Music Poster Project

Please watch my Philosophy of Education!

In our education technology class this semester we were tasked to create an educational philosophy movie.  This process entailed thinking up a script for our philosophy and using i-movie to mix pictures and videos, voice, and music.

I-movie is a great program and it is one that high school students can use easily and make some great projects.

For my movie I used a lot of pictures from my old job in Saipan teaching for the C.N.M.I. PSS at Marianas high school.  I also included pictures from my student teaching in Juneau, Alaska, as well as some student work samples from my class this year.

Gabe Asper's Education Philosophy video

This is a short movie of me, Gabe Asper, discussing my personal teaching philosophy.

Article Response 3

by Gabe K. Asper, gabeasper@hotmail.com, 11/14/07

Article Title: Tools for the Mind by Mary Burns

This is an interesting article to me because I believe that it is true that the United States education system is not implementing technology correctly. We actually have a lot of technology resources in this country, but there is no funding for teacher training that tells teachers how to use technology in their classrooms. There is also no funding for technology positions in schools. Teachers have had to learn the material on their own, and have not been compensated for the time that they put in to things like implementing technology programs, education technology plans, and specialized classes dealing with using technology.

These are some questions that I thought of while reading this article:
-If a teacher says that they can teach technology, how can we tell that the students are learning it?
-What are the measures as a system that we have on that?
-How do you measure something that is evolving daily?
-How do you create clear assessment with technology?
-Who decides (for our countries system) what kind of technology and technology instruction we will use? The President? Corporations advertising their products? Administrators?

5 Good Points:
1. The author believes that there has been a change in our educational system. In the early 90's there was a value for computers, as if they were the answer. These days, the system has become more wary of their potential, and enthusiasm for technology has dimmed.

2. Teacher training has been focused on teaching technology skills, like how to use software, rather than how to teach kids using technology.

3. Classrooms use "show-and-tell applications” like PowerPoint, Word, Publisher, and Front Page, instead of using things like spreadsheets and databases. Programs like In-Design, iMovie, Garageband, Microsoft Excel and Internet communication tools like e-mail and networks are not used as frequently because they are more complicated and teachers don't know how to show their students proper academic use of such programs.

4. Technology is deeper than PowerPoint.

5. "A good deal of student internet use is intellectually passive"


The article explores the present use of technology in our schools. What are the problems with our technology reality in schools around the country? The thing that I like about the article is that instead of just naming problems, the author also hints at some solutions. I like the idea that "professional development should model technology use that is matched to a learning outcome". In my experience as a teacher there has never been any technology training professional development, let alone training that might provide a teacher with a good idea for a technology based lesson! It is such a recent field that we don't have experts to turn to and ask how to use technology. There are only a handful of people who can actually use technology so well that they can teach it, and even fewer who understand how to teach their knowledge to others.

What it all boils down to? Teachers need supports! Give us the computers and software enough for all of our students, and give us training in how to comport technological knowledge to young minds.

Energy Conservation Project--Recycling in Schools

I chose recycling in schools as the topic for my energy conservation project. My essential question was:

How much recycling does a typical high school classroom generate?

To come up with my findings I did a two week long analysis of all the recyclable garbage that was disposed of in Mr. Steele's class. I discovered that in a one week time period there are about 25 pounds of paper and 5 pounds of plastic/glass bottles and cans.

To take this study further I multiplied my findings by the number of classrooms in session at a given time and tried to determine how much recycling JDHS contributes to the landfill every year due to the lack of a school-wide classroom to classroom recycling program.

The results were pretty astounding. I estimate that there are TONS of recyclable materials added to our community landfill every year from schools across the district. JDHS has a fledgeling recycling program, but it is my belief that our town needs to institute school-wide and city-wide recycling programs. The landfill gets enough trash added each day as is... we do not need to put our recycling there too. The key to success would lie in training teachers and community members to be responsible about recycling.

There is a link to my powerpoint presentation on this subject below.

Energy Conservation Project Presentation

Here is the link to my Powerpoint presentation.

My feeling after watching the video of myself presenting is that I did pretty well. My presentation was 8 minutes long and there was no filler, it was short and to the point. I like the fact that I was concise, but I also feel that in this kind of presentation it is good to have some extra ideas so you can diverge off of the PowerPoint presentation a little bit. I never really like PowerPoint presentations because people just read off of the screen. I would rather have them just give me the text to read to myself. The worst is when you get a handout of the PowerPoint slides, and you can read through the whole thing in the first 5 seconds of someone's presentation.

