Mr. Blake Professional Page

Audacity

2010-07-09T14:33:00.000-07:00

I can see where this could be used as a way to put lectures on the web. It can be used to put audio in an electric lesson but with other sources it seems like there may be other easier tools to use. Audacity has tools that can enhance the fun but the fact that you can't save to mp3 without other tools seems like ti might be too much.

PPT

2010-07-09T14:26:00.000-07:00

In the past i have used powerpoint to teach my lessons. I liked it because i could save my lessons in a format that is easy for me to find and tweak. I like it because i don't have to write on the white board with my back to the students. I can walk around the classroom keeping my eyes on students and answering questions instead of being tied to the front of the room. I have used PPT to add content to my web page. Students who are absent and need notes can go to my website and learn the lesson from home. I won't say they love it but their parents like it.

Trends in distance Ed

2010-07-05T13:40:00.000-07:00

I have always wondered in my 7th grade pre-algebra class if there is a better way to help students at home besides the book. I think i am starting to see how. I can you so many resources that are already created to help the students along. I think it may be more for an addition to the class rather that the whole class. I can see how i am able to answer questions as students have them and how this helps them before they get too frustrated. I think that if it was no face to face interaction the students would get frustrated and struggle with the learning.

Google Docs

2010-07-05T13:30:00.001-07:00

I think i have found a way that i can go paperless. I can set up all my assignments to be in google docs. I think that if i can get the forms to work properly and how i can organize them this should work right. the only issue i am going to have now is getting computer lab to operate on. I like it because then my students can do their assignment even when they are gone. I think next year i will try a few and see how it works out.

Open Course Ware

2010-06-28T05:28:00.000-07:00

With Open course Ware the instructors are able to add, modify, or create lessons that other instructors can use. What a great idea. I am always looking for ways to better my teaching and is there any better way than from pulling from the best. I can use lessons already created and maybe one day some one will use mine.

Slide rocket

2010-06-28T05:23:00.000-07:00

I learned about slide rocket this week. I can see myself using this because many of the lessons i teach i have created a PPT for them and try to get the students to look at them at home to review fro the quizzes but don't have a great way to put them online. In the past i have tried to put them on my UEN page but i can only put a few of them on there. then if the students want to review for a make-up quiz i can't put more than one weeks worth of lessons on so this would be a great way to put all of them online. I just need to find a way to organize them so the students can easily find what they need.

Teaching just from the Web

2010-06-18T20:55:00.000-07:00

I wonder if it will ever be good the do all teaching at all grades from the web. Is there a grade that you just can't because you have to be face to face and then is there a grade where you can do partial and at what age is it okay to go all online learning. I know that in highschool they have online classes but do the students get as much out of those as they would if they were face to face. My sister-in-law did "fit for life" online but if she did not exercise like she was suppose to she just lied and said she did. Is there a way to get past this of is it more based on trust. Well right now i just don;t know.

Google Calender

2010-06-18T20:52:00.000-07:00

I can see how i could use google calenders in my class. I can schedule all my lessons on it and then let the students see what we are doing and when we are doing it. I know that you can attach documents to it but i am not sure how. I also wonder about those students who don't have the internet at home. how can i reach out to them?

Blogging

2010-06-15T13:26:00.000-07:00

Blogging can bring a new aspect to my students that no one at my school has thought of. I can create a topic and have my students comment on it creating a discussion for the next day in class. I can put math concepts on that i need students to review before a test and they can ask questions that i can either answer right back or save it for the next day in class. Blogging can be a fun way to get students involved that what never spoken in class before or that have a question but don't want to ask it at the time.
With blogging I can reach more students more of the time.

