Week 14 Sexting

It is very sad to what happened to all those kids who tragically ended their lives because of cyber bullying. These are very fragile situations that require a lot of attention by a team of specialists. I strongly believe that not only parents must be involved in these situations, but also the school psychologist, a professional investigator, a school representative and also teachers. It is very hard to restrict technology because of many reasons; for example in case of an attack children need to contact their parents.. but on the other side the use of cell phones in schools is vey distractive and unnecessary. There should definitely be a restriction on the use of cell phones. Schools must make students aware of the consequences of sexting or other wrong actions they might take. The tragic death of those two girls who committed suicide must be told to students so they could understand where sexting can lead into. I do not believe that completely banning cell phones in schools would bring any benefits because students can send messages to each other after school and then talk in school about it, but some things schools can do are: 1) Make students aware of the risks of sexting and their consequences 2) make students aware of the punishments 3) Monitor the "victim" very closely 4) Demand phone companies more restrictions based on age 5) Increase the control on cell phones inside the school. Even though it might be hard to control, technology can be taken over if a lot of attention is paid. Perhaps there is a way to disable photo texting without parent's permission based on the children's age. Or expel from the school those who bully. One thing that must be and can be done for sure is to get parents, school members , psychologists and investigator work together. Every life is worth protecting it.

Fair Use

In order to define "fair use," we must look at the laws first because everything is depended on the laws. Basically the video posted by professor Bigsby that we watched is an example of fair use. It is such because since the beginning the purposes of its usage are clearly stated: criticism, parody and news. The material is modified by Eric Faden. The fact that Eric Faden states his purposes and recognizes the rights of the author,then the material becomes a "fair use." Education needs to use a lot of materials which are produced by different creators, so in order to use them accordingly, I believe that the rights of the author must be always recognized. Teachers must always reveal their purposes clearly and make sure that the material has permission to be shown publicly. There are instances when teachers may need to request purchases of various educational materials becuase that is the only legal way to use those materials.There are a lot of useful materials which can be also found on different public domains and those materials could be used as well for educational purposes. In those cases, teachers must do so. We all know that there exist a lot of "pirate websites" out there and often teacher purposefully or unpurposefully fall for them, but unfortunately that is still a violation of the copyright. Once I had a teacher who was using a software called Lime Wire and downloading music so he could show it to us in class. That was clearly an illegal action which totally violated the laws and was not a fair use.There is still more left to be done about strengthening the protection of the rights of the author.

Week 10 The Flipped Lesson Classroom

This assignment was tough because of the time limitation, but after many tries I got to finish it successfully, even though I had to modify it a little bit. Assuming that all the students have watched it, I would ask if anybody has any questions about the lesson. Then, after answering all their questions (if any) I would throw some questions here and there to make sure that they all understood the video lesson. After discussing the lesson in depth, getting the students engaged by giving them an assignment;such as building a scale, would definitely be very effective. It would be effective because whatever has been learned must be put in practice. This way both sides would benefit; the students, because it would be a challenge for them, and I as a teacher because this way I would understand for sure how well the lesson was perceived and what part of knowledge they might be lacking.

The Screencast

The screencast assignment was a tough one because I had to spend a lot of time downloading plug ins for my computer, but in the end everything came out nicely. All I needed was java and after 20 minutes of recording and deleting, I finally got finish my screencast and publish it. I found the screencast to be a great advantage. Not very hard to use, very summative and very informational. It is absolutely a great tool when it comes to contact with parents and it can work very nicely in front of an audience or crowd.I can use screencasts when I will be absent or not able to go to teach. This way my students will still be in contact with me and receiving my lessons. As a musician, screencasts are extremely helpful when it comes to analyzing a work based on its sheet music. I can focus the recording window on the sheet music of a piece and talk about it while have the students look at the score. I defeinitely love screencasts!

Back to School Night Slide

There are a lot of benefits to making a presentation and also presenting it to students/parents or to any kind of audience. Both sides, the teacher and the audience, benefit because for the teacher it is a very focused task, neat, orienting etc. and for the audience is very informational, focusing and easy to follow. However, as we watched it on the video, teachers cannot just throw everything in a presentation and just read it off there. The presentation is beneficial only if you use it as an outline to orient you about the main points of your discussion. Then you can insert images, quotes etc. so it can be more illustrative. I had a great time doing this assignment because it really got me thinking in order. I believe the audience will sense the same things because everything is put in such a way that it provides information very slowly and clearly. Unlike podcasts, which might not work for visual topics, google doc presentations are very visual.

Week 7 Podcast

The podcast assignment was a fun and challenging one at the same time. I succeeded to finish it in a very short time because of two reasons. One is because I chose to teach a lesson that I have taught hundreds of times to my students an the second one is because I have garageband, so it was really easy to combine the audio recording with my playing.

