Guest speakers fron the Calgary Catholic Board

Build 21century learning environments

-supporting one another in our practice
 -supporting teachers
-going from the classic lecturer to listener to active collaboration 
-Aisi = Alberta government help for teachers
-searching vs research
I love the term elbow partners, very creative way of saying turn to the people beside you. 
I am pleased to hear that the government did not cut this program completely, though a 50% drop in funding is substantial. The Literacy and numeracy is exactly what my partner teacher was trying to tell me when I was doing my practicum; they are beyond the subjects of Math or English just concentrating on the skills. Need to use technology to support tasks that are interesting. I love the commercial that one of the speakers ended with to illustrate the point that technology can only be used when it makes sense. The man kills a fly with his ipad and smashes the ipad far worse than the fly.
I love the points the speaker is making about the loss of skills in handwriting and wrist and finger strength. I noticed it in my first practicum and especially when I tried to get the students to sew a Christmas craft that I remember doing in grade 3. I was working with grade 5 students and they could not sew for the life of them; the project took all day. If someone had worked on fine motor skills when they were younger or even if I had thought to do some work before then it would have helped them to be more successful.

Be Positive!

I was unaware that showing library movies was illegal in the classroom.I really appreciated the link to the movie data base.

Working on the Circumference of the Earth

This was a fun task to complete and I know I would want to do this with my own students if I taught grades 5 or 6. I learnt the most about creating blog pages and what a powerful tool they can be in school. I would love for my class to have enough time to access the computers for a blog page. Unfortunately the reality is that this might be a homework assignment or a year long project that has only a few entries because of the limited time most classes have in the computer labs. Blogging would be a great way to get students to reflect and become more accomplished typers. I believe that being familiar with this type of technology will benefit me in the instance that now that I know how to use it  I more likely will.
Because our group had difficult time schedules we had to do quite a bit of work by correspondence and shared passwords. I found that this was a very effective way to work as long as the whole group understands the deadlines and objectives of the project. I think our group did very well when we divided the tasks and had an outline created. It was the easiest to do because of our schedules and everyone became accountable to the group for specific projects. I put the most pressure on the group because of my holiday plans and they were very accommodating by agreeing to meet a week earlier than we would have normally to plan everything out. Being away I did not see the finished project until I returned and was really impressed how it all came together. The most frustrating thing that we encountered was even though we all thought the project would be a great experience, we could not replicate it because it was the wrong time of the year and we could not get in touch with anyone from a school on the same latitude as us to complete the experiment. Because of this we had to find a more complicated way to figure out the circumference which involved several extra steps. I felt disappointed that I could not be part of the final steps to putting the project together, but I really enjoyed my holiday.  Next time I think I will invest in a fortune teller to inform me if the holidays written in the handbook are correct or not so I could be part of the whole process. the only thing I need to work on now is finding those contacts so that if i do attempt this project in the future I will have another teacher who is 500km away that I can work with.

Presentation on Second Language Aquisition and Researching

I have always been really  interested in learning other languages. I have learnt French, German, Japanese, Spanish and Latin and the FL Teach site looks great for me to find sources to translate and help improve my vocabulary. I really forgot how isolated I was when I lived in a small town considering language learning. We were lucky because my brother and I were in a French Immersion school that had teachers from Quebec. I remember though, being 11 and wanting to learn Japanese and having to use a huge old textbook and the audio tapes. Even access to the internet have improved the ability of students to better learn a second language.The group presenting gave some excellent sites and ideas about what to do  to help assist and hook students learning.

The second group also gave some excellent sites. I am really excited to use Jing; it looks like a great program. I also didn't know about the e-library on the Calgary Public Library site. It is just amazing that you can get papers from around the world for free and that are current. I would get so frustrated in my first year when I would find a great video and not be able to play it in the class. In this way you can download the video and share it in the class. I found this class extremely helpful and I cant wait to use it.   

Visit from Neil Stephenson

"Inquiry is how you think about the topics that you teach." 
                                                             -Neil Stephenson
I was really impressed with Neil as a speaker and the information he provided for the class. I was really interested in the Calgary Science School as a school and their modus operandi. I loved how they decided against expanding into two schools or a high school because they wanted to maintain their small status and focus on  perfecting their teaching skills to help others. I was not surprised that there are 3/4 more boy's at the school than girl's, but I was disappointed. 
 I really agreed with what he had to say about the inquiry procedure. I really liked how Neil made a point to discuss the fact that many teachers think that just having the technology in their classroom will help. I love that it is not about the technology; it is about the thought that goes behind the task that the teacher decides how to use the tools and why. He also reiterated the fact that teachers have to balance the fine line between  teacher centered classrooms and student centered classrooms. I just loved this class there was so much information to think about. 

Kate's and D'Arcy's Presentations

I have used Prezi before in a presentation but I did not know about Google docs. I'm not sure if this would help me out at all because it sounds like it is just the same as the windows programs. Though everyone would like to say that they don't support a multi- billion dollar monopoly, why fix what isnt broken? I understand that you can work on the projects from anywhere but in my first year i will be at the school till late hours  and probably working on my own laptop. The second presentation was more to do with what is possible with  a little technology. I think the idea is great for secondary students but not elementary. It would be very unlikely that all the students would have access to Iphones. It brings into question of whether a teacher would even want to bring Iphones into the classroom for independant movies. I know that my students from my last practicum would not have been able to handle it and they were a very well behaved and focused group. I was hoping that in these presentations we would go over how to use this software and little backdoor codes or cheats we could use to make things easier. 

Technology and Me

I have always been comfortable with technology. In my practicum I used the smart board for attendance and for Math and Literacy questions and assignments.The Smart board was pretty much always on and I thought that it did benefit the students to have daily interaction with this particular technology. I think that students need to be very literate in these different tools because they will be used as stepping stones for other systems that haven't been invented yet;just like when I was younger and used the Macintosh computers to play the Recycling game or practiced typing. Having said that, there are aspects of technology that I do not like. I feel that the way we use technology is very irresponsible. We have made our society more reliant on the unknown and the fast-food model of consumption. The idea of "I want it , and I want it NOW!" is just being reinforced so that potential consequences have no time to be reflected upon. Another concern for me is that though people are using technology, not many of them understand how and why it works. Who can actually build a computer from scratch? I know I cant and I have taken Computer tech. courses. Is this the right way to deal with a potentially powerful societal tool?