What I'll be able to incorporate into my teaching

This might be a bit of a cop out, but the concept I learned in this class that I will most likely end up incorporating into my teaching is the use of online web tools in general. I know I'm not supposed to discuss a specific tool in this post, but I'd be lying if I said that using them in general was less than the most valuable concept I'll be taking away from EDUC 932.

In my initial blog post about what I hope to learn from this course, I wrote:

"Hopefully, EDUC 932 will expose me to more technology-based methods of teaching and will turn me on to some websites and programs that can be useful in the classroom. I am not a traditional learner in the sense that one should be able to follow instructions and pick up on a new skill or concept. I generally prefer to be exposed and left to my own devices to experiment and learn through trial and error. I guess you could say that, ideally, EDUC 932 will plant seeds in my mind that can grow into flowering technological advances in my teaching later on."

I don't mean to brag, but I know myself pretty well (or I'm guilty of self-fulfilling prophecy). I've already used a screen cast (a term I didn't know before this course) to show a class that was cancelled last week how to format their essays, and I've planned a podcast assignment too.

It's tough integrating technology into a school with limited facilities like mine, but I might be heading for greener pastures next school year. If so, I'll be able to expand on my use of technology in the classroom, and hopefully expand my grasp on it too.

SAMR is MIA

Ruben Puentedura's presentation on the SAMR is compelling, but just not something I can relate to at the moment. Teaching at a government school in Thailand means extremely limited technology in the classroom, and it also means very limited time with my students.

Since my school, and particularly the program I teach in, caters to the arts, I meet few future engineers or technology buffs. Combined with my lack of affinity for technology (I don't even have a smart phone), the result is very few opportunities to integrate technology into my lessons.

I sometimes have students use Google Docs and Slides and sometimes have my classes make videos. But when it comes to using ipads or computers on the regular, my chances are few and far between.

What I'd like to say to the education world...

If there is one message I'd like to shout from the top of a mountain to every administrator, teacher's union, educator, and student in the world, it is this: stop standardizing.

I imagine that many people would assume that I am referring to standardized testing, but that is just one tiny component of what I see as a gradually centralizing behemoth of universal miseducation. I want the whole system to come crashing down. Be it Common Core, No Child Left Behind, the constant re-brandings of the ESEA, or the Department of Education itself, I want pedagogy to become local, personalized, and specialized.

I believe that while people are born with equal rights, we are born with drastically different abilities. Some students are good at math, others aren't. Some students care about their grammar, others don't. Some students can be still and attentive in 50-minute intervals from 8am-3pm five days a week for twelve years, others can't. Because of this, education should never attempt to create universal standards. Students should be treated differently, and should face teachers with different styles, demands, and curricula. The world has no standards, so it is silly to impose standards on the youth to prepare them for the world.

If I were in charge, some changes I would make in America are:

1. Auctioning off all public schools into private hands (and using the profits of these sales to pay off the debt)

2. Abolishing laws that require parents to send their children to school and scaling back child labor laws, so families can allow their children to develop skills and earn money if they feel it's more beneficial to their children than sitting in a classroom all day

3. Abolishing the Department of Education and returning total control of education to the states and localities

4. Removing the licensing and education degree requirements for perspective teachers in favor of expertise/experience in the subject the teacher desires to teach and life experience in general (additionally, I would do everything in my power to remove all hopes of job security from teachers to force them to stay on top of their game or risk getting canned)

5. Allowing teachers to use limitied corporal punishment if need be

6. Encouraging morals, ethics, and values to take primacy above more scholastic academic fields in school

Rant over.

Movie Unit

Here is my movie unit. This is a project I've done with my 12th graders the past two years. The last two chapters of our textbook focus on food concerns and health issues, so a diet and exercise plan video makes sense to me. Since most of my students are infected with senioritis by the end of the year, it's just easy enough to convince most of them to do a decent job.