I liked my presentation and I think that I was pretty articulate throughout. One problem that I noticed is that I say "aaah" a lot. I don't say um, I just say "aaah" when I am pausing between two thoughts. I never noticed before that I do that. It is weird to hear my recorded voice because to myself when I am talking I sound different.

-PRESENTATION: I have a really clear and loud speaking voice. That was good. I said "aaaaah" too much. At one point in the presentation I was doing something funny with my hands... I realized that I shouldn't fidget in front of people. During my presentation I was also kind of wringing my hands behind my back at one point. You couldn't see it on the movie but I had to consciously stop doing it. So fidgeting is one thing I need to not do when I am speaking. I know I am supposed to be facing the audience more than facing the screen. In this presentation I was reading off the screen so I did not face the audience enough. I think I was pretty good about turning toward the audience often, but in the future if I am in front of a big group of people, I will practice the presentation more so that I can face the audience more than the screen. Maybe I will print out the slides so the material is in front of me and I am not always looking to my side at the screen.

-VISUALS: I don't have much experience doing PowerPoint so I saw some visual things in the other presentations that I could incorporate more into my own. The biggest thing, to me, was that the background of all my slides was just white. I had some cool pictures, one that made people laugh, but I should have come up with cool background colors and designs for the slides. I will do that in future presentations. I still had a lot of pictures illustrating the ideas that I was talking about. I think they went well with the material. I could have spent more time on finding pictures for my PowerPoint.

-ORGANIZATION: I think my presentation was very organized and it had a good flow. It was not rocket science to get from the essential question to my conclusion, but the information that resulted was very fascinating.

-CONTENT: I think the content of my presentation made everyone in that room think about how they need to recycle. I remember some people in class talking about how they don't recycle, so I wanted the presentation to make them think again. I think I was successful in that. I wasn't trying to pick on anyone because I think all of us have been guilty of not recycling at points in our lives. I liked my presentation because everyone knows that they should recycle, but a lot of people choose not to. We don't realize what the exact difference is between recycle and don't recycle. I think my presentation made it clear what a huge impact a simple process like establishing a real school-recycling program has. During my research I read that in some areas of the country they are reducing the waste added to their landfills by nearly 30 percent because of recycling. At first I had a simple idea. I was amazed at the conclusion I got after just a little bit of math.

Despite the fact that I was sick and I haven't had much experience doing PowerPoint, I think that I still gave a meaningful presentation. It is funny to watch yourself present. I always get the feeling, "Is that really me?" This project has inspired me to go back to my original idea of implementing recycling in my classroom if there is not a school wide program. It might be a drag to collect all that crap and drive out of your way to go turn it in somewhere, but as one teacher I can personally prevent one ton of material a year from going into the landfill instead of being recycled. That's pretty amazing.

Article Response 2

Response to Will Richardson's "The Educators Guide to the Read/Write Web"

This article is all about the influence that new technologies are having on education. Tools like blogs, wikis, and podcasts are revolutionizing the ways in which we can communicate. This past summer I read an article about a new theory of education called "Connectivism". Connectivism is a theory that states that education is being more and more driven by aspects of communication and chaos. I didn't really understand the chaos part of the article, but the communication part really hit me. In this day and age we have so many resources at our disposal because of technology. Students can use the internet to connect the knowledge of the class and the teacher to different groups of knowledge around the world. These days we have great networks. Students can pen pal with other students across the globe. Students can write questions to a network of other people and receive answers. A lot of academic research can take place online. A group in Alaska can pose a problem or question on a forum that other groups around the world can then analyze and respond to. In education we need to make a shift from individual based learning and learning outcomes, to a networked system where students are allowed to learn as a community.

The next time that I have a classroom of my own, I plan to create a Myspace page for MR. ASPER. I disagree with the principle of restricting kids from technology at school. Rather than telling students they can't use myspace we could have a myspace page for every class that facilitates for communication. Teachers could post assignments and materials, and students could use the technology to stay current with the class (even if they went on a family trip and missed two weeks!).

Teachers who incorporate technology into their curriculum are ahead of the curve. Those who are resisting are behind... it's that simple. We are moving into a new era of education.

Today we were asked to come up with a technology mantra. We also were asked to write about the essential question below.

MANTRA:

Technology is like a river...
It never stays the same. Technology is a constantly evolving entity. Like a river it moves and evolves over time, like a river it shapes the world around it. Some aspects of technology are easy to use and very shallow; others are complicated and very deep. Rivers support life systems, technology supports a lot of social systems every day.

MANTRA: Students learn to relate technology to different academic areas. Teachers incorporate technology into their curriculum.

