Sunday, August 25, 2013

Blog Assignment #1

Krissy Venosdale

Krissy Venosdale and Sugata Mitra both had amazing ideas on improving different ways of educating children. Venosdale has a great imagination on her view of a school that she would build. Presentation is huge part of her view on how her dream school would be built such as the colorful walls, a tree house in the library, neon signs, fish tank in the hallway, the comfy seats, and even as far as a stand out colorful bus for the field trips. Venosdale envisions a school with out a set curriculum and grades that are not based on age but on ability. Mitra really focused on children learning in the future through ability of self learning. He made many references on experiments of children teaching themselves how to work a computer, learn a foreign language to run the computer, teach others in the process how to do so, and all this done by leaving a computer in a hole of wall or under the tree. Mitra's point to all this is that our school system is outdated and children are able to learn on their own. Venosdale's and Mitra's views on the possibilities improving education for our children in the future are great tools for our future teachers.

Sugata Mitra

What do you want your students to know?
As a High School teacher dealing with grade levels 9th-12th the first thing these student need to know is the ability to learn on his/her own. This would be achieved by presenting multiple tasks to the children with at first set directions so they would build confidence on their learning skills. Over time I would reduce the amount of directions they would receive to complete the tasks. Eventually the student would learn to research on how to handle and accomplish the task without directions.

What do you want your students to be able to do?
The over all goal would be for a student to perform tasks and reach their goals without the process being laid out for them. This would improve self motivation and self confidence in each and every student. Over time a student would be able to perform task and be successful independently.

What will be your primary ways of teaching your students what you want them to know and to do?
As a teacher I would provide task that students had to perform and complete by performing on their own. These task would provide guidelines for them to follow on their own and progressively the students would learn they are capable of doing and learning on their own.

What tools will you use in the classroom?
As teacher the ideal tools would be that all students would have access to MacBook or an Ipad with internet access. These tools would open the door to multiple opportunities of learning such as Blogs, Skype, Twitter, and many other sorts of social media. With this access the possibilities are endless.

What role will students play in your classroom and how they will participate in the learning process?
Students will be a self teacher with tools that they could use to be self efficient. With task given and tools at hand these students would eventually grow to be independent learners. These skills are key essential for all people to be successful in the work field and in every day life.