I did a few rehearsals of my lesson and also a few recordings. After I finished, I chose the best one, uploaded and published it.

My lesson is about recognizing the quality of the chords (major/minor.) I followed 4 simple steps to make it clear to  my students. 

1- Tell them what we are going to learn

2- Play examples of different chords

3- Let them know where to focus

4- Explained the theory and told them to practice.

Podcasting is a very effective method of teaching. It allows you to record your own voice unlike written messages such as emails, texts, or notes that cannot provide lively qualities. I believe by listening to a podcasts students will learn easier than via notes since they can listen to you and understand much more by an explaining voice than just imaginary images in their minds.

Take a listen at my podcast.... Thank you!

Week 5

At first, I would like to say that this topic is a very good one because it touches some of the most critical matters of the 21^st century in regards to the academic world. At the same time, this topic relates to the non-academic world meaning our daily lives, the way we interact, behave and work. Both critics and supporters bring up some very important aspects and discuss from different perspectives which is really good because it allows the readers to see things being discussed from different points of views and also makes them reveal things they might have never thought of. In her article “Critical Thinking? You need knowledge” Diane Ravitch mentions some facts that really convince me about the importance of knowledge. She does not separate knowledge from skills and I believe this is a very strong message. For example in the article with the same name as a above, in 1916 the federal government stated that the academic education was lacking relevance. The way I understand this has to do with how the students at that time were only taught about things and not how to do them.  Then years later there was an improvement because according to the article, students had to build pet parks, puppet theaters and do other activities in order to practice and improve their skills. Diane Ravitch says it clearly: It is required activity not docility, and awakened student motivation.” She also relates it to today’s skills doctrine by saying that the model used in the early 1900s was similar to that activity philosophy of nowadays.

It sounded funny to me how the fact about how in Roslyn, Long Island in the 1930s children spent more time baking nut bread assuming that this would help them get better in math. There is a last statement to which I completely agree and that is the one where Ravitch states clearly that knowledge must come first in order to begin to reflect and look for alternative solutions.

On the other side I appreciated very much all the articles, but the one that really impressed me was lawed Assumptions Undergird the Program at the Partnership for the 21^st Century Skills.” There were some really good views in there because it had a lot of common sense involved. This article was very domain oriented because it focused on the fact that a lot of groups such as P21 focus only in specific directions such as only business, education and government matters. Well, I think this is good because no one can do everything at once, but at least takes responsibility for teaching certain skills to those students interested on that particular domain. The other thing this article reveals is that a lot of groups like this one only really possess more visions rather than offer “hands on” experience which is directly related to skills. It is also worth to mention the comparison of Steven Spielberg being a great critical thinker in the cinema domain, but probably not a great lead of the Yankees baseball team. This might sound like a funny statement, but to me this conveys a great message. And the message is that without having sufficient knowledge, we cannot put any skills in practice nor be a leader.

The supports seem to be very much on the same side I am. “The Value of teaching 21^st century skill” summarizes pretty much in one sentence my point of view:  Our role as policy makers, educators, business leaders and parents is to provide the future students with a strong curriculum, meaning to fuel up with knowledge so later they can be useful into practice as skills in order to succeed. I am very much for getting knowledge first and then feeling obligated to use this knowledge in a skill.

Based on personal experience it has happened many times to me to put my knowledge into practice. I started teaching piano when I was only sixteen years old and didn’t know much about music theory, so I didn’t have much knowledge even though I could play piano well. I noticed that I could not explain everything academically because my knowledge was limited, but only after I learned a sufficiently about music theory I was able to teach comfortably and improve my teaching skills even further.

Week 4 - The Digital Week-

After browsing through each and every single strand, I finally decided about one that would match with the content of my lesson. I must admit that it was really hard to find the one that could fit my ideas, but anyhow I adapted it to the best I could. In the beginning I was skeptic about sedon graders and blogging, hmmm... how would second graders perceive blogs? But I did some research and this is what I found - How Do Second Graders Perceive Blogs?

The strand I chose is: Creativity and Innovation

Grade:2

Content Statement: The use of digital tools and media-rich resources enhances creativity and the construction of knowledge.

CPI 8.1.2.B.1: Illustrate and communicate original ideas and stories using digital tools and media rich resources.

This In this case the use of blogs would be great because I could assign them to build the blog as group project where they can all combine their information and put it together in paragraphs. For example they could write about Mozart in three different paragraphs:a) Early Life b) Famous Woks c) Mozart's Music Today

Students will have a possibility to be introduced to music history lessons illustrated by pictures and also short music theory lessons. This way the focus of the class would be stronger and everyone will think in unison.

