Rough draft of technology philosophy

Rough draft of technology philosophy

1.       Philosophical school of thought you subscribe to

For me, philosophical school of thought should be free at first. This free means their mind, I want all the students could be themselves. Admittedly, there is only one Bill Gates in the world, there is only one Steve Jobs in the world, I do not expect my child could be one of the top in the world. But I truly wish that my child could be one of the happiest people in the world. I would like to make him/her having their own idea about this world, and I wish they could speak out other ways than books. Free is easy to say bur hard to do. I read a story these days, it was written by a mom who just sent her daughter to a primary school for 1 month. That was is real story, and it happened to her and will happen to other parents in China. One day she sent her girl to school and saw her girl went to school with other children by walking in a straight line one by one. Before get into this school, this mother prepared all most all things that this school asked in a printed paper, which labels that all the students have to prepare the same bagpack, the same pencil, the same notebook, even the same shoes. However, this prepared girl still got punished because her shoes were not white as others, which made her really upset and humiliate. This mother got confused, should she send her little girl to this school after all? My recommend is no, please give this girl a freedom space. She is too young to afford this.

Second of all is communication. As human beings, we cannot write but we have to speak. A good communication could make the things go through smoothly. Our teachers more care about how much score we get in the examinations, but not how much we learned and keep them in mind. Sometimes I do not know why I have to learn this, and this negative idea makes me do not want to learn it anymore. I know we cannot satisfy every student in the school, but we could try to let them know why they should learn it at least. This is asked communication, which could make both students and teachers be more positive and understandable.

2.       Role you see technology playing in your classroom, school, and/or workplace to empower you and those around you via informating (see course notes)

I am a mathematics student right now, and what I have learned using technology is mathematica 8.0, which is an awesome software to solve math problem. And after this class, I learned there are tons of way to use Google, Wiki, Blog and podcasting. Before this class, I thought eCourse is just a course that professor and students connect to each other via emails. But now, I learned that I could build my own blog in the internet and speak myself out. Especially, after this week I learned that Google has lots of applications that would help me with my work and study, I will try it in the future and if I have chance I wish I could introduce it to my friends and students.

So I think technology is playing a more and more important role nowadays. Because of internet we have no nationwide, no racist, and no generation gap. This is a good way to help parents and children or teacher and students work together, everyone can express themselves freedom.

Although I know every good thing has its bad aspect. The internet is convenient but also dangerous. All kinds of information go through it, how to identify them is a big problem. Even I learned some way to tell whether they are formal or fake, I am not sure I could recognize it every time. Hopefully, I could share my information with others, my friends or students, it may be helpful.

3.       Views on teaching, learning and education/training.

View on teaching, I do not really know about teaching. It is a huge thing for me, I think teaching is more like to show the teacher’s own philosophy to students. Whether you want or not, it does impact students’ thinking. I heard that a teacher who does not like fractions was teaching fractions in a very negative mood, and then the students did not do very well at that part in the exam. That teacher told us, after that she does not do this anymore, because it is a huge thing to pass the negative power to students.

View on learning, I am still a student now, so I guess I could say something from my view. I usually do not like to participate in a procedure, and I would like to learn what you write on the board and say this will in the exam. Last semester, I had a statistics class with only 4 classmates and the professor said we could teach each other this semester. Which means that we had to prepare the class ourselves and we would try to explain it to others in the class, that was fun. I prepared thoroughly, since I had to prepare both statistics and my English. But I have to admit I love to be involved, and I have a big progress.

View on education, I am not familiar with this part. After all this course, I feel I still have a lot of thing need to learn and I am proud of learning so much high-tech methods with computer. I regret that I used to treat internet as a game center or entertainment, I knew it is powerful but I never thought it could do almost everything. Although this is only an ecourse, but I made lots of friends and learned lots of real world skills. I will keep trying in the internet and see if I could use in the future.

Activity 1 & 2

Focused Free Write (Activity 1)

Pause just long enough to begin thinking about the questions below.  Don’t struggle over form or correctness.  Don’t cross out words.  Write as fast as you can for five to 7 minutes.

Consider your entire educational experience. Who was your best teacher?  What made them the best?

The math teacher who taught me in my middle school. She was the first teacher made me thinking mathematics could be fun and she was never punishing us. I got a full mark of mathematics in the first test of my middle school, that therefore I could be her assistant during my middle school. She was smart and different with other teachers, she cared whether we learned the points or not. And she is the first one makes me want to be a math teacher, just like her.

