Web 2.0 Educator

I chose this blog because I got the feeling from the title that it would involve books, and I like those. I was right; the woman whose blog it is seems to review books every once in a while. At the same time, she uses a variety of images. This indicates to me that she has a good handle on differentiating instruction. As far as technology goes, I wasn't able to see any posts that specifically involved it, but it is a blog. That shows me that Melissa B. is savvy enough to use a computer; not just that, but it's well-organized and attractive. I have to make an assumption here, but I believe, as a teacher who knows how to use technology and seems to have a good disposition, she likely knows how to integrate it into her instruction.

Type I and Type II Technology

As technology gains usage in classrooms, two separate types of technology applications have emerged. Type I applications are those that could have been done without technology, but which technology makes easier or quicker. Type II applications, on the other hand, are those which would be so difficult without technology as to be impractical.

Examples of Type I Technology Application:

• Students use their personal computers to take notes.
• Students play an online flash game which asks them to find countries on Google Earth.
• Students look on the Internet for quotes from a famous person as part of a report on that figure.
  

Examples of Type II Technology Application:

• Students are asked to conduct interviews with classmates about a particular subject, and then edit those recorded responses together into a short podcast.
• Students use video taken from the Internet to research a topic that can't be conveyed fully through words, such as the history of film.
• Students are allowed access to a specially-prepared set of wiki pages which they can access on mobile devices. The students, guided by these wiki pages, would go out into the area surrounding the school and do field research, adding to the wiki pages as they add to their own knowledge.
  

Chapter 2: Respect, Liking, Trust, and Fairness

Chapter two focuses on the issues in the chapter's title. It all connects with how a teacher interacts with his or her students on a daily basis. At one point, a student named Lauraliz offers the advice that the instructor "should fill out the same questionnaire [as the students] and share his answer with the students. Let them laugh a little. There's nothing like laughing at a teacher" (Pg. 20).

I connect with that because one of my favorite things to do is to make people laugh, and it's a relief to hear that students want to laugh with me about things. A learning environment is always improved when students feel at ease, and there is no force more potent than humor when it comes to making people feel at ease.

Chapter 1: Knowing Students Well

Part of Chapter 1 in Fires in the Bathroom talks about how questionnaires can be a useful tool for becoming familiar with students. This is particularly true at the beginning of a new school year. A questionnaire administered to a new class of students can give a teacher a workable primer on how those students wish to be taught.

However, one caveat is offered by a student named Bosung. She says that teachers shouldn't ask for any personal information. In her words, "Guidance counselors are for students' personal help. Teachers are for teaching" (Pg. 5).

While Bosung's opinion may be shared by some of her fellow students, I don't feel like it is the consensus. A teacher is somebody who kids see every day in class, while a guidance counselor is somebody only seen when there's a problem of some sort. In my opinion, teachers are for teaching, but they are also for support. With that being said, the spirit of Bosung's contribution is sound -- students should never feel forced to give up personal information that they don't want to give up.

My MEL Experiences

• Student/Teacher Relationship: My fifth grade teacher, Ms. Weston, was an excellent example of an educator who understands the importance of a strong student/teacher relationship. With her bubbly demeanor and welcoming tone of voice, coupled with her sharp (Yet always clean and age-appropriate) sense of humor, she inspired loyalty in her students and faith that whatever she was teaching us was worthwhile.
• Hands-On: Many of my best educational experiences have involved hands-on work. There's nothing like looking into a microscope in a high school biology classroom and realizing, having known it before but finally realizing, that there is an entire world that exists which we can't see with our naked eyes.
• Interest: Any student who has a preexisting interest in a topic will already have a place in their brain to which they can connect any new information relating to that topic. As that is the case, their learning will come easier if the content can be related to something which has already caught their interest. For instance, the freshman English classes here at UMF are generally themed. This is an attempt to gather the interest of the students, and in my case, the theme of the Beatles definitely worked to hold the interest of my fellow learners.
  
• Connections: Relating to how prior interest helps learning, connections are vital in the classroom. The brain seems to be in a never ending process of pruning information, and the data that make it always seem to be the ones that have the most connections. For example, I found it much easier to learn about human anatomy and physiology after I made an effort to relate it to other subjects that I already had learned about independently, such as evolution.
• Autonomy: Autonomy has not always seemed to be a positive force in the classroom for me. Oftentimes, being given too much freedom has made my learning experience feel unstructured. Some of my most memorable experiences in elementary school involved teachers who told us exactly how to organize our work, rather than leaving us to figure out a system on our own. That built-in structure lets me know how to structure the information in my own brain, and I find that valuable.
  

Learning Style Inventory Results

I feel like the learning styles results are reasonably accurate, but I'm not convinced of the validity of the theory itself. Certainly, I enjoy logic and verbal pursuits most, as I haven't developed much artistic ability, but I'm not sure that translates to those being better ways for me to learn material. Instead, I feel like different material lends itself most easily to certain "learning styles." Rather than teaching us to discern which ways our students learn best, I feel like it would be more beneficial to give teacher candidates the means and abilities to teach material in whatever way it is best taught, and for us to be able to give our students an appreciation of those styles of learning, no matter what they've been previously told their learning style is.

Credit to learning-styles-online.com for use of their survey