WEEK THREE AND THE MOVIES

This weeks movies really were a view into the near future of what we need to address as schools. A great many students now see schools as a place to socialize. They are board with the curriculum and do not feel challenged. It is not that we are not pushing them or providing them an opportunity to grow we just are not turning their light on. Many students are turned off in the classroom and refuse to be involved in the traditional lecture top down teaching format. They want to be challenged in different ways.

In one of my courses it was stated that students receive almost all of blooms highest level of cognitive domain in evaluation, synthesis, analysis, and application when they get home and jump on their computers and spend hours researching things and subjects that are of interest to them. It is not that our students can not learn its just that they want to be taught differently than we were or are.

In the movie about Sam she sounds like a great example of this. She demonstrates she is creative and talented. She spends hours on the computer and even refers to it as her second life. How many of us would love to have a student spend 12 hours on a subject on a non school day. I really liked how she explained the book was easier for her to comprehend electronically. I was once had a superior tell me we can not let that happen in education. Students must learn to love to pick up a book and read it. I FEEL THAT IS ONE OF BIGGEST PROBLEMS IN EDUCATION WE NEED TO ELIMINATE THAT TYPE OF THINKING.

When viewing the second film on using games I felt this is an area that could be expanded a lot
 more in schools with students at all levels. We use the stock market game in personal finance and play risk in social studies. I then realized we could play battleships in geometry. I am not sure where it could stop. I also feel this could be a great classroom management tool and used as a reward for students.

At my school every student has the ability to use a laptop in class so it would defiantly be part of our daily lesson plan. While teaching a unit on the Civil War I would show them  google maps and  them how the states split up. I would first pre test them to divide the states as they thought they divided looking at a map of today and then use a time line from the period. We would then do a Virtual tour of the Battle of Gettysburg.  The last part of the project would be to find things in common with  the North and South and things that were different. This would include the economy and the military.
                                                                         
One of my biggest challenges is that we are 95 percent free and reduced lunch and most my students do not have computers at home. We do have a activity bus scheduled everyday and the students can go to the media center to use computes.

We along with most schools have a large percentage of students who refuse to do home work. I believe that we can make a big change in this by assigning home work that involves technology. Now that we understand today's students are motivated by the use of technology then that is how homework should be assigned and my students would be given the ability to use the media center everyday.

When looking at this weeks readings it is very interesting to see how computers have been used in the classroom over the years and its evolution. Computers have gone from being seen as a threat to now a vital teaching tool to assist the student and the teacher. Many good things have come from this. At my school we use it in a program called School Within a School. This is where students come for credit recovery and stay on track for graduation. I do agree with the text when it points out not all outcomes are positive.

One of the negative outcomes of Word Processing could be that students lack the ability to write legibly. I have seen this all to often at the high school level. It is not uncommon to see seniors graduate with honors and not be able to write without the the aide of the computer. This is a small price to pay as we prepare our students for the next level of education and to become productive citizens.