Sunday, June 30, 2013

Blog Post #10

What Can We Learn About Teaching and Learning From Randy Pausch?

There are so many things one can learn from watching Randy Pausch's Last Lecture. This video is his last lecture before he died of cancer. His goal through recording this was to pass on all the lessons in life he learned to not only his children, but people around the world. As many say, he wrote the book on living while dying. Although he did not always succeed, Randy Pausch had an incredible outlook and understanding on life even when the odds were not in his favor. Here are just a few lessons from his lecture.
Your critics are the ones still telling you they love you and care.

Show gratitude. Gratitude is a simple but powerful thing.

Don’t complain, Just work harder.

Never underestimate the importance of having fun.

All of these lessons are so important to embrace especially for Teachers because they work with children everyday. As a teacher we are not just there to make sure students learn, but to motivate them, help them grow, and most importantly to set them up to achieve their goals. My favorite quote from Randy Rausch is,

"If you’re going to have childhood dreams you should have great parents who let you pursue them and express your creativity."

During this specific lesson he talks about how important it was that his parents let him decorate his walls with math formulas, despite the negative impacts. I know this was meant for parents, but I believe this is a very important lesson for teachers to learn as well. It does not matter what type of home life a student has, as a teacher you can make a difference by giving students the support they need to dream. As a future teacher I plan to let my students go wild with learning. I want my classroom become a totally cool learning zone with their favorite topics surrounding them, just like Randy's room as a child. I want to be able to give them an opportunity to find and surround themselves in their own personal niche and run with it.

quote

Sunday, June 23, 2013

Blog Post #8 Collaborative

What can we learn about teaching and learning from these teachers?

Through the video Making Thinking Visible, we see Mark Church a sixth grade teacher in Amsterdam, use visible thinking in his classroom. The video starts with a topic they learned about the day before, early human beginnings and the origins of human society. He has his students create and write down a headline to summarize what the meaning of the search for human origins is all about. The students then start discussing in their groups how to summarize what they have learned into a small statement. Once they have decided on their headline and written it down, they share it aloud and tell why they chose that headline. Later on once they have completed the lesson they will go back and answer the same question, and then see how their answers changed over time. This is an example of visible thinking. The goal of visible thinking is to develop student thinkings patterns while expanding their understanding of a given topic. To do this visible thinking uses questions to get students talking and thinking about the possible answers, and documented answers to be able to go back and reflect to see how their understanding and thoughts have changed on a given subject.

After watching this short video I think visible thinking is a great way of learning. I really appreciate the fact that it allows students to work in groups and discuss their ideas. To me, being able to work with other people is a very important lesson to learn as a child. I also like that visible learning allows for students to look back and reflect upon their learning. I was never encouraged to see my progress during my education and I think could be very beneficial for my students to be able to see their progress. This is definitely a method of teaching that I could use in my classroom for subjects such as math, history, and much more.

group


Kaylee Diegan

Paul Andersen, a science teacher in Montana, is incredibly smart and has great ideas to incorporate in his Blended Learning teaching style. He has been teaching science for nineteen years and just recently began teaching science online. His main idea is Blended Learning in the classroom. Blended Learning consists of online, classroom and mobile tools that incorporate engaging, exploring, explaining, expanding and evaluating (the five E's).

Andersen has six steps to his students' learning process. The first is the question. This starts the tone and is the "hook" of what they are learning. I realized that it is important for the question to be something interesting to the students so they are willing and encouraged to learn. The next step is investigation/inquiry. This is where the students should experiment and try various things with the proposed idea. Next is the video. This is more for the teacher. Andersen makes podcasts giving his students detailed instructions so he doesn't waste any class time. Instead, he has this time to review with his students. The fourth step is elaborating. This is where the students can read on the subject, or do some research. Also, this is where graphs and tables come in to play. Review comes next. Andersen meets individually with his students to evaluate them and see how well they know the material. He says in his video that if a student really knows material, then they should be able to explain it. He sits with his students and asks them questions. This is where he can tell if they know the material or not. Lastly is the summary quiz. If he doesn't feel like the students know the information, they will start over wit this learning process. If they do know the information, he will give them a timed, paper/pencil test.

