Techlearning.com was an interesting blog that was the first of this course to really hit home. As the laptop service and support coordinator for the school my job is to ensure the success of the longtime 1:1 program of the school. It is nothing to walk by class room after classroom and see all the students actively focussed in on there laptop. The question we deal with is what are they working on? Chating or emailing homework? Project or Gaming? Catching up on school activities or watching youtube? Truely the tool can be a distraction, life can be a distraction. Life after highschool will have distractions. We need to allow children to grow up, with guidence. We need to teach them about the world and technology they will be using in the work place. The school is on a teder-toder. We must stay balanced while optaining our goals…
Why I Don’t Assign Homework by Mr. Meyer was the first blog I read. I dont believe this philosophy was around in my school days. Not sure what the difference would be in myself one way or another? I beleive it has alot of practicality, and some great philosophy. I am very doubtful that it can be defined as useable 100% of the time. Math is the example I see as the biggest example. Math students basically excell in math from application. It is difficult to perfect a habit to just study for a math test. A student may not know if he/she can do a problem till they hands on try the problem. As an instructor it would be a concern about the amount of class time class dedicaded to problems in class. I do believe supervised study helps the student stay on the proper track, and not build wrong techniques. I didnt want to sound quite so negative, since I do believe Mr. Meyer has a great application to instruction. I have not, however pictured how I could get to the place where I could claim the same about ” no homework”.
The next bog I read was The Ripe Enviorment was very appealing. I believe that all the “tools” and all the “knowledge” doesnt make the perfect application. Ensuring that the enviorment is good for learning must be kept high on the list of things to do to ensure learning. If you find the perfect aplication for you,in your subject, with you particular age and type student it will not work 100% across the board in every other classroom. This author broke down some great targets of how to aply your skills, tools, and knowledge, to achieve our common goal of teaching. Our goal in other words is keeping your “eye on the ball” by never forgetting the purpose is teaching the students in a way that they interact, think for themselves, and retain the information. I also liked on the list #4 and am interested in an elaboration of that thought and how he/she would aply that. In all it could be a list (if I was a teacher) I could picture putting up as a occassional check list of making sure I was Teaching.
The habit i believe is my strongest and easiest would definetly be Habit 5. why my weakness is now Habit 3 is due to my strength in networking a problem to however it can be solved the easiest and the best. Someone has already had every problem or question i run into. All I have needed to do is keep an open forem with those people and assests that make the solving of my question ”simple and quick”.
The most challenging habit I see right now would probabably have to be Habit 3. I would say once upon a time this would be considered my strength, as I looked at many challenges as a puzzle. A puzzle I just needed to figure out. Now a days in my field of technology, I have learned that I have my specialties, and if I need to figure something out that is not in my specialty field, I ask the person who’s specialty it is.
There are several habits I feel are going to very enabling for me. I have a feeling it will probably change a few times throughout the K12 course. Since I need to to answer the question now…I will say Habit 4. If I can master my confidence in knowledge, I am not “to old of a dog to learn a few new tricks”. If I can fight through and get a little work out of my few remaining working brain cells I should be able to master a few of these habits along the way.
