Blog Post #8

Mark Church's Making Thinking Visible video to explain his book is very helpful. After watching the video, it made me interested in reading the book. I felt like I learned a good bit about learning and teaching from his video. I really like his approach; it helped create independent learning from the teacher but also incorporated group discussion with your classmates and learning from them. I felt like he really brought his title "Making Learning Visible" to life. I enjoyed how he formed the children into small groups. He asked them to sum up a headline for what they had been learning about. They made up a headline and then he hung them up on a board. Later on, he then would get them to form another headline after thinking and learning more about the topic to see how the headlines would change. I thought it was a great idea how they all formed a group and had to think about a headline, and their thinking was out loud; it really supported the phrase of making thinking visible. His video taught me about how children can learn together from saying there thoughts out loud in a group. I appreciated his approach to teaching and learning.

Grace Hofer: Watching Back To the Future, I was impressed by how Brian Crosby taught his class. One of the things I noticed was how much participation was being done by the class. The students were the ones doing activities and projects and not just being shown an activity, but playing a part in doing it. I think by letting the students participate, let them become more interested in what was being taught. Students in this class also had a blog that they would write anything and everything they have learned. Blogging offered students to be connected to people from multiple countries and let them learn a little about these countries as well. These blog post by students contained pictures and videos that the students took themselves. The class also had a flickr page that contained pictures taken by the students of the whole class. 
I think the way Brian Crosby is teaching his class in an excellent way. The involvement he is offering his students in activities is letting the students be excited about the learning experience. Having students excited about learning I think is what most, if not all, teachers would be thrilled about. Some of the things these students learned was how to maintain blogs, put videos up on their blogs, video chat with a fellow student as well as people from around the world all while learning academically by projects and activities. Using a blog improved their writing and reading skills as well. It is great that his class is excited to learn. I think a way for my future students to be excited about learning, would be to take on the tools Brian Crosby is using in his classroom.

Chasity Heubach: I had no idea how much technology had taken over the classroom. However, not only do I now realize that it plays a key role in the classroom, I understand that it is important in the learning process. I viewed theBozemanscience website which is run by Mr. Paul Anderson. Mr Anderson has been a science teacher for about 19 years. Currently, he is a science teacher and technology specialist at Bozeman High School. For approximately three of the 19 years, he has been teaching science on youtube, where he has created hundreds of science videos. These videos have reached millions of teachers and students worldwide. One video I watched was entitled, Blended Learning Cycle. In this video Mr. Anderson gives instruction on how to incorporate the Blended Learning Cycle into the classroom. He starts by introducing the cycle. He states that first, as a teacher, one must combine online, mobile, and classroom learning into the classroom. He explains that next the teacher would introduce the learning cycle, which consists of engaging, exploring, explaining, expanding, and evaluating a subject. He then discusses an acronym he uses called quivers when teaching his students. He starts with a good QUestion. He then allows his students to Investigate/inquiry about the question. He offers Videos to his students , and then allows for Elaboration. Following that he requires a Review. He sits down with each student and through questioning, he evaluates their understanding before allowing them to move forward. Finally, they are given a Summary quiz, which allows the students to check their understanding for themselves. This method of teaching introduced by Mr. Anderson is very effective. It shows the power of technology, because otherwise he would not be capable of educating the world. I have learned a lot from this site. I learned that teaching any subject can be more effective with the use of technology.