Sunday, June 21, 2009

Thing #1

Thing #1 - Post your thoughts about the student, the video, and the teacher and her role. Can a Librarian play the role depicted in the video?

I really enjoyed this video. In our classroom, I try to show short clip videos that are relevant to our content during the opening as frequently as possible. The students really enjoy them. My teaching partner and I love technology and incorporate tech-based learning as much as we can. We have seen first hand how it really engages the students.

The video was very informative and "cool". It gave all relevant info about the student, teacher, social networks and the roles they play in learning. I thought the use of paper-drawn animation that was place on and swept from the viewing field was quite clever. Showing this video to our students at the beginning of the year when we are talking about technology would be very beneficial. Our students would be able to see how they can creatively (and inexpensively) make a class video on whatever content we were studying at that time. The video itself was put together well with a beginning, middle, and end segment, including credits, etc. Videos are the book-reports of today. They can be as creative and unique as the student himself (herself).

As a math teacher I rely on the librarian more for my knowledge. In reflecting on the role of librarian, I can see how our librarian can indeed assist in our math class. She can help with setting up classroom blogs, wikis, nings, etc. and other resources that are pertinent to web- & tech-based learning. Our librarian can also help with demos and actually creating projects. Wow! Can you imagine? "Class, today in math we will be spending time in the library." My students would love that. We mostly spend time in front of the TI-83 graphing calculator.

I definitely want to use this video as an intro to the limitless possibilities our students could create. I teach Alg 1 and I KNOW that buy creating videos, my students and myself have the power to change the face of math and how it is learned. I want to make math more FUN!

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Library 2 Play 2

I'm excited about participating in a second round of Libary 2 Play. There are so many cool applications that can make a huge difference to our classrooms. So.. let's play!