Ideas from Peers

I have to laugh as I am writing this blog post because I was talking to several people about how it is almost impossible to use technology in a Guided Reading lesson, and then low and behold, one of the girls in my group used technology in her Guided Reading lesson. I couldn't believe it! I learned that it could actually be done! :-) She used a Power Point Presentation to teach the students about quotation marks and how to read/say the words in between the quotation marks.

The second thing that I was very impressed by was a digital story board. One of the girls in my group used technology over the course of several weeks to have the students create a digital story board. The interesting thing that I learned from this was the fact that the students would read their part and record it and then she would play it back to them. When the students heard themselves they said, "Is that what I really sound like, Do I really slur my words together like that?" Once they were aware of how they sounded when they read they wanted to record it again. Every time after that the students were very concerned about reading with fluency and accuracy. So, such a project can help improve fluency!

Week Ten Technology enhanced lesson

I would like to teach a math lesson about skip counting. I would use an online number board found at this website http://standards.nctm.org/document/eexamples/chap4/4.5/calc_full/part2.htm#applet and an LCD projector to project this number board to the front of them room.This online number board would allow me to show the students the different patterns that are created on a number board when counting by 2, 5 ,and 10. I would begin by modeling for them, then a few students could come up and plug different numbers into the calculator to practice and then all of the students would complete a skip counting worksheet on their own. To further enhance the lesson with technology, once the students have completed their worksheet they can come and play the counting by twos and fives games that are found at these two websites.
Counting by twos = http://www.aaamath.com/cnt25a1-countby2.html
Counting by fives = http://www.aaamath.com/cntk4a-countby5.html

Doing

Internet Safety Interview

I decided to talk with my husband, who is 24, because we will be parents soon and I wanted to make sure that we were on the same page when it comes to internet safety and our children. My husband is very computer savvy, so he totally agreed with my idea of teaching our children the tools necessary to make good choices when it comes to the internet instead of just telling them to avoid the internet entirely. He gave the analogy of a hammer. A hammer can be used to build several good things, but yet it can also be used to hurt others. Just because it can be used for bad doesn't mean that hammers are bad, people just need to be educated on how to use a hammer positively. It's the same way with the internet. People need to learn how to use it appropriately. I'm excited to learn more about things on the internet and keep my children informed so they can make positive choices.

Internet Safety Article

Internet Safety Articles

I chose to read an article entitled The Message:
Mushrooms, Music, Movies, and Magazines by Elder Spencer J. Condie
of the Second Quorum of the Seventy. I chose to read it because the titled of poisonous mushrooms intrigued me and I wanted to now how they related media to poisonous mushrooms.

It was a really good article. It talked about mushrooms and how 70-80% of all mushrooms are poisonous, but the other 20-30% are delicious (I actually don't like mushrooms, but this particular person thought they were delicious.) Those 20-30% are delicious and beneficial to the body, just as good and uplifting media is good and beneficial to the body, but the other 70-80% of mushrooms are poisonous and come in different forms. The first form of poison is the "Doubtful" mushrooms that look poisonous and taste terrible, so even if a person were to take a bite of such a mushroom, they would spit it out immediately because of the taste. The other form of poisonous mushrooms are "Look-a-likes." Look-a-likes resemble edible mushrooms and might even look identical, so it's very hard to tell that they are poisonous. In fact, many of these types of mushrooms don't even affect the body until 15 hours later when the body has digested the mushroom and the poisons are released into the blood system. Then they attack and kill. At first they seemed so harmless, but then gradually they killed the person. This is just like media. Many movies, magazine articles, and songs seem so harmless at first and then they slowly release their evils.
This article taught me a lot about the media. There are many times that all of us, "Oh that movie was so good, it only had one bad scene." So really, was that movie good? Media may seem just like the "Look-a-like" mushroom, but really it may be very poisonous and even deadly. To protect ourselves we need to be like the mushroom hunters who developed safety checklists. The prophets have already given us a checklist, but we can continue to add more to our personal checklists.

The main thing I learned from all the readings is that we as parents need to be very involved in our children's lives, especially in terms of the media. Because Satan's number one goal is to break up the family and he is doing that through the media. We as parents need to first set and example of good media and then we need to give our children the tools necessary to make good media choices on their own. We shouldn't remove them entirely from the media, but help them make good choices, because there are good things out there. There is 20-30% of good in the midst of all the 70-80% poisonous mushrooms (media).

