Double Entry Journal # 15

1. "In my mind, play and learning can and should be intimately
linked."

I selected this quote because it is something that I strongly agree with. I think that playing and imagining is how students learn. This is because they model life experiences and have the ability to think freely.

2. "If we want
children to develop as creative thinkers, we need to provide
them with more opportunities to create."

I selected this quote because I agree that schools don't give students enough opportunity to create an original product. A lot of teaching strategies require students to complete worksheets with definite answers or answer choices instead of allowing students to learn on a broader scale.

3. "Lots of things can go wrong, stick with it"

In my 30 hr. clinical I was faced with situations during teaching that I wasn't prepared for. I didn't want to waste the students' times, so I tried backing out of my plan and changing to a new lesson. By following through with my plan, I was able to find quicker, better, and more productive ways of completing my lesson.

Double Entry Journal #14

Chapter 7: Shape-Shifting Portfolio People * Chapter 8 A final Word the content fetish

1. What was the most interesting idea you encountered as you read the chapter?

The most interesting part of the chapter for me was when the author described Seasame Street, Barney and Friends, and Blue's Clues. All of the information hat he described were things that were obvious for me except for when he states that Seasame Street is designed to include the parents in watching the show. When he contrasted the other two shows to Seasame Street in this sense, I was really intrigued with the differences and his reasons for how that changes the show.

2. What connections can you make between Gee's critique and Sir Ken Robinsons' critique of traditional schooling?

I can see a relationship between Robinson's point that schools kill creativity and Gee's point that learning is done best as a cultural process. Learning isn't done because the uniqueness, creativity, and culture of each student is not accepted or valued in the classroom.

3. How did this book change or support your understanding of good teaching?

It helped me better explain why students should gain experience in particular interests in order to learn. This is because the vocabulary and language won't have a meaning for the person until they've had an experience that causes them to give a word a meaning.

Short Responses to the Youtube Video "Do Schools Kill Creativity?"

Three ideas you agree with.

Two ideas that surprised you.

One idea that confused you or that you disagree with.

___________________________________________________________

1. Everybody is unique and extremely creative. Because of this our future circumstances are unpredictable.

2. The younger a person is the less frightened they are to be wrong. This is a likely cause as to why I feel less creative at the age of 21 than I did when I was 5 or 8.

3. The value of art and creativity is greatly unappreciated in public schools. The lack of support causes people to avoid careers in drama, music, and art.

_____

1. I was surprised by the story of the student who was drawing God in class. I think she surprised the teacher with her response as well.

2. (I thought some of his jokes were funny and helped with his presentation.)

_____

1. Academic inflation. I understand what the speaker meant by the term; however, is it really a problem that higher degrees will award you a specific job? What is the real problem? Is it that schools teach us what the world already knows? Should college be more a journey and less like it is? A journey that allows students to participate in inquiry in a real environment instead of a virtual environment..?

Double Entry Journal # 13

Chapter 6: Affinity Spaces

1. Give an example of a "community of practice" in which you are currently participating in.

Becoming a culturally responsive teacher with peers who are also working with a host teacher.

2.Why is the term "community" better defined in relation to spaces rather than groups of people?

There are limits as to what makes you a member of a community. Spaces focus on how people interact with content and one another.

3. What is a "generator"? What is it's counterpart in school?  Something that gives a space content. The textbook may be a generator for a classroom.

4. What is a "content organizer"? What is it's counterpart in school? A content organizer is a designer of how to communicate content. The teacher who rethinks the content based on student beliefs, actions, and interactions.

5. What is a "portal"? What is it's counterpart in school? It is anything that gives a person access to the content and to ways of interacting with the content. In school this could also be the textbook.

6. What do people have an "affinity" for in an "affinity space"? How does this inform your understanding of good teaching?

They are attracted to  engaging in the sharing and gaining of knowledge of the content. It makes me want to find attractive ways to make my classroom an affinity space where everyone's voice is heard and everyone engages with the content in their own way.