I learned quite a few things from Paul Andersen. First of all, I was very impressed with his blog and the way he presented himself in his video. He sounds very intelligent, put together and like he really cares about his students. I have already learned from EDM310 that my classroom doesn't have to be the same, boring classroom atmosphere I had in grade school, but Andersen really reinforces this. He gave great examples in his step-by-step learning process on ways to ask questions, use time management and make sure your students really understand what they have been learning. I am excited to incorporate things such as group activities, podcasts and student-centered learning in my classroom!

Jamie Risner

Back To The Future

Back to the Future is a video by Brian Corsby who is a teacher at Agnes Risley Elementary school. Mr. Corsby teaches fourth graders who are second language learners. The first day of class he gives his 24 students a quiz. One question asked the students what city they lived in. Only 9 got the answer correct. Another question the quiz asked the students what country they live in. Only 3 got the answer correct. This video goes on to show the many projects and style of teaching Mr. Corsby uses in his class. My favorite project they did was sending a high altitude balloon up into the atmosphere with a camera. When the photos and video came back, the students wrote stories from the point of view of the balloon and took their story and the photos taken from the balloon to make an illustrated book. Mr. Corsby does not have tests in his class. Students post videos of themselves doing projects to their blog. Each student not only has a blog but also a laptop computer to use in class. Students also use their blog to post about what they learned and did in class that day. Mr. Crorsby used technology to help fourth grade students get excited about learning and connect with students all around the world. I thought this video was amazing and Mr. Corsby showed more passion for teaching and learning than any teacher I have ever seen. Keeping students engaged in learning and excited about going to school is the most important thing any teacher can do because if a student is excited about learning than the sky is the limit.

C4T #2

I was assigned to read Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano's blog Langwitches Blog. Here is my summary of her post and my comments.

Blog Post June 11, 2013

Upgrading Traditional Reports to eBooks- Guest Post by Karin Hallett

This post shows how a librarian reinvented a book report. Instead of a normal, paper report on animals, this teacher had her students create an ebook using the apps ExplainEverything and BookCreator. Together, the apps enabled students to create an ebook made up of their own text and drawings. In this project students were encouraged to let their imagination run wild. They were simply given a list of specific items that their book must have such as a cover page, table of contents, wonder question and answer, and other items like these. Although the teacher herself was a little worried about how well the students would engage themselves into learning, she found they loved the freedom and their work effort was something to be very proud of. Here is a sample of a finished book from one of her students.



I thought this was an excellent blog post. I love that the students were able to run free with this project. It started with a simple question and natural curiosity and turned into a super cool ebook that they could be proud to show for their hard work. My comment stated that I loved the idea of an ebook, and that I would love to do something like this with my future class.

Blog Post June 14, 2013

More iPad Workflow Scenarios

The purpose of this post was to share apps that she found to be great tools for teachers and students.

This was a great post, especially for those who are looking for apps to help with different projects. I like how she organized the apps into a workflow, instead of just listing them. Her workflow was interesting to look at because of the way she organized and colored her categories, as well as the use of app pictures. My comment reflected that of the apps I had used from her workflow they were a great tool, even as a college student. Here is her workflow of apps. Check them out!

apps

Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Progress Report Project #9

My group has divided the book amongst the members. Individually we are all taking notes about the important topics that we would like to discuss in our podcast. We plan to meet next week for a discussion and filming. The podcast should be posted by Tuesday night.

Blog Post 7 Collaborative

What assistive technologies are available to you as a teacher?

In Teaching Mom What Her Deaf/Blind Child Is Learning On the iPad, I was able to watch as a parent was given instructions to use an iPad, that her child uses in class. It was simply amazing to watch. Although, it was just an iPad that so many people use day to day, I have never seen it used in such a way, nor did I realize what an incredible tool it really is to have. The parent was able to slide her finger across the top of the screen while the iPad read aloud to her the apps available to select. When she found the app she was instructed to find, she was able to double click anywhere on the screen to bring it up. Even more amazing she was able to type any letter by using this speaking iPad to help select the proper letters.

