Blog Post #6

The prompt for this weeks blog post is "What did you learn from these conversations with Anthony Capps?" Here are the links for the videos for east reference: Project Based Learning Part 1, Project Based Learning Part 2, iCurio, Discovery Ed, The Anthony-Strange Tips for Teachers Part 1, Use Tech, Don't Teach It, and Additional Thoughts About Lessons from Anthony.
I feel like I learned quite a bit. I learned that Mr. Capps' 3rd graders are on the same level as Dr. Strange's students at the University of South Alabama, which includes myself. In a way, that is not surprising to me at all. So, 3rd graders are about 9 years old. Children are very impressionable at that age and they pick things up very quickly. Also, they are very curious for the most part, so they just work on something until they figure that out. They also haven't put up many walls at this point in their lives yet, so I think that helps them be more open to exploring technology. In addition to this, they have grown up using technology from pretty much the time they were 3 to some degree. College students around my age (20 years old) are adults at this point. We have put up walls and have been taught a different way than children are being taught today for our whole lives. We didn't use technology that much in the classroom. We didn't make iMovies and Presentations when we were in 3rd grade. We have been brought up with a certain mindset that we need to alter to become fun effective teachers for the years to come. My generation is very tech-y, but there's a lot about technology we don't understand, myself included. So, there are a lot of things we can learn.

During the videos, I learned that everyone is a learner, so therefore, everyone is a teacher. I agree with this. I know I could learn so much from Mr. Capps' 3rd graders. I think they would be so excited to have the opportunity to have that experience as well and it would in turn help them further understand the steps. So, it would be improbable to the teacher to know everything. I do think that a teacher needs to know how to do the basics, like making an iMovie, using Slides on GoogleDocs, or knowing how to upload videos to Youtube. I would encouragingly guide my students if they were genuinely stuck. I would ask them questions to guide them to figure out how to solve their problem. If they still cannot figure it out after trying, I will then help the student personally. I want to challenge my students to do the best they can.

One specific video I learned from is Additional Thoughts About Lessons from Anthony. I really liked how he said that a lesson is 4 layers thick: year, unit, weekly, and daily. A teacher needs to look at how a lesson fits in with the objectives that you need to cover throughout the year. A question a teacher needs to think about is "Does this lesson help cover the standards that need to be covered?" and "Does my yearly plan cover all of the standards that I am required to cover?". On the unit level, a teacher needs to determine if he or she has created lessons and projects that are meaningful in some way and are they all connected. The teacher also needs to make sure the unit is scaffolded properly. They need to make sure that they are stretching out an overall goal that can be stretched for a determined amount of time (like a month). For the week level, a teacher needs to make sure that they have enough for their lessons for that week and that they make sure they can cover everything that they need to cover. Finally, with the daily level, a teacher needs to determine how they are going to deliver a topic to the students. They have to ask "What is the most effective and engaging way for me to teach this subject matter?" A teacher needs to also have some sort of assessment tool so they can gauge how effective the lesson was and how much the students learned.