Jennhund's Blog

Facilitating for PLS

jennhund — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 10:35:22 +0000

For the past year, I have been employed by Peformance Learning Systems (PLS) where I have the opportunity to work with educators throughout the world (although I haven’t yet worked with anyone outside the continental US). So far, I have facilitated “Building Online Collaborative Environments” in which teachers learn how to use Web 2.0 tools to incorporate into the classroom.

Recently, I was asked to facilitate “Infusing Arts into the Curriculum.” According to the website, this class’s description is as follows:

Overview:
Arts infusion is a powerful approach to teaching and learning. This course explores the role of the arts in education. It introduces the elements inherent in the four art forms (music, dance, drama, and visual arts) and models infusion of the arts disciplines across the curriculum, specifically within language arts, math, social studies, and science. Arts-based teaching strategies are described and applied. Participants develop arts-infused lesson plans, and the course culminates with the design of an arts-infused unit of study.

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With the threat of schools eliminating arts programs, it is ever more important that teachers learn how to incorporate these arts into our regular ed. classrooms. For instance, I learned how to take a simple poem and create a lesson that students will also get to appreciate art, music and drama. It is a great class for K-12 teachers.

Several different universities offer this course, and the listing can be found here if you are interested in signing up. The class runs from March 9-May 3, so I hope to see you there!

Where’s Autumn?

jennhund — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 11:22:56 +0000

I remember how mild out summer was this year, and I was enjoying it the whole time (although there were days that I would have liked to have gone swimming, but it was too cold). But in the back of my head I kept thinking, “If the summer is this nice, what does that mean for the winter?” Everyone kept saying that we were going to have a harsh winter, and that made me a little sad.

Autumn is my absolute most favorite season. I love the crisp, cool weather and the changing leaves. My dad brings me tons of apples that I can use to make pies, cakes and muffins. Isabella, my six year old daughter, has really taken a liking to baking in the kitchen with me. We make the entire house smell wonderful, and when it’s all done, we have to taste-test! It’s nice to get a cozy blanket out and snuggle up to read a good book while being enticed by all the wonderful smells of autumn.

But last Friday, we had snow! SNOW! It was October 16, and we had to deal with a dusting of snow already. Don’t get me wrong; it was absolutely beautiful. But I’m not ready for winter. I want to celebrate autumn first. The leaves are still on the trees, just beginning to change. Now they are covered in snow! I just think winter is coming too quickly.

Here are some great pictures of our first snow, though. I love the first snowfall in winter because everything looks so clean and white. And I think this snowfall is just as beautiful–I just think it came a month too early.

Here’s One to Bookmark

jennhund — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 22:40:40 +0000

I found another website that might be useful in the classroom. Personally, I will use it with my seventh grade English students because they struggle with nonfiction reading. The other seventh grade teacher and I have discussed at length ways in which we can incorporate more nonfiction into the curriculum. We’ve come up with the idea that students can bring in current events and discuss them for the first ten minutes of class once or twice a week. Not only will it help with their nonfiction skills, but also it will enhance their research skills as well as their speaking and listening skills.

The website mentioned is from scholastic in which they list many URL’s that are student/teacher/parent friendly. Just going through some of the titles of articles, I can see that this site is going to be a winner!

No-tolerance: Intolerable?

jennhund — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 21:53:39 +0000

This article talks about a six year old child who was excited about joining the cub scouts, and he wanted to show off his nifty spoon that could also be used as a fork or a knife. Who wouldn’t? Those things are cool! Unfortunately, school grounds is the wrong place for a six year old to be carrying a possible weapon. Weapon? Weapon! That’s right–he was suspended for bringing this utensil to school. Suspended for 45 days.

Apparently the “no-tolerance” policies of many school districts are creating some interesting cases for parents. In another example (from this same article) of how far this has gone, a student was expelled from school for an entire year because she brought a cake to school for her birthday. I guess she shouldn’t have brought the knife to cut the cake into pieces.

Obviously, there is a fine line that districts need to walk when it comes to this controversial subject, but should there be some room beyond no-tolerance for common sense?

Has Wikipedia Met Its End?

jennhund — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 20:35:33 +0000

My husband found this article in Time from a couple of weeks ago, and I found it to be intriguing. I had never thought about it, but it makes sense that the contributions and commenting would die down on Wikipedia eventually. Now that it has well over three million articles, one might wonder how much more could possibly be added? Of course it is no longer “growing exponentially,” because it isn’t new anymore, and it is more difficult to find material to post on it. That said, knowledge is always expanding, so Wikipedia will grow to accommodate this expansion. It may not grow as quickly, but it will continue to grow. The question becomes: when the novelty and excitement of the initial experiment has worn off, what will Wikipedia look like, and will it continue to be as democratic or as lovingly cared for and contributed to? Or will we have yet another staid encyclopedia wrapped up in its own bureaucracy?

