Fischbowl/Best of 2007: April

For my Fischbowl assignment I decided to do the month of April and I think I may have chosen one with an AWESOME message. It is discussing the school year and the time we have allotted to teach and learn. In one of the meetings, the Fischbowl
Did You Know/Shift Happens Movie was shown by Barry Bachenheimer only to receive the exact response I feel the movie was looking for. A reaction of agreeing that we need to get with it and make sure our students are ready to meet the world of technology upon their graduation. Though they all agreed to this, no one could understand exactly where they were suppose to find the time to teach their students all about the world of blogging, etc. With the questions of "How," and "When," up in the air, a new Power Point Presentation was put into use.

The 180 Days presentation is now being circulated and I think that it should be a REQUIREMENT for ALL teachers and administrators to watch before approaching the classroom. It gives a breakdown of how we are using our time in school in a way that could really leave the question of, "What spare days should I fit learning technology in?" instead of "We have no time left!" This video shows how we are losing time and blaming it on the kids not being focused. It shows how there are so many days that could be being used wisely, but instead are being cut into half days before vacations because we say the children aren't interested and they are "distracted." In my opinion, we should pull ourselves away from making the excuses and start making a point to use our classroom time wisely.

Some of the comments made to Karl Fisch's April post are bringing up some other very good points as well. The last one made by a lady named Renee says, "Many children are in school from the time they are born, (daycare), up until their mid-twenties. What we, as teachers, need to do is find a way to make learning more enjoyable." In my opinion, it is NOT hard to make computers, etc., enjoyable to students. Whether they are in second grade or a senior in high school. Karl Fisch is NOT trying to say that test are not good and he is NOT trying to say that we do not need to allot time for test preparations. The point he IS trying to get across is to just stop and look at some of the time that is being wasted. Other points that were surfaced by one of the commenter's on his blog was that you can only do so much with the tools that you are provided in school. These are not the situations that his is trying to "harp" on.

One of the points brought up in this April post is that there are many teachers who just pop a movie in for the kids to watch so that they can have their few minutes of quiet time. In my opinion, please keep in mind I am speaking from a "pre-teacher" point of view, this is not okay. I feel that you could get just as much quiet time out of explaining to the kids how to blog, and then giving them the freedom to do so. Set aside that 45 minutes you would be using to show them a movie, and let them have 45 minutes to blog about their school experiences, make post asking for help on a Science project, or even make post to offer help to other classmates in a subject they may be really good in. Teaching is not all about quiet time, it should be about teaching!