Reflective Post #11

Educating for Global Competence: Preparing Our Youth to Engage the World (Chapters 1 & 4)

     Chapter 1 discusses the forces that are shaping lives on the planet.  These include “the flattened global economy and changing demands of work; unprecedented global migration and the changing nature of neighborhoods, identities, and citizenships; and climate instability and the growing need for global environmental stewardship”.

     First, the flattened global economy and changing demands of work talks about the new distribution of labor in the making.  Computers are now taking over many of the jobs.  There were only 5 percent of American jobs in the beginning of the 20^th century that required special skills and knowledge and by 2009, 70 percent of jobs did so.  The article talks about how students today have to have multiple skill sets to be able to do well in a flattened global economy.

     Second, the unprecedented global migration and the changing nature of neighborhoods, identities, and citizenships talks about international migration.  International migration is happening more and more which has an effect on the demographics of neighborhoods and classrooms.  The article talks about how students need to be prepared for a world of diversity in which they need to be taught the different history, languages, geography and cultural contributions of people all over the world.  By learning about the different history of other cultures from around the world, this allows the students to see the others views which can help them for global migration.

     Last, the article talks about the climate instability and the growing need for global environmental stewardship.  It begins by talking about how the earth in the last few decades has experienced a change in extreme weather conditions and higher temperatures. 

     Chapter 4 talks about “globally competent students recognize perspectives”.  Students that are globally competent can recognize perspectives in the following ways: “recognize and express their own perspectives on situations, events, issues, or phenomena and identify the influences of that perspective; examine the perspectives of other people, groups, or schools of thought and identify the influences on those perspectives; explain how cultural interactions influence situations, events, issues, or phenomena, including the development of knowledge’ and articulate how differential access to knowledge, technology, and resources affect quality of life and resources”.  Many examples are then given including exploring shelters across the world and laughter in the U.S. and Afghanistan.  It ends by talking about powerful learning experiences.  These experiences allow students to study world views from others and be informed.

Reflection:

     As for chapter 1, I feel that global warming is a lot of theories and really no actual proof.  My feeling is that the jury is still out on global warming.  Yes, we didn’t really have a winter this year, but think about last year.  We had almost a week of negative 40 degrees in the winter and many other days were well below average.  When watching the weather, they always show the records and many days match the same high/low for that same day that happened 50 plus years ago.  Some believe that global warming is the cause of one year to have higher or lower temperatures.  I believe that all weather is cyclical because if you look back in time when the population wasn’t as large, we still had temperature fluctuations.

     As for chapter 4, I agree that it is important that this generation recognizes others.  Everyone though has different views on every topic.  You have to accept other people’s views but you are also able to hold your own.

Sister Cities and Sister Schools

     The website is about Sister Cities and Sister Schools.  It talks about global interaction.  There are parts of the website that show different technologies used for global connectedness.  These include blogs, presentations, Skype/FaceTime, websites and Wiki, and YouTube.  All of these technology resources are free to use.  Many schools utilize these technology resources to connect with schools around the world.  The blogs are used to communicate with others as in compared to a pen-pal.  Presentations, such as PowerPoint, Keynote, Slideshare and Google Presentation are used to present information.  Skype/FaceTime is used to interact with others through video technology.  Websites and Wiki are used to collaborate through blogs, videos, and presentations.  Google Sites offer joint collaboration for educational projects.  A video sharing website, YouTube can be used to post a video of practically any topic virtually.

Reflection:

     I have never heard about Sister Cities and Sister Schools before now.  I found this website a bit confusing about everything, maybe it was the way it was laid out.  Sister Cities and Sister Schools seem like a good way to help other students understand different global connectedness.  With the variety of technology used to connect with others, it makes it easier to connect with a variety of technology.

Virtual Field Trips (Hershey)

     The website talks about different virtual field trips and lists ten of the best virtual field trips.  Virtual field trips are often free or cheap verses an actual field trip than can be very expensive.  I thought the Hershey’s virtual field trip would be a good one to look at.  I have never been to the Hershey Factory in Hershey, PA but would like to go sometime.  Like stated on the website, “sometimes students just want to explore something cool, like chocolate”.  I felt that this field trip would be fun to learn about, and who doesn’t like chocolate? :) This field trip takes you through the history of The Hershey Company and the man himself, Milton S. Hershey.  It talks about how it all started.  There is even a section for Milton Hershey School.  This is a school that was founded in 1909 for orphan boys.  It is now a free world-class education that includes meals, clothing, a home, health care, counseling and training for careers.  There are several retail locations for Hershey, including a few in the Middle East and Asia.  The website includes sections for different brands that are made by Hershey, the corporate social responsibility, about their ingredients, investors, careers, Hershey’s partners and a news room.

