JOFFA KREE, and other useful gould phrases.

OK so as an extrension to the last post with the question of videos as a viable form of presentation, TV has come to mind. Now i think that some TV has an educational place, for example, The magic school bus is a great cartoon, my daughter (remember the 5yr old with the dinosaur poop fixation) come to me with profound knowledge about science and when i ask her where she learned it she says magic school bus. I have no problem letting her watch this type of TV (when she understands digestion better then some of my highschool biology students it scares me, and makes daddy so proud of his little geek SNIFF)

Now there are other shows.....hearing the theme music can send my IQ into a deep downward spiral, but thats just my personal opinion. So i guess the main point (other than to say JOFFA KREE in a gould voice) is that not all media presentation is created equally so if we choose carefully you can have good results.

tek ma tay T'ealc

dilema dilema

ok so this is what comes out of thinking about stuff, it gets you introuble. i thought i had a great thing when i found and used this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODwt6OdN-8Y

it was great for reviewing the topic of mitosis, it told all the vocabulary, it explain where it is used, it even has a catchy tune (sorry if you start singing it) but would it actually helpp students learn or would it be watched and filed in their schema as junk? tell me what you think, is watching a video an effective way you cement ideas in a students head?

The digital divide

The 21st century version of the haves vs the have nots, can this factor throw an old school monkey wrench into our carefully crafted, technology integrated lesson plan? we are being taught to apply all the new toys to connect to the digital learners that populate our classes but what about the few holdouts of the 20th century. i guess like anything in life we need to know the skill but we also need to know when to employ it.

WERE UNDER HEAVY ATTACK, HULL BREACH ON DECKS 1-6!!!!

Have you ever had one of those feelings???? i've got Klingons all over me, i cant shake em.

i guess this would be a good time to discuss time management. Instead of disruptors and photon torpedoes i've got an exam and microteaching and journal assignments battering my temporal shields down,and i dont need scotty to tell me "I Kin na do it capn, i DONT have the POWER!!!

I think that its a pittrap that i (probally others but i will speak for myself now) fall into too easily. I have often reminded myself that for ever assignment and test that i inflict on my students i am assigning 20+ correcting assignments on myself, and nothing is more demorilizing to me than looking at that pile of correcting on my desk when there is new stargate to watch. So here is a question with a valuable answer.... how do we do authentic assessment of learning without creating a pile of extra time comsuming work? technology has allowed the multiple choice test with nice answer keys so we can streamline it like the enterprise jumping to warp. there are online quizzes that they can do and get results right back but i cringe at the cheating possibilities for them.

so i guess thie time for more metacognition on what i can do to reduce workload without compromising quality of assessment.

Mr. Crusher, set a course for starbase 183 for repairs, warp 3 engage.

its happened, she is one of THEM

ok so this weekend opened my eyes to the fact that even 5yrs olds can be teenagers in disguise.
Picture it lacombe 2010, a slow sunday morning with my on my computer and my daughter on hers. She has already shown great abilities with computers since she was 4 she could turn on the computer and open "the blue E" then use favorites to go to her websites (PBSkids, NICKJR, KIDSCBC ) so when we are doing kitchen stuff she comes in and starts watching videos or playing games on these sites. on the sunday in question she pops her head out with "daddy did you know that paleontologists have found fossilized dinosaur poop and it wasn't soft." ..... ok your 5, since when are 5 year olds knowing palentologists and using it correctly in sentences??? when asked about her new knowledge of dinosaur poop she told us she learned it from the internet. SHE IS ONE OF THEM.....digital learners! so its not just the teenager in your grade 10 class that we have to be watching for technology tendencies, APARENTLY ECS is a hotspot for multimodal, downloading of all things fecal (dinosaur poop) into my daughters brain..... i'm traumatized.

Unschedualed offworld activation, incoming wormhole, closing the iris...