Goin’ Way Back

jennhund — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 11:22:25 +0000

Have you ever returned to a site that has been useful in the past and found that it’s gone? Well, Wayback Machine is a site that has many of these “resource moved” sites archived so that you can still use it.

What is the Wayback Machine?

Stated on its site:

The Internet Archive Wayback Machine is a service that allows people to visit archived versions of Web sites. Visitors to the Wayback Machine can type in a URL, select a date range, and then begin surfing on an archived version of the Web. Imagine surfing circa 1999 and looking at all the Y2K hype, or revisiting an older version of your favorite Web site. The Internet Archive Wayback Machine can make all of this possible.

Ah, so if you have gone to a site to find that the website’s URL is no longer available, apparently, that site could have been archived and may not have been lost forever. Personally, I have not had a chance to use this yet, but there are many times in the past when I have tried to go to one of my bookmarked websites to find that it has been moved. Now that I know about Wayback, and I have read through testimonials of others who have used it, I am more confident that I will almost always be able to find my favorite sites after they’ve been “moved.”

(The Web 2.0) Safety Dance

jennhund — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 12:40:33 +0000

I realize that as Web 2.0 gets more and more popular, there are way too many opportunities to associate with students, administrators and friends outside of school. The complication is when we try distinguish between our professional relationships and our personal ones. Our principal states in just about every faculty meeting that we should never allow a student to be our “friend” on facebook.

Yet, there are still teachers who do it.

Is it likely that something inappropriate will be posted and that teacher will face severe consequences? Not likely. However, there are those rare occasions when someone might slip up. Take the student teacher from Millersville, for instance. I realize this happened a few years ago, but sometimes we need to be reminded how easy it is to lose so much. She just had a picture of herself on MySpace, and it only implied that she may have been drinking alcohol. Unfortunately, while student teaching, she allowed students to access her page, and there was a negative reaction in the community.

Now she has no teaching certificate at all.

It is my understanding that there were a few other instances when she was unprofessional, but this was the spark that started the fire. According to this article, she ended up as a nanny with an English degree.

Wanna Dance?

jennhund — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 00:33:33 +0000

I’ve found that the majority of educators I have come across are generally in this profession because they care so much about others and want to help them. Unfortunately, this often proves to be a double-edged sword. I love helping my students and getting their graded work back to them as quickly as possible. I’ll spend hours trying to plan the perfect lesson so that the students will enjoy the material that they are learning. But what about me? Every health magazine or journal states that you have to take time for yourself. Watch what you eat. Exercise. I can’t tell you how many teachers I talk to complain that there just isn’t enough time! It’s true. I fall into that category as well.

Make time.

Hmmm…now there is a concept. I guess if I think about it, I have been making time to go to yoga for the past two years, and I have found it to be an extremely relaxing and rewarding experience. I go once a week for 1.5 hours, and I am okay with giving up that much time because I can work the rest of my schedule around it. However, this past Monday, I experienced a new form of exercise: Zumba! I heard about this dance/aerobics class a few years ago, but I recently found out that there is a class offered just five minutes from my home. I checked it out, and I fell in love! I always thought dancing was tons of fun, but who would have thought it could be exercise? What a great workout! I felt refreshed and alive when I came out of that class, and I know it will help me to work to my ultimate level of performance as a teacher. So, by helping me, I guess I am helping my students. Huh…go figure.

Check it out–here is a sample video (first one I found).

RSS feeds: The new paper to read with your coffee and breakfast

jennhund — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 09:21:02 +0000

I used to think it was weird when my husband would take his coffee into the computer room and go through all his news feeds. Now that I have subscribed to RSS feeds, I can completely understand. What a wonderful way to get the news! I think movies will start showing the morning couple sitting at the table with laptops and coffee rather than the traditional newspaper. And the best part? I can still do sudoku every day!

But how will RSS feeds enhance my own learning, or that with with my students? I think RSS feeds will help me stay up to date with the educational topics. I can look through several headlines before narrowing in on the ones that I know will affect me and my teaching. Furthermore, not only can I easily find topics that are relevant to me as an educator, but also to my students for current events. It is always nice to bring in topics to discuss in class–this allows students to work on their speaking and listening skills when they have a topic to really get into. But most importantly, I can find the articles myself (very quickly and efficiently). I had no idea how much time would be saved by not having to do a google search every time I wanted to find something relevant.

Wiki-Wiki-What?

jennhund — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 10:10:45 +0000

I had the opportunity to take an online education course in which I learned how to incorporate wikis into the classroom. While our school is generally slow to accept new things (i.e. bringing Web 2.0 into the classrooms), I was really pleased with how easy this could be accomplished with my sophomore CP English classes. Last week my fourth period completed their anticipatory research for the novel Night. They had to research several different concentration camps—many of which are mentioned in the novel. You can find their class wiki here. While I am learning how to modify some things before my next class goes down to the computer lab, overall I am really pleased with how well this assignment turned out.