Major Accomplishments

Who would have thought that I could make a website. It is far from great, but I did it. and I actually somewhat like the final product too. That is not usual for me. It was fun do to and I learned alot. However, I spent far too much time perfecting my website at the expense of all my other papers. I know I should finish strong, and that four classes is not even that much, but ever since my internship I just want to teach and I have lost all motivation to do essays and midterms. Maybe that is a good lesson, so now I know what not to always emphasize to my students. But the end has come, and Lord willing I pass my final classes, I will have another degree. After nearly 8 consecutive years of post secondary education, I am so ready to be done for a little while.

http://homepage.usask.ca/~tjm727/index.html

"Don't beat yourself up about it..."

Having just experienced my first Job-reject, I need to remind myself that it is only the first and it is a chance to improve my interviewing skills. The job was perfect, at the perfect school, and I knew numerous staff members. But I need to move on and realize that sometimes those things that look perfect really aren't and in fact those opportunities which scared you to death are in fact the best. So, in the words of my 6'11" 'little brother' I need to not beat myself up over it, because it is only my first one, and there is always better opportunities if we move on!"

Emotional Decisions

So, it is pretty obviouse that I am a horrible blogger. I never kept a journal as a kid, or any form of continuous log of my thoughts (mostly because they really aren't that extraordinary). Since I needed something to blog about, I thought that I would blog about decisions. With resumes going out and interviews coming, I am beginning to realize just how big the next step I am going to be making is. Part of moving forward, is leaving things behind. I have been working at the daycare for 3 years, and I love it. Although I know that I need to move forward into the career that I have been training for, I also don't want to leave my daycare kids. I know that if I stay on, there is a sense of security: I know the staff, the families and the community. I also have guaranteed work. In the past three years, I have been puked on, pooped on, peed on, boggered on and bled on, but I still love it and I love my little ones, and I think that I might just actually cry the day I leave. Never before have I faced such emotions regarding my work, although I have always loved it, whenever I have left before for large junks of time (Internship, wedding, etc), I guess I knew that I was coming back in a couple of months, however this time I know then when I take my first contract (Should that ever happen) that this will actually be it, and I will be leaving there for good. It is a hard thing to think about leaving the saftey, and security of my daycare community, but I know that it is time to move on, and this transition might be the first one to cause tears. (Other than the one when I moved to this province... but that is a different story...)

Very proud of myself

So a few moments ago I posted my online proposal, although it is not the best proposal I have overcome a huge feat. I had written my proposal up in microsoft word so that I could work on it when I found junks of time to sit down and think about it. After I had finished it I found I had a stumbling block. I discovered you cannot copy and paste things into a blog. Now this was cause for some concern because I didn't really feel like retyping two pages worth of information. So I tried turning into a picture and uploading it, then I thought I would make it into a webpage like we learned in class and then post the link. However in the process of attempting to do all that, I discovered that you can actually post things to your blog through microsoft word and so that is what I did and I am very proud of myself for doing so. Who would have thought I could do it! Yay! However I am sure that as I continue to try putting together and actual webpage my pride will be short lived and humility will once again take over.

470 online proposal

Web Quest proposal:

For our online assignment I have decided to challenge myself by creating a web quest. As a history teacher and a high school teacher, I thought that it would fun to put together a web quest for history 10 though 12 on how to use primary and secondary sources, issues regarding biases and other research and investigating issues. During my internship I realized how little students understand researching, and using different sources. Many would either simply site "Google" as their entire bibliography, or would explicitly believe anything they read on the internet as basic fact without questioning the source or its validity. So in order to combat this issue, I am thinking that I might create some form of web quest in which the students are given some sort of scenario such as a Historical event CSI. I would then have them work through a series of tasks and pieces of evidence that include primary and secondary sources, biases and false sources so that they must process the information they are given and begin to develop researching and analytical skills. If this is successful, it will be a great resource that I can use for a number of grades, and on the first couple of days or weeks of a semester in order to begin to engage the students with what they are learning and to address issues that arise regarding researching and analysis early on in the semester.

