Sunday, December 2, 2012

Blog Post #13

1980's movie

In Brian Crosby's video, Back To The Future, he had a class of forth graders that had been enrolled with him for three years (grades four through six), and about ninety percent of his class are learning English as a second language and are at risk students for poverty. On the second day of school, Mr. Crosby had them fill out a survey which consisted of the following:
1. What city do you live in?
2. What state do you live in?
3. What country do you live in?
4. What is your address?
5. What is your home phone number?
Here are the scores to the survey:
1. 9 correct
2. 12 correct
3. 3 correct
4. 7 correct
5. 4 correct, 7 no land line, 13 did not know

Almost the entire class did not know what city, state, or country that they lived in, their address and home phone number. This was truly shocking to me. The reason I say that is because back when I was in Elementary School, I had already memorized all of that information by the age of five or six. Mr. Crosby had asked the question "Why is there such a disconnect for these students?" And the answer to his question was stated as "You don't want to have a narrowed curriculum for students and you want the students to have the schema to build the world." On a side note, he had mentioned that as of a couple years ago, his sixth grade students had one to one laptops with webcams and blogs to think outside of the box.

Mr. Crosby had his students do an experiment called "The "High Hopes" High Altitude Balloon Project" and in this experiment, they had used a coke can and watched it compress as the air mass was changing. The students were allowed to video the experiment and embed the code onto their blog individually and write about it; as in why did the aluminum can compress? Once they had done that then they went into the history of ballooning and saw that the maker Zeppelin wanted to use hydrogen to fill the balloon up instead of using helium. After learning this useful information about ballooning, they each made their own wiki page about the specific topic. They were to also write their own story about being the balloon, where they went and talk about what happened. And on their blogs, they had to write about their high hopes for their school, community and world.

He let them make their own trade cards and called them "strato cards" because they were going into the stratosphere and putting their high hopes and picture on it. The students made their own "High Hopes" webpage wanting people from around the world to comment about what their high hopes were. When the students got done with making their cards, they made a carrying case to put them in and tied it the balloon to have it sent up. The students were able to watch the balloon on the computer screen because of the video camera attached to the balloon. They were able to see how far up it went, to when it exploded, then to when the parachute deployed. Also, these students were able to track the balloon by using Google Earth. I wish that we had done that when I was in Elementary School what with making your own card, sending it off in a balloon, and watching it float towards the stratosphere before it could not take the pressure anymore and explode thus deploying the parachute.

After making this experiment/activity, the students had gained the following:
1. Read/write to learn content
2. Writing to clarify and share
3. Write to tell a story thus using creativity
4. Feedback from the teacher and peers globally
5. Articulate orally
6. Connect globally/aware globally
7. Authentic audience

Along with this, the students were also able to gain the possibilities of empowerment, activity, motivation, being included, connecting, and collaborating. I think that this activity was an excellent way for the students to learn about all the subjects and have fun by doing it. It would be interesting to see his students were more connected to their surroundings after having taken this class at the end of the school year.

student holding sign saying that he is a 21st century learner

In Michael Wesch's video, A Vision of Students Today, he had started the video with a quote from Marshall McLuhan "Today's child is bewildered when he enters the 19th century environment that still characterizes the educational establishment where information is scarce but ordered and structured by fragmented, classified patterns subjects, and schedules." I think that this quote still holds true because it is talking about how college classrooms are auditoriums, filled to maximum capacity, and the professor only uses the blackboard. With the world the way that it is now, the modern teacher can not just simply teach a lesson on the chalkboard. They have to be able to use pictures, animations, videos, and websites to illustrate the information. He had used the quotes " If the walls could talk what would they say?" and "If students learn what they do...what are they learning sitting here?". Well, if this were a world of talking walls and seats then they would probably say that the new students would not learn anything from the old style of learning. But obviously that is not the world we live in because only that is found in cartoons, if that.

He had a document using Google Docs with the title "A vision of students today" and of the two hundred students in the classroom, three hundred and sixty seven edits were made to the document. They had also surveyed themselves to bring us a message, some have suggested that technology can save us...some have suggested that technology alone can save us...on the benefits of the chalkboard. He had needed the video with another quote but this time from Josiah F. Bumstead "The inventor of the system deserves to be ranked among the best contributors to learning and science, if not the greatest benefactors of mankind." I think that that was a great way to end a discussion because inventors do in fact need to recognized for the inventions that benefited in this society. Also, it lead you wanting to know more and discuss more because of all the possibilities.

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