Teacher vs. ???

I think my post this week is derived from some frustrations I am feeling as a developing teacher.  My frustrations come from the feeling that as I develop my skills and gain the tools and knowledge to try and be a successful teacher, I see lots of roadblocks and grey area in front of me.  When I say this, I mean that it seems that teachers are fighting battles on many fronts.  They have to deal with large numbers in the classroom, many more special needs students in each class, under staffing, underfunding and a general lack of support for change from within the education system.  Teachers also face a lack of a family support at home for children, technology that enhances teaching, yet challenges teachers to stay ahead of the cheating curve. 

     I think I am more terrified and excited to have an opportunity to have my own classroom, because I think I know what it will be like, but then again I have no real life experience to base that on.  I hope to be able to instill great ideas, knowledge, work ethic, respect, communication skills, motivation and other aspects to students.  I worry that I am setting myself up for failure or disappointment because all of those things I want to accomplish are possible, yet in my experiences over the last few months it seems that the role of the teacher is so vast that it is hard to accomplish lofty and well thought out goals.  I am excited about utilizing all of the great ideas and techniques I have learned to organize and initiate learning for students, along with the technology to inspire and motivate children.  What I do not look forward to is the overwhelming pull on teachers to be teacher, friend,  parent, social worker.  I feel that in my first several years in the classroom, I will be to busy and to preoccupied to utilize new and interesting teaching methods, a  I will just fall into a routine of being   average teacher.  I do not want this and am not sure how to avoid this.  I guess, that I hope to find a great school system that supports andencourages young teachers.  I hope to find a mentor like teacher to utilize their skills and knowledge to help me to adjust and to inspire me to push my limits and the limits of the students.  I guess I will see how this all plays out, but I hope myself and my fellow new teachers have the opportunity to force education to change and for students and teachers to a be able to learn and spread knowledge and skills to make this world a better place. 

Power Point: Not just for presentations

I was not in class last week, due to a unplanned and unavoidable trip to sunny Florida.  Prior to leaving for my trip I met with my group to discuss a project we were doing that was goingto have us using powerpointas an interactive teaching tool rather than as a presentation tool.  This was odd to me as I had seen powerpoint used many times as a tool to help a presenter get his or her facts across to an audience in a short andconcise manner.  I was a little skeptical of how we were going to utilize this tool to teach and interact with students. 

     I met with my group on Sunday after returning from a 20 hour drive from Florida.  My group had completed about 10 slides of our project and I immediately was intrigued at how interesting and powerful our project could be.  We were able to utilize the slide format of powerpoint along with the hyperlinks to create and exercise for 1st grade students that was going to teach them about importantmembers of their community, and it was goingto be short, interesting, informative and interactive.  Powerpoint has now been another computer based tool that I have in my teachers tool bag to help me make education fun and interactive for students.  I am amazed and a little disappointed that I have not known the power of Microsoft word and powerpoint, as they are both user friendly and have been readily available to me for years.  I think that powerpoint as I knew it was boring and not very educational, but with a little extra hard work and proper use of all the tools in powerpoint it can be an amazing learning tool. 

     I have to say that this semester of Graduate school has been very challenging and some of the topics and things we have learned in the Technology in Education class have been very overwhelming.  I think that I have been able to gather and retain enough valuable and practical knowledge about  things like powerpoint, word, wikis, and podcasts.  I have a great foundation of technology based tools that are going to allow and enhance my ability to be successful as a student and even more so as an educator.  I look forward to the opportunity to utilize more of these tools as I enter classrooms, and hope I can continue to learn and expand my knowledge, so that I can keep up with the rapid pace of technology. 

     I think my technology class has also taught me another importatn lesson and that is teaching and technology have to go hand and hand for many students to learn and be succesful, so for me to be successful as a teacher, I have to embrace and continue to learna dn expand my knowledge of technology in hopes of enhancing and increasing the knowledge of the students.  I guess learning never stops, or rather should never stop, as the world and the tools we have as people is always changing and expanding.  I think it is exciting and terrifying all in the same .  Atleast I am not alone, because I know there are other in my class and around the world that are being pushed and taught new things that they are just as excited and terrified of as I am, and I think that is amazing. 

Education: Why reactive not proactive?

