Documentary Studies

I listened to a talk under Dukes Documentary Studies titled "Poetry and Documentary Expression". This was introduction by Tom Rankin for Robert Pinsky's talk about "poetry and documentation", Pinsky is a poet and teacher of workshops at Boston College as well as the author of "Democracy, Culture, and the voice of poetry". Rankin mentioned that poetry and documentaries are similar in that they both include everything, connection to everyday life and they both try to fix the here and now. He really wanted the talk to be a conversation, so that people could give and take.

Just from hearing the introduction i can tell how great of a writer Robert Pinsky really is, by his accomplishments, and the quotes Tom Rankin talked about. It's great that you are able to go onto i tunes and listen to these talks because it gives you a chance to listen to talks that you might have never had the chance to listen to, because its at another collage or that you had a conflict and couldn't attend.

Class Blogs

The podcsat's went over well for it being our first time, however, we could always improve. I think that is should have been set up better, so that everyone knew what to do and that Dr. Strange wasn't having to narrate the whole thing by asking someone to speak, they should have known who was to talk next. I think that people should have stuck to their subject, some students brought in more information, bringing them away from their specific topic. This brings me to the main problem of the topics, they were to overlapping, making information be repeated, the same things over and over. People seemed to talk a little fast in the beginning, probably due to nerves, but by the end they started to slow down. Overall, you could understand everyone clearly, and the volume was great.

I was so embarrassed to listen to my own podcast, i sounded so weird, but overall i think we did a good job. I think we were all very nervous and you could tell sometimes in our voices, and i talked a little to fast and a little loud. I think that we could have done better, as far as sounding nervous in our voices and the volume and speed of our voices, if we could have had the chance to practice before the final take. In the end i think we did better than i thought we were going to do, it really sounded like a conversation we would have in class and we had a lot of information on our topic.

Technology with lesson plans

I went to Itunes technology in lesson plans and found a great lesson plan called Pirate map. This was for grades k-2, it was to help student work together to accomplish a task. The subject matter of this lesson was geography,knowing North, South, East, and West, and learning to measure length and distance.

They started out by taking pictures of North, South, East, and West and making their own compasses. Then the teacher made a video introducing a pirate, he told the students that they needed to follow the map in order to find the treasure. Then the students were asked to hold on to a rope with a distance of 1 yard between each student. they did this as a group ad headed outside to find the treasure. They worked together to measure out distances from the map to find the treasure, making it a collaborative learning process. The teacher made sure that the students congratulated the other students in working together to complete a task.

I found this video cast to be great! It makes learning fun for students when you put an activity with the subject. It also helps them remember how to do things and that they can count on each other if they need help.

"Growth vs Fixed" Minds

Fixed, means having a trade, basing there activities on whether they will look smart, where as Growth, means that they are willing to learn through their life. This video cast is about a program developed to teach students about the growth mind set. They had 8 sessions in a workshop one half got study skills, and the other got growth mindset and study skills. The group that go the growth mindset was the only group that worked, and when they learned stuff they applied it to their school work. It worked so well because they learned how the mind worked and really got into learning how everything was being processed. Teachers were able to tell the difference with two groups even though they didn't know they were even taking a workshop.

The point of this was to help people be mentors and to help people admit mistakes and how to fix them. An example they gave was that of a race car driver, one with a growth mind will be able to get in the zone and stay in the zone even if a mistake is made. Some people really want to learn while others just go around acting like they know everything.

This was a great video cast, it really can benefit teachers, because you want your students to have a growth mindset. You always want your students to know they are smart and teach them that learning is fun, which in turn will give them a growth mind, instead of a fixed mind.