blog #3 Jigsaw method

After reading about the jigsaw method of teaching I realized that is how my summer foundations of education teacher ran his class. We all had sections to do and then after a few minutes we gave our parts and in the end the entire class learned all the topics. I was not impressed with and did not have fun doing this. After reading the article outlining the jig saw method I think I understand why I have such a hard time with that kind of classroom. Go to http://www.jigsaw.org/overview.htm if you would like to read it yourself. It says that older students have been taught to compete with each other. I would like to take that thought out farther and say that I have been taught to be independent, want to be graded for my own work, and because of that I hate group projects. What is odd considering how I feel about my own student work I picture my classroom as groups of students working together as families, armies, etc. so that they can have a better understanding of how diverse groups lived through the same historical incident. If I only had five computers in the class this jigsaw idea would work just fine because I will have books, magazines, and other information in the room for the students to work with while someone is on the computer. The advantage to only having a few computers would be teaching students to use many different forms of information to meet their needs as well as cooperation. The bad part of only having one computer is time. Sometimes it takes a while to find what you are looking for and middle school classes are not very long each day. I like the jigsaw idea and planed to do something similar in my class before I had even found out it existed.

assignment #2

I went to Google classroom tools for teachers and found three things that I would like to learn more about so that I can use them in my class but also so I can use them myself. I looked at the book search area and saw that I can use this tool when I need to find books on topics. Good to know since I have to write a 25 page paper for another class this semester. As a history teacher this will help my students and I find out more about what ever our topic is. I like the fact that you can read some of the books on line but it also lets you know where to borrow or buy the book if you want to have a hard copy of it. The second thing that I saw was the GEO education section about Google Earth, geography, and maps. I think students should be able to see the area that they are learning about, what it looks like, where it is, how big it is, etc. This will be a great tool to help us all figure out where things happened and visualize what those people saw. It helps make history "real" if you can see where it happened, at least that is how I feel. The Google groups tool will be great for the groups I hope to be able to use. I want to set up families, armies, and nations in my class. Google groups will make my idea work. Google docs is something I am going to have to learn more about before I understand it. For now I know that it can help me and my students to work together to understand and create what ever we need to for the lessons. As a teacher it will be great to see who is doing so I can give credit and help where it is needed.

assistive technology

I am going to BSU so that some day I can teach history or social science at a middle school. Globes, maps, and charts are very important when teaching history but they can be very hard to understand for many reasons. Often, the lettering on those tools can be very small, the lines separating areas unclear, and some students have a difficult time using the tables to find cities or other places of interest.

On you tube, I found two demonstrations of Tage It talking objects and maps that would facilitate map reading for both visually impaired students and those students who have difficulty understanding or translating the information on a map. This Tag It system works with desktops, laptops, and hand held devices making it practical in the classroom and on field trips.

Maps or objects like artifacts have computer chip dots as well as braille placed where ever a point of interest. The student takes a pen and touches that area and a voice comes on to tell what ever information has been downloaded for that chip. This product comes with flags of other countries that, after touching with the pen, changes the language to meet the needs of all students.

For a history or geography class this Tage It system would provide a fun and easy way for all students to learn.