7. How do "affinity spaces" support inclusive classrooms? Choose two characteristics below to make connections between "affinity spaces" and inclusive classrooms.

Affinity spaces support inclusive classrooms because they require everyone to find a portal to the content and engage in the sharing and learning of knowledge of that content. This is only obtainable if the classroom has a sense of community. Affinity spaces are also defined as a place were "newbies and masters and everyone else share common space, which is characteristic of a place where students have the opportunity to be problem solvers (as explained in the 7th characteristic of an inclusive classroom below.)

7. Students as Problem Solvers - Successful inclusive schools involve students as partners in the school community. As students are allowed a greater participation in the community, they become more responsible and effective in the inclusive process. Common among inclusive schools is the use of students as:

a. peer mediators - students trained to help resolve disputes among other students.
b. peer tutoring - students help other students learn and review material.
c. cross-age tutoring - older students helping younger students.
d. cooperative learning - teams of students problem solving and working together.
e. buddy systems - two children who agree to help each other; may be made up of any two children, regardless of educational status, who want to help each other.

The following describes a characteristic of inclusive classrooms:
 1. A Sense of Community - An inclusive school is a school where every child is respected as part of the school community, and where each child is encouraged to learn and achieve as much as possible. In order to achieve that sense of belonging for each child, many schools have found that fostering a sense of community is of primary importance.

8. How are traditional classroom different from Affinity Spaces?
The major differences between traditional  classrooms and affinity spaces are that in classrooms students are segregated by grade level and ability. Another difference is that in classrooms portals are rarely strong generators where students interact the content and modify it. Traditional classrooms students are also encouraged to gain the same knowledge across the board and excelling students are not allowed to teach the teacher or other students the knowledge they have gained above that limit.

Chapter 5: Learning and Gaming

1 What is the main argument the author is making in Chapter 5.

The school system is not "learner friendly". In addition to a school's poor attempt to facilitate learning, the current school system doesn't allow students to approach education as gaining of skills. Instead it makes students feel as if their abilities and potential in a subject are based completely on their grades. 

2. What constitutes a theory of learning?

A well tested, but not completely proven, idea of how learning best occurs.

3. Why did the author struggle to learn to play Warcraft III? What needs to proceed before good learning principles?

Motivation for an extended engagement. The author couldn't engage with the game, so it became too hard for him.

4. How would have the authors struggle with learning to play Warcraft III been interpreted in school?

It would have been recognized as the students fault instead of the teacher. A teacher has to be able to motivate their students to commit to the learning of a subject such as chemistry. The students need to find a valuable reason to study the subject. A reason that allows them to connect the content to their current and future lives.

5 What kind of learning experience might be better suited for at risk students?

A good learning experience in which the students receive a different aspect of the content. One that might really be attractive to their lives. This is not to be a "dumbed-down" version of the content.

6. Why does the school-based interpretation of "at risk" lead to bad learning?

Some teachers "dumb- down" the curriculum; consequently, the motivation to learn is decreased even more. A teacher who recognizes their students as "at risk" are providing the students with low expectations and a poor self- esteem. Instead the teachers need to continue high expectation of learning the curriculum combined with a more interesting approach that motivates the students to learn. (Self- fulfilling prophecy)

7. What do schools need to do to function more like a good game?

Allow the students to take on roles of humans in real life situations, so that they can look/participate in at the world in a new way. 

8. What is different about how good games and school assess learners?

Good games allow players to self- assess their abilities in a way that doesn't give them a false sense of their potential. Many students who struggle in school receive poor grades and immediately get the feeling that they will ALWAYS be bad at a particular subject. Good games allow players to see that they are progressing and always learning. 

9. What are the attributes of a  fish-tank tutorial that make it an effective learning tool? How is it different than school-based learning?
It allows players to solve problems by assessing themselves which allows them to learn things about what they did and what not to do. The tutorials also contain player choices. When skills are mastered, the player sees that it fits into the whole system. The information is given multimodally (visually, orally, and in print). The fishing tank operates in the Zone of Proximal Development for the player.