So here is the who, what, when, and where of my proposal,

Who: Students in history 10, 20 and 30. It will not focus on specific curriculum content, but rather on the skills and abilities that are outlined in the curriculum. Although the students at each of these grades are at different levels of critical thinking and deeper thought, my plan is to create a web quest that can be used across the grade levels to help build strong skills that do not pertain solely to history. Because this is an introductory webquest that is designed to teach students basic researching knowledge and skills, students will not be required to know much content prior to commencing. However, they will be required to know basic computer skills in order to navigate through the webquest.

Curriculum:

Part of the Saskatchewan Curriculum for high school history is to foster higher order thinking amongst the students. Some of the objectives that relate to skills and abilities are that the students will learn to,

• Review/learn the skill of categorizing and classifying material according to some system in order to make it meaningful.
  
• Review/learn the use of criteria as a basis for analyzing an event or situation.
  
• Learn the skill of hypothesizing.
  
• Learn to test hypotheses against historical fact.
  
• Learn and practise the basic research skills of:
  
  • finding information;
    
  • classifying information into meaningful categories;
    
  • distinguishing between relevant and less relevant information; and,
    
  • describing cause and effect relationships; and,
    

I think that creating a web quest that teaches these skills would therefore be a very useful tool, especially to start off a semester. If it does not work to make a multi-grade quest, I may tailor it to grade 10 so as to start instilling these skills into them.

    http://www.sasked.gov.sk.ca/docs/history10/unit1/over.html

http://www.sasked.gov.sk.ca/docs/history20/uniti.html#over

 

Questions: In order to instil in my student higher-order thinking skills, my questions will focus on why and how. I am still in the process of creating a scenario for my web quest so I do not have a specific idea yet, but my goal is to provide the students with a scenario and have them question and sort through the different forms of sources that are out there.

Evaluation: to evaluate students completed webquest, I will create a rubric that I will have them fill out. I also want to try and create scenarios that correspond with their completed webquest, i.e. if they take the wrong information, they lose the case and something bad happens. I have to think more on what exactly will be evaluated.

Some resources that I have found so far are:

Found on google.

• http://www.youthsource.ab.ca/teacher_resources/ps_comparison.html
  
• http://www.historyonthenet.com/Lessons/sources/sourcesmain.htm
  
  • Both the above sites introduce the basic definitions and examples of the different forms of resources and how to distinguish between them.
    

Found through Lycos:

• http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/resources/educational/lessons/secondary/broadcast_news/bias_news_lesson.cfm
  
  • This resources provides a lesson plan on teaching about biases. I probably won't send my students here, but it had good ideas that I could use or incorporate into my webquest.
    
• http://search.lycos.com/image.php?tab=multi&img_frame=1&query=primary+sources&thumb_url=http%3A%2F%2Fthm-a01.yimg.com%2Fnimage%2F44e571ba0163f4fa&image_url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.designedinstruction.com%2Fimages%2Fevent_trace_map.gif&refer_url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.designedinstruction.com%2Flearningleads%2Fsa-trace.html&page2=0
  
  • This site had provided tasks that students can do to internalize different sources and the impact that evidence has in history/life. Mostly I will use this source to get ideas to adapt to my own activities.
    

Yahoo:

• http://www.library.barrie.on.ca/teens/research/tips_primary_vs_secondary.htm
  
  • This is a source that is geared towards teens for teaching about sources. I might send my students here to learn about it.
    

 

Accessing issues.

So I am having drouble accessing my blog page right now, I can post and view the "Dashboard" part of the blog, but I cannot access my actual blog page. I am not sure why. It was fine yesterday, but now it redirects me to a number of different links whenever I try to open it. Maybe it is just the university server, but I could access and view the blogs that I am following so I am not sure why it is doing this? Does anyone know anything about fixing things like this?

Blogging!

