Daren's IPT 301 Questions 5

1. Describe the two most helpful instructional strategies explained in Module 11 and how you see them as being useful to you in your teacher.

-The first strategies that is important is meaningful learning. When a student is just listening to something that has no meaning to them, they are not going to remember it. By making the topic more important to them by finding ways that it connects or is of interest to them will help students not only remember the lesson better, but will motivate them to learn more about the subject on their own.
- The second useful strategies to use is to provide visual imagery. A teacher that just talks and does not use any examples or items to demonstrate what they are saying is not going to have that big of an impact on their class. By having items for children to look at, students will not only once again be more interested in the lesson, but may be able to make connects visually that they would not be able to make by just listening to the lesson.

2. Define and give two examples of low-road transfer and high-road transfer not used in the textbook.

-Low-road transfer- the spontaneous, automatic transfer of highly practiced skills, with little need for reflective thinking
-Ex 1- a child learning to ride their bike to the point where they need no training wheels
-Ex 2- a student learning to type, gets to the point where their fingers move automatically
-High-road transfer- is when an individual purposely and consciously applies general knowledge, a strategy, or a principle learned in one situation to a different situation
-Ex 1- Use their knowledge of building a chair in class to repair a table leg at home
-Ex 2- Having knowledge on when a baseball is going to get to their glove, can determine how long a car will take before it passes on the road

3. Explain what kind of transfer, if any, you see most often used in public education and how it is used (ether from observation or from personal experience).

-To me it seems that the kind of transfer most teachers try to use is low-road transfer. Many teachers try to get children to do things automatically weather it is spelling or math problems. The problem I see with this is that it does not always seem like the best course to take. Although it may be good for students to be able to do their math problems automatically, if they are only able to do that and not understand the math behind it, they will not be able to use that knowledge in real life because they only have the low-road transfer and not the high-road transfer.

4. In what situations have you used an algorithm to solve a problem? When have you used a heuristic?

-well I have used algorithms in math all the time to solve problems, but I have also used many algorithms to help me build furniture in woodshop. In order to build a strong cabinet, you have to use an algorithm (or sequences of steps), otherwise your project will ether turn out ugly or not stable.
-a time when I have used a heuristic was when I started working at Subway. At the beginning, I was not told all the things I need to know in order to make the sandwiches. Because of this, I had to use a strategy and common sense in order to make the sandwiches. After awhile, I was corrected on a lot of things, yet I was never highly condemned for the sandwiches that I came made using my heuristic strategy.

Hardships of digital story telling

The think that I think becomes the biggest problem of using storytelling technology is the availability you have to computers and other technology tools required for digital story making. There are many children who may not always have access to a computer. Because of this, it could be very hard for some students to complete a project like this due to lack of equipment. One thing that could be done to allow all students to do this kind of project is to do the assignment in a computer lab during school. But even then, you may still have problems if your school does not have all the things you need to allow your entire class to work on the project. So over all, access to technology seems to be the biggest limitation to doing digital story telling as a assignment in a class.

Videos I have watched

I have watched and made comments on the following six peoples digital videos.

Sarah- Messy Room
Nichole- Health Movie
Nancy- Taiwan
Kaylie- The hunger games book trailer
Laila- First grade hand washing
Jill- Book trailer

Daren's ipt287 digital movie- Toys at night

Questions 4 for IPT 301

1. If you were asked in a job interview to describe four ways you would promote emotional intelligence within your classroom, how would you respond?

-I would first try to promote emotional understanding in my class. When a student is feeling angry or sad, I would want to explain to my class the reason why so that the rest of the students can understand why their peer feels the way they do
-the second thing I would try to do is respond correctly to student’s emotions. Sometimes teachers are quick to judge a child’s emotion that is causing problems as something negative. I would want to get to the point where I could step back and figure out why the child is feeling that way rather then going with the first impulse that comes to my mind.
-The third thing I do would be to try to teach the children emotional regulation. For example, when one of my students gets mad at their peer, I would want to encourage them to respond in a positive way using words like “please don’t do that because it hurts” rather then having them give in to their first emotion and just hit their peer.
-Last of all, I would want to keep my own emotions under control and try to keep them in a positive form so that my students will be able to have a good learning experience with a teacher who is positive.

2. Which theory, the Gardner’s Multiple Intelligence Theory or Sternberg’s Theory of successful intelligence, do you see as more useful to you as a teacher? Why?

-For me, Gardner’s theory seems to be more useful. The fact that Gardener has eight intelligences in his theory really appeals to me. There are a lot of people that are not good in certain areas of school such as English and math. But according to Gardener, if you are bad at these, you are only lacking in one intelligent rather then overall. With this knowledge, you can say to yourself that you may not be good in that one intelligent, but that means you are stronger in other areas of intelligent. With this view, it is easier to keep a positive view on things since you can say you are only lacking in one area, but not necessary in life.

3. What is your opinion on the usefulness of IQ testing?

-To me, it seems that IQ testing is too limited. Although you may be able to get a pretty good idea of how smart a student is through IQ testing, I believe that there are to many things happening in peoples lives that can change there IQ (for better or for worst) very easily. Because of this, I do not believe IQ is probably the best test to use to find out how smart a person is.

