Keeping up with global competition

There are so many times you hear people say that American children are behind countries such as China in Math and Sciences. What does this statement really mean to us, to Americans? In the article, "What's Our Sputnik? by Thomas L. Friedman he suggests America needs an event like the Soviet launch of Sputnik in 1957 is what motivated the Americans to enhance their education in science.



Since 1957 no other similar event has happened. We lost our momentum and now we need something new to spark that interest. What could that event be? Honestly, I don't know. I would hope we would not need a major even like Sputnik to realize that we are behind in education and need to really step it up. We all make comments about it as it is, so what's stopping our school systems from actually doing something about it?



All I hear are excuses. Administrations are a lot alike corporations at times, working like a business and only thinking about money. If they were only thinking about the students and education they would try and see how to make things work. They would let the teachers make committees and get together to see if they can come up with solutions. When you have administrations who do not want to listen to new ideas especially when it has to do with introducing STEM education it proves they are ignoring the fact we need to improve our educational system. We will eventually be blindsided just like Sputnik and people will turn their heads and pretend they had no idea it was coming. In reality, it was a long time coming, no one cared to take a stand and really try for our students.

Natural Disasters

If you look in the newspaper or watch the news, it seems that natural disasters are always happening and being discussed. Hundreds and thousands of lives are directly or indirectly affected by these tragedies. Flooding, Snow/Ice storms, Hurricanes, Tornados, or even the most recent Tsunami in Japan has been the center of the news. I can't help but think that my students in particular do not fully understand the damage these disasters create because they do not understand the actual disaster.

When the tragic Tsunami hit Japan, I took that time to show them videos from the internet of the actual event occurring and the news reports as they happened. My students have never seen anything like it. It really generated questions and a great conversation and discussion of this particular event and other events.

I really think that students are not exposed to enough of the "real story" of natural disasters.  They really only see what the media puts together. I feel it is my job as a teacher to really teach them about natural disasters, teach them how to prepare and get through a natural disaster and I feel like it is important to find real life examples. Also, to show them real examples of the devastation that could happen.      

After showing them the devestions I do not want them to leave my classroom with hopelessness feelings. I want to show them what they can do to help. Whether it is donating clothing they do not wear anymore to creating food and money drives for donation. I really think getting students invovled is the best lesson because they may not have expereinced the natural disaster, but they can still be a part of it, and be a part of the recovery.

Presentation Methods

It’s been awhile since I have ventured out into the world of “presentation technology”.  I like many of you am sure you spent most of your educational career using PowerPoint or notes from apple. I recently entered into a graduate program. One of the requirements is to have a course project represented in a presentation.

I took some time to check out different presentation methods and I have viewed them.

Googledocs: I find it very easy to navigate. It works pretty much like PowerPoint. The great addition to googledocs is that you can load your presentation to your account and make it very excisable.

Zoho Show 2.0: Again this was easy to navigate. It works like PowerPoint as well, but has a great almost “hip” vibe to it. It’s free, you just have to sign up for a user name and that’s about it.

Voice Thread: This is a site that has ideas that I have never heard of. It was a bit hard to navigate the site, and I couldn’t really find any useful tutorials. The concept is great you can upload pictures and add voice recordings. I would definitely have my students use these in the classroom, but for my graduate project I think it lacks the ability to give the depth to my course project.

I really would like to explore these presentation tools further. For my graduate class I am going to choose googledocs. It is set up similar to PowerPoint which I am familiar with, but being able to load it for everyone to see very easily is very appealing.