Reflection:

     I have heard of virtual field trips before, but this is the first time I have experienced one.  The website itself was pleasant to look at and easy to navigate.  I really enjoyed looking through the information and background provided about Hershey.  I have always wanted to go visit the town of Hershey, PA.  This field trip showed me all about it and an opportunity to figure out a plan when I get the chance to go.  I think virtual field trips would be awesome for students to participate in as well.  It would be a great, cheap way for students to explore different places to learn about.  Virtual field trips would allow students to have a choice as well, like we did, on what trip they would like to take.

OERcommons

     This website explains what an OER is and about the future of education and OER resources.  OER stands for Open Education Resources which are “teaching and learning materials freely available for anyone to use, whether you are a teacher or a learner”.  These materials include modules, syllabi, homework, lectures, quizzes, games, etc. that are digital media collections.  After exploring, the website includes other examples of OER materials which include full university courses, interactive mini-lessons and simulations, adaptations of existing open work, electronic textbook and elementary school and high school lesson plans worksheets, and activities.  Included on the website are links to different websites dealing with OER’s.  These include OER’s on Wikipedia, Featured Resource: Open Education Quality Initiative, Featured Network: OLNet Evidence Hub for Open Educational Resources, and OER Training.  This site allows you to also create your own OER.  This allows you to download and share your resources with other colleagues and students.  By doing this, the websites research suggestions that using OER verses traditional books saves money and student outcomes improve.  The website states that “OER Commons helps educators, students and lifelong learners avoid time-consuming searches and find exactly the right materials”.  It also states that over 50,000 high-quality OER collections in which can be searched, browsed and evaluated are available.

Reflection: 

     This site gave a lot of information on OER.  I feel that this could be the future of education because the materials for teaching and learning are free for everyone.  Who doesn’t like free?  The only problem for me is I noticed after searching on the website for physical education, there were not many sources found.  Most that came up was dealing with physics education.  I did however find a few lessons and different content with some neat ideas but not nearly as much as I thought.  I think OER could be beneficial to many because of the fact that it is free and you can create your own lessons and share with others.  

Activity #11 - Virtual Field Trip

For the virtual field trip, students can explore the history, traditionals and education in Hungary.  I chose Hungary because I did a project on the country before because my uncle had a foreign exchange student from Hungary.

I did my virtual field trip through Google Sites.  Click on the following link to view my Virtual Field Trip on Hungary.

Hungary - Virtual Field Trip

Activity #10

Following educators:

@Mr_PhysEd @teachnpe @JoeyFeith @mrrobbo @CollinBrooksie 

Following businesses:

@pecentral @NASP2002

Tweet to educator: 

Laura Redd ‏@redd_laura

@CollinBrooksie Any good ideas on using Google Classroom or Google Apps in PE?

Response:

Collin Brooks ‏@CollinBrooksie

@redd_laura I use google forms a lot for quick assessments.

Reflective Post #10

Tweeting the Night Away: Using Twitter to Enhance Social Presence

The article talks about how Twitter can be used as social presence in online schooling, twitter in action and other instructional benefits of Twitter.  The article also gives guidelines for using twitter with students.  Twitter, according to the Twitter website, “is a service for friends, family, and co-workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?”  The responses have to be in 140 characters or less.  Because of this, it encourages the students to be clear and concisely.  The article explains that faculty has been experimenting on Twitter in the classroom.  Use of twitter in the classroom examples in the article include a student posting a question that they have from a textbook reading, communication with a group they are working on, sharing a video or URL with others, political debating, and students tweeting that they are tired and going to bed.  As for students using Twitter, the article provides guidelines for them.  These include: establish relevance for students, define clear expectations for participation, model effective Twitter use, build Twitter-derived results into assessment and continue to actively participate in Twitter.  The article ends by stating that including Twitter in the classroom can help hit the components of inquiry framework: cognitive and teaching presence.

Reflection: Tweeting the Night Away: Using Twitter to Enhance Social Presence

I think Twitter in the classroom would be a great idea.  I feel that as long as they are using it in an education way, it would be a great tool.  I think that it would increase participation because of many of the students having social media accounts.  With my real first experience using Twitter for this class, I am overwhelmed with it.  It all looks like a jumbled mess that is unorganized.  Being an organized person, I feel that is why it looks so confusing to me.  Facebook is so much easier to use because it feels more organized to me.  I just need to use Twitter more and I think it will come easier to me.  I also liked how the article gave good examples of ways for Twitter to be used in the classroom.  For my classroom, physical education, it would work for students to post different activities they were doing while at home or over the weekend.