Web 2.0

2010-06-15T13:20:00.000-07:00

There are lots of tools out there to help reach more students in a different way. I feel that I stay up-to-date on the new technology that can help me as a teacher but I know that i am not. In latest trainings I have gone to are how to better your PPT. They may be differently named classes but the emphasis is always turned back to face to face instruction. There are so many different tools in the web that can be used to teach and solidify instruction. With Blogging the whole class can have a discussion outside of class. With Wiki pages students can create research and publish them. There are so many things out there that I don't feel like i have even scratched the surface.

social

2009-11-25T14:25:00.000-08:00

What is learning? i remember one day my bike was not working properly, with out the help[ of a bike shop my friends and i sat down and starting to play with the brakes and gears. we learned that they were set up the same with a simple wire. as you tighten the wire this is when something happens at the end. we found that if we tighten the wire to the gears they will change faster but if you tighten it too tight then you can't get the last gear. if i did not have my friends there i could have figured it out but it was faster with them there.

what can we do as instructors? we can let the students work together to find out how to do stuff. we also need to be there to clear up any misconceptions or false findings. as the students understand how this is done they will gain ownership of the concepts and remember them longer but more important is that they will be able to understand how they work.

Bruner

2009-11-17T19:32:00.000-08:00

What is learning? Learning is do with different styles at different times in s person's life. Just imagine if when teaching a child to run you got them are 6 months. The first thing you need to do is teach the child to roll over and you will need some kind of extrinsic motivation. put a toy out to reach for. then you will need to teach them to crawl. this is started with extrinsic motivation but can be changed to intrinsic motivation because of need. The comes the walking around objects of help with balance and soon the child is moving without any support. if you were to teach a child how to run that could not crawl even though he was 5 the child would struggle for a long time because he would not be able to see the point of moving or have the muscle to move.

As a teacher we can look at the big picture of the learning. We need to see how what we are teaching today will effect how they will learn years from now.

week of november 9

2009-11-12T18:41:00.000-08:00

What is learning? I have to disagree a little with the theory this week. I think that we can learn a lot from on the job training, but before we go in it is better that we have a little back ground. If we go into a basketball game without any idea of the plays we can eventually learn them and how they work but it will take about 5 games. if we sit down and talk about the play and then go through it as a walk through and then against our own team we are learning lots and lastly we need to experience to know how they will work against a team that doesn't know our plays. I agree that learning takes place on the lob quicker than it can in a classroom but i think that we need to spend some time in the classroom before optimal learning can take place.

As a teacher we need to incorporate this into our lessons. we need to take the time to help them understand the concept and then see it in a real world situation.

Case-based learning

2009-11-03T18:44:00.000-08:00

What is learning? with case based learning this seems so basic and what learning is. We learn from real world things and can learn for things that have happened in the past. We need to find some emotional or logical connection to the material. now that being said i think it is really hard to do this with every lesson I think would be overwhelming. I think that we can do this with a unit and give a case study for one or some of the concepts but we need to teach some parts of a unit with the understanding that it is the foundation of the information related to the cast study.

As an instructor we can create an emotional attachment for the students to show that there is a reason for the knowledge.

Motivation

2009-10-20T19:37:00.000-07:00

Learning is still the gaining of knowledge from different sources and experiences but it can be influenced by many things. In my life my goal for a long time has been to be smarter than my brothers. This is a motivating factor for me. As I try to be smarter than them I go about it different ways. One way is that I try to find out what they know and acquire that knowledge and a little bit more. One other way is I am always reading books and experimenting with my knowledge to prove things true or false.

Teachers can influence learning by finding motivating factors and using those to help students learn. Some motivating factors are social, helping students learn more to look good. Another is mastery. Some learners are perfectionists. They want to learn concepts to the greatest amount they can. As a teacher you can find this motivation and use it to help the learner want to learn.

cognitive development Learning

2009-10-14T20:03:00.000-07:00

What is learning? Learning take different roles as we develop in life. As a younger child we are able to learn through experiences with our hands or body (with contact) but as we mature we are able to learn by experiences we can think about or mentally. As we change we are able to apply the experiences we had to experiences others have had and learn from our mistakes by not making them again but by understanding how others actions can be applied to ours so we don't make the same mistake.

As instructors, We can effect learners by understanding where they are at developmentally and apply that to how they learn. if we have more advanced learners we can teach by examples of others but if we have beginning learners we need to have the learners experience by hands on so they can succeed and fail on their own.

