Mentorship

 

 

 

Consumer Math 20S (Fall 2007)

 

“A window through the walls of our classroom. This is an interactive learning ecology for students and parents in my Consumer Math 20S class. This ongoing dialogue is as rich as YOU make it. Visit often and post your comments freely.”

 

As part of our ECMP 355 we were asked to commented on Darren Kuropatwa’s Blog (Consumer Math 20S class). I am not a math person, but did find it interesting to see how Mr Kuropatwa integrated technology in his everyday class structure. What I find very positive is that when you ask your students to write something about what they had learned that day it made them think about it on a different level. Now they have to explain in a way that somebody else will be able to understand it and it is a good opportunity to assure you understand the class/lesson of the day. It took some thinking to comment in a way that will be appropriate and on a level that is understandable for students of that age.

When I am finally able to teach one day, it will be high on my priority list to have a student blog for my students. It gives the parents some insight on what is going on in the class. Secondly it will gives me time to evaluate if the students understand the concepts and ideas that is introduced to them. I am a educator that strongly believes in the learning process and not necessarily the end result and by blogging your will stay on top of it.

I have posted some of comments I’ve made:

Good job on explaining what you did in class. You will see that you will remember something that you have explain to somebody else or put it on your blog so much better. Keep up the good work.

This section that you do in class now is so important. One day when you earn your own money you need to know where every dime is going. You work hard for your money and you should be the one that has control over it and the first thing to understand is where the money is going that has been deducted and how much will be deducted.

Hi Almond

This is great that you learn how to use a spreadsheet. I am a volunteer on our local school council and often have to keep records on who have paid for something and who are still owing us money. I always use Google Docs to do this. It is so easy to share the information with the people that works with me.
It will be very useful to calculate your income one day, but soon you will use it for more things as well.
Keep up the good work. I learn so much by just following all of your blogs.

It seems that this student really grasp the idea of the topic discussed in class. It is important to understand the concept of finding the 10%. I see it so often when my children like to buy something and need to add the tax to know if they have enough money. The first thing I taught them was how to add 10% so they can see if they have more or less enough money to buy it. When they are a bit older they will see tax is not only 10% but we will leave for later. It is a quick mental math to do and they can apply it to more things as they grow up.

I also like to agree with Michelle on how important it is to ask questions. If you don’t ask a question the teacher will not know that you don’t understand or that you need some more information. Teachers will teach with a certain speed but if you don’t keep up you need to slow them down and the one way of doing it is by asking questions.

Knowledge gives you power.
Knowledge gives you power, but also to know where to find answers if you don’t know. While I am trying to write to you about the power you will generate because you choose to go to school I remembered the following post I read a while ago. I will quote some of it, but you can also go the website if you like. http://tinyurl.com/yodlaw

“I’m sure you agree with me that knowledge is power. I remember I story I once heard about an elderly maid who served her mistress faithfully. She loved her mistress so much that she took care of her even when she was diagnosed of having a terminal ailment. As it is with love and affection, the mistress also replicated this love. Since she did not have any sibling at her point of death, she gave this woman what she would regard as her most precious possession, a small sheet of paper to remember her mistress by. This was enough for the old maid.

This older woman was an illiterate but understood the language of love. As soon as her mistress was diseased, she glazed this sheet of paper and hung it in her own private home. Not long after she was also diagnosed of an ailment, it wasn’t a terminal ailment, neither was in incurable. It caused much pain, and was so expensive to treat. The projected bills were going to be about $30,000, there was no way she’ll ever get this money. She decided to resign to fate, and die. It wasn’t worth it going through such pain at an elderly age. She had suffered for weeks and was at the point where she begged for euthanasia -painless killing.
On the day the doctor came over to her ward with the plan of putting her out of her misery, they decided to have a small chat before the elderly lady bade farewell to this side of life. The lady was excited that her pain would end, and shared with the doctor the high points of her life. In this long discussion, she reached into her bag and showed the doctor one of her most cherished possessions. A glazed sheet of paper she remembers her fondest mistress by. The doctor collected it and took a closer look, his jaw dropped and eyes looked dazed, “what?”. What this woman had glazed was a $1,000,000 cheque. She lived in pain, suffered and was about to end it all, not because she was not rich, not because she could not afford a better life, but because she didn’t know. Knowledge is indeed power.

The good book actually says that a man who is in honour and does not know is like a perishing beast. Knowledge is vital. Information is crucial. Information is a vital ingredient in what you need to move from where you are to where you are going. The definition of power I love the most defines power as the ability to choose. The more options you have, the more powerful you are. Knowledge gives power, the more you know the more options you have. Some of the most thriving businesses today thrive in providing cutting edge information at cutting edge speed. We are in an information driven age… that is not just for our countries and the media, that’s for you and I.”

Telecollaborative Web Projects

In class we looked at a few of these “Telecollaborative Web Projects” and would like to highlight a couple of them.
Monster Exchange is designed to encourage the development of reading and writing skills while integrating Internet technology into the classroom curriculum. This is a wonderful projects for kids in different age groups. It sounds very easy but to describe something(monster) in written words with no eye contact, no hand gestures is not easy. I find it a great way of practicing writing to help you to be better in creative writing. It helps you to describe something so that the person that reads your story have the same picture in their mind as you did when you wrote it.

