Chapter Three Assignment on Podcasts & Vodcasts

It was in 1969 that the Vietnam War had taken a step for the worse. The year before saw the death of Robert Kennedy and Marin Luther King and the Tet Offensive in south vietnam. General William Westmooreland would be replaced by President Johnson. In 1969 with Richard Nixon in the Whitehouse, there was civil and political unrest throughout the country. David Eisenhower the grandson of the former President was at a party along with his future wife Julie Nixon the daughter of the current presedent. David was asked how did the Government determine who would get drafted. He responded only those without rich parents, college students, senator's kids and "other" fortunate sons. John Fogerty, front man of the group Creedence Clearwater Revival was at the party when he overheard this conversation. This is how the song came to be. It is about an "unfortunate" a man who has just learned he has been drafted. 

Reflective thoughts

There are various ways in which I can use podcasts and vodcasts in my classrooms, but first, let me define what each definition means. A vodcast contains video and audio information. It can be used when downloading a production that shows and describes something both visually and with audio. Podcasts can be usefull to students in such a way as to allow them to create and design their own projects. The field of education is constantly evolving. I am a product of the late 1960's and early seventies. At no time did I think Ipods,Ipads, and the internet would be possible. I see how ineffective the U.S. post office has become just to give an example: one can order stamps through his computer, transactions are possible. One can do a background check by simply going to a website.
Podcasts and Vodcasts can be integrated in a students learning. It is no longer necessary to lecture in class where half of the student body will become distracted and bored. Studies have shown students cannot learn in a classroom like this. All this has to do with "partnering" in which the teacher learns from the students as well.
I plan to become more knowledgeable in the use of technology. I can understand how another younger student or younger professor can become frustrated by someone as I, but by the same token, I feel frustarted likewise by those too young to have remembered the importance of the fall of the Soviet Union, the fragmentation of so many countries which no longer exist and the sacrfices made by those men and women who lost something of themselves in the jungles of Southeast Asia, only to come "home" to ridicue and animosity. The oldies such as I who are not taken seriously by the younger generation who were spoiled by my generation and had the priviledge of learning computers at a very early age in school while those of us had to deal with manual type writers. We had to read books checked out in the library while searching for Hemmingway or Poe or Hawthorn through the index cards at the back of the room. Now, one need not have to read a book. They simply google the story and download its abstract.All this leads me to think in a manner I never could have imagined and to ask myself this: Are we products of our own stupidity and have we become so lazy and uncaring as to neglect the very simple aspects of learning? Where is the joy in starting and finishing a great book? of using a scratch sheet of paper to figure out simple math instead of relying of calculators for the most simple of problems? I have not had to physically deliver a typed paper to a professor in the last three years. I am told to e-mail it. Now we have spell check. APA, MLA, or Chicago format? just hit a key on the mother board and it will do it automatically. This is what we now call EDUCATION???
It is the future and so I feel I must learn about Vodcasts and Podcasts or be left behind.

Always be Real (Not Just Relevent)-Planning assignment group 3

Chapter4-This Chapter explains the diffrence between "real" and "relevent". Why the yellow color? Why not
Blue or better yet my favorite color, RED!!! Does changing a color or font get   attention?  In this chapter we address this question. As a future social studies teacher I need to simplify my lessons. There is nothing worse than having students yawning, falling asleep, totally lost in another world as the instructor is trying to teach. Using our imagination to make what we teach become more interesting to our students is what this chapter is all about. We had some examples on our power point as we progressed with our presentation. I briefly explained what a Gallery Walk was and how we can implement it in pedagogy. I opened up classroom discussion by stating I had the good fortune of visiting a Montressori school in El Paso Texas where I was permitted to view the Gallery Walk in the lessons. Here is what I observed:
1) The teacher placed paper images throughout the room of various objects that the children (2nd graders) were familiar with, Fishies, Dinosaurs, bugs and flowers.
2)The teacher had them rotate throughout the room going from station to station where each image was .They were each asked to identify which of the images they would like to be and why?
3) Next they got on internet and researched information on that image. They were taught to create a WiKi and post there observations and share with their peers.
In the next presentation, we talked about "Planning". What I found helpful and something to implement in my future lessons is the restructuring of Guiding questions. It is important to have students come up with their own conclussions while doing research rather than listen to a boring lecture. We as instructors and educators need to keep this in mind. This is what I consider part of "Partnering". As unorthodox as my blog may seem, I have chosen not to show or post a video because to me this is not really speaking from the heart. I feel its something that everyone is doing and I try not to be part of the staus quo but rather something I know I will be doing in my classroom. The wheres and hows can be obtained from my fellow group members. e also touched up on the area of socratic questioning. In this case, I as the teacher will pose  questions that are more meaningful than those usually posed by the novice instructor or by those who speak without realizing if the students are making a connection with what the teacher is saying. Socratic questions allow the student to "probe" and form an "educated guess" if anything else. This is what I learned from our group presentation.Now to touch up more on how I will be using this method in my lessons.