10. What is a sand-box tutorial? Why is effective? How is it different that school-based learning?

The sandbox allows the player to act in the real game with easy opponents. The player also receives a lot of hints.  It is effective because it requires the player to think about what they are doing and what they are learning. In addition, it allows players to immediately apply what they've learned. Many school- based instruction strategies do not require students to apply the knowledge until much later. 

11. What is a genre? Why is it important for good learning?

Genre is a type or style of something. It is important for learning because "good learning always involves a knowing early and well what type of thing we are being asked to learn and do"

12. According to the author, what to learning and play having in common?

Learning and playing is engagement. To learn you have to be engaged in the content. 

13. How are the skills test in good games different from skills tests in school?

The skills tests are developmental for the learner and not evaluative. School skills tests are decontextualized and not related to how the knowledge is applied. For instants, a chemistry test may ask a student to recall the definition of a word instead of using it to solve a lab procedure.

14. How does RoN support collaborative learning? 

Players can compete in multiplayer mode online. Also, players can watch other players' strategies to help them advance their knowledge of how the game can be played.

15. Match at least one learning principle of good games (on page 74) with each the following learning theorists you have studied in 3352:

Dewey- 17)- They let learners create their own unsupervised sandboxes.

Vygotsky- 25) They ensure that the learners have and use an affinity space wherein they can interact with peers and masters, near and far, around a shared interest (even passion), making use of distributed and dispersed knowledge.

Piaget- 9) "Experienced" doesn't need to mean "expert"; it can mean that one is well prepared for future learning.

Gardner - 14)- They give information via several different modes. (visually, orally, and in print).

Bandura- 1)- they create motivation for an extended engagement.

Skinner-  reinforcement...in video games power ups occur for good tactics.

Fostering High Quality Formative Assessment: A Policy Brief by The National Council of Teachers for English

In a blog posting answer the following questions:

What is formative assessment?

Formative assessment is an assessment FOR learning that is beneficial to a student. Formative assessment utilizes immediate and high quality feed back as the means for improving student understanding. The task may or may not be a graded assignment.

What is the CENTRAL purpose of formative assessment?

Student learning.

Connect a best practice in formative assessment to one research-based strategy.

Providing Feedback

Give an example of how a specific assessment can be used formatively and summatively.

One way to make an assessment both formative and summative is by providing student's a rubric with their project. For example, I recently gave students a week to make a model of an atom for an element of their choice. This project allowed me to provide the students with a formative assessment by immediately telling them the parts of the atom that they ignored or had a misconception about. By giving the students a rubric that detailed what items I was looking for in the project, enabled me to give the students a grade for the project. This aspect helped to make the project a summative assessment.

Give an example from your field placement related to formative assessment and timing.

By implementing an intermittent schedule for quizzing last week, I surprised my students with a pop quiz that required them to have read the assigned sections from their textbook. Many of the students realized as a result of the quiz that they were not prepared for the future chapter test. By quickly returning the students' quizzes with feedback, I helped them narrow down which topics they needed to spend more time studying for the chapter test.

What are some strategies to help formative assessment be more effective when providing students with feedback?

From the text:

High-quality formative assessment takes many forms, but it 

always:

 emphasizes the quality rather than the quantity of 

student work; 

 prizes giving advice and guidance over giving grades; 

 avoids comparing students in favor of enabling individual students to assess their own learning; 

 fosters dialogues that explore understandings rather 

than lectures that present information; 

 encourages multiple iterations of an assessment cycle, 

each focused on a few issues; 

 provides feedback that engender

Name two advantages to high quality formative assessment.

1- "It helps  identify students who are struggling with particular tasks or operating under misconceptions.  This, in turn, can lead to improved instruction that addresses student learning."

