Haha.
Teaching has been fine... except that I am never actually teaching. My principal has placed me (and the other 2 competent teachers at our school) on multiple committees which means we are never in our classrooms! We are either at the district for trainings or we are writing for our California Distinguished School award. We finished the rough draft and are now going to peel it apart, connect ideas, etc. We are also recruiting one of my students' parents who teaches at our feeder middle school to edit for us.
Funny classroom story for the week: One student was absent and I had another student give her the words for her spelling test. My kids are awesome at spelling... so it's almost a joke. About 25 of the 31 have an A+ in spelling. Anyway, I had a boy give her the test... and he took a peek at the upcoming test's bonus words. These words are selected by me... just randomly from whatever we learned throughout the week. Anyway, he told the rest of the class in private... thinking I'm never going to find out. Turns out I have ONE honest kid who emailed me with this information. I never busted anyone... just simply changed my bonus words to INTEGRITY, HONESTY, UNACCEPTABLE, CHEATING. Too bad I had a sub yesterday. I would have loved to have seen their faces. :)
For Thanksgiving, I am driving up to N. Cal with my parents and Elliot. During this nice 12 hour trip, I plan to bring my laptop and do some serious revisions to my lit. review.
I am close to being done with the conversions of videos for Gary's class and I worked very hard on the SL project for Bill's class... that I am looking forward to presenting on Monday. I need to work for Margaret's class and design my ARP plan and clean up my lit. review this weekend/through Thanksgiving.
I'm also looking forward to watching The Comedian! :)
Teaching has been fine... except that I am never actually teaching. My principal has placed me (and the other 2 competent teachers at our school) on multiple committees which means we are never in our classrooms! We are either at the district for trainings or we are writing for our California Distinguished School award. We finished the rough draft and are now going to peel it apart, connect ideas, etc. We are also recruiting one of my students' parents who teaches at our feeder middle school to edit for us.
Funny classroom story for the week: One student was absent and I had another student give her the words for her spelling test. My kids are awesome at spelling... so it's almost a joke. About 25 of the 31 have an A+ in spelling. Anyway, I had a boy give her the test... and he took a peek at the upcoming test's bonus words. These words are selected by me... just randomly from whatever we learned throughout the week. Anyway, he told the rest of the class in private... thinking I'm never going to find out. Turns out I have ONE honest kid who emailed me with this information. I never busted anyone... just simply changed my bonus words to INTEGRITY, HONESTY, UNACCEPTABLE, CHEATING. Too bad I had a sub yesterday. I would have loved to have seen their faces. :)
For Thanksgiving, I am driving up to N. Cal with my parents and Elliot. During this nice 12 hour trip, I plan to bring my laptop and do some serious revisions to my lit. review.
I am close to being done with the conversions of videos for Gary's class and I worked very hard on the SL project for Bill's class... that I am looking forward to presenting on Monday. I need to work for Margaret's class and design my ARP plan and clean up my lit. review this weekend/through Thanksgiving.
I'm also looking forward to watching The Comedian! :)
Monday, October 29, 2007
Sunday, October 21, 2007
My Brain on OMET
Anyone remember that commercial about the brain on drugs... and then the guy fries an egg in a pan to illustrate that drugs fry your brain... well I think OMET does too.
My reflections:
638b: I am working, working, working away. I spent a good number of hours working on a lit. review that I have a feeling will be revised more than one time in the coming weeks. That makes me nervous. I have never been great at revising my work because I always feel like I did a great job. It's a tough process. I am also struggling through reading some of the books. I am all booked out for right now. I read a lot in the beginning and needed a little lull here. In addition, if I try to even think about sitting down to read (considering standing up), I will be asleep in a hot second.
664: I have enjoyed some of the adventures, but above all, I have enjoyed MicroWorlds the very best so far. I knew I would... considering that I had been messing around with it for awhile before we started up with it.
633: The Second Life project makes me anxious. I don't really know if we are going to be able to pull this off and make it as grand as we are hoping. I think we all want to do an amazing job, but are seeing the difficulty in distance learning as of now. Doing this project at VirtCamp seems like an easier task because we would all be in the same room. We are starting to see the major players in the program... especially on projects like this. Looking forward to beginning the building challenge. :) Turtles here I come!
My reflections:
638b: I am working, working, working away. I spent a good number of hours working on a lit. review that I have a feeling will be revised more than one time in the coming weeks. That makes me nervous. I have never been great at revising my work because I always feel like I did a great job. It's a tough process. I am also struggling through reading some of the books. I am all booked out for right now. I read a lot in the beginning and needed a little lull here. In addition, if I try to even think about sitting down to read (considering standing up), I will be asleep in a hot second.
664: I have enjoyed some of the adventures, but above all, I have enjoyed MicroWorlds the very best so far. I knew I would... considering that I had been messing around with it for awhile before we started up with it.
633: The Second Life project makes me anxious. I don't really know if we are going to be able to pull this off and make it as grand as we are hoping. I think we all want to do an amazing job, but are seeing the difficulty in distance learning as of now. Doing this project at VirtCamp seems like an easier task because we would all be in the same room. We are starting to see the major players in the program... especially on projects like this. Looking forward to beginning the building challenge. :) Turtles here I come!