The Wiki Week:)

I would also like to blog about the wikipage that was due today. I enjoyed doing this assignment even though it gave me a hard time finishing it because I accidentally missed the video professor Bigsby had posted. In the beginning I created my own account not being aware that I needed to start it from the class' wikispace. I realized people weren't able to access my page and there was something I hadn't done right. Thank to professor Bigsby, I followed the instructions and managed to paste my content from my own wikispace to my own page on the class wikispace. You can all take a look at it whenever you can.

Wikispace offers a really good amount of space to a teacher because as we all know there are a lot of dedicated and creative teachers among us for whom a webpage wouldn't just be enough, so wikispace gives you that opportunity to do "more." You can be more creative without being afraid that you will complicate things whereas with a webpage you must be always careful when it comes to putting things in order because you don't want to overwhelm the students or make them feel like they are getting unnecessary information. The webpage is almost like an official must when it comes to the school district's requirements, but the wikispace as far as I know is more like an optional thing where you could expand your creativity and share it with whoever is interested.

Week 2 The Teacher's Webpage

I think it was such a lucky coincidence because once I clicked on the link provided by professor Bigsby, I chose to go through the Saddle Brook district page and saw a few teacher webpages there and found a webpage which really impressed me. Nevertheless, I also decided to go through other webpages of other school districts such as Paramus, Hanover, Fair Lawn etc., but I found them to be very not in "depth" because most of them had either too much unnecessary teacher background information and a very few useful links, or were very poor on information and not updated.


The one that really impressed me was my first click, Mrs. McGuire's Class Webpage. Mrs. McGuire is a faculty member who teaches second graders at Helen I. Smith elementary school in Saddle Brook here in New Jersey.  If you navigate through her webpage, you will see clearly how she has all the subjects listed on the side, her schedule, some useful links that are related to the subjects she teaches and also a site map. I tried to imagine myself as a parent for a moment and I found it very helpful to navigate through this webpage because of the following reasons:

 I could find everything very easily without having to spend a lot of time. The webpage was very artistic and childlike unlike some other webpages. If I needed to see what my child's homework was then I clicked on the homework link. In order to learn about the  math program  I clicked on the math link. If i needed social studies then i clicked on social studies etc. If I wanted to get my child involved in extra curricular activities, the links the teacher provided were really great. In other words, her webpage is very informational and humble.

 I recommend Mrs. McGuires webpage format to the future teachers because it is very helpful and easy to use. I am sure that parents will love it.

technology Integration

I can say that I can split my technology background into two different pieces.

One side is my general knowledge about knowing how to operate computers and their most used programs such as microsoft word, excel, online surfing, emails, downloading, printing, formatting, converting etc and the other side is the usage of specific softwares and hardwares . As a musician I have an improvised home music studio that consists of a table , a computer, two speakers, a midi keyboard a sound card, a microphone , several usb-s. They are all connected and I have observed and read a lot in order to connect all these together and make them work. Other than that, I know about iphones, ipads, mp3  and similar electronic equipments which are considered as technological etc. This is pretty much most of my technology background. 

I feel very comfortable about using technology as long as we take our time to learn about how to use it. It makes things much easier and accessible. Even though I personally find technology very helpful, I must say that it cannot replace 100% other ways of doing things. Sometimes it is worth to have a pen and a paper to write something instead of using technology. Sometimes it is better and really important to meet in person (to have a synchronous conversation) rather than use Skype or ichat. Technology is extremely helpful and necessary but not completely replaceable and also not completely reliable.

At the time hurricane Sandy happened, we all understood how fragile technology is. I am sure most of us appreciated the non technological side as much as we had been appreciating the technological side until then.

In one of the articles I read, there was a passage in which one of the teachers named Miss Jones made her students use the computers to create and edit pictures. The teacher did this because she thought it was very easy, fun and concrete at the same time to have students reflect what they learned; not only what they learned but also tried to be creative and reflective.So this way they build their own PLN inside their classroom and even expressed deeper their learning experiences. The point is that the usage of powerpoint or microsoft are a clear example of technology. The usage of a computer in a classroom during a class is simply a clear example of technology integration. I as a student am a witness of technology integration myself because in most of my classes, technological equipments are constantly in use in order to assist the professor to reflect a better lesson quality. The speakers, the projectors, the computers, the microphones etc. They make it much easier to communicate and also convey the learning material easier and faster.

Technology integration consists of several aspect and I will explain them by laying out several of them. At first, in my own words, the definition of technology integration would be the welcoming of technology in our daily lives. The fact that we rely on electronic sources to expand our knowledge, to answer a question with confidence, to gain information or to provide information is purely technology integration. We witness this every day. When the professor uses a projector to show the syllabus on the board so the whole class could see it is technology integration. The professor could make it brighter, darker, with bigger letters, smaller letters etc. All these elements are part of technology integration. I must say that integrating technology into a classroom or anywhere we can is very helpful.