I watched two different Pod Casts from the 9-12 grade section and they were very interesting. The first one was "Galileo on the Moon." It was very short, less than a minute. It showed a clip from the 1969 walk on the moon. It illustrates one of the astronauts testing an experiment first tested by Galileo hundreds of years prior. The astronaut tests Galileo's theory on gravity fields and falling objects The theory test consisted of dropping a falcon feather and a hammer at the same time to see if they land on the moon's surface at the same time. The astronaut dropped the feather and the hammer and they landed at the same time on the surface of the moon. Would it have worked the same way on Earth? Absolutely not. This was a very interesting illustration.
The second pod cast I watched was "A Night in the Coral Reef." It was about a city of sea creatures. It was taped mostly at night to show the nocturnal fish feed. One example of the carnivorous creatures I found most interesting was the octopus. It was really cool watching how the octopus went about catching and eating it's prey. There were also other night feeders such as coral polyps, squirrel fish, and sea urchins. Most of these creatures feed on algae, grunts, or other small fish.
Both of these pod casts were fun and educational. They would be excellent in science classes. "Galileo on the Moon" would probably be suited for an older group of students such as high schoolers. But "A Night in the Coral Reef" could be used for older and younger classes alike. It would also be great in a science class. Both clips were short and to the point. They would hold the attention span of most school age children. If I taught science these pod casts would definitely be helpful.
Monday, October 27, 2008
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Post #16: Pod Casts with a Purpose
I am very impressed with what I watched on the video pod casts. The Edible Schoolyard is awesome! What a great way to get students interested in learning. When I began watching the video, I admit I was a little skeptical. How is working in a garden going to teach these kids anything but how to sweat? Boy was I wrong. Not only does this wonderful program at Martin Luther King, Jr. Middle School in Berkeley, California teach students about gardening, but also about life. This program was started in 1994 by Ms. Alice as a way to improve school lunches. Since that time, it has morphed into something so much better. Edible Schoolyard is actually a Social Studies class for the middle-schoolers, but it teaches them science, math, and social skills.
I would really like to implement something similar to this program in our area. When I was a child, I was taught to work in the garden. Not only did it teach me to appreciate what I have, but it also taught me about working well with others, multi-tasking, and it was amazing to watch something I planted grow and be harvested. The lessons taught at MLK Middle School are invaluable. Most of it could never fully be grasped in a classroom setting. Edible Schoolyard gives all children a chance to learn and succeed at life.
A Night in the Global Village is a real eye opener. It is a 5 acre campsite in Arkansas, with different "camps" mimicking living conditions in South America, Africa, and the United States, to name a few. It lets middle and high school students experience life as someone living in poverty. It is called the Rocky Mountain School of Expeditionary Learning. It teaches these kids to work together as a team in order to "survive" the night.
I am from a rural area and this would be a great way to illustrate to my students what doing without is all about. I could implement a program similar to this one on property I own, and let them work together to find solutions to problems most of them have never had to worry about in the past. My students could learn by "living the lesson." You can find out so much more information on these projects and similar ones on the Edutopia website.
I would really like to implement something similar to this program in our area. When I was a child, I was taught to work in the garden. Not only did it teach me to appreciate what I have, but it also taught me about working well with others, multi-tasking, and it was amazing to watch something I planted grow and be harvested. The lessons taught at MLK Middle School are invaluable. Most of it could never fully be grasped in a classroom setting. Edible Schoolyard gives all children a chance to learn and succeed at life.
A Night in the Global Village is a real eye opener. It is a 5 acre campsite in Arkansas, with different "camps" mimicking living conditions in South America, Africa, and the United States, to name a few. It lets middle and high school students experience life as someone living in poverty. It is called the Rocky Mountain School of Expeditionary Learning. It teaches these kids to work together as a team in order to "survive" the night.
I am from a rural area and this would be a great way to illustrate to my students what doing without is all about. I could implement a program similar to this one on property I own, and let them work together to find solutions to problems most of them have never had to worry about in the past. My students could learn by "living the lesson." You can find out so much more information on these projects and similar ones on the Edutopia website.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Post # 15: Listening to Podcasts is "Interesting"
Wow, what can I say about pod casts? I listened to as much of it as I could stand. I could not imagine being a teenager and made to listen to this mindless dribble while in class, in front of a computer with so many interesting things on it. First of all, I have a slow connection and subscribing to six different pod casts took alot of time. Not only did it take a long time to download each one, I had a very hard time finding most of the pod casts. This not only makes me lose interest in the pod casts, it makes me lose my patience.
