How using differentiated instruction can benefits us

    Many teachers think about their content they want to teach in their classroom and how they want to teach it. What makes a good teacher is how they teach the lesson to meet the learning styles of every child's needs. When you think of differentiated learning you think of how am I gonna reach out to everyone of my students learning styles. However, we rarely think of how it can benefit us.
   I think that having an assessment in the begin of a school year will benefit the class as a whole. That way right off the bat, you know how you have to differentiate your lesson for the class.  Their are a few different types of learning styles to test for, two examples are Gardner's multiple intelligences or the very basic auditory, visual, or kinesthetic. There are websites to do it on your own time as well. 
Learning Style Exam

Once someone knows how they learn, it opens doors for them to excel better. As a student, I know that if I see something I will learn and understand it better as opposed to hearing someone explain how they did it. For a child this can be a huge game changer! By us using differentiated instruction, we as the teacher are learning how to access every students strengths of learning. This helps us realize that we need to change up lesson accommodate for each students needs. This helps us realize that all children do not all learn the same, this tells us that we need to work to think out all possibilities that would benefit a child during their learning processes. Our job it to help each child grow as a learner and keep each child to be on the same track. With differentiated instruction in the classroom this will help promote each child to reach their goals to move up to the next grade. A classroom is where learning never ends, we teach them but the students also teach us!

Democratizing Technology!

   There are many effective ways to use technology in the classroom. If technology is used correctly it can be very beneficial for both the students and the teacher. Technology could be used in a lesson, for homework, or even at home as reinforcement for the students.

   Some types of technology are a n alternative way to have differentiated instruction for your lesson. For example: Lets say I am doing a history lesson. I could break up the students into group that would most benefit their learning styles. Maybe I would have one group read a passage and then as a group answer questions. Another group listen to the passages as a recording reads it to them and answer questions. Lastly, have a group on the computer have the passage in front of them but also read aloud so they can follow along, and then they type out their questions.

   Although we also need to take into account of having the children not be embarrassed about themselves. Some students who need assistive technology will refuse to have it because they feel like on outcast. A classmate of mine spoke about when they were younger they had a small earpiece and their teacher wore a microphone in class to help them hear clearer.  Although this probably helped the student a lot, they felt ostracized and refused to use it any longer.

   As a teacher that is what I would want to prevent. The classroom setting should be as comfortable and equivalent as possible; In order to have a good learning environment for the children. 

Being Literate in Your Content Area & In Society

   As a teacher, it is important to know what you are teaching. It seems so obvious "know what your teaching" but you would be surprised how many teachers are not as educated in their study as much as they should be. In order to teach your content area to kids, you yourself must be well informed of the information. You must also be prepared to answer any and all questions a child would ask.    In order to be considered literate, you must have a knowledge or specific skill in certain areas. For example high school teachers only have one subject to be immersed in and devoted to, which could be looked as both lucky and unlucky. On one side they only have to know, one subject. However, since they only need to know one subject they must know it extremely well; especially because, they are dealing with an older group of students, who might have a variety of tough questions for them.

  On the elementary teacher side of being literate in their content area, is a whole other story. They must know a little bit of everything, for their age group. They too must know a significant amount of all of their subjects, but not as in detail as a high school teacher.

   Along with knowing your subject/subjects well, you also need to keep updated in your society. This could mean keep updated in the news, with technology or as simple as know your students a personal level. This will make a huge difference with your student and teacher relationship. I know the teachers I had that actually cared about getting to know me, were and are the ones I wanted to talk to if there was ever any problems that arose.

 In Conclusion, teachers should make themselves aware of all surrounding societies to benefit their classroom. A good teacher is on that will educate their students in the classroom, and then further educate themselves at home. A teacher’s job is never ending, there is always going to be more to learn. 

Beloit List...

   Prior to last weeks class, I have never heard about The Beloit List. This list is the top 75 topics about honestly anything and everything that professors from Beloit College think we should know. The list is co-authored by Ron Nief, and Tom McBride, both professors at Beloit College in Wisconsin. Personally I take much offense to this list, because the topics listed are all very belittling.   I was skimming through all the lists and most of them start off about like semi educational topics but then lead into really miscellaneous information. For example: one point is "4. Al Gore has always been animated(1)". Then there will another point made like "10. Entering college this fall in a country where a quarter of young people under 18 have at least one immigrant parent, they aren't afraid of immigration...unless it involves "real" aliens from another planet(2)" These are just 2/75 random examples from Beloit College.   I personally think this list was created to bridge the gap between professors and students, however this list is not valid to me or any of my classmates. In other words A for effort, but this idea is completely irrelevant to the incoming students. The list is almost mocking the extent of inteligence of their students. It also comes off as if all of the students are the same. This list does not leave much room for student learning, since the professors have generalized the students already.   If I was an incoming freshman and I saw this list before applying to this school, this list would defiantly change my decision. The way these professor's come across, i don't even want to think about how the rest of the school is towards their students.   If this was done a with a little more structure and maturity, this could be very beneficial to the students and professors. Instead the list is currently just making a mockery of Beloit College.    