Now there is a nice idea, being able to close the iris on our lives and nobody be able to see what is happening behind it. Stargate is scifi in many ways but this idea is the one that is quite fantasy, because as a teacher there is no way you can be a teacher in the classroom from 9-4 then go home and do your own thing. Having taught in an adventist school the fishbowl life is even more pronounced then if we taught in public school, the parents and students see where you go to church, if you go to church, do you stay for potluck, do you drag you kids out when they are loud. all these thing add to their perception of you.
Is it fair that just because we have chosen the mantle of teacher that we morph like odo from DS9 from michael Crews normal person with quirks like everyone else to mike crews B.Ed superhuman with no flaws..... see it is lol-able when we read it in print but thats kinda the mentality alot (not all but alot) of parents have on teachers. Example if bob smith works in an office and is seen staggering home one night and comes to work looking a little rough the next day, his coworker will giggle and move on because "thaht just bob"....now if bob is a teacher who is seen staggering home and come into the class the next day looking rough there is outrage and probable complaints from parents. why the duality? bob the office guy could be dealing with multimillion dollar choices when hungover and its laughed off, but bob the teacher has a day of videos and work on assignments and its not acceptable. (THe previous rant is not a personal experience or plans for next week but just an extreme example to support my point)
ok with that i need a pangalactic garglebanger and some vogon poetry (see if you know scifi literature as well as shows)

Teaching in the fish bowl

ok so today we learned of julie amero the subsitute teacher that was almost jailed for having porn popups occur during a class with grade 7's. i have a few choice questions here.... first if a person is educated enough to be a teacher hopefully they would be smart enough to not come to school and start surfing porn, now that being said i dont know Ms. amero, she could have the same porn fixation as a 17 year old male, but common sense (which i must say is NOT common anymore) should have prevailed. Second if you have any knowledge of computers you know that popups can come from anywhere (as in this case it came from hair salon products web page). Finally had the justice system never seen those movies where you hear a gun shot, go to the room, see the body and gun, you pick up the gun and then the police burst in...while you hold the smoking gun, this is pretty much what happened to julie wrong place at the wrong time.

ok i need to relax, i'm going to the holodeck

electronic cheating

Captain supplimentary blog, stardate 20/01/2010

Continuing our course through the digital sector of the neutral zone we see potential cheating issues popping up like uncloaking romulan warbirds...all green and shimmery.... what i mean is that now that every student has a photo capable phone and iPod that could have anything loaded on it, how do we keep control of movement of information, it use to be if we seperate students so they couldn't glance at the neighbours paper we had won, but now if they can set a phone to viberate and get texted answers and unless we hear the buzz or see the glances under the table we wouldn't know whats going on. So is the answer a militant NO ELECTRONICS DURING TESTS! i guess that is what the government standardized test rules are so maybe gov knows best.....scary

ok i'm thirsty so Computer, earl grey, hot...BUZZZZZ

Digital Learners

Ok so yes we have moved into a new era of teaching with the influx of technology into the class and into students hands how do we stem the tide of problems we face with it? (it like little replicators invading an asgard ship (yes i jumped "star" programs to stargate but set your inertial dampeners to full power cause i will do that alot)). So what do we know, we know that these kids that we see in our classrooms are from a generation that watches HD everything and feels its a major infraction of their prime directive to manually have to do anything that doesn't involve a rechargable battery. This has given us an achillies heel to work with, even though the "this is boring" and "why do i have to learn this" shields are still at full power if we use this addiction to technology to get our message through the iPod shields we can tap into their love and knowledge of the media to promote the message. (students are sounding quite borg or replicator arent they???) N E WAYS....
so if we can use their precious (yes my precious precious...gollum gollum) ipod for podcasts of the subject area instead of the DREADED video presentation that involves, dramatic pause, VIDEO CASSETTS you have to rewind, we can use that to endear it to them... now i will be the first to admit that when i put these on during my bio class i was the first to make comment on the fashion and hair styles of the 80's and 90's BUT getting beyond big hair and brown suits we see that the underlying science is still sound (and i added running commentary if it was an outdated theory)
Another idea is the youtube phenomon, find a student in your class that cant go to you tube and search for stuff and spend hours watching and you will have found the enigma in a riddle child. so find a topic and send them to youtube to find video or animations, i used the animation search in my classes to aid the visual learners. (granted this idea will require more monitoring of student activities to make sure what they are watching but remember the ALT + TAB combination...i have caught many students trying to hide minimized windows.
ok that has been cathartic so i will "set a course for the alpha sector, maximum warp, engage."

Captains blog, stardate january 12 2010

Our mission is to boldly go where this blogger has never gone before, to explore new websites and seekout new civilized people... ok so it was a rough translation of startrek start but it works for this instance. This blog will follow the "ADVENTURES" of the final semester of my education degree, so you may hear much of assignments and practicum rants but will be done with the highest levels of scifi references and other obscure content. (if you know me you will probally understand).
So with this in mind, number one you have the bridge, i will be in my ready room if you need me.