Sunday, January 30, 2011

Harnessing Your Student's Digital Smarts

     I think the students that have Vicki Davis as a teacher in high school will have a much easier time in EDM310 than those who didn't! It's really cool that she has found a way to take the curriculum she has to cover, but has turned it into a whole new learning experience. Not only are her students learning to use the computers in their classroom, they are also networking with people from all over the world! Simply having a conversation with people across the planet will broaden your horizon's, but they are bouncing ideas back and forth and doing projects with each other. These students aren't just learning how to make a power point presentation, they are learning how to learn and grow with one another.
     To understand how effective technology can be is extremely useful. Learning how to communicate with the rest of the world and learn through an international perspective will gear those students to understand the world they are stepping into. National borders are starting to fade with technology and the influx of immigration all over the planet. Mrs. Davis has jump-started this learning experience and hopefully the knowledge will spread.

          Here's the video.

Cecilia Gault's Interview

     The experience of the interview holds just as much importance as the content of the interview in Cecilia Gault's case. Not only is she being challenged to think in complex ways from an early start, she is also getting to speak face to face with some of the best thought provoking individuals concerning education. In all seriousness I'm jealous. She gets to see one of his presentations and then gets an interview while all I have is a link on a website with a video. Literally a link like this. (actually takes you to the page). And that's the difference...
     To ensure that the students inside my classroom have the best education they can get I need to challenge them to think in different ways, expose them to different ideas, and inspire their own form of creativity through all the new information they will receive. We need to kick them out of the classrooms and into the museums, into other schools to see the ideas bouncing around in other places, into different cultures to see what other civilizations have to offer. As teachers, we love to lecture on all this, but there is something about actually getting your hands dirty that changes your experience. There's something much different than watching a 20 minute video rather than actually being there and having a personal conversation. Maybe I'll be able to catch the next presentation Sir Ken Robinson does. Maybe one day I'll be able to take an entire class to one of his presentations.
   ~ Miles

Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity | Video on TED.com

Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity | Video on TED.com

This video touches on two different topics that I think cripple our schools today. The first being the force fed curriculum and values placed in our school systems today. Sir Robinson mentions the top regarded subjects in education systems across the world. The top being the literacy, math and the sciences while the bottom is the humanities and arts. What if we held equal value to all these subjects and helped our students make connections between the two? A child might better understand the emotion behind a work of literature from an English text book if they can relate it to a musical piece of literature they express through an instrument. If they understand what it's like to create a piece of art using their voice or a paint brush, wouldn't that help them understand the creativity of the pen? If they understand the complexity of how every single movement of a dance combines to make a whole, could that help them understand the different pieces of a math problem or chemistry equation? We force what the school systems value on our students, while stifling their own set of values and beliefs.
Both my parents have taught in the public school systems for over 30 years. Both of them taught music, and the arts are not among the most highly valued subjects in the southern parts of the United States. Both of them have told stories of times when their classes and resources have been cut, or when they have faced threats to the programs they poured their lives into developing so their students could grow in a whole new dimension. The focus of schools systems is centered around the school system itself. They have set programs in place, and developed organizations that focus on making their schools look better, rather than focusing on the students that compose the schools. If we concentrate our attention on the kids sitting in the classrooms and turn our backs to the goals of accomplishing a certain standardized test score that will boost the schools rating, each child would have a chance to grow through many different mediums. Their development would expand throughout many viewpoints rater than the one that tells them they are stupid if they cannot complete a certain math problem. I imagine that if we re-evaluate our outlooks on education, the change in the students lives would be something to see...
food for thought,
~ Miles Bubbett

Mr. Winkle Wakes

     Mr. Winkle Wakes is a cool little video that I think should keep us in check while we are teaching. As much as all this technology molds the world into a whole new era, there are some things that simply cannot be replaced by a computer. While in school, the value of actually being in the classroom and developing relationships face to face can be crucial to a child's education, especially at a young age. We should merge older traditional types of teaching with the advancements of technology to get the best of both worlds.
    With this combination we can use the teaching systems that make Mr. Winkles relax and teach him all the ways the world has changed and developed. That way he might be completely lost at the beginning, but by the end there will be lots of progress made. Hopefully like EDM310. We'll all be completely lost in the beginning, but at the end we will have come a long ways.
~ Miles

Did You Know? 3.0

     For teachers, both already in the field and just now starting, I believe this video should be called "Here's What You Need To Know." Personally I had no idea about some of the statistics that were presented in the video. We are stepping into a world that we presume to be something extremely concrete, but it takes on a more fluid form the way it shifts and changes constantly. As teachers we will have to understand that concept in our classrooms. Not only for our sake of keeping with the latest and greatest technology, but for our students sake. Everyone knows what it's like having a teacher who has no clue how to operate simple tasks on the computer. It's frustrating sitting in your desk for ten minutes while they try to figure out how to open a power point (Especially when you're in college and all you can think about is how much you are paying for it!
     In order to keep our schools and classrooms up to date we need to understand the newest technologies, the most recent inventions, and the latest news about the rest of the world. The bubble we like to live in needs to be broken. This video was hardly 5 minutes long and it turned some of the things I had thought completely inside out... what would a 30 minute video do?
     I know this was a class assignment, but if there are any visitors to my blog go and check it out.               Did You Know? 3.0

~ Miles Bubbett

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

A Little About Me

Hello!
My name is Miles Bubbett, and I'm currently studying to be a elementary teacher at the University of South Alabama. Before I wound up down in Mobile I lived in Helena Alabama. It's just about twenty minutes south of Birmingham, and it will always be home. Both of my parents taught in the school system I grew up in. My mom is the choir teacher at Thompson Middle and my dad is the band director at Thompson High, so my family is very musical. I have a little sister who's about to be driving on her own (fair warning), and whenever we get together we always have a lot of fun. Finally the little guy in the picture is named Michael. My family has taken him in for a while and he has been a little bundle of joy for the past 13 or so months.
Obviously with my background I love music! Both creating music and listening. I grew up learning piano and that introduced me to other instruments. I also grew playing soccer and that has stuck with me as well. It's not the most popular past time here in the south, but personally it's the greatest sport on this planet. I don't play competitively anymore, but if I have time I like to go start pickup games over at the rec center. I wound up in Mobile because I played soccer. One of the teams I played with traveled to the bay area to play a tournament and I fell in love with the place. One visit to Fairhope and I was hooked. I looked for local schools, discovered South, and then visited the campus. A year and a half and I'm still here.


I'm still new to the world of blogging and I'm currently trying to figure out all the bells and whistles. If you have any advice, please feel free to let me know!

Sunday, January 23, 2011

A Whole New Game

I'm still new to the world of blogging and I'm currently trying to figure out all the bells and whistles. If you have any advice, please feel free to let me know!