PESG

Today we had a meeting with PESG and took our first official steps (according to the State of Michigan) towards our professional careers in (possibly) Michigan.

PESG stands for the Professional Education Services Group, they are the largest educational employment service in the Great Lakes Region. In addition, they specialize in placing qualified substitutes classrooms based on local school districts' need. Throughout the summer we have had to watch and learn multiple modules on the PESG website to qualify our cohort for substitute teaching. An example of a few are being qualified in

• Allergy Management
• Bloodborne Pathogens
• FERPA
• Guide For Substitute Teachers
• Hazardous Communications
• Sexual Harassment
• St and Fed Laws K12

In addition, we needed to get fingerprinted! However exciting this sounds, I had a rather frustrating experience trying to get fingerprinted. Alas, it was the day that I moved part of my stuff from Columbus, OH to Ann Arbor, MI. I moved part of my stuff into my new apartment and headed an hour and 15 minutes southeast towards Wayne where the only L1 Fingerprinting station that was open past 6pm was located. I drove there and looked for it for two hours to no avail. Frustrated, I drove to Novi and had dinner with my father. The next morning, I tried again to go to another L1 Fingerprinting station and they told me that their connection with PESG was down and asked me to go the next business day, which would be the following Monday. I eventually got fingerprinted, and finished the ordeal, and was informed that the Wayne location had closed down. Their website states that it is updated everyday and refreshes each day with the date and time that the information was supposedly "verified."

Anyway, we brought our passports and all other sorts of information as well as money to pay for the registration. Who knew that to become a teacher, one had to pay so much and jump through so many hoops? (ICHAT, PESG, Fingerprinting, etc). Anyway, in order to keep my fingerprints in the system for next year, I must work as a substitute for one day this school year. Who knows, maybe next year I will stay in Michigan?

My Teaching Placement

It has been a crazy few weeks since my last post. Between a vehicular collision occurring in Columbus, Ohio in August, to my best friend getting married on Saturday, I have had my fair share of experiences. In the midst of these happenings, is my student teaching assignment in an actual high school in Michigan!

I have been paired with a Teaching Mentor and it has been a blast so far. The classes that he will be teaching (some of which I will be taking over next semester) are three freshman Civics/Economics classes, APUSH (United States Government), and AP Government and Politics. He has a tough love approach to the students. As I observed how the class was managed the first day, he mandated that all bags and personal belongings must be placed in the front of the classrooms (this includes cell phones, purses, etc) and that students are only to bring a pencil and paper/notebook to their seats. And if there was a worry as to the safety of expensive items such as phones, calculators etc, then the students were advised not keep them in their lockers! This is just one example of the classroom management that I had observed.

He began the class with big bolded letters on the whiteboard "YOU MUST PASS THIS CLASS TO GRADUATE." He followed this up with statistics, saying that one in three of them statistically are not going to be able to graduate. He went on to explain that if they fail this class, they will be back next year to take it again as it is a required class for graduation. He impressed it upon the students that they needed and were able to pass this class. At this point, he launches into an explanation of how he will help them. In his explanation, he kills two birds with one stone. He explains the structure of the class which will help them study for the test.

So an ideal class that he has laid out looks like this: Without the teacher needing to say anything, students walk in and immediately place all their belongings except a pencil and paper in the front, find their assigned seat and begin to furiously copy down the questions and vocabulary words. -- And that was exactly how my second day in school was like, these students caught on fast.

The high school is a very interesting, there are striking disparities throughout the school! One can see their priorities by observing what is around in the school. There are Smartboards in every classroom, yet the computers are not so up to date and thus lag when playing videos and opening programs. They have a very very beautiful library, which contrasts with their bathrooms which look like they were last renovated in the 60's! While every classroom has a Smartboard, each teachers' supplies for the year consist of two yellow notebooks, and two boxes of pens.

Nevertheless, I have my own ID, keys, and desk! I am still adjusting to students calling me Mr. Tan. I will be sure to let you all know when I get used to it.