This morning as I stood i the shower I thought about what I was going to blog about today, and I thought about all of my past blogs and I have decided I like blogging.  The reason I like to blog is because it is like a journal or a place to vent or a place to ask advise or a place to make a statement.  The best part is that sometimes no one reads your post, and other times you can get alot of responses.  Once I had this epiphany I then move onto choosing a topic to blog about.  I recapped my Tech Ed class from the night before in which we had talked about the uses of pod-casting. In class we had talked and seen great uses for pod-casts like news and sports and speeches, and then my blog idea hit me, just about the time the water in the shower started to get cold.  I want to blog about the fact that there are so many more examples and ways that teaching and learning can occur now than in any point in the history.  The example of the school in the south that had students who spent long commutes on the school bus and how they were given ipods and laptops to use on their ride.  The children were quiet and learning.  I realize there is an expense to giving children this technology, but the way I see it is we can put money and time and resources into helping teach and educate or ewe can spend even more of the same on welfare and jails for uneducated and unmotivated adults.  The way I see it is at this point our society is reactive.  We spend lots of funds on jails and on human service programs to help people who can not provide for themselves, when we could just as easily shifty our goals and focus and educate and prepare people to be able to support themselves.  Some people will say that there are lots of jobs that would be lost in jails and at service organizations, and my response would be that switch the jobs to fields that are similar, yet the focus or goal is a proactive approach.  I worked in social work for ten years prior to returning to school, and the number of people who are not educated or motivated to be successful is disgusting.  I as a future teacher want to take the challenge of leading the charge to change our society and how we live.  I believe teachers are the key to this happening as they influence both families and children more than any other force around.  The problem is the teachers need the support of the government and that is going to be a struggle.  I do have hope and that is that people want and see that we need to change and since the people are the power than lets hope we can inspire and encourage change. 

proTECH the Earth

I speant what little free time I had this weekend trying to think of something interesting to blog about.  I found my topic in an email from a friend who is very passionate about recycling and the use of resuorces.  The email was interesting in that it talked about several types of technology and how they are wasteful.  The funny thing is the technology is not wastful, once again it is the cojnsumer who is wasteful.  I agreed with many of the comments and have decided to change a few habits of my own.  One habit that I will change will be turning off the computer at night.  I agree with the writer that I can find something else productive to do for the 2 minutes it takes my computer to boot. 

     The most intriquing part of the article was the part about the wastefulness of people who buy things cheap and throw them out when they are outdate or broke.  I see this as a fault of the consumer, but then again I have my example in which the otherday, I was talking with my parents and their archaic VCR (I know it isnt DVD) broke and they wanted to get it fixed.  My dad took it took get looked at and the guy told him it clould be fixed and would cost about $40 for parts and labor.  I told my dad that was great, but for about the same price, maybe cheaper, he could buy a brand new and better VCR.  So, is the wastefulness the fault of the consumer or the fault of the producer.  In this day in age I hate going to Walmart because I see walmart as a neccasary evil.  Walmart has everything you need and they can give it to you for the best price and that is great for me as the struggling college student.  The bad part is that Walmart and big companies in this world are growing and wiping out many other forms of competition and in many ways negativly effecting the economy in many places.

     I also like the comment about the new phnoe or Ipod or tech device.  I am infamous for keeping a cell phone for ever, yet I get super excited when it is time to get a new and better adn faster phone.  I think my generation and genreations to come are going to have to learn to utilize and reuse because our drive to want new and bigger and faster is rampant in many of us. 

     For now I will try to do my small part, and I believe every little bit counts, but to really make changes this effect of technology on the environment has to be looked at by the masses.  The proble at hand will be many people feel about issue like this that someone else will deal witht he problem or better yetthese problems are not in your house or your yard, so they are out of site, out of mind.  This issue seems similar in its magnitude and vastness to that of the issues in the years past with the ozone layer and how we as producers and consumers were destroying a vital and functional necisity of our world.  The amazing thing is look how bad things had to get with that before any substantial changes were made. 

     In closing I have to say that I do recycle, I buy the new lightbulbs and I car pool when possible.  The problem is while I am doing all of that I see many companies and people all around not doing the same things and it makes me wonder how my small efforts will be helpful.  In the end, I guess we have to start somewhere and in this case I am going to lead rather than follow.