Socrative Applications

Socrative is a great website that allows teachers to create test and quizzes for their students to take online or over their phones. I created a quiz about Star Wars and had my parents and friend take it. I also took the quiz to see how it worked from the student's perspective. Besides me the best grade on my quiz was a 40% from my dad. Besides the poor grades the actual site is very useful and can be used as a good way for students or community members to take a survey. It is also useful if a student is sick, they just have to make sure to log on at the right time and they can take the quiz from home. However, I don't like how if for some reason a student can not take the quiz the same time as the rest of the class you have to open it up at a later time and he is excluded from the data table.  I would also prefer if the data table showed different statistics instead of showing the number of total points the entire class got compared to what the entire class could have gotten ( if 4 students take a 10 question quiz and each get 7 out of 10 it shows 28/40) I'd rather see the class average. I also had an issue with my friend who took the quiz over their phone. On my live feed it showed that they skipped a question but they didn't. and when I pulled up the data sheet it showed that she did answer all of the questions. That is just a minor bug. Overall I really like this tool and will continue to use it.

Wii Bowling for errr… Math Purposes

Using the Wii I worked on my math skill along with my roll, both were quite rusty apparently.  My first game I didn't have a single spare or strike so the math was very simple, just adding a bunch of 7's and 6's for a grand total of 65. My second game, however, put together 5 strikes in a row and 3 spares, totaling a score of 200. I had a piece of paper covering where the score shows on the screen and looked away when the totals were shown on the screen after each frame. After remembering how to keep count in bowling I had no errors in my math. This would have been such a fun way to learn this kind of math back when I was in elementary school. It is engaging and definitely keeps the kids attention. There is definitely no boring parts and there are so many things you can do to make this lesson your own, turning it into a competition between two teams using both bowling skills and math skills as a way to score or creating a bunch of hypotheticals to see how they handle different "outcomes". This was an incredibly fun lesson and overall I think it could be very successful.

Blowing Up the Grade Book

School is changing. There is no avoiding this, students are more connected to technologies than ever before and continue to get more connected each day. So as teachers why do we not adapt to this and use technology to our advantage. Using a game based teaching system rewards students as they learn while the current systems punishes as students make mistakes. With the gaming system students are encouraged to do their work with the chance of badges, awards, and achievements. This type of class allows students to earn the grade they want with out ever having to worry about being mathematically unable to obtain their goal. They work at their own pace but I still believe due dates should be set in place. Like the speaker said given a week to do something we will take a week to do something, or in my case given a semester to do something I will take a semester to do something. Games give the players (students) all the equal chance to win. Why wouldn't schools want to have equality throughout the students?

I just made a new Voki. See it here:

I just made a new Voki. See it here:

Creating a Vision for Your Class

Everyone knows that they need to plan the upcoming lessons and assignments for their class, but many including myself do not put enough thought into the "behind the scenes" aspect of teaching. To optimize our lessons we need to have a class room that allows the students and the teacher to interact in the most effective way. You need to think how the desks should be aligned, how will I as a teacher be able to move around the class room to accommodate/ execute my lesson plan. Can I have my classroom set up in a way that helps my students focus in and even give them a "sneak peek" as to what they will be learning that day. Maybe in my history class when we get to the roaring 20's have some music from that time period playing as they enter the class. It is just better to be prepared and plan ahead in depth than to just let your class shape its self over time.

Video Gaming in the Class Room

Video games platforms such as the Wii and Xbox Kinect are great ways to be physically active while learning or teaching a subject. I feel that these types of games fit better with different subjects than others such as a health class or maybe an anatomy where you are looking at how the body moves and functions, but with the right game most subjects could find some sort of use for this platform. As a future History/ American Government teacher finding a game such as “Sim City” would help me teach how civilization grows and some of the growing pains governments go through.

Mobile devise games/ apps offer a much wider application opportunity. These include many civilization-building games as well as many more simulator games. While teaching the new weapons used in WWI I could easily put my students in old Bi-planes and put them in a virtual dogfight for them to experience what pilots back them went through. These all provide a fun way for my students to learn without them feeling like they are learning.

Everything Worth Knowing

Schemas are past experiences and knowledge we have acquired throughout our life that shapes how we act and react to certain situations. Schemas we already have shape our social, educational, and private habits. Before we can go to a formal party, we have to first learn how to put on a tie and any social norms (such as what are appropriate discussion topics). Same concept with learning. Before we take an exam we need to learn how to take effective notes, how to study, and of coarse the material that is going to be on the test. How we perceive intelligence needs to take this into account. We can't expect to teach someone to make pasta if they don't already know how to boil water. We have to make sure our students have everything they need before we try to teach them new concepts. If they don't we have no right to consider them unintelligent.