Well, three weeks have passed since I set my goals. How are you progressing toward your goals? I made two goals for summer school. First, I wanted my students to increase their understanding of how technology could help them learn on their own and how technology could help them create products which will grab other people's attention. Secondly, I want to learn from my students what best meets their needs. How am I doing? The first goal is still going well. The students are well into their projects. Some of them have already finished one and are working on another. Many students have decided to make a living book. Showing the students and example really helped them to understand the final product. When I teach this during the regular school year I will take a lot more time to build up to this. I will be writing the unit outline in more detail in the next few days. Only two students have decided to complete the artist project. The project handout has helped greatly. This guides the students to fill in the necessary information on their artist. The first goal is going well. The second goal is a little more difficult to quantify. I am spending more time roaming the room checking on students. I think the students need more detailed information so I will make a more detailed project description for each one. I will continue to create any handouts, forms or graphic organizers that will help guide the students. I will remember that there are a lot of graphic organizers out there already that I can use. I found a great article on goals. Take a look! Click here. http://ccsmallbusiness.wordpress.com/2008/11/04/set-goals-for-your-business/
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Has there ever been a time when you wanted to say something to a teacher but did not want to? I had one of those experiences in high school. I was fifteen years old. I went to a small school and there were only thirty students in my whole grade, I don't mean my class, I mean the whole grade. So, that meant we all had class together almost every period. Many of us had been in the same class together since middle school. We had an English teacher that year who was a little strange. She seemed to be unaware of her surroundings, even to the point of being clueless if we were passing papers around. By the way, this was before texting, otherwise I am sure we would have been able to do that in class without being caught as well. She also seemed very scatter-brained and disorganized. When we asked a question we would receive one answer one day and a different answer the next. Class was very frustrating for us. Even my friend who became a doctor and a professor at Wake Forrest University, only got a B in her class. And my friend NEVER got another B in school, EVER! One day, during class the teacher took a break to go to the restroom. When she came back her zipper was not zipped all the way up. Word soon spread in the classroom and we all knew what was going on. None of us wanted to say anything. We were embarrassed for her embarrassed for us. I think one of the more courageous students in the class wrote her a note and gave it to her. That was definitely a time when I wanted to say something to a teacher but didn't Thankfully each of us are very different. We are not bothered by the same problems. What things bug you? One of the things that bug me are people who brag, especially the one who are obviously exaggerating. On Tuesday evening I went to the Angel's baseball game with my son. He does not exactly look like a son any more because he is fifteen. He is six feet, 3 inches though, that is why he looks so much older! Anyway, we were at the game, the Angels were playing the Detroit Tigers. Shortly after we sat down a family came to sit behind us. One of the boys, probably in high school, started bragging, he hardly stopped during the whole game. He said that in order to make the home team look better the person operating the radar gun for the pitchers pitching speed cheated. He said they measured the home pitchers when the ball left their hand and the away pitcher when the ball crossed the plate. How the person with the radar gun managed to measure two different points which are separated by one third of a second (.33) I don't know. In fact it seems impossible! So that's how he began. He continued when he made the home team's batting averages seem not as good as they were. He would say, "Oh, .295, that's not a very good batting average, and his slugging percentage is only .395." Seriously! Okay, those numbers are not Babe Ruth or Hank Aaron numbers but they are very good. Anyone who has to demean others in order to look good has lost a lot of credibility in my book. What bugs you? I am asked many questions every day, but this was the winner. Back in 1990, during the first Gulf War, I was teaching seventh and eight grade. One morning, during the bombing campaign, I was standing next to our principal on the playground discussing school business. One of the student came up to us. She seemed worried. She asked if any of the bombs were going to fall at our school in Monterey Park. We assured her that she was safe and that the war was on the other side of the world. She had nothing to fear at that time. She looked a little sad and disappointed. Before she turned to walk away she said, "I guess I'll do my homework then." We had been concerned for her state of mind since there was a lot of coverage of the war on television, she had hoped to get out of turning in her homework.
What questions have you asked your teachers? Well, two weeks have passed since I set my goals. How are you progressing toward your goals? I made two goals for summer school. First, I wanted my students to increase their understanding of how technology could help them learn on their own and how technology could help them create products which will grab other people's attention. Secondly, I want to learn from my students what best meets their needs. How am I doing?
The first goal is going well. The students have learned how to take still pictures and mold them together into a movie. The learned to add sound to the moving pictures and some of them will be adding narration to them shortly. Students have learned to us digital photo editing software to change digital photos and make them look more like paintings. Student have learned to create PowerPoint presentation with text and images. Student have also learned to make simple web sites using a fantastic WYSIWYG interface at www.weebly.com. The first goal is going well. The second goal is a little more difficult to quantify. I could see quickly that certain students learned more quickly than others and certain students needed more help guidance. Some were more independent and some wanted to check in with me every few minutes to see if what they were doing was correct. Moving around the classroom and asking the students questions is a quick way to assess their needs. Also looking at the work they are producing to see if it matches the goal of the project or the assignment. I need to create another form for the artist project. This form will have blanks for the students to fill in to prompt them to answer the questions they need to answer in order to assess each artist's work. I got myself into a big mess once. Well, only once that I feel like explaining now. I was twenty years old and we were hiking in the mountains above Hong Kong. We were so close to the city that we could see the lights and see the harbor. That gave us a false sense of security. I was hiking in an area called the Eagle's Nest. It was December but the weather was not too cold. Three families decided we would hike the short trail and come back to our cars before it was dark. The other kids in the family were between the ages of 12 and 20. Several of us moved ahead quickly while the parents took their time. We soon became separated but two of my friends knew exactly where we were going so I was not concerned. About half way through the hike you come to an area with a beautiful view of the city of Kowloon. We stood and watched for a while assuming that our parents and the younger kids would soon show up. After several minutes when they had not arrived we moved on. From there we went down some steps to connect to another trail to take us back to the parking lot. At the bottom of the steps we turned left. We arrived back at the parking lot in about 20 minutes. The temperature was dropping and it would be dark soon. We waited patiently for our parents and the others to arrive. As darkness descended there was no sign of them. We began to worry. We knew that none of us should be alone so some of us stayed at the cars in case the others returned and some of us headed back down the narrow trail that lead into the woods. It was difficult to see and as the light faded quickly we had to watch our step. We were running as quickly as was safe. Soon we reached the bottom of the steps. Two or three of us stayed at the bottom and two or three of us ran up the steps. They came back shortly to say there was no sign of the other at the look out point. The path continued on in front of us. This was new territory to us since we had turned left at the bottom of the steps to get to the parking lot, this was the other direction. We continued running. The ground was moist dirt, not quite mud, but slippery enough to make us move cautiously. After about 20 more minutes of running we found everyone. They had realized as it got dark that the path they were following was not leading them to where we had left the cars. They had turned around and started heading back. We were very concerned about Robert and Ian's mother since she has Multiple Sclerosis (MS) and she was fairly weak. The walk had been very long for here and turning the wrong direction had made it even longer. Robert and Ian helped their mom and the rest of us made sure our parents were okay. I was reminded of a rule I should have followed that day. Never separate your group. Always travel together. Many of us had climbed mountains and traveled for days in the mountains on dangerous paths. The nearness of the city and its lights had fooled us into thinking that the rule did not apply that Sunday afternoon. After all, it was just a Sunday afternoon walk. |
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