Week 6 Schema

2009-09-29T19:52:00.000-07:00

What is learning? My idea of learning still didn't change much from last week I still think we need to connect our knowledge that we learn to our prior knowledge to help us remember more. I think that there are two ways to remember thing and thus learn things. First we need to experience them and second we need to build no our experiences.

What can instructors do to help learning? instructors can encourage or create experiences to help the learn and/or build on the experiences to help learners remember more.

Week 5

2009-09-22T19:25:00.000-07:00

What is learning? I think that is learning is talking the knowledge that we have and adding to it. now this brings up a good point who did we get our first knowledge to connect our new knowledge too. what can first the chicken or the egg. well here is my thought on that. It depends on what you already know. if you grew up in a christian home then the chicken came first because you were taught that God created every thing first. if you don't then the egg came first because in order to have a chicken you need an egg. now i think our first bit of knowledge came from experiences that we have had. When i learned to ride a bike i had to prior knowledge but i tried and tried and learned from my experiences of falling. I learned how to ride a bike and now when i learn how to Snowboard i can take my experience of riding a bike and apply it to the balance i needed to stay up on my bike to staying up on my snowboard. I think we learn from experience and when we have to learn something new we attach it to a past experience and continue to shape our knowledge.

How can an instructor how students learn? ( i wish i could remember the exact question) I think that as a learner is learning the instructor needs to learn about past knowledge or experiences and create a lesson around this. It is hard to create a lesson around one experience when you have 30 students but you need to try to shape it around some thing all can relate too. this will help the most learners learn.

Week 3 PBS

2009-09-09T20:29:00.001-07:00

What is Learning?

My definition did not change much this week. I feel that Learning is the gathering of knowledge through many different avenues. I think that the more ideal the environment is the more optimal the learning can be. We need to find things that we can "hook" information to so we have a reference to our new knowledge gained.

How can instructors influence learning?

As an instructor can guide our learning to our previous knowledge so we can hook to to something else the more optimal our learning will be.

What is learning-behaviorism

2009-09-01T19:17:00.000-07:00

What is learning? learning is, according to behaviorism, is learning an action that becomes conditioned. If something happens you always have the same response. In stressful situations we always resort back to he response we know the best. An example, in basketball coaching freshman I can teach them over and over how to shot a layup but when the first game come and they shoot their first layups they always shoot they way they did before I taught them. By the end of the year they shot like I have taught but this is because of a few reasons, one they game becomes less stressful and 2 the stress reaction has been changes because of conditioned response, they make a basket and they run less. I can always tell who have been focussing and working outside of practice when the game becomes stressful again and who falls back to bad habits or who follows what they are taught.

How can learning be best effectuated by a teacher/trainer?

This is the same thing. If I as a coach reward them for good actions they are more likely to do what I asked. If I do this many times I can change what their Stress response is.

How can learning be best effectuated by a teacher/trainer

2009-08-24T17:21:00.000-07:00

We are able to learn things on our own but with a teacher we are able to learn faster and more correctly. As a baby learns to walk they are able to take steps on his own. The baby will eventually be able to walk on his own without any help. The next thing is learning how to run. If the now child learns how to run on his own he may develop many bad habits and not become as fast as he needs to be. With help from a trainer he will be able to develop skills more quickly and the correct skills.
As a teacher helps a student develop the skills necessary to succeed the teacher can step back and watch student grow and develop but will still need to step in to correct same errors.

What is Learning?

2009-08-24T17:14:00.000-07:00

There are many ways and things to learn. I think the basic definition of learning is acquiring knowledge. I think you can acquire knowledge by experience and by information gathering. Experience is like riding a bike, you can read all you want about riding but until you do it you wont really learn how to ride a bike.
Then there is learning that takes place by gathering information. When learning how to get better at things you need to read and research to polish off the skill. I think that we need to be open to both types of learning and if we limit to just one type we are going to come up short.