Blog Post #9

This was a Collaborative assignment done by: Laura Hamilton, Brian Orr, Sally Gajewski

Brian Crosby, Agnes Risley Elementary School, Sparks, Nevada, Back To the Future (17:43) (made in 2010)

Brian Crosby, an upper elementary teacher for 29 years, guides the learning in a model technology classroom in Sparks, Nevada.

TED type video. Hot Air balloon project. 4th graders. Students did not know their address, home state, country. We are not sure why the teacher presenting went over many topics he did, such as tissue flying in air, hot air balloon. We assume he was teaching thermodynamics in basic form, and giving examples/projects as a beginning and teaching the science of the project or demonstrations at a later date.

***Funding! This type of project (sending a balloon with quite a heavy payload, into the stratosphere, would take ALOT of money we would think...for 1 classroom.***

Good part of video is that the blog’s teach children “internet etiquette,” as Mr. Crosby states. The internet is known to be quite a chaotic or hostile environment. Teaching students to be polite is a good lesson to have, yet the importance of this lesson is moot.

In the video Making Thinking Visible Mark Church a 6th grade teacher from the International School. He has his students get into groups and has them think about a video they watched cally Early Human Beginnings : Origins of Human Society.

In it he has them get into groups so they can think of a headline. The students discuss what they need to say to get others to understand what it is they are trying to say with this headline. In the video he has one group read their headline which is " Why do mysteries begin and why are they important ?"

After they make the headlines they put them on the class bulletin board. Then after two units he has them check and see if the headlines are still the same.

Paul Anderson's Blog Mr. Paul Andersen is a high school AP Biology teacher in Bozeman, Montana. Paul Andersen has been teaching high school science for the last nineteen years. He has been teaching science on YouTube for the last three years. Paul spent the first seven years teaching all of the science classes at a small rural school in northern Montana. Paul is currently a science teacher and technology specialist at Bozeman High School.


Questions In one of his blog or or podcasts he talks about questions in education and in the classroom. Paul Andersen discusses the importance of questions in education. He briefly discusses the evolution of Wikipedia and the problem of evolution of textbooks. He discusses the importance of questions and the problems posed by creating enough good questions. He really believes in question changing and evolving instead of the textbooks. Even with using the ipads with the textbooks, he says it is still just a textbook and nothing has changed. He believes learning videos, and interactive videos in school standards should be brought more into the classroom, or even at home with homework. But questions is what his main influences is on. He talks about how hard finding and coming up with good questions is for teachers. And how much work really goes into having a good questions and great lessons.