reflection 1

After many attempts to use the class blog with no success this evening I am feeling pretty defeated...Thank you Adam for proposing email as the back up plan.  Essential when it comes to my dinosaur school computer and my challenged technology knowledge.  

Today's class allowed me to investigate twitter which I found to be much different than expected. I was pleasantly surprised how easy it was and how much value can be gained from it.  I spent some time exploring #edchat and I look forward to using this for professional development.  I need to spend more time figuring out blogging as I am unsure of the setup.  I can see how this would be a great way to communicate with parents and I hope to understand how to create a classroom blog. 

The 100 Languages of Children makes you stop and think about how much time we spend as teachers directing instruction and not investigating learning.  I use a lot of center-based learning in my classroom of primary children but feel that the exploration of questions and discovery of building knowledge often takes a back seat in most classrooms and has in mine.  This connects to Dan Meyers presentation to students should be directed as "today we're going to ask about" instead of "today we will learn about."  That resonated with me.  The demands of common core standards and achieving on standardized assessments takes the focus away from thoroughly investigating and constructing learning.  The word "Perplexity" that Dan Meyers spoke of so many times in his video should be the goal for our students to experience with.  Some of the tools that Dan Meyers utilized to capture, share, and resolve perplexity such as YouTube, cell phone, and document cameras are all easily accessible and many of us use them already in our classrooms.  This spring my first graders and I incubated chicken eggs for 21 days.  I pulled up a YouTube video of how to set up an egg incubator and my students came up with steps we needed to follow to properly incubate eggs. The students shared ideas and observations from the video.  They came up with the necessary steps to take and even suggestions on egg placements in the incubator. 

Dan Meyers talked about storing the perplexing moments.  I would like to understand how to use KEEPVID as a way to store them.  I am unsure of what RSS is and Social Bookmarking?  It seems like a handy way to store things you have captured.  I would like to learn more about it.