Saturday, April 24, 2010

Under my video section in my blog you will see the URL for http://wwwyoutube,com/watch?v=zj4d7LdDc3E , which takes you to a tutorial video that teaches you a song and technique for teaching a child how to properly hold a writing utensil. I am a Pre-k teacher who has been looking for a good method to teach this technique for quite awhile. I hope to remain in the Pre-K to Kindergarten age range when I begin teaching after graduation. This is a difficult skill for new writers to master, and definitely not a skill you force upon children until they begin showing you that they are ready to learn it. The more catchy and fun you can make learning new, difficult skills at this age, the better. So I was really excited to find this tutorial that I plan to use soon in the classroom I am teaching in currently. The second video I viewed, and found extremely interesting was a presentation given by Mr. John Seely Brown for Teaching 2.0 ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOvQAdDFGMA) that was entitled "Doing More with Less." I was attracted to the title because as a Pre-K teacher we learn to make a living out of that very concept. However, what I thought the video was going to express, compared to what the actual content turned out to be, were very different. But I took away a great amount of good information that echoes the message of this class and all we have learned in it up through this point. Mr. Brown spoke about the importance of collaboration while learning to help students to internalize what they have learned. He pointed to the opportunities to collaborate over the Internet as being an essential tool to use in order to internalize learning and promote group discussions that add many different points of view and collective knowledge. He spoke about the shift of the Internet moving from posted knowledge to being a part of a collective group that discusses experiences, knowledge, and scenarios to enable others to join in that discussion and take away valuable information, even being a part of solutions. As a teacher, you tend to feel that you don't have time for "one more thing;" however, Mr. Brown helped me to see just how much better of a teacher I could be by applying the use of this technology in my classroom, and for my classroom by becoming a part of these discussions.

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