I understand that the article was written in 2005, but the author missed the point beyond belief even for that time. The smartboard was created in the UK and has been in place there for over ten years in almost all of their public Schools. Today in the year 2010, almost all Smartboard activities and resources have a .UK at the back of the web "addy".
What this guy failed to mention was that the "efficiency" of the teacher lies in the fact is that the organization on "these guys" is streamlined for the teacher, but student engagement is the key to its overwhelming success.
Smartbaords are not a window of your computer screen, they are a touch screen of your entire computer. They allow a teacher to multitask just like a normal laptop and do away with the mess of wiping off a "white board" every class period. On top of that, Smartboards come completely bundled with a ton of teaching aids from interactive graphics ranging from frog dissection to animated probability excercises all wrapped up in a Microsoft word style interface for lecture as well as note taking.
What is not mentioned is the fact that the student's ability to be in front of the room and navigate around such incredible features is the interest level comonent here. We have 65 rooms complete with 65 Smartboards. Students fight to get in front of the room amoung other tasks, solve math problems, and do daily oral language. The Author is right only in the fact that teachers do have much more time circulating around the room. What is failed to be mentioned is that this "little shiny technological" object is student objected, student based, and student taught.
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Why Merit Pay Will Not Work!
http://www.edutopia.org/compensation-student-performance-fair-system
This article is basically once again another attempt for politicians to try and turn Education into a business. Guise it anyway you want, it has always been called "merit pay" and it always will. There are only about ten thousand reasons why this is wrong, but I will only focus on two.
First and foremost, education and "daily classroom" practices are so subjective in nature that just in that statement, blows the whole "business" bonus model right out of the water. Depending upon which "Site" based administrators you talk to...the gamet of what they think success is rambles as endlessly as our Rocky Mountain roads. Some will go to their deathbed warmly wrapped in the philosophy that the only way to improve test scores is good "old fashioned" drill and kill. In other words, kill all elective and enrichment classes and spend 8 hours a day on the basics. Others, who are logistically two miles down the road and in the same district will yell at the top of there lungs that "hands on" and applicable learning is and will always be one of our most important and the only true "formative" answer to keep many of our kids in school.
What if you are a hands on teacher at the first and a drill and kill teacher at the second?
I guess no merit pay for you.......Education is a collaborative effort to say the least. Students need a broadbased faculty with individual styles all directed toward the same goal, and there are many ways to attain those goals. We are not "widgets".
You want to monaterly reward us.......hell yes......go evenly across the board on every Unified District Salary schedule with an amount that reflects our education, responisibilty, and creativity.
Now that would be a fair start.
This article is basically once again another attempt for politicians to try and turn Education into a business. Guise it anyway you want, it has always been called "merit pay" and it always will. There are only about ten thousand reasons why this is wrong, but I will only focus on two.
First and foremost, education and "daily classroom" practices are so subjective in nature that just in that statement, blows the whole "business" bonus model right out of the water. Depending upon which "Site" based administrators you talk to...the gamet of what they think success is rambles as endlessly as our Rocky Mountain roads. Some will go to their deathbed warmly wrapped in the philosophy that the only way to improve test scores is good "old fashioned" drill and kill. In other words, kill all elective and enrichment classes and spend 8 hours a day on the basics. Others, who are logistically two miles down the road and in the same district will yell at the top of there lungs that "hands on" and applicable learning is and will always be one of our most important and the only true "formative" answer to keep many of our kids in school.
What if you are a hands on teacher at the first and a drill and kill teacher at the second?
I guess no merit pay for you.......Education is a collaborative effort to say the least. Students need a broadbased faculty with individual styles all directed toward the same goal, and there are many ways to attain those goals. We are not "widgets".
You want to monaterly reward us.......hell yes......go evenly across the board on every Unified District Salary schedule with an amount that reflects our education, responisibilty, and creativity.
Now that would be a fair start.
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Web Poster Wizard
Poster Wizard is a resource that I have used for
building two worksheets
for a comprehensive unit.
It's free and the "getting started"
basics are easy to follow.
It does take sometime
to learn the ins and outs.
However, the real value here is in a
lab situation. The worsheets or "posters"
are hosted on their server.
Not only can students access them oneach individual
workstation, but the links that they must use are'active".
As opposed to a hard copy worksheet where
students would have to physically type in each web address.
An added feature to this program as well
is the fact that students can create their own and
enjoy some creativity in the design which is always an interest grabber.
The website is posted in Related Resources
.
Monday, February 1, 2010
Student Technology
This is Cameron.He is only eleven years
old, and already is a multimedia
superstar. His passion and
enthusiasm for technology
knows no bounds and I guess
you could say that sometimes, the
student really does become
the teacher.
Click Here To Play Video
Here some helpful links I came across that
teachers and students alike can use when
authoring projects.
iMovie Video Tutorial
iMovie Text Tutorial
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