Everything is a Remix

In general, i would tend to agree with the basic premise of part four of the documentary Everything is a Remix. Everything in our world that exists now is based upon ideas or concepts that that came before. No mater what field of research or form of art, something is owed to those in the past that 'paved the path' before.

The documentary briefly talks about the history of Copyright Act in the United States and seems to be of the opinion that this act from 1790  was a fair way of supporting the originator of an idea or product to compensate the costs of developing this idea and allows the inventor to make a reasonable profit over the 28 years that the law protects their idea. I would probably agree that this amount of time, or even the extended period later adopted in 1909, would be an ideal time frame to make money before an idea becomes public property. The current state of copyright that this edition of Everything is a Remix focuses on has become ridiculous and seems more based on greed than the betterment of society as a whole. The film makes an interest point that this stifles creativity and innovation.

Girl Talk, a mashup artist from Pittsburgh, has become somewhat of a lightening rod for his use (or abuse depending on your point of view) of other artists songs to make his own music. From a documentary that he helped produce he argues that the media that we are surrounded with daily is the equivalent to being handed paint on the street, it should be used freely to create new art and current laws are holding this creativity back. I tend to agree and  with the amount and quality of unique videos, music, and graphic art on the Internet that has been created using these methods it seems to show that the majority does also.

How to add a Link to Text in Blogger Screencast

For the screencast assignment I decided to show how to add a link within your text in Blogger. Follow this link for written directions from Google Support. Also check out below for this video of the screencast.

What can fix a Broken Educational System?

 The article I chose comments on the overall problems of the education system of (i assume) the United States. In the article, the author, Steve Denning, blames “the factory model of management to education, where everything is arranged for the scalability and efficiency of “the system”. He argues that this system is feeding off itself with a cycle of teachers teaching a flawed curriculum for test that students have no choice but to study for. Anyone who has been a teacher for a school that demands certain test results will have a hard time disagreeing with Mr. Denning’s argument. Having a system in which the curriculum is based on test score will have the obvious results of many students being taught how to master the test without actually mastering the material.

The solution brought up in the article was to shift the focus of the classroom from a teacher dictating information to the students to a more open situation where students are inspired to want to learn and continue to do so for the span of their life. This is a philosophy I definitely agree with and have unwittingly attempted in the past with limited success.

However, there have been success stories for this model. This idea seems very similar to the Finish educational system which routinely produces student that rank among the highest in the world. The article also references another article (written by the same author) about Montessori schools that have produced great results with this system. Graduates from this system have gone on to become some of the most successful in the western world, including the founders of Google and Amazon, to name a few.
One point of disagreement I have with the author is his believe that this “shift in goal” will be relatively simple. Any system that has been in place for this long will undoubtedly see resistance towards change from some on all sides, teachers, administrator, and parents alike. That being said, it’s a worthy goal to work towards and definitely and education system I would like to be a part of!

Halloweeeeeen

Alright! Here is a PowerPoint presentation for my class of kindergarten students. Its a basic review of numbers with some colors and shapes thrown in all done in a Halloween theme. Unfortunately, I can't seem to figure out how to make the animations work in Slideshare so I'll have to ask for some advice and maybe re-post it at a later point. Regardless, the full animation version with the lesson overview and rubric will be uploaded in a Google Drive folder. Enjoy!

 

Breaking Through the Norm

By far the lessons I enjoyed teaching the most were from a class called Great People in History. Many of us in this course are familiar with the ESL system that exists in a lot of schools in Korea, a lot of dry grammar books and lesson plans with way too much work crammed in them. Anytime time I am given the chance to make unique lessons plans its interesting if only to break up the norm.

The Great People in History class was a great chance to make lessons about interesting topics for students who were almost at native level. As the title of the class suggests, we introduced influential figures from the past to the class, a group of twenty six year olds. Despite the subjects for the class being chosen by R&D from the company headquarters, it was a great opportunity to focus on and talk about musicians, inventors, and other inspirational people the students for the most part had no exposure to.

As someone who studied history in university and spends a lot of my down time reading history it was great to have a hand creating lessons and activities for something that I had a passionate for. It was interesting to see the reactions and questions from students who were had little concept of the world outside of their own community let alone Korea or a different time period. It was pretty satisfying and is something I hope to do more of in the future.