I found a Quote which seemed to sum up my ideas thus far about blogging. I never know what to say or write. My thoughts are not really vastly intelligent, nor that sought after. I could see how a blog might be useful if I actually had a point to it, like if it was for my students or a class I was teaching, or if I was living in Antartica and wanted to keep my friends and family updated on my going-ons. However I see my friends and family-in law all the time, and talk to my family on the phone fairly regularly, so I have yet to find a point to this blogging thing. I could rant on about how much I would like to be back on Vancouver Island, but that would just put me into a negative, feel-bad for myself mood, and that will not get me anywhere. But since I need to start blogging on a weekly basis, I really need to find something to blog about. I am open for ideas. I might shut them down as cheesy, but I am still open to hearing them.

470 paper proposal.

As with the other three academic postings on this blog, this one will be no different. for our research paper for 470, I have decided to look into plagiarism and the ease of cheating in our super-connected world. At first I thought that I would simply just plagiarize a similar paper to see how easy it really is. But then I decided that wouldn't fly and the shame would follow my perfectionist self for the rest of life. Then I thought I would write a "how to plagiarize/cheat" manual. but then I figured there are quite a few of those out there. So instead I am doing this the academic way of researching the topic and see what discussions have or are taking place regarding the issues. like any university paper I will probably first start by identifying the problem, and then discuss the severity of the problem. I will look at what is the issue, how can they be resolved and why they need to be resolved. It would be interesting to know and understand a true plagiarisers ideas regarding this, but most people wouldn't admit to it. I will look into how to address these issues with students. What a teacher can and should do about cheating, and finally privacy issues regarding cheating as well as finding out if a student is cheating. That's about it, and I am sure that you are all REALLY excited to read it when I am done. By the way, I may have plagiarized some of these questions from the class folder on blackboard, but then again I may have thought them up all by myself.

PS. I have already learned so much about plagiarism just from this post, including how to use spell check and how to spell plagiarism.

Because I'm a keener

Because I'm a keener, I am posting this a day early. So for our class we had to either edit or add something to a wikipedia page. I started by looking at the page for my hometown, Campbell River, BC. Some links then took me to a neighbouring island, Quadra, where I have spent numerous summers. They had a link there to one of the settlements on the south side of the Island, but there was no information in it. The link was a stub. so I expanded it with information that I found and information from my brain. I created an entire paragraph to put on that page where there had been nothing before. Pretty impressive I know.

So here is what I did.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quathiaski_Cove,_British_Columbia
Cheers!

Blooms Taxonomy

Blooms Taxonomy:

Knowledge: Three ways that blogs can be used in education are:
1. Class announcement and information: If a student has missed a class, they can see what they missed online.
2. Group projects: students can use a blog to work on group projects on their own time.
3. Sharing group projects, videos, pictures, etc.
4. Handing in assignments: Save paper.

Comprehension: Three reasons why teachers should integrate blogs into their classroom are:
1. Incorporating technology into the classroom.
2. Incorporating students’ interests and skills into the classroom.
3. Allows for easy access of information both in school and outside of school.

Application: Three ways in which we can use blogs in our teaching and professional development would be:
1. When teaching, can use this link to post videos and documentaries that I would want my students to watch.
2. Posting and sharing resources with other teachers.
3. Forming new ways to connect with students and engage them in their learning.

Analysis: The use of blogs in education is better than the use of static websites, because blogs are trusted in their content and author. Also Information can be added, deleted and co-created between the creator and followers of a blog. Blogs also tend to be updated more often.

Synthesis: Blogging could change your role as an educator because it opens the doors of communication between students and teachers, and allows students to access information at home. Blogging also gives a teacher more access to their students work, as well as more chances to provide feedback to their students learning.

Evaluation: Three potential disadvantages of using blogs in education are:
1. Students might cease coming into class if they can access information at their homes.
2. Has the potential to limit face to face interaction and discussion in a classroom.
3. Students who do not have regular access to a computer, or a home computer might become out of the loop
4. Potential increase in plagiarism due to ease of access to information.

About Me

Because a post entitled 'this is my first blog' is boring, this is about me instead. I am from Vancouver Island where flowers are beginning to bloom and the temperature rarely reacher -5 degrees celcius. I greatly dislike the cold winter weather of this province, but I do like the Rough Riders, so my initiation is complete. That's about it for now.