Now that I am going to be a mother soon all of these article really rang true to my ears. I will first of all put our computer in a high-traffic area, so my husband and I can monitor the things our children our viewing. We will set up a computer filter. Above all, we will spend time learning the newest fashions of technology, so we can educate our children on how to use them effectively and wisely. I want my children to have access to the many resources they are blessed with by having technology, but yet not invite poisons into their lives and into our home.

I must admit I need to work on having a positive attitude. I constantly find myself saying how bad media is and I try to avoid a lot of it. But really instead of trying to shut it out, like not becoming a member of facebook forever, I should have researched it and found out the positives and negatives of such a program, before just assuming that it is bad. I need to keep up to date with all the latest technologies.

Tausha's Technology Integration Slide Show

Tausha's Technology Integration

View more presentations from guest30b242.

I hope you enjoy!

Cultural Snapshot: Latinos

The day that we were given this assignment I knew that I wanted to research Latinos and see how they were perceived or portrayed in the United States. That night my husband and I went to see the movie Push. Before the movie started we were watching all of the trailers for other movies and one of the first movies gave me a perfect idea of how America views Latinos. The trailer for this specific video was all about Latino gangs and how someone was forced to become a member of them or be killed. The whole trailer was very scary and yet so real. I pondered about that trailer for quite some time and decided to see if that was how all Latinos were portrayed. As I searched YouTube videos the main stigma associated with Latinos was that they were all illegal immigrants and a detriment to society. There is a very prominent message throughout America that ALL Latinos are illegal immigrants and should be kicked out of America. Even though we know that not ALL Latinos are illegal immigrants, in fact, probably only a small population of Latinos are illegal immigrants, but this is the message that is being portrayed. Take a look at the following three comics and determine what message you think is being sent.

One of the main reasons people dislike illegal immigrants, and therefore Latinos so much is because they think that most Latinos want to come to America to receive free health care, a free education, and jobs without having to give anything back to America. ie. paying taxes, etc. Is this true for some Latinos? Maybe, but is it true for all?

This picture shows pure hatred towards illegal immigrants. It shows that murder is ok if it is used to get illegal immigrants out of America.

I think that this comic is portraying the message that if a person loves illegal aliens then they are considered a Gringo, or uneducated. Does it really mean a person is uneducated if they care about illegal aliens?

As I continued to search YouTube videos, not only were Latinos considered illegal immigrants, but they were portrayed as being gang members. I know that America has a problem with gangs in general, so I decided to research why Latinos were specifically considered gang members instead of other nationalities. I decided to find out if Latinos were more involved in gangs and that was why they were portrayed as gang members in videos or if it was just an astigmatism that America put on them. I came across this video on Google. It is a news report on Latin Gangs. It's only about five minutes long, so you can take a look if you'd like. Just click on the link bellow.

Gang Video

In this news report on gangs they report that there are 800,000 gang members in the USA and 1/2 of them are Latinos, 30% are African American, and the rest are Caucasians. This was the answer to my question. Although the majority of the Latino population may not be a gang member, half of the current gang members are Latino. This is probably why the media portrays all Latinos as being gang members. After watching this video I really think that several Latinos participate in gangs because of the resistance theory. This theory states that people who have been rejected by the dominant culture try to create a sense of belonging that contrasts the dominant culture, a lot times this is done through gangs. The following picture is what the media portrays most gang members to look like.


If Latino children are being fed the message that Caucasin Americans do not want them here, because they associated them with illegal aliens and they must be a member of a gang and participate in violence, what are these children going to become? How will the other students treat them? There are enough negative stereotypes that Latino children could possibly be growing up with learned helplessness, and the deficit theory only because that is all they have been shown from the media.

Now that I knew how the media portrayed Latinos, I wanted to see how the people of America viewed Latinos. I finally came across this news video taken in Wisconsin. This video is really long, but the important part that I want you to see is from 1:00-5:00 (minutes). He discusses how there seems to be a Labor shortage in jobs such as farming, food manufacturing, meat packaging, and several other "blue collar" jobs. He attributes this to the fact that either Americans do not want to do jobs like anymore, or we just aren't going into fields such as that anymore. Instead, we just look down the socioeconomic ladder for people to take the job. This is why almost all the behind the scene jobs are done by people who speak Spanish. Farms and different companies may be owned by Caucasians, but they are completely run by Latinos. This is obvious. If we would just open our eyes, we would see that the person cooking our hamburger at the fast food restaurant is Latino, the person packing our meat in the back of a grocery store is Latino, the person selling food from a small cooking stand on the side of the road is Latino.
Take a look at this picture bellow of Wendy's workers.