***

M6 English Speaking and Listening Formative 2 Assignment: Exercise and Diet plan video

1.      Your assignment is to come up with a weekly routine that people in Bangkok can follow to maintain a healthy lifestyle

2.      Focus on diet and/or exercise

3.      Your routine should be healthy, affordable, and enjoyable, but not time consuming

4.      Your video should be fun. It can be like an infomercial, an exercise video, a cooking show, a skit, or anything else you want

5.      You will work in in five groups of 7-10 people

6.      You will make a five-minute video (shorter than 4:00 or longer than 6:00= -3 points)

7.      Everyone in your group should speak in your video

8.      I will evaluate you based on three factors:

a.       Your plan (Does it make sense? Is it creative? Is it practical?) 5 points

b.      Your English (Are you using English effectively?) 5 points

c.       Your video (Is it fun, interesting, and filmed/edited well?) 5 points

9.      We will watch your videos on the last day of class.

Due Date: Last day of class

	5	4	3	2	1
Plan	Thoughtful, creative, and practical!	One of the three previous criteria is lacking	Two of the three previous criteria are lacking	All of the three previous criteria are lacking	Not much of a plan at all
English	All group members spoke accurately, clearly, and confidently	All group members spoke, and most spoke well	Several members did not speak, or many did not speak well	Few members spoke, or few spoke well	Not acceptable for M6 English
Video	Very attractive and shows great effort	Nice to look at with good effort	Pretty good video with some effort	Not great to look at and not enough effort	Poorly done

My Sample Video

Audio Lesson

Current Events Commentary Podcast

-          -Your assignment is to record a 15-minute podcast that reports and discusses a current events news story

-         - You are to work in groups of 3

      -Your podcast should be no shorter than 14 minutes, and no longer than 16 minutes (-1 point every 30 seconds over or under time)

-          -No more than 2 minutes of your podcast should be spent on introductions and reading the news combined; the vast majority should be analysis, debate, and discussion

-          -You can share your honest opinions as yourselves, or act as biased, agenda-driven pundits

-          -You can use a guide and talking points, but your podcast should be mostly unscripted

-          -My sample was recorded on speakpipe.com; you may use any program or website of your choice to record yours

Due Date: July 6^th in class

Evaluation

	3	2	1	0
Speaking	Virtually fluent, clear, and confident	Few mistakes, mostly clear, and decent confidence exhibited	Quite a few mistakes, some parts difficult to comprehend, and lacks confidence	Unacceptable for gifted English students
Content	Good choice of news story; intriguing analysis and discussion	Fairly interesting analysis and discussion	Somewhat boring discussion	Mostly thoughtless
Production Quality	Shows effort, planning, and care	Acceptable, but not spectacular	Could use some more work	Lazily done

My Sample

Website

Here is a website a created for my 11th grade English class. I normally use a Facebook group to communicate with my students outside of school. Here are links to both:

New Website

Facebook Group

Syllabus

Here is a link to my course syllabus. It's a PowerPoint presentation that I uploaded to SlideShare.

Check it out.

Should ideas be considered property?

I've seen the "Everything is a Remix" series before. It's one of the most interesting and thought-provoking sets of videos I've ever seen and forced me to heavily question my beliefs.

Prior to watching "Everything is a Remix", I was dead-set in my respect for intellectual property. I learned early on in school that plagiarism is theft and that copyrights and patents are as legitimate is the deed to one's house.

But unlike theft of physical property, ideas, as the video explains, are inspired by the ideas of others. There is no doubt that "we stand on the shoulders of giants" and that our thoughts and words are heavily influenced by the thoughts and words of others. Ideas are intangible and can happen simultaneously in separate minds, so there is a clear distinction between a thought and a piece of matter.

The concept of ideas being treated as property invokes feelings of Orwellian thought crimes. Should we be prosecuting people for the activity that takes place in their heads? Should we empower the authorities to investigate the content of our minds?

Towards the end of the video, the narrator says that the result of intellectual property laws has not been more progress and learning. This is a cynical and grossly inaccurate statement. We're on the verge of producing self-driving cars, renewable rocket ships, and private trips into outer space. Regardless of our policies on intellectually property, I'd say we're progressing just fine.