Sunday, September 16, 2007
Students teaching Students
In having dinner tonight with a friend of my fiance, we began talking about her education. She is a senior level student in her undergraduate program at UCSB. While definitely a hippie with the utmost respect in using the term, she's a world traveler and has been many places in her 20 years on this earth.
This was my first time meeting her and I have been anxious because I love her mom who I recently visited in Colorado (see earlier blogs). She has a passion for making change in the world but shuns the idea of teaching because she does not want to conform to the Western World's view of education. She doesn't want to become a professor and simply have knowledge that proves to be less useful than going into the world and changing it. She has aspirations to work with those who are less fortunate in countries she has already traveled to and intends to go back and help... she simply has dreams that many people keep in the closet.
Since we've been learning about progressive education movements throughout OMET thus far, it was interesting that she brought up an upcoming opportunity at UCSB. Apparently, there is this program that allows students to teach classes about essentially anything they want. Now, they have to be sponsored by (I think) another professor in the school or at least within her department of study and it has to be legitimate. When I asked what class she planned to teach (they get credits for teaching too), she said very quickly "How to Change the World" as if she'd been planning this her entire life.
I asked about her curriculum and she told me that she was hoping to have speakers come in from different organizations and different scholars come in to express needs within our world for the first portion of the class, and for the second half, to create a "project" collectively as a class to change the world... could be an excursion, something. She also expressed this idea of having her students interview their professors (who are researchers) about their research and ask them how they could use the information they teach in their class to better the world or make a difference in some way. In this "homework" assignment, students would learn from their professors and open their eyes to new ways to rejuvinate their own brains to hopefully making a difference. I found this to be awesome. I took multiple classes in my undergraduate years that added no value to my brain or to the world. I would've rather spent time at least seeing the world through other's eyes and opening my eyes to the world of need around me. Although such a typical hippie thing to want... I still loved the idea.
Finally, she talked about a professor she had who spent half of the year in India and the other half teaching at UCSB and said that the reason he continues to come back and teach (besides the $) is because he feels that if he can even steer 1 or 2 students to proactivity, he feels it is worth the while. She brought up a good point and talked to her professor about raising his bar. What about wanting 50 students to become proactive?
Even more profound from a 20-year old... she mentions that since she used that "homework" assignment with herself to talk to her own professors about ways she can use the information they teach to better the world, she was able to speak openly with her obviously intelligent professor who may have been living in research (but no application) land and needed to have the fresh mind of a young adult to free him from his stagnance.
Finally, thanks Todd. I posted the music onto my website and it can be found here: http://students.pepperdine.edu/blfoster/OMEThome/fall07/index.html
This was my first time meeting her and I have been anxious because I love her mom who I recently visited in Colorado (see earlier blogs). She has a passion for making change in the world but shuns the idea of teaching because she does not want to conform to the Western World's view of education. She doesn't want to become a professor and simply have knowledge that proves to be less useful than going into the world and changing it. She has aspirations to work with those who are less fortunate in countries she has already traveled to and intends to go back and help... she simply has dreams that many people keep in the closet.
Since we've been learning about progressive education movements throughout OMET thus far, it was interesting that she brought up an upcoming opportunity at UCSB. Apparently, there is this program that allows students to teach classes about essentially anything they want. Now, they have to be sponsored by (I think) another professor in the school or at least within her department of study and it has to be legitimate. When I asked what class she planned to teach (they get credits for teaching too), she said very quickly "How to Change the World" as if she'd been planning this her entire life.
I asked about her curriculum and she told me that she was hoping to have speakers come in from different organizations and different scholars come in to express needs within our world for the first portion of the class, and for the second half, to create a "project" collectively as a class to change the world... could be an excursion, something. She also expressed this idea of having her students interview their professors (who are researchers) about their research and ask them how they could use the information they teach in their class to better the world or make a difference in some way. In this "homework" assignment, students would learn from their professors and open their eyes to new ways to rejuvinate their own brains to hopefully making a difference. I found this to be awesome. I took multiple classes in my undergraduate years that added no value to my brain or to the world. I would've rather spent time at least seeing the world through other's eyes and opening my eyes to the world of need around me. Although such a typical hippie thing to want... I still loved the idea.
Finally, she talked about a professor she had who spent half of the year in India and the other half teaching at UCSB and said that the reason he continues to come back and teach (besides the $) is because he feels that if he can even steer 1 or 2 students to proactivity, he feels it is worth the while. She brought up a good point and talked to her professor about raising his bar. What about wanting 50 students to become proactive?
Even more profound from a 20-year old... she mentions that since she used that "homework" assignment with herself to talk to her own professors about ways she can use the information they teach to better the world, she was able to speak openly with her obviously intelligent professor who may have been living in research (but no application) land and needed to have the fresh mind of a young adult to free him from his stagnance.
Finally, thanks Todd. I posted the music onto my website and it can be found here: http://students.pepperdine.edu/blfoster/OMEThome/fall07/index.html
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