I don't know if so many Latinos are working such jobs because they want/like to or if it is because we as Americans refuse to. Here is the video explained up above. It explains even more in-depth the things that I have just written.

Wisconsin Video

I still wasn't satisfied, I needed to see both sides of the issue, so I researched specifically for positive information about Latinos. Then I found several videos of Latinos in high, prestigious positions. One particular political group is called Latinos on the Hill. This group is sponsored by MATT.org which stands for Mexicans and Americans Thinking Together. I was really excited about this website, so you should check it out. I watched a video of one of Latinos on the Hill's conferences and learned that there are Latinos serving in political positions, but still not enough considering how widely their population has spread in America. However, this proved that there are several very successful legal Latinos in America that want to succeed and make a difference in the world.

Bellow are two pictures of famous Latino people. Of course everyone must know Mario Lopez also known as Saved By the Bell's Slater. He is extremely famous and successful.



Here is a picture of a few Latino politicians. They are very active in politics and involved in the country.

Along with the negative lime light that is given to Latinos, there are also several successful Latinos that lead the path for many others. As teachers we need to know how Latinos are portrayed in society so we can help our students to see and focus on the positive messages that are being sent about them. People need to be more educated on such issues so they can see the success and contribution of every nationality. I found a video clip that helped educate me about Latinos, so I hope you can learn something from it as well. This video is 10 minutes long, but gives a quick background of Latinos. It discusses where they came from, some of their culture, and then spends several minutes showing several people who are Latinos and are very successful and even famous! I hope you enjoy.

Background Video

To recapitulate, there are several Latinos in America and Latinos are the fastest growing ethnic group in the world, so their population is going to continue to grow in America. There are several negative astigmatisms associated with Latinos such as illegal immigrants and gang members, but there are also several positive astigmatisms. You can choose to see them the way that you would like, but as for me, I am always going to try and focus on the positive and all that Latinos can contribute to America! As teachers we need to be away of each students socioeconomic status and the astigmatisms associated with that specific class so we can defeat racism in our classrooms.

Resources

Gang member http://www.dctvny.org/productions/latin_kings/11_ig_tat_chest.jpg
Politicians http://www.gothamgazette.com/graphics/latinos.jpg
Head in the ground http://www.conservativetimes.org/Photos/Illegal_Immigration.jpg
Bush Comic http://www.peterthehermit.com/images/Aztlan-politicians.jpg
Free stuff comic http://blog.puppetgov.com/wp-content/2008/03/immigrationq-768063.jpg
Mario Lopez http://evilbeetgossip.film.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/04/eva2.jpg
Gangs Video http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-782362335193174914&ei=SCPVSZCHK52wqAOWwfDXAQ&q=latino+gangs+site%3Agoogle.com&emb=1
Wisconsin Video http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4223139073024362465&ei=12PVSdX0CYr-qAOChdSSBg&q=latinos+site%3Agoogle.com&emb=1
Gang Video http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-782362335193174914&ei=IGTVSdaUJ4r-qAOChdSSBg&q=latino+gangs+site%3Agoogle.com&emb=1
MATT.org http://www.matt.org/english/index.html
Wendy's workers http://farm1.static.flickr.com/11/14999803_3a674567a4.jpg

Technology lesson - Week 11

I actually taught two different lessons with a PowerPoint. The first lesson was a shared reading book that contained information about rainbows, so I created a PowerPoint with several pictures of rainbows to activate their schema. The Rainbow PowerPoint was a hit. The students 'oohed" and "awed" at each picture. It really helped to grab their attention and get them focused on rainbows!
The second lesson I taught was a lesson about Plurals. I again used a PowerPoint to show when we need to add an 'S' and when we need to add and 'es' to make something plural. I showed a picture of a tree and said what do we need to add to the word tree to make it plural? Then I put a blank at the end of the word. After the students chose their answer, then I clicked the right button and the blank would fill in with the correct answer. Example; tree___ = tree_s_ It was perfect! This PowerPoint really helped to Quickly teach a principle that would have taken quite a bit of time. It allowed me to teach it quickly because the students could visually see the picture of the object that was currently singular, then they could also see the printed word and see HOW to make the word plural. I was very pleased with both lessons and will continue to use PowerPoints in the future. Bellow are a couple pictures that I took after I taught the lesson because we forgot to take them during the lesson. :-)