One potential problem I foresee that could come with easing up on intellectual property laws is replacing patent trolls with idea trolls. What would stop the parasitic among us from leaning over the shoulders of our innovators and stealing their ideas? How would an economy of inventors forced to shelter their thoughts and trust no one function?

I love discussing social and political issues and have principled opinions on most of them, but I need some more time to hear arguments and think this one through. It's a tough one.

My Favorite Lesson

My favorite lesson would have to be teaching Ernest Hemmingway's "Hills like White Elephants". It's a famous short story that consists of little else than a conversation between two young travelers deciding what to do about their pregnancy.

First off, the story is fantastic. It's the perfect length for a 50-minute class to read and analyze, contains unique vocabulary words and phrases, and exemplifies the eternal friction and misunderstanding between man and woman. The writing is off the charts brilliant and it makes way for several excellent discussion.

Most students who read the story find it boring (as I did when my teacher had us read it in high school). There is no action at all, and the main subject of the characters' discussion is implicit. But being able to comment and point out careful details throughout the story makes reading it fun thanks to the added tension and curiosity.

Possibly the most impressive aspect of "Hills like White Elephants" is the rapid character development. It's hardly 4 pages long, but you really get to know and understand the two main character before it's over.

The best part of the lesson is having the class try to figure out what the characters were speaking about the whole time. What is "it"? I've read the story with hundreds of students, but fewer than 3 have ever figured it out on their own. We go back through the story methodically and I point out details and ask questions until a lightbulb goes off in someone's head...

***SPOILER ALERT!***

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...

...

...

...

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"they're talking about having an abortion!"

The shock and awe on my students' faces when they figure it out is priceless. The lesson learned is that we don't always have to be so explicit in our writing, but we always have to be perceptive and critical in our reading.

An Evaluation of My Digital Footprint

I Googled myself to get a glimpse of my digital footprint. I'm not too sure how I feel about it. The first page of search results are my Twitter account (which I am thinking of creating an alias for), 3 links to Facebook (my special teacher account for my students, a list of accounts for the name "Glenn Verasco", and an account my friends in college made for me before I had my own Facebook), my LinkedIn account (which my fiance recently updates), my voices.com account (I momentarily thought about a career as a voice actor), two YouTube videos made by my students (a recipe and a video featuring me), whitepages.com (creepy), and my bandmix.com account (that was from my college days too).

To improve my digital footprint, I would like to do the following:

1. Change my Twitter account name to an alias. I do not use Twitter as a means of communicating with friends or colleagues. I use it almost strictly as a way to access up-to-the-minute news coverage and compliment/criticize writers after reading their articles. By switching from my name to an alias, I will be able to Tweet more freely and espouse my political views without the risk of being discriminated against for expressing myself.

2. Remember who made my fake Facebook account in college and ask him/her to delete it.

3. Achieve greatness and have my achievement covered by a major news source, so those who Google me will have a wonderful first impression of me.

Google Form for Evaluation/Observation

Here is my evaluation form. It is a comprehensive personal assessment to be used to evaluate my 11th Grade gifted English students whom I have taught for the past two years.

Presentation Unit

The following is a project I assign my 12th grade English classes. I teach large classes of about 40 students each, and take advantage of if it by assigning this big, complex project called "The Perfect Country Project". The basic idea is that my classes take some debate topics we use in class to poll people outside of school in Bangkok. They get into specialized teams, collect the polls, analyze the information, and give a PowerPoint presentation at the end of the term.

Below is the project in detail. I couldn't figure out how to upload a file to this blog, so I just copy and pasted it. It's quite long and complex. A rubric is included. After the details of the assignment, a link to my screencast can be found below.