After watching this video I wondered who was this Denise Robinson? I google searched "Denise Robinson special ed teacher" and the seventh listing was the article, A New Model of Education for Blind and Low Vision Students. As it turns out she has an amazing story of her own. It is not just Denise Robinson, but Dr. Denise Robinson. A woman who puts every waking minute into working with blind children. Her inspiration? She lost her vision due to diabetes when she was twenty-four. Fortunately, she gained her sight back years later due to several surgeries. Through her experience of being blind, she understood the improvements needed to help others be able to function and live a normal life. Her story is inspirational and reminds me of my math class last semester where I encountered a boy that was blind. I had never been around someone who was blind and for me it was fascinating. He was so smart and I could not understand how he was able to survive in college. I remember talking to my mom about him. Saying that, even though I did not know him very well I was so proud of him because if it was me, I don't think I would be able to go and do what he is accomplishing. Likewise in the article, she tells that there is a 74 percent unemployment rate among blind individuals because they are not being taught effectively. With her methods and use of technology she is working miracles in lives of so many students. She is someone that I inspire to be like. This video and research is useful to me because it made me realize how much I would enjoy making a difference like Dr. Robinson has working with blind children. After this assignment I will definitely be looking into specializing my education to help the blind.

The article, 50 Must-See Blogs For Special Education by Jeff Dunn, is a great resource for teachers. It has different blogs that cover anything and everything. From special education tips and strategies all the way to blogs for specific disorders. One particular blog that caught my attention was, ADDitude Blogs, a blog made to help those dealing with attention deficit. It is a brilliant website. Not only is it available to help those coping with the disorders, but the writings are all from those suffering from ADD, parents whose children have been diagnosed, as well as ADHD experts. For a teacher, this is a great because the writings are not giving a glossed over, dictionary version of a disorder. It is giving you personal accounts, findings, methods all from people who understand. When you have a child in your class that has a disorder such as ADD or ADHD, what would you rather read to be able to help them to the best of your ability, a research paper or a personal account?




Jamie Risner

Teaching Math To The Blind

Before watching this video, I never gave much thought to how a blind student learns math. I had always assumed blind students learned math with braille. However, blind students are unable to learn math using braille because braille is only linear and cannot show two diminutions in math problems. Professor Art Karshmer at the University of San Francisco, designed a solution to this problem. Professor Karshmer put braille on small blocks that look like scrabble pieces and then designed a board that was made into a grid. The blind students scan a block and then put it on the board. The computer then tells them in what row and grid they placed the block in. This design makes it possible for blind students to work problems out in two diminutions, which helps give blind students a foundation of math. This design is one of the most important tools available to blind students and the teachers responsible for teaching them math. Without a foundation of math, the number of jobs for a blind person becomes more limited.

Ipad Usage For The Blind

This video was amazing! Wesley Majerus is blind, yet in this video he demonstrates how new software that is put into an iPad makes it possible for a blind person to use an iPad. The software has voice-over which allows the user to drag their finger over the screen while the iPad tells them which app their finger is on. Another great feature this iPad offers is a main stream e-reader. By having e-readers available, a blind person can buy a book they would like to read but which is too expensive or else not offered in braille. The e-reader on the iPad reads the books out loud and describes images in the book. The only problem with the e-reader that I noticed during the video was that the reading voice was fast and hard to understand at times. The best thing about this iPad is that it comes this way out of the box and already set up. This makes it more user friendly to its blind owner. With this new software, a blind person is now able to use the same type of technology that seeing people can.

New And Useful Technology For The Blind

I was amazed at all the different technology for the blind. I found two different ones on the website www.ehow.com click here ; that I thought would be very helpful. The first technology is called the smart cane. The smart cane is a new and better version of the walking stick. The smart cane can detect objects around the user up to a few meters away. This would be a great thing for a blind student to be able to have for crowed hallways or field trips. The most impressive technology for a blind person on this website was the Knfbreader mobile. The knfbreader mobile is a phone for a blind person; however it also has a camera that lets the owner take pictures of a text. The knfbreader mobile will then read that text back to them. This would be an amazing tool for a blind person in any situation in which braille text is not available. However, I was unhappy to find that I would not be able to use these tools in my classroom because they are hard to obtain and very expensive.

Kaylee Diegan

With today's technology, there are so many available tools to help enhance teachers' classrooms. I watched the video Assistive Technologies for Vision and Hearing Impaired Children. In this video many tools are shown that can help increase the learning experience for impaired children. A few of these are sensory aids, flip cameras, text telephones and text to speech devices. Sensory aids, such as hearing aids, can allow students with hearing impairments to hear better in the classroom, thus automatically increasing the things they can learn. Flip cameras allow access to videos immediately. Text telephones are used for those who have speech impairments. The main tool that struck my attention most was the text to speech devices. These are frequently used for students who have ALS. There are apps you can download on the iPad such as EZSpeech Pro, Fat Cat Chat Repair and Verbally Premium. EZSpeech Pro is for literate users who have lost their speaking ability to ALS. Users can receive phrases from others and store them in their device. The Fat Cat Chat Repair is more "small talk" based. The student can push a symbol, then they are prompted to choose from fifteen different words choices that best fit the symbol. Verbally Premium seems like it would be extremely helpful for those who are speech impaired. With this app, students can save their favorite phrases or most commonly used phrases. The voice can be personalized. Students often use this for common places such as a doctor's office or the classroom. These apps, along with many others, can be found on a Special Apps, Special Kids blog.

