Chapter 2: Respect, Liking, Trust, and Fairness

This chapter of Fires in the Bathroom was all about how teachers can gain respect from students, and how to create trusting relationships between students and teachers. In this chapter, students discussed what teachers can do to earn that respect and how teachers can form good relationships with their students. Some of the major things teachers can do, is treat all students fairly and give all students a chance to succeed.

The part of this chapter that stood out to me the most was actually something one of the students said, something one of their teachers did that made them lose respect and that was saying grades out loud to make students feel bad. My history teacher when I was a sophomore in high school would read the grades out loud after quizzes to the entire class, this was only if you wanted to know the grade right after taking the quiz, but you only had the option of having it read out loud or waiting to get the quiz back. It always felt really unfair to have your grade read to the whole class, especially because the teacher would always adopt an almost mocking tone of voice when reading the grades if they were lower grades.

Chapter 1: Knowing Students Well

This chapter of Fires in the Bathroom used student responses and opinions to talk about how well students and teachers should get to know each other. It used many examples for ways that teachers could get to know their students, without overstepping any boundaries. Examples such as, questionnaires asking how students learn, knowing student's schedules, connecting work to student interests and knowing student's neighborhoods.

The part of this chapter that really jumped out at me, was how important it was to know where students live and that aspect of their lives outside of the classroom. I had never thought that knowing student neighborhoods would be important to their learning, but after reading this chapter, it really opened by eyes. I definitely think that when I'm a teacher, I'm going to make the effort to know where students live and understand how that might affect their learning and understand the resources that they have or don't have.

Video Thoughts

This video focused primarily on video and the place that it has in the classroom. There was a lot of good information in this chapter relating to how to properly use video in the classroom and I learned quite a few things that I didn't know before!

1. I learned that you could narrate a slideshow using a smartphone. I didn't even know that there was slideshow making apps for your smartphone, but I thought it was so cool to learn that, not only are their slideshow making apps, some apps have the ability to record voice. 
2. I had always been unsure of how to make screencasts of my screen while also including video. More than once I've tried to take screencasts of my computer screen and had no audio, so knowing that there are ways out there to get the audio into screen casts was a really great thing to learn! 
3. TeacherTube. I had heard of StudentTube before, as some of the teachers at my school had used it before, because YouTube was banned. I had no idea that there was also one for Teachers as well, so that was a pretty cool thing to hear about, definitely something that I'll use sometime in the future. 
4. All the different video sharing and making websites and applications. I knew that there were plenty of different video sharing websites out there, but I had always just stuck to YouTube, so getting to hear about them was definitely a learning experience. 

Two of my projects for Dr. Grace's class are going to be about the kids making their own movies. I think, with the final project (which is going to be a 5-10 minutes documentary type video), students will have the opportunity to share their videos on the web, if they feel comfortable. I also want to make sure that the students explore some of these video sharing websites, so I hope to have parts throughout the lessons where students are searching for videos. I think, because I'm doing video for two of my projects, students will be able to be more comfortable the second time around with how to properly make a video that they can be proud of! 

Wes Fryer: Chapter 3

Audio

This chapter focused primarily on how teachers can incorporate audio recording into their lesson plans. Fryer gives a few points as to why audio recordings might be more impactful, and easier to use, than video. Such as, less equipment, more anonymity so students can be more comfortable about posting their audio recordings online, audio recording files take up less space and are usually far smaller than video files and more devices have audio recording capabilities. Fryer also talks about how teachers can use audio recordings and how they can be implemented in classrooms from grades K-12.  One of the things I learned was the idea of an digital portfolio, which would require students to make audio recordings, or even podcasts, about their learning that can be shared with a teacher. An idea, that I have never heard of before that I found to be a really interesting idea. I also loved the idea of having students record their essays as another way for teachers to grade and critique them. This I thought was really great and I learned a lot from, because this can play into the VAK model, teachers who are more auditory learners can have another way to have their students work. This chapter also highlighted many different audio recording technologies and websites that I had never heard of before. 

For my three websites, I decided to look at three different audio recording websites that Fryer talks about in the chapter. I ended up selected, AudioBoo, Vocaroo and Narrable. The most straight forward of these three websites was Vocaroo, where the homepage has a record button and you just press record and start talking, which I thought would be really good for younger students, so they don't get distracted by other things on the webpage. Both AudioBoo and Narrable had sound recording capabilities but also allowed you to listen to other recordings that are on the site. I loved that aspect of both of these websites. I think overall I preferred Narrable the most because it was geared towards students, and had mostly student and education based recordings, where as AudioBoo had a larger range of topics. 

Maine Memory Network

On the Maine Memory Network, I first explored my hometown of Boothbay/Boothbay Harbor and found nearly 150 pictures dating all the way back to the late 1800s. Along with these pictures, there was also 6 "exhibits" that included something about Boothbay in them, including an exhibit about tourists in the 1900s and a schooner boat, called Bowdoin, in the 1900s. I was extremely interested by everything I found about the town that I grew up in, a town that I was unaware had the history that I was able to find on this website. After looking up Boothbay, I looked up the Aroostook War, which took place from 1838-1839 and was able to find pictures of soldiers that were involved in the war, documents from before and after the war and locations from the war. Having no previous information about this war, learning more about it through these pictures was really interesting.

Being a social studies teacher, I would love to do a unit completely about Maine history and would use the Maine Memory Network as a guide to the unit. It would be really interesting to having each student find a picture and have to write about what they think was happening in the picture, or something similar. The Maine Memory Network would be a wonderful database for the unit or just has an extra resource for students throughout the year. As a social studies teacher there would be a bunch of different ways that I would love to use the Maine Memory Network, and I can definitely see myself using it as a tool in the future.