Digital Reputation

Honestly, I have never put a whole lot of thought into my online reputation. This could be from living in some kind of Korean bubble for the past few years but I have always thought that life at work and outside of work are kind of separate realms, what someone does outside their place of employment shouldn't really have any relevance to their professional life and vice versa. While there is an obvious line drawn at criminal activity, other behaviour can get blurry. As people share more and more of their lives online, this is becoming an issue with a lot of professions, especially with teachers.

While I have never had a problem with my online reputation, if someone who didn't know me was to judge me based on some of the things I say or post on Facebook, my bad jokes and sarcastic comments might not come across that well (to say nothing of the few hazy norebang videos that might be out there). If a future employer or student’s parent were to do a search on me, it might only be my Facebook profile that pops up.

As we move through this course I am staring to realize that putting more of myself online professionally can only benefit my career as an educator. Creating an online resume and profile are the obvious first step, but getting involved in the community of educators through Twitter and the different networks of blogs seems to me to be the best course, long term. Besides creating a reputation for myself, the two way dialog will help me educate myself and add to the pool of resources I can use with my students.

It is probably fortunate for me that this is the course I have started with for this masters program. It gives me the opportunity to move forward with the rest of the program with this kind of mentality and improve my digital footprint as I move forward.

Digital Media for Assignments and Lessons

Digitizing assignments and lessons seems to have great potential to support and benefit students’ education. While I generally think that the rapid increase of technology in our lives might have more of a negative influence  than we would like to admit, from the experiences I have had teaching with technology (using video, touch screens, and, to a lesser extent, PCs) it has been very effective.

Anyone who has ridden a subway in Seoul can see that people are attracted to screens (count the amount of people you see reading off paper next time you’re crammed on the green line). Children especially seem to be drawn and attracted to them, when not used as a time waster they can benefit the students as a tool for educating. It can definitely aid in having the students focused and participating actively in the lessons and assignments.

In a previous job, I was lucky to have my classroom equipped with a projectors and a giant touch-screen TV. It was hard to not notice the students’ curiosity and willingness to participate increase with the visual aids. Lesson on the different organs and systems of the body, for example, were definitely more dynamic when the students were able to interact with the human body ‘hands on’ and see how they work.  For them to make the visual connection with what they were learning was a great benefit.  

Of course visual and hands on learning with computers and other technology will probably never completely replace reading and writing as the most important method for educating, but they can be a tool to supplement lessons and help students look at concepts and problems in a completely different way.

Most of teaching career has been with very young students so homework, and in a lot of cases written work, is not really a major factor. However, I can only imagine the benefits of digital, non-paper assignments would have, many of which were discussed in class. With the technology we have now (and whatever unthinkable technology we will have to work with in the near future) it should only help spark the imagination and creativity of students and teachers. 

NETS-S: Communication and Collaboration in the Classroom

The NETS-S that I am most interested in learning about and implementing in my classroom would have to be the second point, Communication and Collaboration. I feel that this, at least with older students I have taught, has been a part of my teaching career as I have done the poorest.

Most of my career as teacher in Korea has been with very young children, usually kindergarten. For the most part I have excelled at keeping them captivated and involved in the lessons. With older children, however because have had a little more of  a problem and many times I have resorted to doing straight up lectures without much group work or back and forth discussions between teacher and student or between classmates. This has been, in part, because of  the difficulty of the lesson, a low level of  English skills, and unrealistic expectation but also a large part of the problem has also been my lack of ability to draw them into the lesson, make them want to involve themselves, and help them become engaged in the lesson. I'm hoping that through some of the tools and skills I will hopefully learn in this course I can improve on this.

Although my experience in teaching older children and young adults has been limited I expect to teach this age group in the future and, of course, would like to be successful in doing so. While teaching young children the lessons have been more rewarding and fulfilling for both parties when everyone is engaged and collaborating together rather than a ridged one sided lesson.  I've been excited with some of the technological tools and methods that have been discussed in the first Saturday of class and reading I have done. The rest of the course and this program should be enlightening.