2- "For students, formative assessment offers increased feelings of confidence and control.  Students who experience high-quality formative assessment are more likely to transfer learning from one class to another because they understand the given area thoroughly and can relate new learning to what they already know." 

What are some challenges to implementing high quality formative assessment?

One of the challenges mentioned in the reading is that teachers have to work within policy in order to effectively be active with formative assessment. To the community and parents, formative assessment could make teachers look as if they are not doing their job by "shirking responsibilities".

Double Journal Entry #11

QUICK RESPONSES TO Chapter 4:Simulations and Bodies 1. What does the author mean when he says, "Learning doesn't work well when learners are  forced to check their bodies at the school room door like guns in the old West."  I feel like the author is saying that student's cultural experiences are ignored in the classroom. As a person who is taking guns, a teacher is taking the resources and ammunition from a student and preventing them from using it in their classroom. 2. According to the author, what is the best way to acquire a large vocabulary? A large vocabulary is obtained by a person who has experience with a word in a meaningful way. For example, a student in one of my classrooms will gain a large lab equipment vocabulary by using the equipment while talking about the names and uses of the equipment instead of reading about them in a textbook. 3. What gives a word a specific meaning?  Its specific meaning is based on a model simulation that a person builds about the word and the actions with an object. 4. What does the term "off the hook" mean in each of these sentences? a. My sister broke up with her fiance, so I'm off the hook for buying her a wedding present. Not in pain of doing a difficult task. b. Them shoes are off the hook dog. Extremely attractive or awesome. c. Man that cat was fighting 6 people and he beat them all. Yo, it was "off the hook", you should have seen it!! Unreal or awesome. 4. According to the author what is the"work" of childhood? Do you agree? The work of childhood was described as working toward the ability to read. In this sense, work was used to make reading a skill that takes a lot of effort to master, which is the task of a child. Opposing this view by traditionalist, the author says that the "work of childhood" is playing. I completely agree with this after my experience at WVSTA this weekend. Thankfully, I was reading this chapter of the book while attending many science teacher workshops. During some of these workshops, I was reminded about how students who earn more experiences generally gain a larger scientific vocabulary. I believe that free thought and play are what allow children to become better readers, so I agree with the author. 5.Why is NOT reading the instruction for how to play a game before playing a game a wise decision? A person who reads the instructions is likely to know less words used in the instructions. The trial and error process enables a player to view words as meaningful when they later attempt to read the instructions. 6. Does knowing the general or literal meaning of a word lead to strong reading skills? A small portion of knowing the literal meaning of a word is helpful for reading. It is more important to know ways the word can be used. It leads a person to have a more diverse vocabulary. 7. What does the author mean by the terms "identity" and "game". Give an example of 3 "identities" or "games"  you play? The author is referring to the roles that people take on in order to complete a task effectively. One identity that I have is a teacher in which I act out the role of a teacher. The acting part of this is what I see as the game. Second, at the racetrack, I take on the role as a racecar driver who plays into the mind of the spectators as a different person than the role of a teacher. Although I am the same person, I am acting a different role. A third example is the terms(jargon) I use when taking on the role of a skateboarder. 8. According to the author what is good learning? Good learning is the altering of a perspective that betters life in the future. Sometimes this is done through games that give people virtual experiences but still understanding how a decision could affect the future. 9. How does understanding that being able to build a mental model and simulations of a real-word experience is closely tied to comprehending written and oral language support of change the way you think children should learn in school? It doesn't change it too much. I've believed for a while now that modeling events through hands- on activities is the way to help students learn. 10. Why is peer to peer interaction so important for the language development of young children? How does knowing this support or change the way you think children should learn in school? It is important to let peers interact and communicate with each other because it allows students to say and express what is on their mind without the fear of the teacher correcting their mistakes. It also is powerful that students who are correct can fix misconceptions that students have about a topic. I also am in favor of allowing peer to peer interactions in my classroom because it allows me as a teacher to sit back and pick out the misconceptions that need to be addressed as a class.