Essential Question: Given we are immersed in technology, how do we "see" it in order to evaluate its utility and impacts.

I feel like educators are too leery of technology. Instead of using firewalls to shut tools like blogs and myspace down, teachers should be encouraging their students to use them as tools of communication. I think the way to really see the change technology is making in education you have to compare past methods of teaching with those that are used today. Technology has already revolutionized education. It is changing the way teachers present material to students, and it is changing the way that students present their work to their teachers. At this point I think all teachers should be evaluated on the effectiveness of their use of technology. There should be certain technological requirements for students before they are allowed to begin school. Among these requirements should be that students word process assignments and carry a data storage device such as a USB drive at all times. I think the way that we see technology is in comparing what we have to what we had in the past. This is a tedious process because it involves always looking backward instead of doing the appropriate thing for educators to do which would be to stay current and look forward.

Today we were given an essential question to write about:

Question: What impact will the increasingly interactive and diminished size of computers, communicators, and handhelds have on education in secondary schools?

The day will soon come when education will have to embrace technology. Technology such as handhelds and smartboards should be implemented in classrooms everyday. The problem that is happening right now is that teachers are fighting it. Instead of "NO CELL PHONES" we should be distributing some kind of device to each student. These materials could be used in class to enhance the learning experience. My vision is that soon students will be able to sit at their desk and individually follow along with classroom instruction. Instead of a lecture format of teaching, there will be a projector screen or a flat screen monitor at the front of each classroom. Each student will be able to read the projected material at the front of the class and at their own desks. Students will also be able to project their own work sample to the front of the classroom for group comments. These tools will also help students plan their workloads.

Out with the hard copy gradebooks and in with networked technology!
Out with the 10 days of data input before grades come out and in with networked schools!

Students should have handhelds that function as their student ids, planners, and a place where teachers can send them a list of their missing assignments, or emails.

THE FUTURE IS NOW

My thoughts about using new technologies in schools

The value of new literacies like "Garage Band" is that there are many new ways of learning that are coming into being. We always talk about different learning styles and different types of learners. We always allude to the fact that teachers need to incorporate differentiated instruction to reach all of their students. Programs like this make me realize that the differentiated instruction is there. Technology gives us great ways to reach kinesthetic, visual, and auditory learners.

I find it personally humorous that we are always told to differentiate our teaching while we are sat down and lectured to or given a power point presentation. It's like people know what they are supposed to teach us but don't always practice what they preach. Then if you go in our mentor teachers classrooms it is a whole other ballgame with a lot of people "grandfathered" into the system who don't even need to pass Praxis.

To me, this kind of program is the differentiation of the future. Teachers will have to become able to utilize technology in order to differentiate their teaching approach. Programs like "garage band" provide valuable cross-curricular material that teachers can utilize. I am so excited for the day when school systems decide to provide these resources for teachers and train them to use it.

Today we discussed the topic of "Cool Hunting." Here are my thoughts:

Cool hunting is the marketing strategy of big corporations finding the 20% of teenagers who are the trend setter kids that have earned the trust and respect of their peers. The basic idea is that every year there is 150 billion dollars spent by teens or by parents on teens. Teens see up to 3,000 ads a day. Cool hunting is searching for those teens that are leading the pack in the new styles of the day. I think cool hunting is an interesting concept. The problem with things that are cool is that as soon as they are at the height of cool they become uncool. If everybody is doing it then there is nothing cool about it. I think cool hunting is a way of exploiting young teens. It is true that kids look up to each other in terms of behavior and style. However, I think that what is cool does not always come from the teen generations. There are a lot of styles and fashions that became popular when I was a teenager that are still cool today. This is an interesting topic that has serious implications on what drives our society.

Technology Anthropologist

http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dgp88r46_0g5h6g8

That's the website of my cool AnthTech report... check-it-out

2-3 paragraph response: What is the overall attitude toward using technology at JDHS? What do I see as the school's opportunities, limitations, and potential in this area? What ideas do I have about how to address them.

I think that JDHS has a vast amount of technology available to the teachers and students. In the school district where I worked in the past we were not nearly so fortunate. I would say that JDHS is a technologically competent school. Teachers have access to computer labs, the library is integrated with our city public library, there is wireless internet all over the school, and many teachers teach classes that utilize technology.

The biggest problem facing our technology culture is a lack of funding. Technology should be a highly prioritized part of our school district, and yet we do not have a district technology coordinator. The school system here is aware that technology is a priority, but they are not providing the funding. Teachers are expected to teach their classes as well as to put things into place like an ed. tech plan. If the district has these expectations of teachers, then they need to provide additional funding in order to meet those expectations. The teachers who are tech savvy are focusing their energy on their own classrooms and the technology classes that they teach. If teachers are expected to do more than this, then they must be paid for the additional time they put in.

