Podcasting

Last week, during the EEV workshop led by Karen Kliegman, I had the opportunity to create my own podcast. I interviewed Christine Southard on her knowledge and use of podcasting in an inclusion classroom. Enjoy listening to our 'Differentiated Podcast'!

Why is the word mnemonics so hard to remember?

I had the rare opportunity to sit down last night and play all of the memory games that were listed on the Cognitive Module. The memory games proved that I remember best when I (like most people) repeat information back in an auditory way. At the end, all I kept thinking was: What has happened to my memory? Do I have brain overload? How am I going to place all that I still have left to learn?

So the question for the day is: How can I (as a special educator) create a cognitive learning environment for my students? The majority of the students I work with struggle with applying concepts they have been taught to different situations. I recently had my parent-teacher conferences, and I felt as if I were a broken record saying: "Your child has difficulty holding on to information...Your child struggles with applying new information to different situations...Your child..." I'm not a parent, but I'm trying to imagine what parents do with that type of information about their children. What can parents do about this?

Recently, my co-teacher had a talk with our studenrs (5th graders) about test taking, trying to figure out why a majority of the kids did poorly on a math test. After the disucssion, and without pre-planning, she orally stated a list of 5 numbers. Later on that day, she asked if anyone remembered those numbers. About 10 our of the 25 kids were able to recite the numbers in correct order. She then explained to the kids about the fact that our brains processes information in different ways, and we should start to have an understanding of how best our brain stores information. What a great metacognition lesson!

Having kids be aware of how they store and retrieve information is a great start to helping them encode information more meaningfully to long term memory. With the amount of info being thrown to them at school, at home, online, and on television, kids need more of an awareness of differentiating between essential and nonessential information.

How did I learn sitting in rows all my life?

As I read everything there is to know about constructivism, my thought was: how did I learn? I was educated in a catholic school, from Pre-K to 12. As long as I can remember, I sat in rows (usually in the second to last row towards the back b/c we were sitting in alphabetical order). I don't remember groups, learning centers, games (other than the occasional 7-Up Game if we had a sub!). This boggles my mind: how did I learn everything I know? Would I have been a different person if I was educated in the type of school environment that encouraged hands-on learning and other constructivist methods?

Since learning about constructivism in my undergraduate years, I've always struggled with this concept of 'open-ended' learning. I think it was because of how I was raised: teacher-directed, minimal student-to-student interaction environment. My struggle as a teacher has always been how to incorporate constructivist-type activities/questions into my teaching. I have definitely improved over my 7 years of teaching. I remember as a student teacher, I made sure every lesson I did was blowing bells and whistles. If I was doing a fractions lesson, we used real brownies to cut them into halves! When we were learning about the history of the Olympics, the kids were competing in their own simulated Olympics (with gold/bronze/silver olive branches as awards!) I've become more wise, however, over the years. I am now finding a balance between guiding the children and then letting them come up with their own conclusions. Does it always turn out successful? No, but my students are remembering a heck of a lot more.

Feeling Disconnected While Connecting to the the World

I spent 3 hours straight this morning at home looking through various blogs,tagging websites on delicious, searching the GLEF website, reviewing notes on the current QuickTopic, and this is what kept running through my mind: What a lonely feeling it is to spend this much time online! I am 'connecting' to the world but I'm actually disconnected from what's going on around me. My family had breakfast together (something we rarely do), yet I was alone staring onto the laptop screen.

Here's my question: How do I maximize my time online so I don't miss out on what's going on around my world?

Tonight: Playing with PollDaddy (why the silly name?) , an online tool that allows you to create polls/surveys and place them on your website, MySpace, Friendster, and a lot of other places!

Observations: Really easy to do...did not spend too much time on it...Most of my time was used up by trying to think up a question for the poll (obviously need to spend more time thinking in this area!)

Celebrating Columbus Day in PR

I had the opportunity to celebrate Columbus Day this year in Puerto Rico (by the way, this is not my life normally...I usually celebrate this day by catching up on all my soap operas!)

Anyway, how gorgeous is this picture you see to the left? Taken from my camera just minutes before the wedding I came to San Juan for. Amazing wedding, amazing couple (Congratulations, Liz and David!)

So what does this post have to do with TEAM, you ask? Well, technology, of course! It NEVER ceases to amaze me how technology has made our lives unbelievably easy....For the first time in my life, I had the easiest journey through JFK because of a miracle called "Online Check-In"...What an ingenious idea! And there were computers placed in the lobby of the hotel that let me print out my boarding pass as I was leaving PR....So smart...Saved so much time and several headaches.

I was sad to see, however, that in a certain part of Old San Juan, there were even laptops attached to the lounge chairs women were sitting in to get their pedicures. Here's my thought: Do we need to be online ALL the time? Can we not allow ourselves the luxury of peace and quiet? More thoughts on this later...

Finally---A Thought!

So I think I'm finally feeling a little better about being a part of TEAM (hence my long-awaited 'web presence' on this blog)..By no means am I a tech-geek (as I am referred to by one of my students....Wait until he realizes how little I know!)

My current thought (as of Oct 1, 2007): I have A LOT to learn...but I'm ready to take the challenge! :-)