Blog Post #5

Building My Fream School!

Krissy Venosdale's post If I Built A School opened up my mind to what I would do if i had the opportunity to create my own school. I believe the environment she depicted was amazing; I know if I went to a school that was designed like that, I would be much more willing to wake up every morning and much more willing to learn. She wanted her students to feel comfortable in their learning environment because she thought the students would be more willing to do their work on their own instead of being forced to do homework and assignments. I think Krissy Venosdale's school would be extremely effective, but we never hear of schools like these because we are forced to certain standards and a certain criteria we have to teach.

If I could create my own school, my school would be a lot like Krissy Venosdale's dream school. I would definitely want my students to be as comfortable as possible in their learning environment. I would have study lounges and computer labs accesible for all students. I like the idea of the cafeteria being like a modern day coffee shop. In all of my classrooms I would have comfortable chairs for the students and have the rooms decorated. I think students being involved in the school is very important so for every club or school group, I would have a room set aside for them. I believe student athletes strive to keep their grades up to play sports so they should be rewarded with the best gear, equipment, and places to practice and play. I think it would be really awesome if kids could pick a certain subject that they would like to focus on and take more of those classes after they retained all of the basics from other subjects. I would want my school to be a place where kids would be eager to come to too learn, and I want my school to be a place that makes the students want to push themselves to better themselves.

Virtual Choir

I think it is incredible where technology has taken us today! None of the singers have ever rehearsed or even met before is what amazes me. They sounded perfect together; I didn't here one mistake in the whole show. If this can be done only via internet, just imagine what all the internet can do and offer us. Honestly, I am just in shock over this video. It was amazing!I could maybee even use a technique like this and make a class assignment.

What Does It Mean To Teach In The 21st Century

If Roberts is correct about the information in Teaching In The 21st Century then one can infer that the way teachers teach now is useless. Students can get information from so many sources now that the role of today's teacher can be repleced with the internet. Roberts believes that teachers can only provide students with the following: content, facts, dates, formulas, research, theories, stories, and information. All of these things can be obtained from the internet so what is the purpose of being a teacher? The students still need to learn the right way to use tools and search engines on the internet. Roberts asks the question "with all this information available [on the internet], should our curriculum be focused on facts and content or skills?" It could be possible as a teacher in the future I would have to focus more on teaching skills to students because they can get all of the facts and content they need on the internet. As a teacher my job will be to get the students to engage in activities as I teach them the skills that they need to know.

Flipped Classroom


I think the flipped classroom approach of teaching students is different and pretty awesome. I think as a teacher you would be able to make sure all of the students know the material because you would have more class time to work individually with each divided group. My concerns with this approach is if all the students will actually do their at home review on their computers or electronic devices. Every child may not have a way to view the material at home, and If the kids did watch the assignment when they got to school that would still cut into the class time that you were trying to create to help the students individually in the first place. Also, the kids that are further advanced in the subject, I don't see how it really benefits them in any way. They further advanced kids will go home and learn the assignment quickly, get to school finish their assignment quickly, and then just sit there while the other kids take their time to finish their work. I can see see how the flipped classroom approach would help kids that struggle in a certain subject if they do have a computer or electronic device at their home, but if they didn't I don't see how it would help them that much. I can see how this aqpproach would help in math or maybe even science classes, but I think it would be a lot harder for this approach to work in a history or English/literature class. If you gave students a certain assignment or project to work on some of the ideas from this approach could be useful in history and English/literature, but I don't see how it would help with giving reading assignments or assigning a paper. I might would use it in my classroom under certain circumstances.