The first podcast, Smartboard Lessons, was easy enough to find. It drew my attention immediately because of the "Simpsons" characters on the screen. I kept running into problems subscribing to this particular pod cast, so I listened to episode #147 for 10 minutes. It was awful. It sounded like a very bad local morning FM radio show. It took Ben and Joan well over nine minutes to say anything about education; by this time I had lost interest with the entire thing and began a new search for something better. I found some improvement with the next pod cast.
Kidcast, hosted by Dan, was definitely educational, but he bored me to tears. I listened to the last installment on the pod cast, #56, "Questions Make the World Go Round." Ugh!!! He talked very monotonously and although I know he talked about a really interesting subject, I could not get past how boring Dan was making the presentation. I began looking for other pod casts on the list, since only one of the pod casts could be found in the Listener Also Subscribes box. I found MacBreak Weekly and listened to the last cast, #109, posted on October 7. I noticed this cast had paid sponsor recognition which the previous pod casts did not have. It was also over an hour long. It took this lot of what sounded to be educated men at least 15 minutes to get off the subject of bad jokes and another pod cast, This Week in Photography, only to talk about CNN and AT&T verses Verizon. They also promoted the iPhone and commented on the stock market. I just did not find anything they talked about interesting or educational. It mainly sounded like another way to promote Apple products. And why not? I personally like their products, but hearing about it for an hour got a little boring. Now on to my next victim.
This Week in Photography at least stuck to the subject and stayed on track. I listened to the last cast posted, "Printing for Photographers." The host had a call in guest with some pretty interesting things for photographers to try while printing pictures and answered phone calls and emails from listeners. Like the other pod casts, I was bored to death. After listening to the pod casts I realized that maybe it isn't the pod casts that are boring, but the subjects that are discussed on these pod casts.
I wanted to find an interesting pod cast and I did. I really like GrammarGirl and Man and Wife. The subjects of these pod casts are totally different, from using proper grammar in everyday speech and writing papers for school, to relationship and sexual questions. At least I could stay alert through these pod casts. I did learn what not to do with my pod cast next week: try to stay on the subject, at least for the majority of the cast, and make it interesting!!! You may not talk about what most people want to hear, but you can make it as fun as possible. That is what I am going to try. Please Dr. Strange, don't make me listen to anymore educational pod casts!
The first podcast, Smartboard Lessons, was easy enough to find. It drew my attention immediately because of the "Simpsons" characters on the screen. I kept running into problems subscribing to this particular pod cast, so I listened to episode #147 for 10 minutes. It was awful. It sounded like a very bad local morning FM radio show. It took Ben and Joan well over nine minutes to say anything about education; by this time I had lost interest with the entire thing and began a new search for something better. I found some improvement with the next pod cast.
Kidcast, hosted by Dan, was definitely educational, but he bored me to tears. I listened to the last installment on the pod cast, #56, "Questions Make the World Go Round." Ugh!!! He talked very monotonously and although I know he talked about a really interesting subject, I could not get past how boring Dan was making the presentation. I began looking for other pod casts on the list, since only one of the pod casts could be found in the Listener Also Subscribes box. I found MacBreak Weekly and listened to the last cast, #109, posted on October 7. I noticed this cast had paid sponsor recognition which the previous pod casts did not have. It was also over an hour long. It took this lot of what sounded to be educated men at least 15 minutes to get off the subject of bad jokes and another pod cast, This Week in Photography, only to talk about CNN and AT&T verses Verizon. They also promoted the iPhone and commented on the stock market. I just did not find anything they talked about interesting or educational. It mainly sounded like another way to promote Apple products. And why not? I personally like their products, but hearing about it for an hour got a little boring. Now on to my next victim.
This Week in Photography at least stuck to the subject and stayed on track. I listened to the last cast posted, "Printing for Photographers." The host had a call in guest with some pretty interesting things for photographers to try while printing pictures and answered phone calls and emails from listeners. Like the other pod casts, I was bored to death. After listening to the pod casts I realized that maybe it isn't the pod casts that are boring, but the subjects that are discussed on these pod casts.