The other video I watched was the Mountbatten video. The Mountbatten is a braille writing machine. You can connect it to a computer and save, transfer, and receive files. It helps recognize braille characters, allows play for young children who are not physically able to use traditional braille writers, provides basic level concepts of using braille and displays the children's work. This is a great way for impaired children to be included in classroom activities such as peer group projects.

It's hard to say which of these I will use in my classroom, but I think all are potential tools that could help me with any impaired students I may have. Hopefully I will have an iPad in my classroom, in which case I could download any of these apps to use in my classroom. I think it is so important that project based learning is including impaired children. All children deserve the opportunity to explore and learn at their full potential. They can't do this without teachers who are willing to let it happen!

Sunday, June 16, 2013

Blog Post 6

What do we need to know about asking questions to be an effective teacher?

In Asking better questions in the classroom, by Joanne Chesley, I learned that an effective teacher does not use close ended questions in their lesson. Close ended questions do not offer any positives in terms of learning. They just give a yes, no, maybe, whatever, blah answer. Instead, effective teachers should be using open ended questions because they can be perceived in different ways and start a meaningful discussion among students. Open ended questions allow for more creativity and learning to occur in a classroom. As a student, I would much rather be able to talk and bounce ideas off my teacher than to just sit there and maybe answer a yes or no question.

In Three Ways to Ask Better Questions in the Classroom I learned that a effective teacher needs to prepare, play, and preserve questions. Good questions play a crucial role in learning. For a teacher a question resembles a lesson, it needs to be given at the appropriate time and order. A teacher does not walk into class and start talking about the first point that comes to mind. So, why would you ask a question without preparing it too? An effective teacher also needs to understand that once you have given the correct answer to a question, the students are not thinking about the question anymore. It is gone. Their brain has been shut off, they no longer care to think about another possible answer. To prevent a student from shutting their brain off, a teacher needs to play with a question and discuss the answers with the class before saying what is correct. Finally, an effective teacher needs to preserve good questions. If you are asked a good question keep it! Write it down for the next time you are teaching the lesson. It shows the students you care what they say, as well as helps point students in the direction you want in the future.

angry baby


Project 8 Book Trailer

Wednesday, June 12, 2013

My Sentence Videos

My Sentence



My Passion

Blog Post 5

Through The Benefits of Podcasting in the Classroom by Joe Dale, I learned that podcasting can be helpful for students outside of class. I had never thought of how such a simple video could be used to help in so many ways. One example presented in the video that really hit the idea of podcasting home for me was using it to help students who are out sick be able to keep up with class. This is a fantastic idea! It reminds me of all the days that I went to school feeling terrible just to be able to attend an important lesson. By offering a podcast for students who are absent is great because we are no longer pressuring them to come to class when they are not feeling well. I for one, am all for giving my students to tools necessary to keep up with school all while being able to stay home and get well. I want my students to come to class healthy, happy and ready to learn, not worrying about getting sick.

From the Judy Scharf Podcast Collection I learned about podcasting in general. She has some great tips on topics, research, as well as background information about podcasting. One thing that surprised me was the origin of the term podcast. I had no idea that it was cross between broadcast and ipod.

I loved reading Langwitches - Podacasting With 1st Grade. For me, as a future early education teacher, it helped me see what I could do with podcasting in my classroom. At the beginning of EDM 310 I had a poor attitude towards making a blog and other technological profiles because I had the idea that I would never be able to use many of these things in my classroom. After reading this blog post I can see what a difference something as simple as recording students reading can do. I think it is incredible how interested many of students became in the project, as well as how much feedback and encouragement they received from the people who visited their podcast.

technology

Sunday, June 9, 2013

Project # 3 Presentation

Project #4 Comments4Teachers

I was assigned to read Will Richardsons' blog Read. Write. Connect. Learn.. Here is my summary of his post and my comments.

