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Blog Post #6

I have learned many things while in W-310. One of the things is that everyone has a different type of memory. Alongside this information, there need to be different teaching styles that will help each memory involved. Some of the memory styles involved are declarative, episodic, conditioned, procedural, and flashbulb memory. The memory that I identify most with is the episodic memory which is when I remember stories from my own experience. The keyword being experienced. Some teaching styles that I may include are hands-on learning and storytelling. Hands-on learning can be used in any subject especially math and science. While teaching math, I may use building blocks so that students can have hands-on learning experiences. Storytelling, without necessarily reading a book, will keep kids interested in the lesson that is being taught. 

The next thing I learned about in this class is that technology use in the classroom does not necessarily mean having students explore different apps on the iPad or computer. The use of technology can just be the use of different online resources such as educational websites that I have already looked into beforehand. The “Games to Learn English” has been life-changing for me as a future ENL teacher as I did not know of any resources for ENL until this classroom. It is important that I am able to teach my ENL students how to use their online resources just like any other student in the classroom. 

The third thing I learned in this class is that the lessons my students need to be engaged with the lesson. It is one thing to just lecture to young students and another to help them and want them to be successful learners. No student wants to start a new lesson discouraged and end the lesson frustrated an unable to feel like they learned anything (Dirksen, p129). I learned that I can teach a new part of a lesson and I need to have practice for my students to do so that they are confident in their ability. As I assess their learning and see where every student is at in understanding, I can move on to more challenging parts of the lesson and again, have practice at the end of the lesson. Students need to be confident and be able to say to themselves “I think I can” because that is what will keep them moving forward. 

The fourth thing I learned is that keeping my students engaged can also mean having fun in the classroom! Some fun things are rewards and having a good time. Students have different backgrounds, cultures, and home lives so they should all be treated equally and be able to have fun at the building in which they are in for a majority part of their day. 

The fifth thing I learned in this class is that technology does not just need to be a “treat”. Technology is a very powerful learning tool that can help students want to learn. Some of them have already mastered how to search for things that will help them in understanding math problems because of their parents at home. Some students do not have resources at home, but when they are exposed to technology at an early age, they are able to find out that their strengths are in technology especially science and math. These students may find what they are passionate about in life early on which is beneficial to them. 

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Powerpoint Renovation

There were a lot of slides with red or green backgrounds. With these awful backgrounds, the text was also the color of the background, which makes reading the slide almost impossible. Reading information off of slides is important for students since teachers usually present information through the use of slides. All of the images used in the presentation were not cited from where they came from. Some of the slides also had way too many pictures on them that will lead its reader to become distracted because they are focusing on the image instead of reading the awful color red against a red background. The slides also had interesting font styles from WordArt or it was a font that I was not able to read the first time. There were slides that had too much information about projects that W310 would be doing all in one slide. This will make any student want to read past this slide and go to the next. Slides 10 and 11 had random images that did not relate to what was talked about in the presentation at all. In my presentation, I made sure to keep the information short and simple. I only had one image per slide to not distract my audience. If I had a light background, I put dark text over it and only had one text box to put over my background. I also made sure to not have any pictures as my background as pictures make info hard to read. There were also crazy transitions between slides and words did not appear when I first clicked on them so my presentation does not have any crazy transitions and just has everything. I also made sure to cite where all of my images were from, I will also follow those rules, so I made a work cited slide. I ended the presentation with a slide that invites students to contact the teacher if they ever need help with work. 

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Blog Post #5

In the first video I watched, students in the “Blended Learning Energizes High School Students”, the students are able to get feedback on Khan Academy much faster. Before the use of Khan Academy, students would not be able to know right away why their answers were wrong. With the use of Khan, they are able to use hints and understand how to do problems. 

The teacher in the video was able to use Coach Mode that allows them to see who has progressed in math and how many exercises the students have done. When the teacher worked with one student, he was able to dig deeper and see where his student was at. The teacher is not holding the hand of the students and telling them what to do more on, instead the students know where they struggle and where they are succeeding. The students make sure that they are moving along with their lecture. 

