As I made plans for a year of vodcasting, I thought a wireless lavalier microphone would be nice to have. I could stand at my IWB and narrate my lesson as well as write more clearly than I can with my slate. How hard could it be to find one? Every news station, church, band, and presenter in the world uses a lapel mic. As with many of my simple plans, this one turned out to be more difficult than I had imagined.
TENACITY I have an interactive white board (IWB) in my classroom and a slate that works with it. I’ll be honest; I really dislike using the slate. When I write using the slate my handwriting looks horrible – so I prefer to write and annotate from the board. As I made plans for a year of vodcasting, I thought a wireless lavalier microphone would be nice to have. I could stand at my IWB and narrate my lesson as well as write more clearly than I can with my slate. How hard could it be to find one? Every news station, church, band, and presenter in the world uses a lapel mic. As with many of my simple plans, this one turned out to be more difficult than I had imagined.
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I have become a fan of the TED Talks videos on YouTube. There are a lot of people there sharing some interesting ideas. I recently came across a talk by Steven Johnson titled "Where Good Ideas Come From". That sounded intriguing; I need some good ideas. I saw that his comments were available from RSA Animate, so I picked that format as I find it entertaining. My comments relate to his, so watch the video and then I will follow with how his talk relates to my journey toward a flipped classroom (It's only four minutes long). This is a re-posting of some thoughts about literacy from this past school year.
It Takes Two to Play Catch Have you ever thought about playing catch? I was thinking about classroom instruction recently and the idea occurred to me that teaching was analogous to playing catch. More specifically, it is like showing someone how to play catch. Playing catch is deceptively easy; one person throws a ball – the other person catches it and throws it back. What could be more simple that that? Or is it as simple as it first appears? This first blog posting is not really my first post --- say what? I wrote a commentary with the above title in January of 2012. This was posted elsewhere but I wanted to include it here as it will give some insights into my thoughts about education.
Disruptive Technologies, Ivory Towers, and Literacy in Education I recently asked one of my eighth grade classes, “Why do we have school? What’s the point?” The most common (serious) answer was, “To prepare me for a better, more successful life.” That seems to be a reasonable answer, but when we dig a little deeper it becomes more complicated. What is a better life? What does it look like? What skills will the children need and how will they use them? These answers are no longer simple in today’s world and they hold some insight into our future roles as educators of tomorrow’s adults. As is often the case, perhaps some clues about our future can be gathered by examining the purpose and role of education in the past. |
AuthorMy name is Gary Strickland. I teach physics and IPC to high school students in rural Texas. I taught science for nine years in our middle school. Coleman is a one to one environment where all students in grades 4-12 have a laptop. I have been teaching in a tech-rich environment for over eight years. I teach using the flipped model of instruction. This blog is intended to chronicle that process. Archives
February 2015
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