Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Blogging

First, let me extend my appreciation to Professor Luongo and my fellow students who made this summer class a wonderful and enjoyable experience! I really learned a lot of information from this class that will be very useful when I finally get to teach. The lessons, the instruction, the engaging discussions, and the shared laughters made this class special. Thanks to everybody for being "nice" to me during my second book reading :).

The blog? I must admit that the blog was the only item in the syllabus that I did not like at first. I never had any experience with blogging until this summer. I wasn't motivated by the thought that I have to have a blog account and I was very hesitant to write on such a public venue. However, as the days went by and although I was slow with my blogging, i actually found myself reading my fellow students' blogs almost everyday. I enjoyed reading the articles that they posted and read about their thoughts on various issues. I was able to read interesting articles that I would probably not find if not for the blog. I also learned about websites that I could visit later on if I need to find research materials on education or about reading. Although I am not completely into blogging yet, I must admit that the experience was interesting. If there is another thing that I will remember most about this class, it would be the experience of being able to join the world of blogging then learn and enjoy the experience.

Thanks everybody for making this summer class really fun! Have a wonderful summer everyone!

NCLB and Test Scores

I came across this article today at the Education Week website edweek.org titled "Since NCLB Law, Test Scores on Rise". The article is about the result of a study conducted by the Center on Education Policy that studied data from all 50 states from 2002 to 2007. According to the study, student achievement in mathematics and reading has risen on state tests, particularly in elementary and middle school and that the gap between white and minority children has narrowed since the passage of the NCLB Act. They observed a "moderate to large" gains in mathematics and reading for 4th graders, while most 8th graders fared well in math but not much in reading. I find this to be a very interesting development. Please check the article if you want to read further.

Thursday, June 19, 2008

Reading and Teachers

Kudos to all the readers during last Wednesday's class!

It was also interesting and refreshing to have our first male reader last Wednesday. Andrew's reading made me reflect on different styles or ways that male teachers and female teachers approach reading. Interestingly, I found an article about how struggling male readers respond better to female teachers. According to the article, boys who are identified as struggling readers develop higher positive perception as readers when working with female educators. The article which was published almost a year ago was actually based on a study of 175 third- and fourth -grade boys who went on a 10-week reading intervention. Based on the result of the study, researchers concluded that the decline in the number of male teachers in schools was not the reason why boys underachieve in reading considering that they worked really well with female teachers. It did not really elaborate on possible reasons but I think this is something that I can research further on.

The title of the article is "Struggling Male Readers Respond Better To Female Teachers" www.sciencedaily.com.

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

MyAccess!

I really enjoyed learning about MyAccess today. I am very impressed with what the program can do to help students of different grade levels learn how to develop and improve their writing skills. It is also a great tool for the teachers to use! While I was working on it this afternoon, I was excited to receive feedbacks about how I write. Although I was not very thrilled with my first grade :), the revision part was exciting because the immediate feedback served as my guide on how to improve my writing. And guess what? My second grade was far better than the first--- so many thanks to MyAccess! I really love this program.

Technology Training

I tried to post this as a comment to Professor Luongo's posted article on technology training for teachers, but it could not go through her blog account :) I just want to comment that based on my conversations with teachers as well as personal readings, I would totally agree that there are many teachers who feel they are not confident enough to incorporate technology in their teachings due to lack of training. I find this sad considering how teachers would really like to help develop educated students in this technology-driven society.

I read somewhere that one of the obstacles to teachers use of technology is the lack of release time from school to learn how to use technology. I totally believe that teachers should have access to technology training, otherwise the persence of advanced technologies in the school or the classroom will be useless if teachers do not know how to use and teach them.

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

I really learned a lot from today's lecture on techniques for an effective vocabulary instruction. The ABC Brainstorm activity is really interesting and I look forward to be able to use that in one of my lesson plans for the unit of instruction. I am really excited and happy to learn so many teaching techniques from this class!

Classroom Management Skills

I really enjoyed today's video on classroom management skills. I am once again reminded about the importance of having a well planned and well implemented classroom management strategies. I look forward to having my own classroom management plan that is directed to provide a safe, exciting, and well managed educational environment for my students.

But I found out from teachers that it takes time to have a "perfect" classroom management plan or maybe there will never be a perfect one. Everyday, I guess, is a discovery. I hope to be able to learn and employ classroom management strategies that are essential to create and maintain a fun but orderly learning environment where the students will have wonderful experiences and will fall in love with learning.

Monday, June 2, 2008

The video on No Child Left Behind: Truths and Consequences reminded me of an article that I read about a study that focuses on the relationship between perceptions of teachers, administrators, parents, and students on standardized testing and test anxiety and its effect on test performance. Interestingly, the study does not identify anxiety as a factor that influences how students perform on the tests. I have always thought that test anxiety exists in every testing environment and if not properly handled will have negative effects that could limit the student's eudcational opportunities. However, the study showed that students actually liked taking tests (surprising isn't it? my own experiences tell me otherwise:).

Teachers are most anxious over testing because the results could be used by the administration to make personnel and administrative decisions. But I also look at it in the context that they are anxious because they worry about their students. Like most of us believe, the test is not the only way to measure students' abilities and we are afraid that the results could be damaging rather than helpful to the children.

Huffaker's Article

Hello!

For someone who never had a blog account before or even posted in one, I was surprised to read from Huffaker’s article that out of the four million published weblogs, almost 53% are created by children between thirteen and nineteen years old. Our young children’s motivation to communicate with other people on the web, by posting their thoughts on varied issues that interest them, shows how the internet or the web plays an important role in this so-called technological age. If the chalkboard was the “technological wonder” introduced to the classrooms in the 1800s that would prove to have a strong impact on teaching and learning, today’s generation has the web, the blogs, among others --- all promising technologies that could help both the teachers and the students enhance classroom learning and instruction.

But how about those who do not want to use the blog due to privacy issues? If the blog is required in the curriculum, how would that affect a student’s interest to come to class? Although some school web servers can be completely in-house and students’ identities can be kept private, Huffaker argues that it would be difficult to generate feedback and further develop communication with the other bloggers if the blogs are kept private. After reading the article, I look at blogging as a wonderful medium for students to express their thoughts and ideas as well as engage in an ongoing conversation about other people’s ideas in a non-traditional way. When used wisely, the blog can enhance learning by developing interest to read and write using the web. It is a wonderful way for students to develop their writing and reading skills, communicate their thoughts, as well as develop understanding and respect for other people’s opinion.

Sunday, June 1, 2008

Hello Everyone!

This is my first blog account ever and I am not sure whether I'm doing it right :) So please bear with me!

I think this is a very interesting class and I look forward to learn a lot from it!