IntaInsight

Today we were so lucky and blessed to have a few guest speakers into our class. We had MAC graduates from Kevin Hankinson in '08, as well as Larry Liu a good friend of mine who also graduated in '08. In addition, Andrea Clyne who graduated in '06 skyped in from Paris, France! In addition, Lauren Fardig who graduated from MAC.

Larry is going to the Dominican Republic to teach at the American School of Santo Domingo. He told us about incorporating technology into his classroom. He utilizes facebook in his classroom! That is completely different than my conception of how to utilize technology in the classroom. He also told me about how he utilizes podcasts in his classroom. He would record his lectures in a podcast for his students to review as well as for people who miss the class. It was really great to know that technology has been successfully integrated before. I hope to follow his example in this way!

Lauren Fardi also gave us the opportunity to ask a few of her students as well as herself questions about technology practice. I asked a question regarding her students' internet accessability in their homes. My concern was centered on how many students do not have access to internet in their homes. This in turn would hinder their ability to engage with integrated technology in the classrooms. Her response really surprised me. She noted that 70% of the students in her school in the Bronx had internet access in their homes, but because of the 30% that did not, she never created strict deadlines with regards to assignments that require the use of the internet. She noted that the most common way for them to access the internet is using their phones! Yet the main issue that she noticed was the lack of technological literacy. Her example was that most of the students knew how to utilize Microsoft Word, but were not inclined to utilize technology further due to a lack of knowledge.

I have a new found passion to impact students' in the form of technological literacy so as they do not fall behind in the economically driven technological world.

IntaGenerationM

I would like to begin by discussing the "generations". These definitions are taken off of wikipedia:
Generation X: generation born after the Western post World War II baby boom ended genearlly including people born in the 1960s through the late '70s, sometimes as late as the early '80s, usually no later than 1981 or 1982.
Generation Y: members, who are commonly cited as born between 1982 or 1983 to the mid 1990s or early 2000s.
Generation Z: (aka Generation M), the Net Generation, or the Internet Generation. This generation is highly connected, and for the purposes of this post, M refers to Multitasking. "Lifelong use of communications and media technologies such as the World Wide Web, instant messaging, text messaging, MP3 players, mobile phones and YouTube".

I am writing this post right after I recorded my first official podcast, it can be seen here:


"The Wired Life: The Public and Private Spheres of the Gen M Community" by Klapperstuck and Kearns talks about how Gen M has not replaced older formats of media for newer ones but rather that they have added new formats to older ones essentially in a combination. For example, Gem M still watches TV but do so while texting their friends, doing homework on the computer, and using the internet. It is changing the rules of etiquette and of the conception of "rudeness" in terms of members of Gen M being together in the same physical space and yet are connected to others through media sources. This is seen in the example made in the article where two people are sitting in the library not breaking any rules of etiquette or ignoring each other but are texting their other friends and listening to MP3's.

"To those outside of Generation M this may seem either rude or unnecessary."

This quote was extremely interesting to me. Although I may have been born right at the cusp of the ending of Generation Y and the beginning of Generation M, I have definitely assimilated into Generation M's culture. Thus, through this analysis, I am beginning to step into the metaphorical shoes and lenses of my parents and what they see of this new generation that can never seem to pay attention amidst the sea of stimuli.

Another key difference in generations is their perception (and reaction) to privacy. Generation M's attitudes about privacy differ a lot more than the previous generations' attitudes as discussed in the article. Geneneration M is "less concerned about being targeted by advertising and do not feel that ad targeting is a form of invasion, rather that they want 'ads to speak to them' indicating a huge divide.

And the final change is essentially what you are reading right here, right now. Blogs becoming the new diaries and journals. Apparently according to Goodstein's research in 2007, more than half of the blogs are written by teens. Gen M is about creating and sharing their lives online. This is also seen through social activism. An example of this is my voting once a day for Gracehaven Home Inc., a Christian organization that provides shelter and rehabilitation to girls under the age of 18 who have been victims of commercial sexual exploitation, via Facebook on vivint.givesback. This a way that Geneneration M moves from local to global. This is a way for our generation to actively overcome the "apathetic" and "rude" labels that are placed upon us by the older generations.

