GOALS:

Here we are at the beginning of a new semester, and as always it is a fresh start and a new opportunity to learn and grow both as a professional and human being.

So let's address a few basic questions: What are some of your personal or professinal goals in EDUC 522 this semester. What would you like to be able to accomplish at the end of this class that you could not do at the beginning? What technologies might you be able to utilize to better reach all learners and learning preferences? What unit(s) might you want to work with in this class? What do you think?

Take a few minutes here as we begin to gather your thoughts and to brainstorm on a plan for progess in this class.

READY TO GO!

Thumbs up!

With respect to the Web 2.0 and modern multimedia, the possibilities for classroom use are nearly endless. We have the power today on our desktop computers to do things that fifteen years ago would have required tens of thousands of dollars and elaborate training. This is a new power given to teachers.

But how will we use that power? With the nearly endless possibilities for innovative and engaging lesson plans and projects using technology comes the heavy (immense?) responsibility of thinking up, designing, creating, and executing such custom curriculum. What Web 2.0 projects do you wish to use in your own unique educational situation? How can you use video and visual learning to increase student engagement and achievement? Not small questions, nor ones that will be answered in one day or one week.

Look both at the big and the small picture. Think of long-term goals that you might accomplish in five years. Also think of a short term goal you could use as a final project in this class.

BEGINNING OF CLASS SELF-ASSESSMENT: HYPERMEDIA AND MY PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE

We live in a world where modern media reigns supreme. Our students spend a large portion of each day watching TV, going to the movies, playing video games, and browsing the World Wide Web. Modern special effects can dazzle the eye. The contemporary American has a very sophisticated eye for visual learning. This is the world we live in, and our students have known nothing else.

Yet for all too many American students the K-12 classroom and classroom instruction has not changed at all in fifty years. The saying is that if Rip van Winkle came back from a decades long nap in 2007, the only thing that he would recognize as unchanged is the local high school classroom. In many schools chalk boards are only now being replaced by white boards. Richard Geib was astounded in 2000 – at the end of the first big Internet boom – when director of technology Ted Malos proudly announced that every teacher would now have their own telephone in the classroom. (“Wow! We are now only twenty five years behind the rest of the country in technology!” I thought to myself.) Currently, digital projectors are only beginning to move into classrooms in elementary and secondary classrooms in a major way. Teachers are still all too often considered mere deliverers of technology rather than creators of it. A common refrain one stills here in the American educational landscape are “teacher proof” lesson plans made by some textbook company or other.

But the rise of cheap and powerful digital technologies gives every classroom teacher the tools and power to make their own high quality curriculum. We don’t have to wait for some media specialist from Houghton Mifflin to make it for us; we can do it ourselves just about as they can. And when it comes directly from the teacher who will deliver the lesson plan, it almost always will be stronger and come across better to students. The pre-packaged textbooks and canned “teacher-proof” lessons are while not horrible never really outstanding. Why should we settle? Why should our students receive less than our very best? Why should the practice of the teacher be less than the product of decades of high-quality, custom curriculum practiced and honed to near perfection?

Hollywood spends millions to develop a movie using some of the most creative minds in our society. Under fair use guidelines, we can use limited sections of for classroom instruction. With an affordable digital camera and editing software, we can even make our classroom into a movie studio. We can project images and maps and painting and music into our classrooms. Multimedia is an incredibly powerful tool in the hands of a skilled, creative, and reflective education professional.

Yet each of us finds ourselves in unique educational situations. Teachers in a low achieving school with a high population of English language learners living in poverty will have different needs than another classroom somewhere else with very different students. Elementary teachers have different needs than high school instructors. Those who instruct adults have their own unique needs and requirements. Each class we find ourselves teaching will be populated by different kids with unique interests, talents, and weaknesses than the previous classes. So we adopt our lessons to the unique needs of our students.

What do the students in your classroom need? Where would you like to develop new lesson plans and instructional multimedia? What lessons do you already have that you would like to strengthen?

Please go ahead and respond to this blogsite posting by next Wednesday May 2, 2007.

DEFINE YOUR NEEDS AND GOALS

"Teacher, help us to learn as well as we can!"'

CASE STUDY, NEXT DRAFT

Go ahead and refine your ideas further over the next week as we head towards the finishing line here in this blogsite entry.

CASE STUDY PONDERINGS

For your final case study, you will want to examine the potentialities for blogs both today and into the future. Think both about what you might be able to achieve pedagogically this next year, and also think well into the future about where you might be able to expand into. Think big, think ambitiously! There is no limit to what you could choose to do with blogs, taking into account multimedia and all its possibilities.

While you brainstorm about the technology of Weblogs, keep these questions in mind:

• Implication on the classroom environment -- how has/can this technology help teaching and learning to address the learning needs of all students?