The biggest problem that I see in regard to utilizing technology in our education system, is that in a school of 1,500 students and approximately 80 teachers, I have found 7 teachers that are playing an active role in technology in their school. This means that 73 or more teachers are not playing that role. Many of these teachers implement technology on a few computers in their classrooms, however, even more do not have the training and skills necessary to fill the role of being a technology oriented teacher. If we are to expect this skill in our educators, then we need to provide the training to them. This school system is not limited by a lack of technology. We have the materials, but we do not have enough skilled individuals who can teach it, let alone use it!

Article Response 1

Your name: Gabe Asper Email: gabeasper@hotmail.com Date: 9/18/07
Article Title: Listen to the Natives Author: Marc Prensky

This article is about challenges to teaching in the digital age. The article illustrates the point that today’s students are integrated into a technology system from an early age. They have many technological skills. They are quick to learn new technologies. They use technology outside of the classroom on a daily basis. The article is making the point that teachers need to begin using the technological talents of their pupils in the classroom. Teachers need to start bringing different forms of technology into their daily lessons. They need to be experimenting with ways of incorporating technology into their curriculum.

1. Educators have entered the digital age doing things the same way they used to.
2. Students are “digital natives” adults are “digital immigrants”.
3. Teachers must practice putting engagement before content when teaching.
4. Today’s students lack engagement and motivation.
5. Programming is the key skill necessary for 21st century literacy.

I have been aware of the conflict that this article brings up for a long time. As a language arts teacher I always feel that the schools I’ve worked at have not provided me with the tools for success. The students view English as their most painful subject, especially when they come from an ELL background. I have always said “If only I had a computer for each student!" If there was a classroom set of computers for each teacher in every school, then teaching could truly move in a new direction. As a language arts teacher I would love to do word processing and typing skills with my students on every writing assignment.

Today we watched some video media projects and were asked to write about the topic of "futuring"

RESPONSE TO FOX BECOMES A BETTER PERSON

The value of using technology projects in class is that we live in a technology age. The students have access to and implement multiple forms of technology every day. This means that technology is an educational tool that immediately achieves student interest. Interesting students in what you teach is about the hardest thing to do as a teacher. If you incorporate technology into your lessons then you are meeting the students where they are at. The other advantage of projects like this is that they teach students about the technological tools at their disposal. Many parents are not up to date on modern technology, so this knowledge needs to be taught in schools or the less advantaged students are automatically left behind. The old method of sitting in rows, listening to a lecture, and taking notes off a chalkboard just doesn't cut it anymore. Teachers need to make the learning that goes on in their classrooms reflect the times that we are living in. I feel that this project was easily assessable because it had a structure. The students had to write a story, make illustrations, and film/present. These are all areas that you could easily assign grades based on effort and creativity. I guess I would make a rubric based on best practice work samples.

RESPONSE TO SCHOOL TRAIN

This was an interesting video. I think it would be a fun project for kids to do, but I am not sure what the goal of the project was besides just using technology in the classroom. This project would be hard to grade. I guess you would have to grade on whether the kid did it or not, and as in the last assignment, high grades would reflect a high amount of effort and creativity. It seemed like a really elaborate and drawn out process to teach a simple concept like metaphor. However, the students would never forget their example of a metaphor!

RESPONSE TO EVOLUTION OF TECH

I really thought this video was cool. It made me realize how little I know about some of the tech innovations that are being used today. I was amazed at the rapidness of this technological evolvement. Even though they were making the future up, it was very realistic to what might happen. I do not fully understand the concept of podcasting, but it has been clear to me for a long time that we are moving into an age of networking. I think this is so cool. In education it is going to change things a lot. Instead of the old fashioned way of doing things, kids are going to have so many tools for accessing knowledge. The teacher will have to fill a diminished role of managing learning instead of imparting learning. All the tools for learning will be right there at their disposal. They will just need to teach kids how to access it and utilize it. The teacher will be a "guide at their side" instead of a "sage on the stage". I think these developments are already a long time in coming in education. There are too many teachers who are ignoring progress in technology. It merely serves to isolate them from their students. Teachers who use technology are facing the real world we live in.

1st Blog

My name is Gabe. I was born in AK. I am a teacher. I like kids, the sun, swimming in AK, hot tubs, kayaking, baseball, my family... and other stuff. I'm single and I like it that way sometimes. My goal right now is to get my Masters degree. I am thinking about traveling after that.