ECMP 355 Final Reflection

Hey everyone, here is my video that sums up my final reflection of ECMP 355, bear with it as I tended to ramble… turns out my career as an actress wouldn’t be very successful as being in front of the camera freaks me out haha… on an other note I apologize for the cellphone ring in the middle of my video… forgot to turn it on silent…. well… ENJOY! 🙂

Mentorship Interview

Check out my Google Hangout Interview with Lindsay Morhart. If you have any questions for Lindsay or I about the interview, you can write me a comment here or tweet lindsay @ https://twitter.com/lindsmor.

Thanks everyone and most of all a great big thanks to Lindsay for being a great mentorship teacher, I learned lots!!!

-Allison

TESTING: 1,2,3

Well, I decided with my recent strides in the technology world and help from professionals in the community to take this blogging thing to the next level. I always said if I found out this blogging thing was for me I would need to change the name, I didn’t want allisonsecomp35blog to be my identifier for forever. I think agottseligworld is the perfect name, originally I thought of it as “a gottselig world” then realizing when you put a-gottselig together it’s the initial of my first name haha WHO KNEW… and although to most people this sounds silly that I got excited over that, they need to know that little things such as coincidental puns are exciting parts to my world haha. 

So world, welcome to “A Gottselig World”, I will be keeping up… I hope but might take a little bit as finishing a degree and only having a week left means a bunch of loose ends to wrap up and tie with a bow and say goodbye 😦 ❤

What Should Schools Be?

Hello everyone, 

As I have mentioned before I am doing a project for a university class that is allowing me to focus my learning on any kind of moral education issue. I started my journey with classroom management techniques and realized that it wasn’t digging deep enough. I wrote a term paper on homeschooling from the family viewpoint and through that research saw homeschooling from the school viewpoint which then lead to options of de schooling and the negative lessons that the institution of schools teaches. I have been reading many books and in one of them it asks “what do we want children to learn and why?”

I decided to jump with this idea and poll the people around me to find out their answers. 

Here is the survey I created, I would LOVE your opinions and please share it with others, the more responses the better and more I learn! Thanks everyone in advance!!

 

Feeling of Guilt

I have been overcome with guilt the past week that I have been neglecting my blog. I have become so wrapped up in finishing the school year, moving home, and getting ready for my teaching career that school has, oddly enough, been put on the back burner. 

I am hopeful that once school ends I will continue to blog, I will have to change the name of my blog haha but I like the idea of having this space to connect with the world, even if no one reads it, it makes me feel accomplished.

So I am sending an apology to my blog and in hopes it will forgive me 😉

I’m interested though, how are the rest of my classmates coping with the idea that for most of us, our degree is done in 7-8 days 🙂

GOOD LUCK!

Tech Task # 11 A peek inside my future classroom

Description of Task:

• You’ve listened to several great teachers and speakers, connected with classrooms and hopefully you’ve been thinking about your future classroom. What will it be like? What are the must haves? Think not only about the technology but the pedagogy and learning environments. Embed a trail of links to the people and ideas we’ve explored this semester throughout your post.

It’s probably taken me so long to write this post because my future classroom is still something that’s very much on my mind. Since realizing that my future career is less than a month away, potentially, this idea is something that’s very important and been in the forefront of my mind.

My future classroom is going to be dependent on many things ill be dependent on how much technology is a loud in the school (or if I will have to implement BYOD, which was introduced to me in this course) how much technology I’m allowed to bring into the school (purchase, get funds for, ect), and also time! Time is a huge factor as my future and ideal classroom probably won’t happen in a day, probably won’t happen overnight, and probably not even in a year. It will probably take five years for my future classroom, the one that I would like to envision and that have been invited to envision from the speakers that we have had throughout this class a semester, will take a long time. I will now share with you ideas that I would like to have in my classroom and ideas that have been presented through this course.