I will leave you with a quote by Klapperstuck and Kearns, "adults tend to use the Web as a supplement to real-world activities while teenagers tend to ignore the difference between online and offline."

So.. is online life an extension of one's own life or is it a supplement to real-world activities?

IntaPodcast

Following our conversation about gaming in class. I feel that I must refute one of the main points that were brought up against gaming before I continue about my post about Podcasts.
If one compares DotA to Basketball, they are strikingly similar when it comes to strategy in the mind, perhaps even more so as DotA has 104 different characters with 115 different items creating much complexity alone, without even considering the complexity of the agency of players using them. One can argue that Basketball engages the players physically and is a form of exercise, I do not dispute that at all, I am just proposing that DotA is a viable example that gaming can create an atmosphere conducive to learning, building key aspects of how one operates in the world.

One of my buddies brought up a point that in terms of communication in games, his experience was that it was rather anti-team-building and that most of the communication was badmouthing. While I do not dispute this, I would point to my example about basketball. There are countless examples of badmouthing in baketball games especially when competition is high, or if one player is not playing well. The same way in DotA. Especially when one enters the realm of professional level of playing (basketball or DotA), there is much clearer communication and affirmation in a team. Yet I would like to direct your attention to an instance in professional basketball now popularly referred to as The Brawl which occurred in Detroit when NBA players Ron Artest, Jermaine O'Neal, and Stephen Jackson were knocking out fans (not even players!) during a game against the Indiana Pacers. One cannot disagree that basketball does not have an aspect of team-building. In the same way, I would say DotA has just as much team-building potential as basketball does.

Moving onwards, class last Friday was my first time making a podcast. We were assigned to create a podcast where we advertised an Edublogger that we follow. Mine was about Larry Ferlazzo, an edublogger in the realm of ELL, ESL, and EFL. I partnered up with another buddy of mine and we mixed it up with a few Korean Pop songs by After School and 2pm for the introduction. This was the first time I was on the creation end of this type of media and it was absolutely fascinating. I was reminded of one of my good friends who was a former MAC'er who was a teacher at Northville High who would make a (shorter) podcast for his lectures for students who missed class or for students to review material. Podcasts were thus his way to supplement his lectures. It sounds really cool. I hope I will be able to utilize this in the classroom in the future! Time to go figure out how to use garage band to make longer clips, and perhaps record a few of my songs.

IntaDotA?!

Science, as James Paul Gee writes, is like a game. He deals with the "content" question of naysayers by responding to their assertion that "what you learn when you play a video game is just how to play the game" and yet some people think that learning in school is about "learning to play the game," that is, learning facts that can be memorized and resuscitated, yet those people, although they can pass a test, are unable to apply their knowledge to solve problems or think critically. Thus this brings me back to my point Science, is like a game, one must inhabit the identity the game offers, it isn't just "do whatever you want" there are rules to play by and you must see how "they can be best leveraged to accomplish goals."

I began to wonder think about the business world. Then I thought of DotA.

When I read Gee's "Good Video Games and Good Learning" article, I was stoked. I absolutely love games, however I have not had time to really get into all the higher technology and newer interface games like Call of Duty or any Xbox or PS3 console game. DotA stands for Defense of the Ancients. It is the biggest custom scenario for the real-time strategy video game Warcraft III and it's expansion. It is argued that DotA is the most popular free, non-supported game mod in the world.

Anyway, in this game:

• players on each side choose one of 104 heroes
  
• each have different abilities which create advantages and disadvantages over other heroes.
  
• The scenario is highly team-oriented; and just like Basketball, it is difficult for one player to carry the game alone.
  
• It requires one to kill the spawned units called "creeps" and to "last hit" them in order to get the money, thus there is a specific strategy involving the efficient gaining money (also called farming), which leads to the buying of items.
  
• One gains experience and gains levels to upgrade skills/spells, and if one dies, one loses gold and the opportunity for experience.
  
• The items bought can be used to create other higher tier items and these are known as "recipe" items.
  
• As each hero has different abilities and attributes, different items tailor to different heroes and knowledge of all these things are extremely important.
  
• Players will eventually memorize these recipes as they play the game more.