Who was your worst teacher?  What made them the worst?

I never think about this question until now. I would like to say there was a math teacher in my high school makes me hate math for almost 2 years. I am not saying that he was terrible, but I really could not catch him up in his class, and that time was the most important time before college. Admittedly, he was the best teacher in our high school, but I was not one of his best students. I remembered that in his class he would talk something has nothing to do with the topic as long as almost 40 minutes and talk something useful for 5 minutes and this 5 minutes was random inserted in those 40 minutes. Therefore I could only learn so hard in my spare time to catch up.

What impact have your best and worst teacher experiences had on your approach/philosophy of teaching/training/profession/education?

The best math teacher, Ms.Tao, makes me think that mathematics is fun and teaching it also has fun. I want to be a math teacher like her, who treats students like her friends. She was not teaching us definition or what exactly in the book, she was teaching us how to solve problem. I was lucky to have her as my math teacher and I want to get closer to my students just like her.

The worst teacher makes me refuse to learn mathematics anymore and it does not have fun when other people cannot catch you up. He did not care if we learned or not, maybe that was his style which I can understand now. But I do not want my students think I am not a responsible teacher. I wish I could know my students for real, even it was my bad, communicating is the most important way to get the feedback from students, and it is also the most efficient way to improve myself.

Educational Philosophy Focused Free Write (Activity 2)

After reading through the six philosophy resources, which one or ones do you most closely identify with? Pause just long enough to consider what you believe about teaching and learning or the philosophy that drives your thinking about teaching/training/profession/personal.  Don’t struggle over form or correctness.  Don’t cross out words.  Just get something down.  Write as fast as your can for five minutes and incorporate elements from those philosophies with which you agree.

I am interested in Existentialism most.

The key words, “Relevance” and”do your own thing” very impress me. I have to say in my studying period, there is no “individual” in a class. We are the group, teacher is an individual. And we should get used to them, that they do not have to accept that students are different. I am impressed that existentialism is telling people that “Children should be able to choose their own paths from options available to them”. Ironically, Even in college, there are uncountable students have no idea about what major did they choose, and this choice would be there their whole life. If I were a teacher, I wish to be a friend of my students. I could learn what they are thinking about and what they want, I think only if I learned that I could understand them. I do not want input my knowledge into their mind and ask they do whatever I required. They are different with each other and all I want is keep their characteristics, they are supposed to be special in the world.

Outcome Design

Outcome design

I am going to introduce the knowledge about fractions. I want the learner to be able to deal with fractions, which means they can analyze and calculate fractions. I will focus on the following three points:

1. Specific – is my outcome fuzzy or clear?
2. Measurable – is there a way to assess the product of this outcome? Think about how I will assess this product.

3.    Actionable – is the learner doing something to demonstrate the outcome for the cognitive, affective or psychomotor domain of learning? Is it student-centered and at a higher level of learning?

Upon completion of learning fractions, the

learner will be able to deal with fractions themselves at a higher level.

Fractions
Category	Example and Key Words
Definition: What is a fraction?	Examples:  Key words: Part of a whole. A number written with the bottom part (the denominator) telling you how many parts the whole is divided into, and the top part (the numerator) telling how many you have.
Meanings: What does a fraction mean?	Examples: Key words: They are equal parts of a whole.
Compare: How to compare fractions?	Examples:  Key words: If they have the same denominator, then the bigger the numerator, the bigger the fraction. If they have the same numerator, then the bigger the denominator, the smaller the fraction.
Calculate: How to add/subtract or multiply/divide fractions?	Examples:  Key words: Addition: if two fractions have the same denominator we may add them by adding the numerators. Subtraction: If two fractions have the same denominator you compute their difference by subtracting the numerators. If the fractions have unlike denominators first rewrite the fractions over a common denominator. Then compute the difference by subtracting the numerators, putting the answer over the common denominator, and reducing to lowest terms. Multiplication: Using the multiplication of numerators divides the multiplication of denominator. Division: Using the dividend multiplies the inverse of the divisor.

While teaching the knowledge about fractions I suggest students to do some practice online. There are lots of math games or fun practice in the internet, like http://www.ixl.com/math/grade-8 which is a formal website about math.

Or I could take a video of fraction lesson, then they can reply it after class. I understand that there are students cannot get the knowledge at the class, because I had a hard time with physics in my middle school. And also they can discuss it with me in the class blog, which is timely and efficiently.