What can we learn about teaching and learning from these teachers?

Myself, Jamie Baxter and Thomas Leytham did a collaborative assignment where we watched three videos and critiqued or praised certain parts on each. So, we started with Back to the future Video. Once the video was finished, the first thought was, this is a great teacher. Obviously he cares on just about every aspect when it comes to his “kids”. He is very enthusiastic with all of his projects and gets real excited which gets the students involved.

The balloon project was particularly innovative and most definitely educational. The project helped develop the students’ knowledge and concept about pressure. Also, the students use critical thinking and creativity while writing from the perspective of the balloon. Most importantly, the project did all of this while being attention grabbing and fun. Jamie is going to save this project and use it in her future classroom because she really enjoyed how excited the students got while completing it.

When Mr. Cosby was describing what students learn from 21st century tools, it really caught our attention. This is a very helpful and useful part of the video for us as future teachers. He showed us a few examples, such as: learning how to collaborate, motivation, empowerment, and connection with others. Students will learn and practice all of these activities when using 21st century tools.

We also loved the fact that the child with cancer was brought in through skype and became an active member of the classroom. This teaches communication, understanding, tolerance, compassion, and learning to change each others lives.

We would, because of his new teaching plan, love to know what the kids knew after his class compared to their first day. It seems like if you are advocating a certain plan of teaching, backing it up with statistical data would help the cause. On top of which, he already mentioned the parts that they didn’t know. So, it wouldn’t be difficult to show their progression.

The most important aspect of this video is the teacher and his passion for teaching which makes things work in the classroom, and is more than a video on how technology has turned around a low income student based classroom from not knowing to knowing, it is a video on how an empowered teacher with desire can do wonderful things.

Blended Learning Cycle video is next on the list.The first thing that struck us was how much we loved the tweet by Dr. Tae, “remember, it’s not fair to tell your students that grades are not important if you are ultimately giving your students grades.” True information for sure.

We noticed that in the beginning of the video he mentioned doing a TED talk about making the class a video game. He watched the TED talk video which made this video much more understandable. Essentially, making the class a video game was quite difficult. There were many problems that led to many parts failing and needing revisions. Thomas felt this is why his approach changed overall. Mr. Anderson definitely believes it is okay to fail and that we learn from failure. This is definitely true and teachers should learn to rework failure. It has such a terrible connotation when it shouldn’t be.

Anderson developed his “quivers” approach to teaching in response to his video game “failure”. Quivers seemed like a very good concept. We do not always like acronyms because they can detract from the actual concept, and people remember the acronym word and not what each part stands for. All Thomas could remember is Questions, Videos, and Summary quiz. I found the video aspect of "quivers" to be idiotic and a waste of time. Not having anything that could spontaneously happen or be asked by the teacher while talking. Sitting and watching a video, only calls for distraction and daydreaming. Jamie however, thought the video would be a good idea because some students learn from watching videos. Most children or young adults grow up watching television, so maybe the video will teach them something they missed while investigating. We think the review step of “quivers” is very important because this is the step where the teacher can make sure the student he is reviewing, learns everything that was intended to be taught. Thomas thinks that all students learn differently. So, having a video could be beneficial to some and not as beneficial to others. It would be important to have all of the knowledge learnable in different ways. Thomas is a kinesthetic and auditory learner. So, the video would probably be beneficial to him. But for a visual kinesthetic learner the video may not be.

Which picture looks more engaging?

We also found it interesting that he is teaching AP Biology. Good for him and his students, but what about students in a poverty ridden neighborhood at a state school with minimal funds, would this process still work? He says we should start with a question, well that would be ours for him.

We learned from this teacher a great concept to use for our future classrooms. Although we might change a couple of steps in the “quivers” approach, overall it is a good idea.

The last video we watched was “Making Thinking Visible” This video is pretty straight forward by having the kids watch a video, and then create a project that builds upon each weeks learning. We can learn from this video that critical thinking, analysis, and building upon what has already been learned is the fundamental building blocks to project based learning.

Interestingly enough, Mr. Church only uses a video as his technology. It seems teaching properly and engaging students really has to do with the teacher, not the technology. We believed the project had the right idea, but with a more opened mind and a greater use of technology, the kids would of benefited even greater.

In the end, we believe that each video offered us different things to think about when we become teachers. Most importantly, we know that to be great as a teacher, it takes hard work and dedication beyond Monday-Friday, 8-4, it takes a teacher that never stops learning or growing. The one thing I do not want to happen is we become disconnected from life.....or maybe we already have........