Thus the game then becomes all about efficient farming, teamwork, and knowledge of the game. Then I thought about it longer. The business world is all about knowledge of the field, scoping out the competition, understanding the laws and rules of the trade, efficiency, and teamwork. All things that are developed in a game of DotA.

In addition, each game takes around an average of 40 minutes and no one game is the same, each game has a ridiculous amounts of variation even if each team is constant and each player chooses the same hero. The gameplay changes, and if you throw in the fact that there are 104 heroes to choose from with multiple modes to change it up (such as all random or random draft), this makes for a highly unpredictable game. Yet, one of the things I love about it is, if one messes up, one can play again the next game and it is a brand new slate! This resonates with one of the key points in Gee's article which was risk taking where he discusses how "good video games lower the consequences of failure" and how in these games, players are encouraged to take risks, explore, and try new things and that failure is a good thing as it allows one to learn from their mistakes. Gee argues that "school too often allows much less space for risk, exploration, and failure" and this can be rectified in the classroom by creating a classroom conducive to -- (haha, you thought I was going to say conducive to failure didn't you!) -- an openness for failure and its' utilization in the learning process.

So while Gee says that his suggestion is not to "use games in school" he does state that it is indeed a good idea. Perhaps the students should play DotA, and I can definitely be certified to teach that! It would definitely spawn quite a generation of people who would be efficient, knowledgeable, and able to work on a team.

After all, it did inspire one of the catchiest songs of all time which took #2 in Finland and #6 in Norway by an artist named Basshunter singing in Swedish:

IntaBrandon Center

Today we were able to enter the Brandon Center before it's grand opening and use its' facilities thanks to Jeff and Kristen, our teachers from 504. It was quite spectacular. The room that my group worked in, there was a 60 inch touch screen TV with a wireless keyboard and mouse along with an Ipad. Our fearless leader was Rachel Goldberg, a librarian East Middle School in Plymouth, MI. Our topic was the recent Tsunami in Japan.

We began to utilize www.newseum.org/ which is a website that shows the front pages of newspapers around the world and also has archives! This is extremely useful for primary sources, accessibility to kids. Multimedia, visual, archives. Our goal was to view the same event from different perspectives and to teach them how to evaluate sources (ie. who is writing the newspaper). We wanted students to be able to differentiate between the assumptions based on the community that the newspaper was from. Thus we were able to discuss the ramifications of the Tsunami in terms of the country of Japan itself, then have a look at Detroit's car manufacturing woes, and then even to Ohio's revising of a lemon law.

Also, I must provide a description of the room we were working in:
60 inch touch screen TV with a wireless keyboard and mouse along with an Ipad!! It was an amazing environment conducive for learning and planning.

Our prompt was to discuss the intellectual and experimental opportunities presented with this topic and to create a mock lesson plan. We experimented with beginning with a learning objective and working backwards. Our learning objective was: For students to be able to explain the Political, Social, and Economic ramifications of a natural disaster. This is an interesting topic also because natural disasters are apolitical. This was followed by a transformation of our lesson plan into a unit plan with a class on each of the following topics: Political, Economic, Geographical, Social, and Advocacy.

Advocacy was the part that I was most excited about. It is so exciting that as teachers with a partial job of teaching students how to be citizens, we can teach them about their self-efficacy. Teachers can empower students to understand the power they have to change things on a national level, in terms of relief efforts for disasters, and on the world stage. This stems from the quote that I heard from an episode of The West Wing that I watched last night, "decisions are made by the people who show up" with regards to a "rock the vote" rally.

Overall it was extremely fun and satisfying because it gave us a small picture of what it would look like to formulate a lesson plan. We did this all on Wikispaces and our draft can be seen here.

There was one important learning moment though. Technology is fun, and in playing around with it, one can get lost on how it may or may not be useful as a teaching tool. We learned this as we were trying to utilize the 60 inch touch screen TV, yet it was much more difficult to navigate than we had thought. This is a definite point that I will bring into my teaching process. I desperately want to bridge the fear that teachers have in incorporating technology into the education process without getting lost in technology itself.