Blog Post May 29, 2013

Who Knew That Learning Was a Problem to Be Solved?

This blog post was over the article: Amplify Announces One of the Largest Tablet Deployments in K-12 Education

This news release from Amplify, a tablet producing company, announces that they will be sending 21,215 tablets to middle schools in Guilford County North Carolina. The tablets were purchased mainly by federal Race to The Top funds and are covered for four years. Along with details on the tablet and their company, the new release has several praise statements about the tablet from the CEO and other important members of their team.

Out of everything that was possible to say in response to this news release, his only writing consisted of sarcastic remarks. While I was highly disappointed in his blogging I had to go through with the assignment. To make my required comment be worthwhile, I went and researched the tablet on the company website. I looked into whether or not these tablets were a good investment, because education at any grade level is an investment. My comment in a nut shell stated that 14 million dollars is a lot of money especially for technology, such as a tablet. They become highly outdated in a short amount time and are not wanted once there is something better on the market. Maybe I sounded a little too crazy with my use of numbers because my post was miraculously gone after ten minutes on his blog.

Blog Post June 7, 2013

Two Options for Being “You” on the Internet

Refers to the article:Privacy tools are a joke

This article talks about the recent news of the government's online snooping and how you should overcome the situation. It shows that privacy on the internet is really nonexistent and the NSA can watch you even with what some think as impossible to track "anonymity-protecting TOR browse" technology. To truly be able to have privacy on the internet you need a fake name on Facebook and start encoding your emails. Besides the unrealistic answers that I enjoyed reading about, the author finally comes around to politics and how we need to change them to protect ourselves. Here is my favorite part,
A civilized society should not permit its government to collect unlimited amounts of data on innocent people. President Obama said something to that effect when campaigning for president in 2007, when he attacked Bush’s surveillance activities as “a false choice between the liberties we cherish and the security we demand.”
I guess I should not say refer to the article above, his blog post was nothing but sharing the article. Super interesting topic, but he did not say anything! Pick a side, take a middle of the road stance, something. Please. My comment just thanked him for sharing the interesting read. I could not think of anything else to say that would not get deleted.

obama

Blog Post 4

Once I start teaching elementary education, more specifically second grade, I want to use tools that keep learning fun. That is why in my class room I would like to use SMART Response interactive response system to go along with my SMART board. The SMART Response interactive response system connects small hand held devices directly to my SMART board. This allows me to post math problems, reading questions, and potentially many other daily questions such as attendance at the front of the room. All they have to do to respond to a question is simply click a button on their assigned device. The potential this tool has in a classroom is limitless. As a teacher, this benefits me in many ways, but most importantly it allows me to evaluate my entire class almost instantly. If I was to give the same problems on paper it would likely take me at least 30 minutes to go through all the papers and get back to my class to address frequent issues or see that they have comprehended the material. Not only does it speed up the time it takes to evaluate my students understanding, but it is a very helpful tool to eliminate unnecessary paper waste. Making my classroom more environmentally friendly.



Jamie Risner

21st Century Learning And Communication Tool

When I graduate I will be teaching High School history, with that in mind I believe the most important learning and communication tool I will be using in my classroom will be e-books. There is new technology being brought into classrooms every day, however I think the most important, and overlooked technology is e-books. One reason I think e-books will be the best learning tool for my classroom is they are small, weigh a lot less than a traditional textbook, but can store all the students needed information for all of their classes. Not having to have many different textbooks is not just good for the students, but also great for the enviornment because e-books do not use any paper. E-books are not only good for the students but also great for the shcool as well, because books would be much cheaper downloaded on e-books. On the web site www.dbreaders.com it says that 1,500 books on an e-book will cost about $15,000, however to buy 1,500 hard copy books would cost about $39,000. By simpley using e-books schools could save a lot of money that they could put towards other improvements in the school.

The third, and most important reason that e-books would be the best learning tool in my classroom is, because they offer many options that pen, paper, and text books do not. The website www.dbreaders.com says "e-readers offer online dictionary, unlimited notes, saved highlights, simple and convenient search, and the ability to share quotes on popular social resources like twitter and facebook". With these types of options right at my students finger tips the sky would be the limit to their learning. With so many benefits it is hard to understand why schools have not already gone to using e-books. E-books range in price from around fifty dollars to hundreds of dollars, and are avalibale at most electronic stores and even online. I believe it is only a matter of time before schools start doing away with textbooks, and replace them with e-books. My question is, with all the benefits e-books offer to classrooms, why wait to make the switch?