(1)&(2)Beloit's List for the class of 2014

Experiences With Technology & Education

   Technology has been present in my learning environment from the very beginning. I can remember as far back to Wheeler Avenue, my elementary school. When we used tape recorders for reading circles, cd players for foreign language , and of course computers. Back then there were small keyboard and typing classes to train us for our future. Who knew those little classes would be so beneficial to us later on. In my final year at Wheeler our teachers had us do a research assignment which was then to be typed up and handed in for a final grade. This was a huge turning point in my school because; in the past the final papers were to be written out. Which proved that people knew that technology knew was going to be important in our futures.                                                                                       
     As we grew older, technology became so much more complex. Towards the beginning of the middle school, some classes hand online assignments some in the classroom and some at home. Other classes would use computers for researching. A lot of teachers used the blackboard; a while after that some of the classrooms in my school upgraded to white dry erase boards. However, some lucky teachers (usually the accelerated classes) used an overhead projector to teach their lesson. This was a machine with a bright light that used a type of dry erase paper that enlarged and displayed usually on a plain white wall or screen. This was a fun and new entertaining way to get kids involved in my class.     Later on in my high school years, technology had major break troughs. There were the televisions in every classroom, slide shows used for lessons, computers used for assignments, smart boards, and the most controversial cell phones. I am sure we had more technology but the rest escape me at this moment.  At my old school Central High School, we had televisions in every classroom. They served a few purposes; they were used to display our daily announcements in the beginning and end of the week. They were also there for easy accessibility for the teacher to display information from their computer to the class. The last purpose was instead of requesting for “the cart” which contained a television, a vcr, and a dvd player all on a rolling cart. This was what ever teacher wanted/needed to display a movie in class and it needed to be reserved a head of time. So to end the madness of “the cart” the school sold the fancy new tvs and purchased average tvs for every teacher.
  There were two types of computers, the desktop computers and the rented laptops that needed to be reserved.  My public school was lucky enough to have 3 computer labs, one on each floor. Usually we would go there for website assignments, research assignments, or to type up final papers. Which for the most part was very informative and instructional, however sometimes this could create a bit of chaos. It was probably extremely difficult to monitor all the computers of the students, making sure they were not on any other web sites and carry out a lesson. I have to say my school was pretty smart, they created a code for all the computers so that the students could not go on social networks, like MySpace or non-educational websites. It did not take very long for some kids to find a way to break the code. And then the school modified the code, and the cycle of hacking and improving began.  I think it was around my junior year of high school when my class was introduced to smart boards. Just like everyone’s first reaction, everyone was amazed and astounded by what this new piece of technology could do. My Spanish teacher knew how to use it effectively. She would put daily goals for the class, have the kids interact with it, and always had a new fun way to use the smart board. On the opposing side, I had a English teacher who was teaching for 20+ years and had the access to a smart board in her room, just never used it.  She would tape activities to it, display work on it but never used it for its true purpose. We asked her how come you don’t use the smart board. She replied something along the lines of she has been teaching for so long and has gotten along without technology thus far, and she won’t start using it now. Not all the class rooms had a smart board, so we asked her how come she doesn’t pass on the smart board to another teacher, and she replied with it’s still mine and I have a choice to use it or not. So in her classroom she was neglecting a highly educational piece of technology, out of pure selfishness.    Finally my last piece of evolving technology is cell phones.This topic is so controversial. On one hand it has improved so much over the years and has changed our way of living. On the other hand, it has made us unsocial and lazy society. Cell phones were originally used for easy and safe communication, but these days it is more of a hobby/pass time. I am all for the use of cell phones to a certain point. My high school had a rule of “if I see it or hear it, its mine till the end of the period or the day”. Then a year later, they enforced the rule of cell phones must stay in the lockers during classes, because as technology improved the use of cell phones was abused. As a student back then, I was extremely against this rule. So, I continued to bring my phone to class and hide it. It always infuriated me that we were told we couldn’t carry our phones, but some teachers mid lesson or instead of walking around and helping students would be on their cell phones. However, looking from a future educator prospective I think not having the cell phones available during classes would keep kids on task and more alert. I’m torn between the productive out look as an educator and the safety issue as a former student.    I hope that my former experiences from school and observing can help guide me to know what techniques in technology are helpful to use in my future classroom, as well as learn to modify and improve other techniques that haven’t panned out as planed.