Day 2 Reflection

Today’s class: I really enjoyed watching the two presenters deliver the good and bad of presentations.  I will be honest I certainly cannot present like Guy Kawasaki, however, I know how to liven up my presentations with my creativity which usually makes up for my short comings as a public speaker.  Yes, I am feeling a bit of anxiety presenting as I have done so since grade school, nevertheless, I am excited about how the research I am doing will improve my management of lessons, resources and best practices for future years to come. 

Common Sense Media:  I found this site useful for the purpose of monitoring what my children are interested in and exploring in the different media.  I felt some of the age specific material was not in appropriate categories in my opinion.  I like that I can go to one site and check for things for my kids to read, watch and do.   Trying to figure out if I would utilize this site as an art teacher is the question.

Digital Citizen Training:  I have no idea what training our students or faculty go through to have access to technology.  I have been trained in previous years in other districts, but honestly I do not know what our schools do.   I enjoyed the video about the RFID readers.  Possibilities are endless to how technology can be abused in our society.  Trying to be ahead of the game is the challenge for me.  I have a wallet that is supposed to be RIFD proof but how would I know if it actually does the job and for how long??

Podcast: Wow! I am not shocked by this information but more shocked that as a kid I thought about this a lot when I struggled through school until I adapted how I learned.  This took me a long time to perfect this enough to get the grades I knew I could get.  The problem I had was why would the teachers continue to teach to the one type of learner as if the rest of us had no value in the class.  I often paid enough attention in class to write down the concepts I would need to know and then later would approach my friends that I knew could take what was taught and explain/demonstrate the concepts in a way that made sense.  In some ways this helped us both.  The friend that retaught the information was teaching me what I missed in class and the friend would reinforce what they learned by demonstrating using physical examples.  I cherished these friends all throughout school for taking the time to teach me the way the teachers should have been doing it all along.  I will admit my science teachers were wonderful.  They utilized cutting edge teaching tools for the 80’s and for me it worked.  Math on the other hand was taught in a very rigid classroom environment using the same techniques I am sure my parents had.  I look at math as being a foreign language.  I can do math but not apply it in my life.