The Perfect Country Project

Teacher: Aj. Glenn Verasco

Classes: 48, 49, 58, 59, 80, 81, 125, 126, 143, 222, 223, 224

Due Dates: Progress Report: July 8^th

Presentations: The last day of class before finals

Objective: For the next few weeks, we will be discussing the dichotomy of “Tradition vs. Progress”. We will do some reading in Pathways, and debate and discuss various topics as a class. Unfortunately, our class demographic is not particularly diverse (we’re all Thai 12^th graders [except for me!]). The purpose of this project is to get a more varied and worldly view of these topics. Your assignment is to poll about 800 people as a class so we can get an idea of what the average person thinks. You will not only look at the grand totals of the poll results, but will also find differences and similarities between the sexes, age groups, and many nationalities. You will be working as a team, and must all do your part to make this project happen.

Evaluation:

Category/Score	5.5	4.125	2.75	1.375
Content	Full of quality information	Some very good content	Not enough information and seems flawed	Not at all educational and most likely inaccurate
Analysis/ Comprehension	Brilliantly critiqued and evaluated; you really get it!	Some thoughtful criticism and mostly understood	A few decent points, but could use some more thought	Not well thought out or comprehended
Organization	Absolutely ready to be presented and flawlessly delivered	Given plenty of thought ahead of time with little confusion	Should have been better prepared, but a decent outcome	Not ready to be presented and disappointing
Aesthetics	Includes photos of procedure; a pleasure to view	Nice looking and clear; includes photos	Not particularly nice to look at, but not bad	Unclear, dull, and lazily done

Value: 30 points (4 points for the progress report, 22 points for the final project, 2 points for self-evaluation, 2 points for evaluation from the management team)

Teams and Responsibilities:

*** EVERY STUDENT IS RESPONSIBLE FOR COLLECTING 10 POLLS FROM THAI NATIONALS AND 10 POLLS FROM FOREIGNERS***

Management Team (3-5 students):

-          Oversee the entire project

-          Attend Q&A meeting in room 262 with Aj. Glenn (Wednesday, June 1^st)

-          Create a checklist to use for completing each part of the project

-          Keep track of which students are in which groups

-          Make sure all students have taken care of their responsibilities efficiently

-          Hand in progress report the week before midterms (this covers your class’s formative 1 score)

-          Evaluate each student at the completion of the project

Poll Team (4-6 students):

-          Create 10 poll statements (suggested themes provided by Aj. Glenn)

-          Translate poll statements into Thai (or English if you wrote them in Thai first)

-          Translate “Mission Statement” from English to Thai

-          Have poll statements approved by Aj. Glenn (June 17^th at the latest)

-          Predict how different demographics will vote on each topic (must be done before polls are collected)

Design Team (6-10 students):

-          Design and create anonymous poll sheet

o    Must include:

§  Poll statements

§  Age

§  Gender

§  Nationality

§  Mission Statement (can be on a separate sheet of paper)

-          Use collected data to create a PowerPoint presentation (graphs, charts, tables, photos, etc…)

-          Help Presentation Team prepare for presentation

-          Collect photographs of entire process

Data Team (8-12 students):

-          Collect completed polls from all classmates (20 per classmate)

-          Organize collected data based on the following criteria

o    Grand totals

o    Thai vs. Foreign grand totals

o    Male vs. Female grand totals

o    Thai Male vs. Thai Female totals

o    Foreign Male vs. Foreign Female totals

o    Age group grand totals

o    Thai age groups

o    Foreign age groups

-          Deliver data to the design team

Analysis Team (5-7 students):

-          Thoroughly answer analysis questions (provided by Aj. Glenn)

-          Find other notable trends and results within data

-          Explain findings to presentation team

Presentation Team (4-6 students):

-          Answer questions about the process of completing the project (provided by Aj. Glenn)

-          Present project results to class at the end of the semester (it should be as long as one class period)

Mission Statement and Poll Statements

The following is the mission statement for our project. You can let English speakers read this as I have written it before they participate, and must translate it into Thai for Thai speakers.

Dear Friend,

Our class has been discussing and debating what policies a “perfect country” would have. As a class, we agree on certain topics, but disagree on others. Now, we want to find out what policies other people think would make a perfect country.