Students are able to take accountability for their own learning and use a variety of resources. The teacher in the video stated that students are more focused, attentive and engaged in their learning. 

Khan Academy has problems that are randomly generated so students are not able to cheat off of each other. The structure of Khan is not multiple choice so students need to really do some work in order to get answers correct. I learned that teachers should allow students to work at their own pace so that they completely understand subject manner. Teachers should do their own research on what technology resources or things on the internet are able to help students. 

In the second video I watched, “Learning STEM Skills by Designing Video Games”. The boy in the beginning explained how the game that he is working on works. The boy figured his own way around the whole part. He was able to make different levels a little harder by adjusting what he wanted to. He incorporated baseball because he likes it and he said that both the video game and baseball make people think. He also said that his audience gives him feedback, which he likes, so he goes back into his video game and adjusts as needed. 

The boy also pointed out that he sometimes receives negative comments on his games such as, “this game sucks!” which would normally hurt students’ feelings, but he said he just laughs at those comments. He learned that those comments do not help him on how to improve his game and compared it to when he plays baseball. When students are able to learn about STEM and at the same time learn about incidents that happen in life and how to grow from that, they are benefitting in both areas at one time. I gained insight that sometimes exposing kids to have real life experiences will help them evolve and see where the know they are doing and how negative comments should not be taken personally. It is okay to be upset by them but with proper guidance, students are able to grow as people. 

There was not a set “teacher” that was involved in this video, but the true teachers are the people that give the game positive feedback and suggestions as to how the creator can make the game more interesting for all players. The feedback encourage the boy to keep improving his game and have imagination that he may not be able to have in a regular classroom setting.

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Blog #4

In Chapter 7, I learned that in order to develop skills, students need to practice and get feedback (p196). We all know that one Pre-Calculus teacher that gives one lecture about a new subject in one day and expects us to take home some practice, but the whole time the teacher was talking, you were lost and yes, he asked if anyone had questions but you didn’t even know WHAT to ask! This is just one instance in one advanced class. The teacher mentioned started the lecture with an intro and continued the whole lecture with more and more new info. The whole time students are riding their bike on an uphill and see no downhill and the uphill just gets steeper and steeper (p199). Instead of using this method in any class, whether it be elementary, middle or high school, we need to have a better flow of practice so that students are not discouraged in the process and are able to get the proficiency that us teachers ask of them at the end of the unit. Students should go with the flow as they learn, they need to be on the edge between challenge and ability which is the principle of flow (p200). Students should know where they are at and then they are able to learn new, challenging lessons. 

In my future classroom, I would like to integrate technology by having iPads be taken home every night to make sure my students have access to our Canvas site that is provided to us from the school. They will be able to go into each subject that we are learning about and I will integrate videos, games, and anything else that we as a class found as useful during the day. They will be able to watch these videos at home and practice the subjects that I assign on days that we choose to do homework (if it is completely necessary). In the classroom, I want my students to be able to practice math on the iPad so they should be able to play games that integrate what they need to master. New subjects in math will need to be repeated to my students so that they can get immediate positive feedback and feel like they can continue learning the new, challenging info. I also want them to send me the scores that they received on these games during class and homework. They should be able to send me screenshots of the actual screen, that way I know they are actually doing their assignment (I’m not dumb;) ). 

We all struggle with getting on task to do work in class or homework, so I want my students to be able to build good learning habits. From the information from chapter 9, I want to introduce habits and let my students brainstorm solutions. It would probably be “if this happens in my learning...then I can help build my skill by…” scenarios so that they can be successful independent learners (p240). It is also useful to carve out time for specific habits so I need to help my students build habits that will help them academically. I also need to help my students reduce the barriers.I also need to create rubrics or tracking mechanisms. I can also help tie the habit of existing behavior. I can also hack the environment by not letting there be any unnecessary distractions as possible. I also need to identify student triggers and help them find their own triggers that are within the learning environment.

