The Brain
This was a very taxing assignment
for me. The material was a little dry
and there was a lot of it, but I survived and I’m glad I got to read it. The excerpts from Neuroeducation: Learning,
Arts, and the Brain provide findings from research on arts in early education
and its correlation for math and science and a general improvement of cognitive
skills. The main word I took from the
research is “correlation”. Is it just a
correlation or does arts in fact have an impact on learning? Or is this simply a “which came first, the
chicken or the egg” debate? Are people
with musical talent predisposed to success in math and science or are technical
people who find math and science easy the ones who also enjoy and practice the
arts? This might be oversimplifying the
topic and I am not refuting any of the research but I know plenty of people who
break this mold and many that fit the mold.
The bigger question is what can be done to expand on this concept? I doubt many school boards are going to allow
for more art and music time in place of math and science. As a matter of fact schools are always
looking towards Art and Music classes as the first place to cut funding to
balance budgets. I do think more research is needed on this
topic.
Understanding
Childhood Brain Disorders
I chose this topic because my brother, who is special needs, was
diagnosed with AD/HD and I have always been interested in brain disorders in
children. This webcast was
recorded in 2008 at the Dana Center in Washington DC with Dr. Denckla and Dr. Kagen.
Autism, defiance
and AD/HD are often called a disorder and not a disease. In fact, types of “disorders” like these are
diseases and these diseases need to be treated individually and not just lumped
together as mental disorders. The
example given that cancer or epilepsy, 100 years ago, were considered as
all-encompassing diseases. Fortunately, cancer is now treated differently for
what type you have. Skin cancer is
treated one way and lung cancer is treated much different. This is the direction that mental disorders
need go. Autism is not an
all-encompassing disease and we need to get to the point of treating it as
such.
Two items that did
alarm me is the examples they gave on socioeconomic factors being misread as
mental disorders (uneducated parents not reinforcing school work being read as
attention deficit in the classroom) and academic milestones being moved up one
or two grades and being used to determine mental health. (ie Algebra use to be
a 9th grade skill and now it’s a 7th grade skill)
Growing up with a
brother that was given medication for most of his adolescence life it was
reassuring to hear the doctors say that medication is not the answer and that
medication with social skill intervention is the best method. I was also glad to hear them say we are
overmedicating children.
Web 2.0
For my web 2.0
application I have chosen Glogster. I
chose this because many of my students are visual learners and this fun graphic
blog will keep them interested. Plus it
easy to use and has professional looking result.
McCracken County
Schools only started on Friday so I haven’t been able to work this into a class
yet but if the teacher is willing I think it will be a fun project.
First I will give
the students a topic to blog about. “My
Summer Vacation” and give simple guidance on what to include in their blog.
·
Type a
narrative on your summer vacation
·
Add photos of
any place you visited
·
Fondest
memory of summer
·
Activities
with friends or family
·
Present to the
class
The goal of this
assignment is to get students back school mode.
Skills used will be writing, oral communication, creativity and computer
entry.
The grading of this
material will be based on a simple rubric:
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1
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2
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3
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4
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Content
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One activity Completed
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Two Activities Completed
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Three activities Completed
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All Activities Completed
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Text and Pictures
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Text and Pictures do have little relation to Content
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Text and Pictures have some relation to Content
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Text and Pictures relate to Content
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Text and Pictures Relate and Reinforce Content
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Presentation
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Presentation covered one activity
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Presentation covered two activities
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Presentation covered three activities
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Presentation covered all activities
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Tech
Exploration # 19
1.
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Describe what you
learned from exploring this resource. Be thorough in your response.
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Delicious while
being an easy to use “Favorite” or “Bookmark” organization site commits one
of my Cardinal sins for online software.
It lets you look at the software and do a few mouse clicks BEFORE you
can create an account. Then it asks
you to use your Facebook account to long into the software. I think all Facebook users are tired of
seeing countless ads and posts saying your friend is using XYZ software. Now that that’s off my chest, it’s easy to
use and you can take your favorites with you when you move from device to
device. It will really speed up
researching if you use two platforms like a tablet and a desktop computer. In the past I used to email links to myself
and now I could just use this app.
Historypin is a website that
lets users add to and comment on “pins” about history much like a combination
of Wikipedia and Pintrest with a History twist. I liked the concept of this site. You can tell history through words and
pictures and keep peoples interest.
What I did find is that the pages load slowly and the search box is
finicky. Being a user based product I
worry about content being accurate or biased but I have not read enough to
form an opinion on this site as far as that.
The example timelines are a wonderful idea and I think could easily be
used in the classroom.
Diigo is like Delicious only
better. Not only can your organize and
save your favorites and bookmarks and access them from any computer you can
also markup websites and post sticky notes to the websites for later use. You can also save websites with a cache type
feature that way if the website is a fast changing site you can go back to
the one you were using by the time and the day it was saved.
