Character Education

One of the books I'm using as a reference for my paper ties in nicely with our class conversation on Saturday regarding character education. The book is "Being Good: Rethinking Classroom Management and Student Discipline" by Steven Wolk. He wrote that character education is "... gaining in popularity because our society and our politicians seem to believe that our children are lacking in morals. I find this ironic because adults cause the vast majority of the misery in the world. If there were some kind of national troublemaking index, I have no doubt that adults would rate far higher than kids. Adults start all wars, commit the vast majority of violence, lie to their bosses and friends and spouses, cheat on their taxes, [etc.] ... Yet, oddly, adults point fingers at our children as if kids are the ones in need of strict discipline, moral help, and character education."

Any thoughts on this????

Bullying

While researching for my paper in this class I ran across this article and thought it would be beneficial to all of us to take a look at it as it is something each of us can use in our classrooms and at home with regard to Bullying. http://www.education-world.com/a_special/bully.shtml
There are activities that you can share with your students, children and others. Hope you enjoy it! Thanks Siobhan for "bullying" me into this topic!

Assigning Homework

Hi All,
While working on my research project, I was wondering what your opinions were. Do you think that assigning homework is beneficial? Does it teach important life long lessons? Or, does homework intrude on important family time?

I would also like to say a brief goodbye. I am leaving for a vacation in Turkey on Saturday. I will be thinking of you all.

See you all on the 17th June.

Lydia

More Psychology Stuff

On the off-chance that you are not all psychologied-out, discovered this article online which I found to be quite interesting and ties in nicely to this class (well, it uses the word 'cognitive' a lot at any rate!).
See:
http://ftad.osu.edu/Publications/TeachingHandbook/chap-2.pdf

Btw, congratulations to all you exam-passing boffins out there!

Continuing with Siobhan's FTCE Post

I took the Professional Education/FTCE test today. It was far easier than I had anticipated. I would say that there were only two questions (out of 120) where I couldn't make an educated guess. In my opinion (sometimes humble, sometimes not) every student in our class would be able to pass that test right now.

One thought on where to take the test. I've taken a computer test at the Bank of America building out by the Fort Myers airport and today I took the test at the McTarnaghan Building at FGCU. The latter is more comfortable, an important point for old guys like myself.

Web Site for Computerized tests

Hi,

This is the web site to register for the computerized FTCE tests.

http://www.cefe.usf.edu/

I registered on Monday and took the test Friday and you get the result right away.

Too much pizza!

Perhaps we can all learn a lesson from something that happened in my child's classroom this week. All year long, the students in that class have worked towards earning an invitation to an end-of-the-year pizza party scheduled for the last week of school. Little did the teacher know when she planned this pizza party back in the fall, that the kids would be served pizza FOUR OTHER TIMES in the last week of school at the cafeteria and other school-wide functions! Needless to say, once the students figured this out, their enthusiasm for attendance at the class party quickly fell. There's a happy ending, though: the teacher was quick enough on her feet to offer ordering the pizza from a restaurant other than the one normally used by the school, and that was enough to make the kids excited again! So, consider yourself warned: choose and schedule your year-end rewards wisely, and when all else fails, be flexible!

Acid Rain WebQuest - Good WebQuest Example

Here is an Acid Rain WebQuest for grades 5-7 complete with hyperlinked web sites, evaluation rubric, and defined group roles of Chemist, Ecologist, Health Scientist, and Economist with a list of questions for each role. The Process and Learning Advice section offers five detailed suggestions to direct student activity. The student work is hyperlinked at the end of the webquest. There is also a hyperlink to a video (RealPlayer) of the teacher and students who developed this webquest. Use this site as a model to develop webquests.

Two down, One to Go

Hi All,

I took the Professional Educator Test today and passed! I can't believe it. Thanks Lydia for the review book. I did what I did in college - crammed the last few hours before the test but it payed off. Most of the questions were related to Irene's class and Yolanda's Class - they really prepared me for this test! James' "isms" came in handy as did Steph's Legal responsiblities of a teacher. There was even one question on Autism. Alot of questions about high order thinking, Gardener's intelligences and Bloom's taxonomy.

Now what next - Elementary K-6 or Middle Math? Any suggestions? I will be looking forward to all your input on Tuesday.

Have a good week-end!

Autism Speaks

Here is an article/site regarding Autism.
http://www.autismspeaks.org/whattodo/index.php

Passed the GK Test - How ? & What's Next?

Hi All,

I passed all 4 GK subtests. My strategy was 1) find the minimum passing % to pass the subtests, which I found at http://www.firn.edu/doe/sas/ftce/pdf/ftcefelechart.pdf
since it only took 58% to pass the Math portion and 65% to pass the Reading, I did not study for the tests - plus I did well on the pretests in those areas. 2) I studied and took the pretests (many pretests found in Cliffs & the State study guides) on the two areas I knew I would have problems with - English Skills & Essay. 3) When I took the tests, if I had time left over, I would go back over the questions I had problems with. 4) On the English Skills test, I worked backwards, starting with the last page and ending with the 1st page. 5) On the Essay I kept it to 4 paragraphs - two middle paragraphs were examples, with the first paragraph the intro and the last the conclusion.

What's next? - I plan on taking my Subject test Middle Math in July, since it is not offered online. I plan on taking the Prof. Ed. test online, Middle Grades Integrated online (thanks Stephanie for the idea of adding MGI to be more marketable as a teacher), Business Ed. online (hopefully the price will drop from $75).

Hope everyone else did well on the GK test.

Article from Naples Daily News on Marci Erickson

Here is the full article on Marci Erickson who is an inspiration (from my Prof. Foundations - EPI class presentation).

From the Naples Daily News link below:
http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2007/apr/23/barron_collier_graduate_moves_ethiopia_help_childr/

Hopefully it works.

Field Experience at PRM Done!

Hi All,

Today I finished my 15 hour field experience at PRM. I taught to 5 classes (3 Advanced Math 6 graders and 2 Advanced Math 7 graders). I would say 2.5 lessons were Flawless (criteria from evaluation sheet), and the other 2.5 were Flawed. The Flawed lessons were a mixture of problems in classroom management and poor planning/mistakes on my part. I'm my worst critic. But as I told my students today - you learn from your mistakes. My lessons were on Team Work & Presentation. As one of my students said in class, "you learn from trial and error". Below are some links that I used to find out about PRM, and were very helpful in finding more about the School (demographics) and the Teacher I spent the week with.
http://www.collier.k12.fl.us/prm/
http://www.collier.k12.fl.us/schools/prm.asp
http://teacherweb.com/FL/PineRidgeMiddleSchool/MrsJohnson/t.stm

Many Thanks to Siobhan & Stephanie for giving me my lead to find a Teacher/School for the required field experience - what a GREAT TEAM you are. We are very fortunate to have the both of you in our EPI class - I don't know what we would have done without you.

See you all on Sat. morn.

E-Learning: Connectivism: a new learning theory?

This is an article that addresses some issues I have grappled with regarding Connectivism. I don't see the principle of networking as being some new item. Maybe with a nanobot implanted in your head, you are therefore always connected and can therefore lay claim to other people's information. You can call this synergy "your" knowledge, at least at that particular nanosecond.
Anyway, try out the link below.


E-Learning: Connectivism: a new learning theory?

Hello!

Hello everyone! I found these self tests online and thought everyone would like to check them out as there are several and I am sure that everyone can find one that is relevant to their lives.Check it out!http://psychologytoday.com/pto/self_tests.php
Let me know what you think.

Initial posting-Sunday

Test

Test post

Test post.

Hi All

My first Blog - Hi All & Good Luck