Blog Post #5

 In the video, Eric Whitacre's Virtual Choir, this video gave me chill bumps. This video is an absolutely wonderful example of what the technology in this day and age can do. It is a great video to show students and what we can do with them, maybe teachers can implement this into their classrooms. The teacher could do like an animal choir where all the students were recorded doing animal noises and the teacher put it together like this, or the class could tell a story, or even make a picture. Each student would have a separate piece of a picture that the class has chosen and then hold it up in front of their computer and the teacher could put it together just like the choir was put together.

Teaching in the 21st Century

In the video, Teaching in the 21st Century, Kevin Roberts says that teachers are the filter to the students and what they learn. I do not agree with him. The way he puts it is that students should rely on the internet to get their information and says that teachers are the filter for that information to tell the students whether for not it is true and trustworthy or not. He seems like he is talking about older children and not really the younger children. Technology may can teach a kindergartener to read and write, maybe it can teach them numbers and letters, but technology cannot love a student the way a teacher can. Technology cannot come up with the catchy little songs elementary teachers can come up with to help students remember all that they learn. My step-son Zeke came home one day singing, in the tune of The Adam's Family theme song tune, but it was his days of the week. Young students look up to their teachers to guide them and teach them life lessons that a computer cannot. I do think we should put more of an emphasis on the use of technology in the schools and just make sure there are limitations to it.

Flipping a Classroom

In Why I Flipped My Classroom?, the teacher shows how her classroom was not efficiently set up. She had students in the middle of the classroom that were good and decent learners, then she had students off to the left of the rooms that did not learn as fast and had difficulties doing assignments, finally she had the fast learners in the far corner of the room, all off to themselves bored with what the teacher kept having to teach because she has to make sure all the students learn the material. Then she would send the students home with home work and the students would not know how to do the work because in class the teacher had to focus more on the teaching the lesson then she could applying the material. So she tried something called "Flipping the Classroom". She made it to where the students could learn the lessons online and at home they could learn the material at home and then go to school so the teacher can show them the application of the material. In the classroom she put the students into sections and she moved to the middle of the room. That way she could be interactive with the entire room and the individual groups. I plan on implementing this after the first few weeks of my classroom. It would take some time to learn the needs of all the students first then move them into the appropriate sections in the classroom. Its an efficient way to make sure all the students are interactive with the lessons and then they come into the classroom.