We would greatly appreciate your anonymous participation in our study, and promise to invite you for an all-expenses-paid trip to our perfect country once it has been founded!

Thanks for your help! J

-The Perfect Country Project Team (Triam Udom Suksa School)

Making the Poll Statements (Poll team)

Your poll questions should be in the form of a statement. This is called a “Likert Scale”.

Chocolate ice cream is the best kind of ice cream in the world.

___ Totally Agree  ___ Agree   ___ No Opinion ___ Disagree  ___ Totally Disagree

Our poll questions will be a bit more serious than chocolate ice cream. Here are five sample questions for your poll (you may use one of these for your poll if you would like).

1.      It should be legal for committed homosexual couples to adopt children.

2.      Wages should be negotiated by employers and employees without government interference.

3.      All able male citizens should be required to serve in the military for at least two years.

4.      Taxes should be high so the government can provide social welfare like education, healthcare, food, and housing for the less fortunate.

5.      Abortion should be illegal except in cases of rape or a threat to the mother’s health.

Remember, your polls should be controversial (meaning people will disagree with each other about them). If you use a statement like “murder should be illegal”, everyone will choose the same answer, and we will learn nothing. Try to think about “Tradition and Progress” when making your poll questions. Here are some themes you can think about when creating polls:

-          Taxes

-          Economics

-          The Environment

-          Gay Marriage

-          Abortion

-          The Death Penalty

-          Immigration

-          Military

-          Citizenship

-          Form of Government

-          Freedom of Religion

-          Freedom of Speech

-          Education

-          Prostitution

-          Voting

-          Trade

-          Foreign Policy

-          Healthcare

-          Etc…

***A perfect poll will have 5 statements from a traditional (Conservative) point of view, and 5 statements from a progressive (Liberal) point of view.***

Designing the poll (Design team)

The way you design your poll is up to you. But here are a few requirements, and a few suggestions.

Requirements

1.      It must include all ten statements and space to fill out the poll.

2.      It must include a space for the participants to write their age, gender, and nationality.

3.      The “Mission Statement” must be viewable for participants.

4.      Since the polls are anonymous, the poll must not ask for participants’ names.

Suggestions

1.      Try to use as little paper as possible for environmental and monetary reasons.

2.      Use recycled paper.

3.      Keep the “Mission Statement” separate from the polls, and have it displayed on a clipboard to save paper.

Questions (for Presentation Team and Analysis Team)

Presentation Team

1.      Please explain the process you used to complete this project.

2.      Where did you find people to participate in the poll?

3.      What did you think would be the most difficult part of completing the project?

4.      What turned out to be the most difficult challenge you faced?

5.      What did you enjoy about completing this project?

6.      What did you learn from participating in this project?

Analysis Team

Expectations (to be answered before data is collected)

1.      Of the ten statements, which do you think come from the most extremely traditional and extremely progressive points of view?

2.      Which demographics do you predict will vote the most progressively, and which will be the most traditional?

3.      What are some other predictions you have for how the polls will turn out?

4.      Do you think the project will be successful? Why or why not?

Basic Results

1.      Which statement had the highest overall approval rating?

2.      Which statement had the lowest overall approval rating?

3.      Which statement was the most controversial? (had the most people voting “totally agree” and “totally disagree”)

4.      Which demographics voted most similarly?

5.      Which demographics voted most differently?

6.      On which statements did men and women disagree the most?

7.      On which statements did Thais and foreigners disagree the most?

8.      On which statements did different age groups disagree the most?

Critical Thinking

1.      Please explain what you think the purpose of this project was.

2.      By your definitions, which demographic voted the most traditionally, and which voted the most progressively?

3.      Why do you think certain demographics voted in certain ways?

a.       Thais

b.      Foreigners

c.       Males

d.      Females

e.       Different Age Groups

f.       Etc…

4.      Which results were the most surprising and why?

5.      Critique the project and its results: Is doing a project like this useful? Why? What are the project’s flaws?

6.      How seriously should we take the results of the polls?

BEST OF LUCK!!! J

Click here to see my screencast!