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Blog #3

If I had all the resources I needed in my classroom, I would have 3D or virtual reality so that my students could learn about history or be able to dig into an autobiography of a historical figure that they admire. I would bring in food (gluten-free, peanut-free, soy-free, red dye-free, and sadness free) that ALL my students would be able to enjoy. I would also maybe bring in real food such as donuts (vegan, sugar-free, or full of happiness), foods from all over the world so that they can be culturally aware, and maybe even help my students to take food home if they present to me that they are in need :(. (You can’t a student’s attention if they are hungry).  

(me after a long day, eating my feelings)

I will capture my learners’ attention by engaging it within the lesson so I will tell my learners stories, surprise them, show it things that will interest them, tell it others are also doing it, and leverage the learners’ habits. Each culture already has its own ways of telling stories that keep the audience interested so I will use that to my advantage. Stories should have a nice flow, have suspense, and should be entertaining, for the most part (lol). I can also surprise my audience by bringing them unexpected rewards such as food that is eaten in other parts of the world. And sometimes I can keep stories at a cliffhanger that urges them to ask me questions at the end or them research their questions and dig deep into subjects. Showing my audience interesting things will keep them entertained even more. The last way is to tell my audience that other people are doing it. This would benefit things that should be more immediate such as recycling or most importantly reusing stuff to keep landfills clean and saving our turtles!! (save the turtles) Of course, some may be skeptical of me using the word everybody or they are just not competitive, but I can show them videos of people composting and reusing things to save the Earth. 

My fourth-grade teacher would use the “bring your audience rewards” trick all the time! She would tell us that if we participated, we would get raffle tickets and then at the end of the week, she would bring in candy and whoever got their name drawn, would get candy! It wasn’t much of a surprise, but it definitely helped students that were not as confident or extraverted to raise their hands and participate when they knew the answer! Like I said in Blog 2, my British literature teacher used stories at the beginning of each lesson to keep her students engaged. It worked super well because she used “shelves” that we already had and just constructed more onto them by giving us surprising details of legends we knew some things about! 

It seems easy to pay attention when there are details that can stand out to students such as if they answer a question right in class and they get a raffle ticket, they will most likely remember why they were able to get a raffle ticket. It is also easy to pay attention when there are interesting visuals that the audience can use such as a video or a family tree that shows who in history they are learning about and why they are important.

What is challenging is the actual maintaining of an audience’s attention. So if they know that the only thing they will get is candy at the end of the week they may just not raise their hands after a while if they go on a diet or are trying to cut out excess sugar (ahem teenagers).

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Blog 2

I think I have more semantic memory. In my British Literature class my senior year of high school, my teacher would tell the class a story about the bloodline of different queens and kings. One of these stories was about the legend of “Bloody Mary”!!! Dun dun duuuunnnnn!!! She also had the family tree showing us who was all related to each other when talking about the queens and kings. Interesting stories that I have to remember and later be tested on what I know is something that American Education has brainwashed me to do. Ah hahah shaddeeee

I feel like I really liked my British Literature teacher’s ways of teaching us about history. I think that when my class does have time for social studies, I want to try to incorporate more an interesting stories that will make them interested. I want to work on my students’ episodic memory instead of semantic memory. I want my students to be able to process stories in a way that makes them fascinated to get into social studies, which is something even I didn’t do in elementary school. We all know history can be depressy and stressy, but that can help me in my storytelling and how I may see how proficient my students are at recalling what happened in certain time frames. Instead of a quiz or a test, a role-play of history may be more appropriate for some students. Or even try to incorporate art projects.

It is important to think about our cognitive abilities when I plan and design learning experiences because we need to understand the differences of how we present ideas and whether the students just need to pass a subject or help them remember history in the future. American history and amendments will help our students to protect themselves in situations that they do not want to be in. It has been about 2 years that my British Literature teacher taught me about the “Bloody Mary” legend and how she was a queen and I STILL remember it! That is what I am trying to aspire to do with my teachers. 

“Nowadays students are addicted to their phones!”...ok boomer.