I wanted to find an interesting pod cast and I did. I really like GrammarGirl and Man and Wife. The subjects of these pod casts are totally different, from using proper grammar in everyday speech and writing papers for school, to relationship and sexual questions. At least I could stay alert through these pod casts. I did learn what not to do with my pod cast next week: try to stay on the subject, at least for the majority of the cast, and make it interesting!!! You may not talk about what most people want to hear, but you can make it as fun as possible. That is what I am going to try. Please Dr. Strange, don't make me listen to anymore educational pod casts!
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Friday, October 3, 2008
Blog Post # 14: Randy Pausch: A Moving & Educational Talk
Everyone can learn something from Randy Pausch's Last Lecture. Whether you are a parent, teacher, student, young, or old Dr. Pausch's lecture on achieving childhood dreams is very interesting. He not only wanted to attain his own dreams, but he wanted to help others attain their dreams too. In order to succeed, one must have fundamentals and be willing to work hard. There are many obstacles that stand in the way of reaching our goals. Dr. Pausch refers to these as brick walls. He goes on to explain how these brick walls are there for a reason; they are there for us to overcome.
Dr. Pausch was inspired to go to graduate school while at Brown University by Andy van Dam. Professor van Dam told him: "if you are going to sale something worthwhile it might as well be education." So Dr. Pausch began to wonder how he could enable others' dreams as a professor and began the Building Virtual Worlds. It is comprised of fifty students from all departments working on revolving teams of four to work on five projects a semester with two weeks to complete the project. He was completely surprised and blown away by how outstanding the work of the students was. Dr. Pausch was then advised to encourage his students to do even better and work harder on the next project. They did just that. It was such a hit he had parents coming to class.
Then came ETC, or Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon. This idea is result of Dr. Pausch and Don Mannelli collaborating artists with technologists. It is two programs working together. This project also consisted of students participating in small group projects completed in a certain amount of time. This of course freed the instructors and the students of the confinements of normal institutional learning. They referred to it as "edutainment." ETC has gone worldwide including projects in Australia and Korea.
This led to the ALICE project in which Dr. Pausch refers to himself as the Mad Hatter. This project initiated ways to teach--to show someone how to do something when they think they are learning something else. Kids learn by having fun. It involved video gamish technology for teaching. How cool is that? If most kids are playing a video game, they would not think they could possibly learn anything constructive from them. Dr. Pausch has changed the way teachers teach and students learn. He instructs his fellow educators, students, and parents alike to never give up, listen to feedback, positive and negative, show gratitude, be prepared, and don't complain, only work harder. Great advice from such a great leader, educator, husband, and father.
Dr. Pausch was inspired to go to graduate school while at Brown University by Andy van Dam. Professor van Dam told him: "if you are going to sale something worthwhile it might as well be education." So Dr. Pausch began to wonder how he could enable others' dreams as a professor and began the Building Virtual Worlds. It is comprised of fifty students from all departments working on revolving teams of four to work on five projects a semester with two weeks to complete the project. He was completely surprised and blown away by how outstanding the work of the students was. Dr. Pausch was then advised to encourage his students to do even better and work harder on the next project. They did just that. It was such a hit he had parents coming to class.
Then came ETC, or Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon. This idea is result of Dr. Pausch and Don Mannelli collaborating artists with technologists. It is two programs working together. This project also consisted of students participating in small group projects completed in a certain amount of time. This of course freed the instructors and the students of the confinements of normal institutional learning. They referred to it as "edutainment." ETC has gone worldwide including projects in Australia and Korea.
This led to the ALICE project in which Dr. Pausch refers to himself as the Mad Hatter. This project initiated ways to teach--to show someone how to do something when they think they are learning something else. Kids learn by having fun. It involved video gamish technology for teaching. How cool is that? If most kids are playing a video game, they would not think they could possibly learn anything constructive from them. Dr. Pausch has changed the way teachers teach and students learn. He instructs his fellow educators, students, and parents alike to never give up, listen to feedback, positive and negative, show gratitude, be prepared, and don't complain, only work harder. Great advice from such a great leader, educator, husband, and father.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