The PBS calculator is a very
childish calculator that gets pretty old really quickly. It’s slow and only does basic arithmetic. It is a very whimsical looking device and I
think only kindergarteners or first graders would like it.
The Softpedia calculator is a
little better. It is much larger and
looks more professional. It has
several higher order math operations and is not childish. The voice can be turned off and it’s fairly
fast. This calculator would be used by
more people than PBS but with all online calculators if you are doing
something online and need a calculator you have to close and open
windows. I typically will just grab a
more powerful handheld calculator in that case.
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2.
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How could you use
this resource in a school setting? It does not matter if it is in your
field or level, you need to understand how the resource might be used in
educational settings.
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I can see students
using Delicious to keep school based research organized with home based
research with the bookmarks being saved online. This allows the user to use
any computer to access favorites.
History pin is much
like Wikipedia, it’s a great tool to get an idea of what happened in history
or in what chronology but it is not a reliable source for research. It would be a good tool to pin a history
lesson to and let students go out and get but you will have to limit the site
to that type of research.
Diigo would be
useful in many of the same ways as Delicious.
In fact it can be used even more since you can markup and place notes
onto websites instead of just bookmarking them. Just like Delicious this would be good for
students that have to work on 2 or more computers to do their school work or
for teachers that have a work and home computer.
The 2 speaking
calculators are kind of fun and I think younger kids would enjoy the pbs
calculator but it is so basic only k-1 might use it and while the softpedia
calculator has more features than the pbs one it is still lacking compared to
a cheap real calculator. Their only
saving grace is the speaking feature which may be needed in the case of a
young non-reader or a special needs student.
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3.
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Would you recommend
this resource to other educators? Like/Dislike; Ease of use, fee or not, and
so forth. Why or Why not?
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Delicious does what
it claims, you can bookmark websites and retrieve those bookmarks on any
computer. I do not like the fact that
it asks for your Facebook account which you know will only add to the spam on
that site. It is free and can be
logged onto with other criteria so I can recommend the site but that being
said Diigo will do the same things in a much better package.
Historypin is a lot
like Wikipedia and Pintrest put together.
The website loads slowly and the search feature is less than
stellar. It does do all that is
claimed and it is pretty fun to use.
Historypin is a neat idea and if used only for reference and not
research I can recommend the site.
Diigo is a website
that I have no problem recommending.
It does what is says and is pretty easy to use. I like how you can add notes and highlight
items on websites and then look at the site from any computer that you have
access to. I can really see myself and
students using this one.
The online
calculators. While they do what is
promised and if you need the speaking function for a young or special needs
student I would recommend both of these.
If you are looking for a powerful online calculator you need to look
elsewhere.
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1.
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Describe what you
learned from exploring this resource. Be thorough in your response.
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2Write4math is a wiki that contains information on
writing and how it relates to learning mathematics and how it can foster
improvement in other subjects. The
wiki is a little hard to read when you first get on the site and I followed
several links that were busted so I’m not sure how current the information is
that is presented. That being said the
wiki does offer lots of information on writing and math and math in general.
Piclits is a site that lets you created
inspirational pictures like you see on social media and just the internet in
general. The site chooses a picture
and offers drop down words to create a saying or you can just make one up
freestyle. This is a cute website that
is fun for the user especially ones with creative imaginations.
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2.
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How could you use
this resource in a school setting? It does not matter if it is in your
field or level, you need to understand how the resource might be used in
educational settings.
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2write4math is a
totally new way to think about math and writing about math. I think that writing about math can help
unlock a student’s mind about a subject and get rid of the fear of the
unknown aspect of new math ideas. The
wiki describes 5 steps in the process and I think implementation would
require more than a teacher’s decision.
You would have to talk to the school board about using this resource.
Piclits is a fun
way to get students to caption pictures or think about the captioning that is
used for pictures. You could easily
use it in a grammar, writing or literature type class where you could grade
their work for thought process or grammar.
It could also be used to start a brainstorming session by using a
picture with a caption or outlandish expression. I can see many uses for this application.
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3.
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Would you recommend
this resource to other educators? Like/Dislike; Ease of use, fee or not, and
so forth. Why or Why not?
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2write4math is one
of those sites where it would take a long time to digest the extent of the
webpage. Any method used to get kids
to learn can be an asset but something like this really would require the
school board or at least the principle to buy into it before it could be
implemented. That being said I do like
the concept but can’t totally recommend the website because it might be a no
go with the school.
I can recommend the
Piclits website. It’s fun and easy to use. You can use it in class to motivate or give
students something to write about or you can use it for other purposes like
decorations. It’s free so that’s
another plus.
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