• Ethics of using the technology in the classroom -- what are some of the new issues we need to address because of this technology? Include issues as related to parents, teachers, and students.


• Where has it come from and where is it going? How might bandwidth increases and ubiquitous Internet access both in school and at home alter your use of Weblogs?

This case study will not come due for some two weeks, but take this opportunity to let your mind start to chew over the technology of the Weblog in the educational setting.

The Blogsite, as Possibly Applied to MY Classroom:

Take a couple of hours to see what other teachers have done with blogsites in their own classrooms, and then filter that information through your own understanding of teaching and what will work in your own classroom. The purpose of this blogsite posting is to help you to find best practices by other educators and then to begin to see ways in which you can employ blogs and blogging in your own unique teaching practice according to the individual needs of the school where you teach.

This blogsite posting, coming as it does as the beginning of our class, is an opportunity for you to think WIDE and BIG. As teachers we have almost unlimited creativity in making our lesson plans. So what might you do with this powerful read/write technology?

I suggest getting an early jump on seeing what other teachers are doing with blogs, and then allowing it all to sit in your mind before posting towards the end of the week.

At any rate, this blogsite posting will come due next Monday June 24, 2006 at the beginning of our class meeting. Good luck!

WHERE DO I WANT TO TAKE MY FINAL VIDEO?

Mr. Josh Dinkler put it quite well: "I am really learning that digital video editing is an art, and not just something that can be plopped together." How true! It is not necessarily about learning how to "cut" film footage or insert audio or titles. Those things can be learned in an evening or two. The hard part is the creative process - the deciding what to do, how to tell a story, mood and tone, the building of suspense, the climax and resolution, etc. Often the difference between a mediocre and excellent video has to do with the opening "great idea." That is where the true creativity and "deep level thinking" takes place. That is where genius and true talent makes themselves felt.

So before you actually start making your storyboard and shot lists, give some serious thought to what are your goals with and what do you want to do in your final video for this class. You can frankly do just about anything you want! But that great idea will not necessarily just come to you out of the air. No, it will require some deep thought and introspection.

Use this blogsite posting to work through the larger creative thinking behind your video. Of course this is the beginning stage of the creative process and your final decisions might look very different from what you write here, but that is to be expected.

What are you thinking about doing for your final video? Who is your audience? What is the purpose of the video? What music or "feel" would best achieve your purpose? What music do you need, if any? What shots do you need to shoot with camera? How will you put together the audio and visual components to achieve the desired artistic impact? EXPLAIN!

Now that we have the beginnings of our web presences up and running, let's take a moment to focus in on what might be the ultimate goal of it:

What is the deeper thinking and "big idea" of your website! How can you go beyond a simple "vanity site" to help your students to learn more than before? How might it enable you to teach better than before? Make sure you examine the question of whether the Internet and a web presence is even worth your time.

Here at the beginning it is well worth the effort to think clearly through these ideas. The idea is that this week you can choose what might be your final project (an instructional unit? webquest?) for this class. Please be ready to present to the rest of the class your tentative thoughts on a final project. You need not make a decision right away, but it is definitely time to start thinking it all over.

TEN YEARS FROM NOW

After looking around at what other teachers have done with Web pages, blog, and bulletin boards, what use can you find for the World Wide Web in your own classroom and teaching? Where do you see yourself going?

What might you want to focus on as final project in this class? What can you build? How will your students benefit?

Think through the next five years... understanding that nothing great was done overnight. See the long term; what vision do you have for yourself online?

Take a step back in this blogsite posting and see your web presence in the larger picture of your career and professional growth as a teacher!

CAN A WEB PRESENCE HELP ME TO TEACH BETTER?

In this first assignment we are going to examine exactly why might a teacher use the World Wide Web in their teaching. What would be an appropriate and useful pedagogical task via the Internet? What is mere "fluff" and a waste of time? It would be wise to toss around these "big ideas" before we jump off and start authoring for the Web.

So let us get started: Can a teacher webpage help you to teach better and students to learn more? How? Why? What are some examples of how you might be able to use blogs, bulletin boards, wikis, and webpages to do your job more professionally? How might the World Wide Web in your classroom enable students to learn more than they would otherwise. What do you think?

Secondly, think over the next decades of your career and where technologically we are going as a society. Do you think the World Wide Web will play more or less of a role in our society? Will computers and Internet access become as ubiquitous as phones and TV sets? How might your teaching mirror these changing technological trends in the larger American society? Technology never rests and is always changing, and it would be good to stay on top of the learning curve and anticipate how you might adapt to increased bandwidth and omnipresent computing.

Or is Web pretty much a waste of time? Are we going in the wrong direction educationally and culturally? Or is the Internet useful sometimes and a waste of time others? EXPLAIN!

Please explore these questions please in this blog posting. Enjoy!

THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY!

As we start this class in educational web design, please take some time to cruise the World Wide Web and see what other teachers have already done. Most teachers I know would agree with the claim that they learn best from other classroom teachers, not specialists hired for "in service" training. Much of this technology is still very new, and "early adopters" are breaking new ground in how the World Wide Web can be empployed as a tool for teacher instruction and student learning.

There is no need to re-invent the wheel. Get ideas from other teachers, "tweak them" to your liking, and make them your own. Get out there and see what other teachers are doing - the good, the bad, and the ugly!

For this blogsite posting, identify THREE teacher websites that you think are very well done and from which you might learn and even copy; and then one site that is a total stinker, a waste of time, and which holds no value whatsoever.

Enjoy!

DIVERSITY AMONG AMERICAN PRIVATE SCHOOLS:

In this blogsite posting, let us examine the diversity of schools within the private school realm. Tonight in class I broke you into four different groups looking into the mission statements of the four following kinds of private schools: Muslim, Jewish, Christian, and non-sectarian.

So please go ahead and research out on the World Wide Web and find an intriguing school mission statement on your assigned kind of private school and “copy” and “paste” in into your blogsite entry. Please remember: no repeats of schools, and “first come, first serve.”

DO YOUR HOMEWORK!

Before you even show up to your interview with a school administer, be sure and do your homework. In particular, make sure and research the numbers with respect to the school you will visit. What "numbers"?

Well, there is the API score, the ethnicity and socioeconomic status of the students. There is the number of students on free and reduced lunch programs, and the languages spoken at home. What is the average years of experience of the teachers, and how many are in their first year of teaching? What is the class size average? You can see all these scores at greatschools.net. The “numbers” do not tell you everything about a school by a long shot; on the other hand, the numbers don’t lie.

Secondly, decide here on this blogsite entry exactly where it is you want this interview to go. Why did you choose this school? What is it that interests you? In the very first part of your interview, you may want to explain that

1.) you are a La Verne University students who is conducting this interview on behalf of a requirement in a class on educational philosophy dealing with ethical and political issues schools face today;
2.) and why you chose to visit this administrator’s particular school.

Once this administrator knows where you are coming from, it should allow them to understand what is going on and to help get you the information you need.

So, to sum it up, in this blogsite posting please post some of the raw data about the school you chose; and then explain in four or five sentences why it is you chose that school. Besides satisfying this week’s homework requirement, you will be only that much closer to being ready to sit down for your interview with the school administrator.

A TALE OF THREE SPOKESMEN:

We have looked at various philosophies of education in our class so far; among them are the following:

CRITICAL PEDAGOGY (Peter McLaren):The search for social revolution and social justice takes precedence in this educational philosophy as teachers serve as "change agents" and "de-school" the poor before they can be assimilated into a ruthless and unfair global economic system where the dominant metanarrative excludes and exploits the disadvantaged "Other" (excluded by virtue of their gender, race, socioeconomic status, or sexual preference). If you do not against militate against the iniquitous status quo, you are serving it either consciously or unconsciously.

THE LIBERAL (Willard Daggett): The United States as needing to update its antiquated educational system to compete against India, China, and Eastern Europe in an increasingly globalized economy where the Internet and competition have put America at risk as a preeminent world power. No Child Left Behind as both a civil rights and a economic competitiveness issue as America tried to balance the need for academic excellence and academic equity.

THE CONSERVATIVE (John Stossel):The American public educational system in crisis because of a calcified, monopolized system of mediocrity and worse where the teacher's unions hold school choice, voucher programs, and merit pay hostage with their political influence. In comparison to Belgian students, American schools are "stupid" and produce "stupid" students.

Which story do you find most convincing and true to life? Least convincing? Why? PLEASE EXPLAIN!

BOYS AND GIRLS:

In our class we have studied "Feminism" as an educational philosophy that holds women to be disadvantaged in the educational setting, as well as in larger society.

The "traditional" feminist argument ran something like this: teachers call on and give more attention to boys than to girls in the classroom; that these questions directed to the boys were often more academically challenging than those directed to girls; and that boys were rewards for their intellectual contributions, while girls were recognized for their looks and general deportment.

This view has been increasingly challenged in recent years by a growing body of data that shows that boys are the ones poorly served by the public schools. New arguments claims that women now outnumber men in universities and outscore them on almost all standardized tests in the K-12 system -- "Very well-meaning people," says Dr. Bruce Perry, a Houston neurologist who advocates for troubled kids, "have created a biologically disrespectful model of education [for boys]."

But is that true? Drawing from your own experiences as a student as well as an adult, please explore the phenomenon of gender in American public schools and speculate on where you come down in the dialectic between the "traditional feminist" claims and the new arguments on behalf of boys, as evidenced in the recent "Newsweek" article.