Week+Five+Wiki+Journal

It’s amazing how much a day or two away from regular learning environment to talk to other educators can energize a old teacher. Our team spent two days at the Conference for Ohio Middle Grade Teachers. [|Judi Wolf] was very informative in using the Internet.

Judy Stoehr in part of her workshop talked about the 21st century mind in which thinking is divided into four categories.
 * Critical Reflection, distinguishing reality from fiction
 * Empirical Reasoning, willingness to abandon supernatural explanations for naturally occurring events, a form of social responsibility
 * Collective Intelligence, willingness to think collectively to solve common problems
 * Metacognition, thinking about thinking

Rick Wormeli used a scene from the Sound of Music to demonstrate a differentiated lesson that was very entertaining. media type="youtube" key="nnkB1fWcxyY" height="344" width="425" Sherry's class is finishing a unit on Ancient China. They completed project demonstrations last week. Part of project was to put together a commercial for a Chinese invention or discovery. media type="file" key="Chinese Inventions.mov" width="300" height="300"They worked in cooperative groups to complete the projects.

We had several discussions about our student needs assessment and have tweaked it somewhat. After reading and discussing all comments we decided that we wouldn't make many changes. It seems to be right for our students. We felt the length and types of questions would allow the students finish quickly and not miss an entire class and give us the needed data.

As has gone on in education since the beginning of teaching anything new is questioned by veteran teachers. I can remember teachers saying that the VCR would never replace 16 mm projectors. Students entering school today might read about VCR's in a history book. I can see how an iPod type instrument could over take the of the PC in classrooms. So much //new// //technology// has come and gone in the thirty years I have taught. Let me think, cassette tapes, floppy disks, laser disks......
 * From an earlier post that disappeared**.

I found a fun video that questions technology fear. media type="youtube" key="CNVFuPJyN1Y" height="344" width="425"