• I have always been in awe by google and the wonders it can do, however, from this class and listening to Michael Wacker and Alec Couros. I have seen beyond the surface of google that I saw before. Tools such as google documents, google forums (I have already used this tool in my mentorship classroom and loved it!) and then the cool and innovative Google Hangout, shown to us by Hall Davidson. These presenters have not only enhanced my google knowledge but shown me that google and google tools will be a big part of my future classroom. I have always said that when I become a classroom teacher one thing I would like to implement is how to use google properly, especially in middle years I think this is beneficial as it helps to receive the information you ACTUALLY want, and don’t have to search 10 pages to find.

• From being exposed to working with a blog, I have seen the great potential a blog can have. Kathy Cassidy, was one presenter who showed me how even little kids, in grade 1 or 2 can use a blog and how it can benefit their learning. Kathy also helped in easing my weariness about parental reactions. I like the wordpress blog for a few reasons. I like the simplicity of it, it is easy to start up and yet allows for just enough creative options to make it your own without overwhelming you. The second reason I enjoy this blog site is because when you post a new comment, it allows for the option “help inspire me”. I think this is a great creative writing prompt. I see the benefits of using this in classrooms for creative writing purpose and helping those students who do not know what to write about. My mentor Lindsay, has shown me Kid Blog, http://kidblog.org/morhartsminions/, which from browsing the students blogs and talking to them sounds very simple and I like how Lindsay uses them in her classroom, to me what she does with blogging with her students makes the idea seem manageable. 

• Speaking of my mentor I will tell you about what I have learned from her and what she has helped instil in me what I want in my future classroom. I was lucky enough to spend time with Lindsay in her school and watch her connections within the school. Lindsay is the Vice Principal and part time teacher of various classes. Lindsay is not only respected by all of her co workers that I met with but she has the respect and love of her students. This is something I hope to one day have as an educator and co worker. I love Lindsay’s teaching style, she does not command respect or ask for it, she simply requires it which is something all great teachers need. Her relationship with the students is amazing! She is able to talk to them and connect with them in a way that she is still their teacher but I think they also view her as a great source of information. Now that I am done brown nosing haha 😉 I want to talk about Discovery Education. This is a program that Lindsay’s school division, and my soon to be school division, has provided teachers with. I have talked with Lindsay about it and she had the grade 8’s talk to me about how they view it and both parties really enjoy this device. Comments from the students mentioned things such as “I can learn at my own pace, because they are given access to it wherever”, “The video’s embedded into the lessons help me to summarize what I just learned in a fun way” and also the interactive games and activities were another addition they mentioned helping aid in their learning. One student even mentioned that sometimes it didn’t even feel like learning because it was actually fun. Now these are grade 8’s, probably one of the best managed grade 8 groups but also provided some very insightful and wise feedback of the program.

• I talked about this is my tech task from last week but I love the idea so much it has become a MUST HAVE in my classroom next year. I love the idea from Clarence about Stalk Writing. Teaching english is my area of weakness as I was not exposed to much in internship, pre internship or through classes and this Stalk Writing helped in showing me how cool english class can be! I also liked Clarence’s blog rubric and will probably end up using it for grading my blog in this course!

All of our presenters have been so amazing and each one has shown me something new I want to implement… some day. The problem of “some day” is one that made me hesitant to write this blog post. It has come to the point where I actually get mad when I see these amazing teachers in their amazing classroom implementing amazing technological ideas, because of some day. I have heard the statistics, I have felt the pressure during internship and I am dreading my first few years of teaching. My anger that I have towards the presenters is not because of them but because I know it will take time to get to their level and their point of teaching. The workload of a first year teacher and learning the ins and outs will be enough that I do not want to stress myself out by trying to implement too much technology. I will try things here and there but my key for my first year at least will be survival. Teaching is great, it is my passion and it has benefits, but the stress of planning and planning does not go away with the end of the school day and that is what I am looking to overcome. So my future classroom ideas will continue to grow and I will store them in the back of my mind so that when the day comes and I am ready to implement them I have the people (thanks to this class) there to support me and provide me with ideas and helpful tips.

• I want to thank all of our presenters, and dean for introducing me into the world of endless imagination and technology. I have heard your words and am grateful for each of them. Please be on stand by in three years, I will come a calling 🙂

-Allison