Merit Pay

The issue I'm going to research is Merit Pay. I think it is a really interesting development in deciding a teacher's salary. It makes sense to pay a teacher "what they're worth"- the way a salesman is paid depending upon how many pairs of sneakers he sells.

BUT I think there has to be a careful and thoughtful way of coming to a dollar amount. If "they" judge a teacher's performance solely on the outcomes of a standardized test- I think it would be a grievous error in judgement. So many teachers couldn't even be assessed that way- art teachers, music teachers (already low on the proverbial totem pole) and special ed teachers would be a few left in the lurch. Even the beloved football coaches and gym teachers would find themselves in need of some performance evaluation.

I hope to learn what ways performance is assessed and if there are true benefits to be had by using a merit pay system.

Website Continued

My class website can found by clicking HERE. It's coming along pretty well. I think one way that way of getting kids to come back to the website would be to make a page on it that was sort of a safe place that stored educational links.

Some of the links could be drills or helpful games associted with what you're learning in the class (such as the one illustrated in the video above). Another way I thought of would be to have an extra credit question hidden on the page somewhere. This would encourage the students to come back and look for it each week, month, or grading period.

As far as teaching with technology vs. an "old-fashioned book learning" way- there's really no contest. Today's kids are growing up playing games on their manny's iphone, setting their DVRs to record "Spongebob," and uploading pictures from their digital cameras to their myspace page. To build a class around nothing but a book and a chalk board would be ludicrous.

I actually have thought this several times while in school here. I notice my education classes telling me something- "gain your student's interest" for example- and I see teachers teaching in a completely irrelevant way, almost as though the class weren't even in the room. (Mr. Paul O'Farrell's 'Intro to Geography' course for example). For myself, I have to wonder-not just technologically speaking- but when you teach a class, do you actually consider that there are real live people in the room? I think that I would- but some obviously do not.

For my classes (the one's I will teach in the hopefully not-too-distant future) I plan to integrate new ideas as well as new vessels of learning to help my students become involved and invested in the material.

Portaportal

For me, the most informative aspect of the Portaportal assignment was the actual reasearch involved in finding websites to list on our own portaportal.

It really opened my eyes to the fact that there are so many resources out there for teachers to use. I think that's great, because although I prefer to create my own lesson plans and materials- if there were a time when I was stuck with a case of "writer's block" or something similar- there would be so many places I could turn for inspiration.

I think it is also cool that we could give people access to our portaportal and they could find it and make use of the tools we've gathered- and of course vice versa. The internet being so wide- it would be great to utilize the work, the sifting through, that a colleague had already done.

My portaportal is HERE.

Class Website

Our current assignment is to create a faux class website. So far I do not exactly know how the website can actually be used inside the classroom. I do think it could be a valuable tool outside for parents and students.

One thing that could effect learning would be if you could upload homework onto your site, in case a child was out for the day and needed to know what happened. That does sound like a great deal of work for the teacher though, not only teaching during the day, planning lessons at all hours, but also playing the role of web-master.

Of course, many of the pages on the site could be left unchanged for longer periods (the teaching philosophy, the "about me," or maybe the home page). Many would need to be constantly updated though, if you were going to keep it very current with daily happenings and homeowrk and such.

I know some people are going so far as to have a school lunch calendar on their page. I know this would address the concerns of Milhouse's father Kirk from "The Simpsons" who remarked, "I don't like the idea of Milhouse having two spaghetti meals in one day." This way parents could plan accordingly.

Older grades could really benefit from the idea though. For instance my mother is an eighth grade english teacher and she's doing a website for her class. I think she plans to include rubrics and information about specific projects/assigments that she repeats with each class- so she could leave the initial information essentially unchanged and update the due dates as needed.

Google Calendar

I'm not sure this is the most relevant thing to "teaching and learning," but one of the most useful things I've learned to use so far in the class is the Google calendar.

I never knew it existed before, let alone how to use it. It does relate somewhat I suppose, since it is an excellent tool for organization- and as teacher's that's an incredibly important concept to master: the organization of time.

A great feature of the Google calendar is that it let's you create different views, so that you could have a different one going for each subject or each class, and a personal one with dentist appointments or birthdays or whatever you want. I also like that you can be alerted to happenings- kind of like an alaram clock- which I could definitely use. Not because I am constantly forgetting things, but because I am constantly afraid I will forget them- and so worry incessantly that they will be forgotten.

Technology into the Future

The biggest thing we've spoken about in class so far, is the simple fact that technology in the classroom no longer just means one dusty computer in the corner and an aging VCR. Today, technology in the classroom means doing assignments that utilize the educational aspects of the internet, making digital presentations (a variation on the good ol' public speaking task), and keeping up with the daily happenings on a class website.

It is both exciting for me, and a bit overwhelming, to think of the possibilities in the classroom- as a teacher. I enjoy doing things with the computer, video, etc. but to think that you as a teacher would not only spend so many hours a day teaching and preparing to teach, but to also update a website or blog- it just seems like there aren't enough hours in the day! (A common complaint?)