Computer-based technology has allowed us to not use our sequence of memory as often. Where we used to have to repeat numbers and more info such as passwords, now we can write them down on our phones! I think it is very helpful because, for someone with short term memory, I would probably see a butterfly and lose what I had been repeating in my head! We also shouldn’t be repeating facts all the time, so such as vocabulary words. Sometimes, students get lost in memorizing the definition and do not put into practice in how they can use it in everyday life. It is just on one shelf of repeating it over and over again until it is all vomited onto a quiz! (haha have fun with that visual :D). Learning should be taken into an actual understanding of what is being taught to our students. While maybe memorizing numbers and passwords was something people did before the use of technology, do those people still remember every number of their friends and family? No! They forgot it because once they wrote it down they threw it out of their minds and into the garbage! 

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Blog Post 1

My learners are going to, hopefully, be in the elementary age level, all of them with different levels of skills whether in technology or reading and many other things. I anticipate having students who just want to get the lesson, the interested learner, the analytical student, the student that is only at school because it is required, students that get distracted easily, and the know-it-all student ( :,D  yay). This leads to the WHY? students want to learn, also known as their motivations. All of my learners will have different motivations as to why they want to learn. They can either be extrinsically motivated so they only want to learn for an outside reward or punishment because it feels “required” instead of interesting to them. My learners can also be intrinsically motivated so they are genuinely interested in learning in order to explore their own curiosity. Whether or not a student is intrinsically or extrinsically motivated depends on the subject that they are learning about. For instance, a student that loves to learn about music or become a better musician will have intrinsic motivations in music class, but if they detest math class, they will have extrinsic motivations because they just need a high grade. As I begin to start lesson plans I should really make sure that I have talked to my students because they can give me insights as to HOW it works, not how it SHOULD work. Teachers need to modify plans in order for the students to actually have in interest as to what they are learning about. Students also tell us where it hurts. They tell you what they are actually liking and understanding and what they don’t like and aren’t understanding which is good because learning is about them, not the teacher. (OOOOffffff!!!). 

Learners all learn very differently, I can use organization, visuals, stories, work through problems, have the learners design their own way of learning, or use a metaphor or an analogy. This can also go with the different learning styles that we have learned about 1,000 times before this class is Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences. Apparently, the only learning styles are spatial, linguistic, logical, kinesthetic, musical, interpersonal, intrapersonal, naturalistic, and existential. There is also VAK or VARK which is a model that shows what kind of styles people usually learn at such as, auditory, visual, reading, or kinesthetic learning. The last theory is called Kolb’s Learning Styles Inventory which basically shows that there are converger, diverger, assimilator, and accommodator. Even with all of these theories, LEARNING STYLES CANNOT (REALLY) BE PROVEN!!  

I KNOW! Even with all of these theorists testing multiple children, we can’t really say whether they are true because they are still only theories. BUT, we do learn that everyone learns differently, there are different kinds of intelligence, we are more alike than different (if only EVERYONE knew this), and teachers still need to show various ways of learning approaches. I also definitely do not want my students to feel stupid so I will try to see where all of my students are at and slowly increase the difficulty of the subject little by little every time the whole class understands. 

Some new insights that I learned from Chapter 2 were that I need to pay attention to what level of skill they are currently at with different subjects that we will be learning about. With those that need more help, I will need to proficiently provide them the guidance that they need and have a good structure with my lesson plans. For those that are already proficient learners, they need me to coach their behavior and continue to advance their intelligence. I also learned that our brains really are structured like closets! This is so funny if you look at that metaphor because we put the things we like and dislike in there and yet we keep them! If there is not a context that goes with what is being taught to the students, then the subject will not be in their closet but instead on the clothes pile that they have on the floor. Another insight I got was the visual of only the teacher lecturing to their audience (students) what they need to know. It would be so much more helpful to know during the lecture if students are confused so that the teacher can re-explain what they just taught and make sure the majority of the students understand the material. The students need to be confident in vocalizing that they are not following the lesson, no matter if the teacher thought out every little detail because there will always be surprises!