Wes Fryer: Chapter 4

In this chapter from Wes Fryer's book Playing With Media, he discusses the issues with copyright and it's place in the classroom. He starts off by talking about the different kinds of media that have a place with Copyright and Fair Use. These different medias are Homegrown, meaning you are the original owner, Public Domain, these are pieces of media that are published by someone but are free to be used by everyone, Creative Commons, which are available to use, as long as they are being used legally and finally Fair Use, which is when you can use copyrighted material under guidelines and certain criteria. This is why many things are available to be used by teachers, but not by students. Fryer also talks about how it's important for students to correctly site images and information they find, in order to be legal under Copyright and Fair Use.

As a teacher, I plan to make sure that my students understand the general ideas of Copyright and Fair Use. I also will make sure I inform them of the expectations when using information that is protected under Copyright and Fair Use. It would also be interesting to try and use real world experiences to inform students of the importance of correctly using Copyright and Fair Use guidelines. I would find it extremely important for students to completely understand how to correctly use other people's ideas and images without breaking any rules and acknowledging that those ideas and images belong to someone else.

Copyright and Fair Use

For my research on Copyright and Fair Use, I read some information and took a quiz (which can be found here) on what is allowed and not allowed in the classroom under the Copyright and Fair Use law. I was extremely surprised by some of the things I discovered when taking the quiz and discovered that I don't know as much as Copyright and Fair Use as I thought that I did. There were some questions that I had a much stronger reaction to than I originally thought I would.

5. "A geography teacher..." This one surprised me because I would have thought, because there was no selling of the CD ROM and it was only going to be used by students in the classroom that it would be allowed. But I guess, it more has to do with the fact that the school doesn't own all the copies that are being made, as they aren't the original copies.

7. "A elementary school..." I thought this one was strange, as it was saying that the website and school were allowed to post things without copyright permission, as long as people from outside the school weren't looking at the website. Even thought the website would be password protected, I was still surprised.

10. "A teacher gets clip art..." This one more shocked me because of what was said in number seven. I guess because this one wouldn't be password protected, I was still surprised that this wouldn't be allowed and what happened in number seven would be.

13. "A history class...." I'm not surprised that this one would be allowed, but I found it a little strange, that another school would be able to use something put online by a different school. Like I said, it didn't shock me, but I thought it was a little strange that it would be allowed.

16. "A local electronics store...." I was just downright confused and shocked by this one. I guess I didn't really understand what this one was saying, how teachers can use not owned material and make it legal for their students to use it. This one just confused me.

19. "A high school video class..." I wasn't necessarily shocked that much by this one, but I've definitely had first hand experience in videos like this one and now know the Copyright and Fair Use laws surrounding it.

This was a very interesting read and I'll definitely remember all of this once I become a teacher. I found it particularly interesting the amount of things that teachers are allowed to do, and things that allowed for teachers under Copyright and Fair Use, that aren't allowed for students. I think, as a teacher it's important to know the Copyright and Fair Use laws, so you make smart decisions in your classroom and don't get in trouble with the law.

Meaningful Engaged Learning and Learning Styles

The articles "What Engages Underachieving Middle School Students in Learning?" by Mike Muir and "Are Learning Styles Invalid?" by Richard Felder both address integration of learning styles into the classroom. Muir used real world examples of students who were considered "underachieving", but were actually very bright, who had different ranges of learning styles. Muir discovered through his learning about these different students, that most of them worked best with an engaging classroom that allows them to grow and ask questions and not be afraid to make mistakes. I fully agreed with Muir's statement, "Finding out what motivates our underachieving students will help inform and equip teachers in the struggle to lead all students to academic achievement." Because I believe that, while, we can't always create every single lesson to fit the needs of every single student, it's important to know how each of our students learn, so when we need to help them, we know what kind of learning styles work best.

In the article, "Are Learning Styles Invalid?" Felder looks at the controversy that surrounds the idea of a learning styles model in the classroom. Felder discusses how many studies have concluded that “there is no adequate evidence base to justify incorporating learning-styles assessments into general educational practice.” Felder goes on to discuss, how, in fact, many students have benefited from the use of a learning styles model in the classroom. The learning styles model has allowed teachers create effective classrooms, students to understand their learning process and help teachers and students acknowledge the differences in learners in the classroom.  I agree with a great majority of what Felder has to say in his article, and agree whole heartedly with his overall message, that while many people might not believe in the learning styles model, as long as it's being used effectively in the classroom, teachers and students can benefit from it.

I took my own learning styles inventory and found out that I am generally and mostly a visual learner. With my second highest being kinesthetic, followed by auditory. I definitely agree with this conclusion, as, through exploring what each meant, I found myself lining up with the visual learning. The website that I used, said that visual learners need to write everything down so they don't forget it, emphasize key points when taking notes and use other visuals when collecting or sharing information. The website I used also talked about how you can integrate each learning style into the classroom, with some ideas for the visual learning style being, using visual aids, leaving plenty of blank space on worksheets for notes and highlighting major points for note taking.  All of these ideas are very simple and very effective, which is ideal for the classroom.

Citations;
Felder, Richard. "Are Learning Styles Invalid?"
Muir, Mike. "What Engages Underachieving Middle School Students in Learning?"
Visual, Auditory, and Kinesthetic Learning Styles (VAK)