Daren's tpack explanationfor IPT 287

Tpack is when a teacher is able to incorporate their pedagogical knowledge, technological knowledge, and content knowledge all in the same lesson. Many times this is hard for teachers to do since a teacher may feel more comfortable with a specific area of knowledge or may not be comfortable in one of the areas and therefore try to avoid it. Although these are natural tendencies that teachers have, teachers should try to avoid them and use all three of these knowledge’s in a lesson. By doing so, not only will the lesson be more interesting for the students, but the students will also be able to have a richer learning experience that is clear and easy to understand.

picture of storyboard for ipt 287

Here is a picture of Daren's completed storyboard.

Week 3 questions IP&T 301

1. What are some examples of formative and summative assessments? Can a formative assessment be used as a summative assessment later?
-Formative assessments can be anything like homework assignments and quizzes. These kinds of assessments make it so teachers can plan what instructions they need to give their students as they progress through their grading area.
-Summative assessment can be things such as test and cumulative projects. These kinds of assessments are used to assess how a student is doing at the end of a grading period rather then during a grading period.
-In many cases a part of a formative assessment can be used for a summative assessment, but not usually a whole one. The reason I say this is because a formative assessment is assessing detail information that children are studying in the unite. Because the information is more detail, most teachers would not expect their students to remember all of, but just portions of it instead.

2. What is the difference between a standardized aptitude test and a standardized achievement test? Are they criterion-referenced or norm-referenced test?
-A standardized aptitude test assess a students future potential such as their capacity to learn. These test are then used by teachers in helping to place them in particular areas such as special classes or schools.
-A standardized achievement test asses current knowledge students have and help to identify the different strengths and weakness students have
-for both of these test, they could be used as a criterion or norm referenced test. It really depends on whether the education system wants to compare their students to a certain standard or a norm sample. Depending on which one of these the teacher chooses will determine which reference they will fall under.

3. Please read the case scenario on pg. 518-519. After reading the teacher responses, in your opinion, how concerned should Alexandria be about fall standardized scores?
-I feel that Alexandria should not be to concern, yet should still take a few actions on improving the test score. As many of the teachers pointed out, there were many factors of concern/ problems that could have affected the test, yet even with all these factors, the scores don’t seem to be extremely low yet. So although some improvements need to take place in order to improve test scores, I don’t feel that the school as of yet needs to make giant changes in improving their test scores.

4. How do you think you might specifically use the information from Modules 26 & 29 as a classroom teacher? What about as a parent?
-as a teacher, I see that there are a lot of different types of test/assessment that can be given to help determine different things about students. Because of this, I would want to use a number of these assessments and not just one. By using only one, it seems that you a limited on the information you can gain about your student and therefore cannot help them completely
-As a parent, this information helps me know different things about my child. I can see that just because my child did badly on one test, it does not mean that he is bad overall in his school curriculum. Instead, I can see that there may be a couple of areas to help my child improve in, but I would know that my child was probably not failing in ALL of his education.

synchronous assignment

Here is my picture for my synchronous assignment

asynchronous video message

Here is a picture of me doing the asynchronous video message.

most important thing I learned

I think that the most useful thing I have learned this week is how to make a website. With how important the internet has now become in our lives, it has become important to be able to display information on it. To me, the easiest way to do this is by having your own website. With a website, you can display all the information you need people to know all in the same place. Weather your information is concerning scheduling, maps, videos, or jokes, you can put all of it on your website.

Week 2 question IP&T 301

1. What is Bloom’s Taxonomy and what are the six areas that comprise it?
-Bloom’s Taxonomy is a categorization of six learning objectives which includes both lower and higher lever objects. The areas of comprise that are stated are remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating.

2. What is the difference between validity and reliability? Why are these chractersitcs of high quality test?
-Validity means that a test gives you the correct results while reliability means that the test gives you the same results over and over. Therefore, if a test is has validity, it will be reliable because it gives you the correct results every time. On the other hand, a test can be reliable but not valid in that it is constantly giving you the wrong answer every time.

3. Give an example of a product performance assessment and a process performance assessment.
-Process Performance Assessment- a coach watches as a student hits a tennis ball against a wall and then provides feedback on their hitting, performance assessment- a student builds a table to demonstrate is woodworking skills.

4. Describe three different ways to evaluate performance assessment.
-you can use a checklist to check off specific elements that the students demonstrates during the assessment, you can use a rating scale to indicated the quality of performance the student portrays on the assessment, you can use a rubric as a means to score the student on the multiple criteria that the assessment is looking at

5. Why would an elementary school teacher need to be concerned with assessment bias?
-Sometimes elementary teacher can be effective in the way that children act or how hard they try on an assignment. For example, a teacher may see that a student tried very hard to complete a assignment, yet still did not do to well. Because the teacher does not want to give a bad grade to a young student, they may rate them higher then they actually deserve. This in turn is a form of bias and is not a far assessment.

Technology background

Concerning technology, I am not to far advance. I know the basics on computers such on how to do papers, search out information on the website, and make sideshows at a basic level. Things that are much more advance then this becomes harder for me, but sometimes I am able to figure out how to do it through expermintation which is sometimes a scary bussness.