Grassroots Professional Development: How Teachers Use Twitter

This article was about how teachers can utilize Twitter and other social media into their teaching.  There was a study done on how to make everyday technologies into “educational technologies” for teachers.  According to the article, tweets can be used as a professional development tool.  “Twitter is a forum for teachers to not only talk about their classroom practice and share practical information and news, but also to find like-minded educators and give voice to their ideological commitments.”  For this study, there was two methods used to collect the data.  The teachers completed surveys of those who tweet and also participated in phone interviews in which were then analyzed.  The first finding was the tweeting teachers’ perceived networks and audiences.  The teachers took a survey where they were asked to describe who they tweet, follow and who follows them.  The results were that they follow teachers and other teachers follow them.  The second finding was what tweeting teachers hear and what they do with that information.  The study was to find what messages teachers received and how it affected their practice.  The results showed that the teachers participating in the study saw Twitter as a way to keep up with educational technology and a place for new ideas.  The third finding was on privacy, safety, and internet literacies.  Many shared their concerns with their young students using social media because it could be a dangerous place for students.  They also thought that the older students needed to learn safety measures and how to be responsible when using social media.  The fourth finding was the policies and barriers.  Many schools, according to the article, saw barriers and frustration towards internet policies and technology.

Reflection: Grassroots Professional Development: How Teachers Use Twitter

After using Twitter for pretty much the first time ever for this class, I feel overwhelmed.  However, after the last two articles, there are a lot of uses for Twitter in the classroom.  I think the findings from this study were very helpful as well.  It is necessary to know who you are following and who is following you.  I noticed that Julia has a secured Twitter account and when I pushed follow, it had to be approved by her.  I think this would be a good idea to have in place for younger students when used in a school setting so they have to approve who is following them.

What Parents Want in School Communication

This article talks about a survey from 2011 of 50 school districts “to learn the communication preferences of both parents and non-parents”.  The results showed that parents would rather have electronic communication verses any other communication method for school news.  The top five answers received were: email from school, online parent portal, e-newsletters, school website, and telephone message.  Ranking at the bottom of the survey for communication preferences was social media (Twitter, Facebook, blogs).  From the survey the parents wanted information from the teachers regarding updates on their child’s progress, slipping performance, learning expectations, homework and grading policies, and behavior.  The parents also want information on curriculum, calendar events, safety of students, and program changes.  Almost half of parents and non-parents would like the updates once the decision is made.  The article ends by stating that each district should have some type of research done about communications in regards to their own community.

Reflection: What Parents Want in School Communication

I think the survey gave good results in what parents and students want to receive and how they want to receive the information.  Our school uses Ohio Alert text messages for information to send out to those that are subscribed.  We also use the website for information that includes a calendar of events.  Our school also uses social media, Facebook and Twitter, to get information out.  We also have a monthly ‘newspaper’ called The McComb Reader that goes out to the community.  As for Mr. D’s first grade website, it is very well organized with different pages to click on, much like a blog format.  Even though it doesn’t seem to be used anymore, since last post was made in July, his website includes good information for parents along with games, a calendar and contact information.  It would have been nice to see a ‘Meet Mr. D’ page.

Five Steps to Better School/Community Collaboration

This article talks about the need for “strong, authentic community connections and actions” to be able to create a transformation in real education.  The research done was broken down into themes:

·         Community/business school partnerships

·         Parental collaboration

·         Curriculum connected to real world experiences

·         Student voice

·         Cross generation learning

·         Locals designing solutions to local problems

There were also five steps given for a school transformation for the 21^st century learners:

1.  Include all community in the vision of school – experimental learning

2.  Reach out to all stakeholders - teachers, local business, students, parents, etc.

3.  Create a community resource map – hand-drawn, Google Map, Mind Map, spreadsheet

4.  Connect with curriculum – project based learning

5.  A design challenge for the community – redesigning classrooms, community garden, shared learning pace, course design, etc.

Reflection: Five Steps to Better School/Community Collaboration

I think that the school and community should work together, but I’m not sure how would happen to work.  The themes given could be related to a lot of schools and communities.  There should be community/school partnership, parent collaborators, connected curriculum, student voice, cross generation learning and solution designs to local problems.  The steps given for school transformation for the 21^st century learners could be beneficial.  I think all 5 would be good practices for many schools.  Especially involving the community in the school as well as connecting with curriculum.  If the community was more involved in the school system, I feel there would be less issues with parents/students.

I also thought the Facebook page was interesting and useful.  Allowing young people to stand up for what they believe in effort to make change is a great thing.  What those students did is great to allow others to hear their voice.