Pathways Seen For Acquiring Languages (week of Oct. 27)

According to Marty Abbott, the director of education for the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages in Alexandria, Va., states, "We have this national psyche that we're not good at languages". She also states, learning a language is still perceived as something only smart people can do, and it's just plain not true, we can learn a second language as well!
It was said that in the past, the ability to learn a new language shrank after the age of 7 and closes almost entirely after puberty. However, an interdisciplinary research conducted over the past 5 years at the University of Washington, Pennsylvania State University, and others suggest that the time frame may be more flexible than first thought.
A study was conducted on infants where 1 year olds were exposed to Mandarin Chinese through audio, television, and language tutors. The results showed that American infants that were exposed to a language tutor recognized 65% of sounds compared to just 55% of recognition through television and audio only.

City's Black Males Stay in School (week of Nov.3)

One of the highest groups of students of drop-out rates are Black males across the country. In this article, the focus is on the city of Baltimore; where the graduation rate increased from 51% in 2006-07 to 57.3% in 2009-10. Much of the success for this rise is attributed by an increase of reaching out to students that have dropped out by use of social media websites and increase in just the personal accountability factor. The "Great Kids Come Back" campaigns send volunteers to the houses of drop out students to come back to school, and by their efforts, there has been some progress to get those students slowly back on track. One last thing the article mentioned was the power of friendship and caring individuals. D'Antre Larry, a junior at Baltimore's Friendship Academy of Science & Technology said that if his principal and staff had not reached out and supported him, he'd be on the streets trying to make a quick dollar. I think that these positive interactions shed light on this kid to turn to different route to success! Great job staff!

Schools Integrate Dance Into Lessons (week of Nov.17)

Just like the title implies, arts education advocates are pushing for more activities into the mainstream curriculum. In a 2nd grade class at Fort Garrison Elementary School, students were grouped together to create dance movements based on their lesson on photosynthesis. This cross-curricular strategy is a neat idea in my opinion especially for a group of younger grade school kids because of their near endless amount of energy they must burn. In the process of this physical activity, they are also primed to learn one of the most basic life processes in biology and having fun doing so. In a time where budgets seem dismal, educators are using their creative minds to fuse different subject areas with each other to create more effective learning opportunities to learn!

Response to Teaching for a Shared Future: Think Global

This article opens up by stating how American students are lacking information about the world and current affairs. For example, many college-bound seniors could not even find some Middle Eastern countries on a map when compared to other students in other parts of the world! In all honesty, this is really embarassing on the global scale because the U.S. is supposedly the most powerful country and all parts of society need to reflect that image. Over the past decade however, it seems more apparent in the mainstream that many systems have experienced some sort of corruption and lack of detail and is slipping away in credibility and integrity. In a global age, students of all backgrounds need adequate knowledge in current world affairs and relate it into the school subjects and prepare these students for jobs in potentially the world market.

Yodio - Multimedia Project by joecho

I have found that I really enjoy using Yodio because it's really convenient to use and simple to learn to use as well. I feel like any person with a cell phone should use Yodio to record just about anything they want to and be an audio author on the web! In the classroom setting, this tool can give ownership and a sense of authority to a young learner and be creative with using his or her own cell phone to create fun recordings. However, with this new task, comes with responsibility to not abuse using this tool by using foul language or other negative talk directed to anyone ever. Teachers like myself will have to regulate the content in these Yodios and filter out the ones that are not up to par. In the long run, I feel like using Yodio will spice up things in the daily routine of lectures and worksheets.

School discipline inequities become a Federal Priority

There have been some inequities within school in the area of discipline issues for quite some time and have been overlooked. In this article, the numbers presented are quite staggering when comparing racial groups. The national middle school suspension rates in 2006 varied from Black males receiving the highest rate of 28.3% to the lowest group  of Asian females at 2.1%. These numbers are not a positive reflection on these students, particularly the ones that are receiving harsher punishments. There are many factors that play into these statistics and immediate change must occur in order to not feed into the current trends of playing into stereotypes.

One solution that was brought up in the article takes place in a Denver school district where they've implemented a "discipline ladder" that covers the lesser disciplinary issues. They've stressed that only larger and more serious issues such as fighting require the attention of local law enforcement.

In my opinion, schools and the surrounding community need to build relationships with one another by educating each other in cultural immersion classes and seminars and be able to teach to understand different approaches to each group so that they are more aware of the underlying reasons to the surface behaviors that seem to "cause chaos" for the learning environment and eventually reduce the number of suspensions so teachers can focus on the teaching and learning process.

Reflection of Ed Tech Standards

As I've learned from the virtual discussion through Skype, the state of Oregon is creating a new standard for students to become technologically literate and even will be handing out new diplomas at the 8th grade and in high school as well. This is some very new information to me and I'm glad to have received it and will implement to the best of my ability in my future classroom.

How might I explain the big picture of what these standards are trying to accomplish.

Well, first of all, in my opinion, the big picture is relevant to every student in our schools because every step of the way that they are in our education system, we are preparing them for future jobs and opportunities to further themselves. There are tons of jobs that require their employees to be computer savvy and have some knowledge of using a computer and basic software. By creating a standard for all students, this allows each of them to have the tools they need to perform job functions wherever they go.

Describe some strategies I could implement at my grade levels in order to accomplish this huge task.

In my desired content areas of math and health, I could see myself using these technology standards to increase my students' knowledge and familiarity with literacy by constructing lesson plans surrounding the internet and computer software. For math, I could simply have my students create their own diagram of structures and create blueprints and figure out measurements like an architect would and by covering basic math formulas and measurements and creating shapes. In health class, if such a program exists, students could create a character online and have the options to give this person different kinds of diseases that have been learned in class and see the immediate effects of each right before their eyes in an interactive way rather than just looking at photos in a textbook of people having nasty diseases.

Analyzing Student Data in a Spreadsheet

For me, I was still getting used to the tools that Google docs has to offer, and the overall assignment was sort of frustrating to accomplish. It was seemingly tough to execute the tasks that were instructed solely because I was unfamiliar with the program and didn't know how to complete the graph. I realize I just need to play around with the tools and just experiment more and remember to publish my best work for the purposes of the class and the grade.

Student data spreadsheet:
https://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=0AtllIov43TQmdHowNUhld2dOaE82REFiakhjdzhad1E&hl=en&output=html

Overall, the statistics of the class looked very similar and the growth of the scores gradually increased over the duration of the tests. After looking at all of the scores from all of the students, it seems that Katherine had a great improvement from test 6 to test 7 and gradually performed better through the other tests. There are some assumptions I can make about why she may have performed the way she did. One, the material that was presented to the class may have influenced her on a more deeper level than the other students so she expressed more interest and wanted to perform better. Second, she may have not done well in the past, and wanted to perform better for the rest of the year and might have received some pep talks to do well.
When it comes to the teacher giving effective direction for the class, I believe he/she did a very good job and is well reflective on the test scores. I haven't obviously seen the lesson plans by the teacher, but whatever this individual was doing, he/she was very mindful of the students' progress and made necessary adjustments to keep those scores increasing!