Kaylee Diegan

There are so many technological tools to be used in the school systems. Many of those are used in my EDM 310 class such as a blog, twitter, google docs, skype, etc. However, I think there are certain technological tools that should be used with different age groups. For instance, Remind101. This is a tool that could be used for the age group I want to teach, which is sixth grade. Remind101 was created by two brothers who can see the obvious struggle of communication between parents, students and teachers.

How It Works

As a teacher, you create a login and are given a unique code for your class. Your students and their parents can also sign up, using your class code. The teacher can then send messages to those who are signed up. The best thing about it though, is that there are no cell phone numbers shown. The only thing that you can see when sending/receiving messages is the other's name, not phone number. This keeps a safe barrier with the communication, ensuring that the cell phone numbers of teachers, students and parents are being misused.

Examples

A teacher can send a reminder saying, "Science test tomorrow."

A teacher can send a message saying, "Homework due on 06/11/13. American History, page 220, questions 1-6."

With this tool, students are reminded of their work, and parents are either reminded, or told for the first time. Many times, students are lazy and don't turn in their homework. This is an easy way to stay on top of them and make sure they are performing their very best.

Wednesday, June 5, 2013

Blog Post 3

Through the video What is Peer Editing, and slideshow Peer Edit With Perfection Tutorial, I learned what peer editing is and how to properly edit a peer's work. Peer editing is simply reviewing a classmates writing. I did not realize until now that there is actually a process of peer reviewing where you first compliment, then suggest, and finally correct their writing. Personally, I am not a fan of the correction step. I do not like going and changing another persons' writing. I think that suggestions are far more appropriate because they give the writer a choice to change the problem in their own way. I completely agree with the video and slideshow when they say that the best thing to do is to stay positive. Many people are sensitive about their writing and can feel as if they are being attacked when a suggestion or correction is recommended. Overall, I feel that as long as you are polite about what needs to be fixed there is nothing to worry about when peer editing.

Through the video Writing Peer Review Top 10 Mistakes, I learned what not to do when peer reviewing. This video for me brought to light how we may be perceived when we are not taking others feelings into account. Some of the mistakes made during peer review are being too picky, mean, loud, pushy, off topic, and uncaring. Sometimes we forget when asked to review something that it is not our writing, and not to go changing everything. Scenarios like this make you come off as being rude and condescending, causing people to become defensive. The last thing I would want is someone to think that I am looking down on their work. I love to read other responses to a question besides my own.

bossy pants


In EDM 310, my group members have consistently posted outstanding material to their class blog. The content is right on point, grammar and spelling issues are non existent, and their posts are interesting to read. At first I was a little wary of commenting on others work, especially where others could see, but after getting to know them more and working together in class I am comfortable with commenting and giving suggestions and recommendations. REVISED

Sunday, June 2, 2013

Blog Post 2

The video Mr. Dancealot is a perfect example of our current education system. It takes the sit down, shut up, and listen approach to teaching. This approach does not work. The students in the video were bored out of their minds sitting there, and likewise the class attendance declined throughout the video. It bothers me that we can expect students to want to learn when they cannot and are not even encouraged to be involved in their education.

The video The Networked Student describes a modern day student that is encouraged to use technology. Instead of the standard textbook and class lectures, this modern student has both classes and personal online learning. Through his online learning connections, who are possible other students, teachers, and college professors, he is able to read and understand a given topic more in depth than your average textbook allows. With the extended amount of knowledge he is able to gain using the internet, the teachers primary job is to reinforce the information.

I love the fact that this 21st century student was in control of his learning. Through technology and this idea of connectivism he is able to create and control what he learns. By using blogs, scholarly articles, Itunes U, and other resources he is able to read and listen to some of the most educated people that specialize on his given topic. Not only is he able to read and listen to others knowledge, but he can exchange ideas with numerous individuals to further his understanding and knowledge. This is a great modern day idea that is not being used by a majority of students. It baffles me why it is not the most popular way of teaching in our schools. Every answer a student could want is right here, on the internet, but instead we are relying on sometimes outdated textbooks that may only partially cover an issue.

Another aspect of this video that I admire is that the teacher has taken a step back. She may have all the answers and knowledge to a topic, but she is encouraging students to learn for themselves using their resources. She is not dictating what they learn and simply encouraging them to learn.

REVISED

Encouraging Teacher