Week+5

So I just finished our Grant Team video. I have to say it is pretty good. I had to reduce the quality to post it, so the quality is not that great. Here it is!

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The two days before Thanksgiving Break, the Algebra I Honors classes decided we were going to create student led Self-Help Vodcasts of how to solve different types of problems from Chapter 4 Graphing Linear Equations. Wow is all I can say. When my education profs in college explained that planning is what makes a project run smootly they were not kidding. We were not prepared for the issues that occured during those two days. We started out by explaining what would be occurring on the Friday before break. Then on Monday we broke the classes into groups. Actually we allowed the students to choose their own groups, which didn't go too badly. Then we assigned each group a section from the chapter. Ok so far. Then we explained to pick a couple of problems from each section that they thought other students would have problems on. This is where it got a little tricky. They did not understand they should plan what they were going to say and who was doing what and it seemed like we needed to explain every step to each group. Some groups took off with the idea and got very creative while others did not really enjoy the project. We alos, allowed some of the groups to pre-create their SmartBoard lesson and write out all of their problems. Others were slightly behind. The second day we thought we had it covered. Each group would record their group and I would spend some time editiing the vids. Well most of the groups got done while others were lacking. Some of the vids were very creative while others were quite dull. I think next time we will try to pick the groups ourselves and space out the more creative people. This chapter was more of a trial run and next chapter should be a lot better planned and the vids should increase in quality. I will post one of the student vids when I have finished editing them.

I had hoped there would have been some comments on our Student Needs Assessment by now. I like to know how things look from someone elses view. I tend to see my own work through rainbow shaded glasses. O well, I guess I can just wait them out. However, I am very excited to see the results when we finally give the assessment next week. I think the information we obtain will be very interesting. The size of our sampling is about a quater of the school and will consist of all ages and walks of life. I am so excited. I think we as educators believe the students have more access than they really do. I am going to make a couple of predictions: 55% of students have a home computer 80% of these have internet access 75% have an mp3 player 100% find that technology helps them understand the material better Most of the comments at the end have something to do with allowing students more privelages on the internet

I think we should conduct this survey every year, just to see how we are progressing as a community or if we are progressing.

I finally got a chance to watch the video for this week. I was not as impressed as I have been in previous weeks. I think it is becuase it is the basically the same thing over and over, just with different texts and backgrounds. I think we have gottten the point that students are changing and the teachers need to change with them and that we are major influences in their lives. We have the capability to change lives for good or for bad. We have the power to incourage and develope these students. i just wish we would see something different with the same "wow" factor from when we started the course. [|Our Teachers Today - Video]

I love our grant team. Even the teachers I am not working with right now are coming up with ideas of how to incorporate 21st Century Learning. Here is a video of Andrea's English class. They recreated Edgar Allen Poe's "The Pit and the Pendulum" It's awesome. Again sorry about the quality I had to reduce it to fit on this site.

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Melissa and I finally got the mics for recording lessons so here is a cleaner and more streamlined version of how we are recording lessons.

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In addition, we had our students create their self help videos. They are pretty cool.

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