Excited students will learn geography through an engaging, relevant exchange of information….

This program brings the kids in touch with students from all over the world and to help them to understand different cultures. It also let the kids think a little about their own culture and way of living when they have to describe it on their postcard. Kids learn a lot from other kids as they write about and in a style that their peers can understand. This is a tool which I will most certainly use when I teach. Other than learning about other cultures, climates, and geography it also helps the kids with their writing skills.

Power of a Blog

How powerful can a blog be??

As I am working on my final project I just realize more and more the power there is in a blog. I’ve posted a book review on Daniel’s Story by Carol Matas and was I surprised when the author left a comment on the blog. The power that I was talking about is when my kids realized they can write about a book they have read recently and maybe the author will leave a comment on their post as well. So this will probably be happening in our house in the next few days and I sure hope somebody will leave a nice comment on their posts

Now I should stop blogging and watch TV for a change.

Technology in the Classroom.

While working on my final project for ECMP 355 I came across Diane’s blog. She has some excellent ideas how to use technology for book reports by her students. Slide Share and Photo Story are just a few of the tools that she will use.

It is great to see how people use the tools, we talked about in ECMP355, with their students.

How to Make a Christmas Tree Pop up Card

 

 

With all the technology we have today are there still place for a hand made Christmas card? 

We have lots of friends and family that do not have internet and we would need to send them a card with “Snail Mail”.  Actually it will be a “Flying Snail Mail”  as normal “Snail Mail” will take about 3 months to reach South Africa and if the snail is flying it will take about 2 weeks.  My wish for Christmas is that more of my family will get connected with the internet, but I just can’t see my 76 year old parents trying to figure out how the internet works.

So for all of those who we need to send a card to, my kids will have the honors of making this Pop up Card

Is it an English as a Second Language World?

As an English as a Second language speaker and writer I found this Fishbowl blog post very interesting.

1. I’m not sure if it strikes anyone else this way, but the phrase “the majority of encounters in English today take place between non-native speakers” really seems significant to me. Especially when you follow it up with “relief at the absence of native speakers is common.” I wonder what implications that has (if any) on how we teach English to native speakers? I also wonder what that will look like over time, as more and more non-native speakers use English to communicate, will native speakers be the ones who have to adapt? Apparently that’s not so far-fetched.

2.But spoken English is another matter. Why should non-native speakers bother with what native speakers regard as correct? Their main aim, after all, is to be understood by one another. As Mr Graddol says, in most cases there is no native speaker present.

The two quotes above gave me some peace as to why should I always stress if my English as a second language is good enough to use, if I write something – is my grammar correct? I think my English teacher is to blame, because we had to be 100% correct in spelling and grammar. So my way of coping was to say as little as possible and only write what is really important. By putting up this blog gave me so much confidence and I don’t think any native English speaking person can ever understand how it feels. Maybe you will if you are asked to write something in French. This should say something for the teachers who teach English as a second language….

Go digital or lose out!

Go digital or lose out, teachers told

Justine Ferrari, Education writer | November 13, 2007

TEACHERS are immigrants in their students’ digital world and risk being sidelined as irrelevant if they fail to embrace the learning potential offered by digital technologies.

Follow the links and read the rest of the article and blog. 

After reading this article and blog it was quite interesting to see that the same problems and stumbling blocks occur on the other side of the globe as well. Tony Richards reflects and points out that the teachers don’t “step up to the plate” because they simply don’t have the time to learn the skills for ICT integration because they need to test their students or develop programs to meet the benchmarks or are busy meeting the curriculum requirements.

What is the answer? Are we too focused on what students should learn or is it the parents that would like to see a rapport card and evaluate through that what has been done at school? Are we too focussed on achieving the best mark and not the process of learning?

There should be some guidelines to ensure a certain standard of teaching, but kids do learn so much by exploring. What my son has learned on Google Earth is just unbelievable. Just one example: he learned through flight simulator the importance of the wing flaps of an airplane, how it helps with the landing and take off, turning of the plane and these are just a few of the things he learned.

Flickr Photo’s

Is there any one who can help me to put a Flickr Badge in my side bar? I think it will look really cool to have my own photo’s on the side. I do know how to get the code, but where do I copy it in my blog?

Work just piling up!!

Kimberley Johnson put up a post and although it’s true you should remember the next.  University is certainly the busiest time of your life until ….. you start to work …….. then you have kids …….. and you realize life will never be as carefree again as the time you were at university. So even though there is only 12 days of school left, enjoy it and keep on working hard.  You will remember the good times as well as the times that you had to do an extreme amount of work in a short period of time.  I always use it as inspiration when deadlines are piling up and I can’t see I will be able to complete it all.

Project #8

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This is my project #8 with pictures of the people who influenced my life so I am who I am.  There are pictures that show what I like to do and the flag of Canada shows I am proud to be Canadian.  The back ground with the Africa map illustrates where I come from.