July 22nd, 2011 Class - EDUC 504

     Today's class was split into two halves, love that team teaching!  First I was with teacherK learning and interacting about creating a podcast.  A suggested use of audio files with podcasting was for inclusion of different levels of learners.  Exposure to this tool was suggested to be used with everyone in the classroom as a dictation tool.  If one person can benefit, so can everyone else.  This way it doesn't single anyone out!  For my usual archiving reverence, see the Aviary podcast tutorial for any needed refresher!  We created accounts with Aviary in class today, then teacherK gave us a run through of what to do.  We were off to the races creating our first podcast.  We were supposed to promote an edublogger we have been following.  My focus, of course, was on Randy Pausch edublogging.  I have been inspired by Randy, as you can see from my last post.  I wanted to use him in the edublogger podcast assignment for class, which is a bit difficult because he passed in 2008.  However, his inspiring works are still alive in others blogs that can be viewed at blog.ecollege.com.  It is a good way to keep his works alive by reading other blogs and creating a podcast so people check out his life work!  Thank you teacherK for being flexible.  It is appreciated!

     Next, I used my blog to write out the text of my very first podcast.  I spaced it out to properly so that it would be easy to read while recording the audio file.  See below!

Are you looking to be inspired about education!?!?! This is Amanda suggesting for you to start by following reading blogs on Randy Pausch at blog.ecollege.com!

Randy displays how technology can be an extremely powerful platform for change for students.


His love of virtual reality started with one pilot class, and evolved into an entire program at Carnegie Mellon.  


Learn inspiring tips about creating community, classroom motivation, and how difficult learning can be a byproduct of fun activities!  


Go to "blog.ecollege.com/WordPress/"and search for Randy Pausch "P A U S C H" to get started learning about his life work as an educator.

     It was a bit crazy running out of time to post the podcast on the class wiki and transition over to teacherJ's class for the second half.  I wish I had some more time to go through the audio files before to create a better product.  The short amount of time was actually a blessing in disguise for me though.  If we had more time, I would have stressed more about recording the audio file.  Many people in the class did not want to do the recording.  I just ignored the feelings and got to it!  Nice teacher move there teacherK.  It was probably on purpose.

   As we intermittently wandered into the room down the hallway to interact with TeacherJ, there were some strange hieroglyphic type pictures arranged on the overhead projector.  No one seemed to pay attention to the projected image due to the craziness of moving classrooms and multitasking writing thank you notes to our librarians from last class.  What was this strange projection?  It was a lesson in decoding symbolic language, from icon to understanding.  We had a fun time trying to decode the sentences made from pictures.  It was confusing and there were many different interpretations.  Integrating the thought process of the group helped piece together knowledge to comprehend this strange story.  It would have been preferred to spend more time personally to decode the information, but that was all part of teacherJ's plan for us to formulate reference points from our to be students perspective.

     There were many points that classmates brought up when "unpacking" the situation.  One of the thoughts people had were that the situation was challenging when others comprehend faster in decoding!  Some people found it easy to recognize small pieces or pictures, but the big picture was difficult to comprehend.  Others could figure out what the overall picture of the story was, but didn't comprehend some of the symbols.  It's good to understand that students in your classroom will be at all different levels of problem solving.  A classmate pointed out that this situation parallels when we first started to read.  When you don't have much previous context to comprehend something, you have to dig through your prior knowledge to make any sense of it.  There are different tools one uses to solve the current situation.  Sometimes you can look at the context around confusing words was useful in comprehension.  I took away from the lesson that depicting the thought processes and challenges we went through as students with a foreign topic, would be a similar environment to what our students would have to deal experience.  It would be helpful to use this lesson to be able to create questions that can guide the students to solve the unknowns on their own.

     In the last portion of class with TeacherJ, we depicted the Gee article.  We talked about the importance of creating an environment where it is okay to make mistakes in the learning process.  How does one create a mathematics environment where the end product is not the focus?  How can you cultivate an environment where the students are not stagnant in class?  Some classmates were kind enough to throw out ideas.  Some of the memories they had were to make a golf course on paper and measure out the geometric angles to putt a whole in one try.  This was done in two dimensions.  It could be done in three dimensions and become a physical activity, and the nature of a project isn't focused on just the end product.  Another person pointed out that you could give a student four or five chances as getting the right answer, so that they really focus on the process, not stressing about having the final exact number.  Others suggested making proofs because you can come up with multiple creative ways to solve a problem.  It was also recalled that one of our previous MAC visitors said that she gives her class the answers, posted on line for easy access, and only grades on the process.  An interesting classroom environment that was depicted was to have the students' work rotated through and written out on the whiteboard by the teacher.  The teacher would then talk out loud to the class working through the problem to display their thought process for the learners in the classroom on how they might pick it apart.  I love using white boards in practice, and having my players get involved with the process of drills and score keeping.  It could be a great way for me to reference what I have cultivated in the athletic environment in the classroom.

     I know... enough already in my blog today.  It is interesting to me that I didn't have enough to write on after the first class, and now the thoughts (perhaps incoherent) are flowing much better.  Thank you for the constructive post feedback!  Maybe the goal of my next post will be to create something concise, but useful.