Artifact for Standard #9: Relationship with Colleagues Jacob Choi Please note that in this document, reflections are written inside the text boxes to allow the reader to concentrate on the artifacts, written outside of the boxes. To accomplish our objectives of going to Nicaragua, the team of seven teachers from American University and our professor devised set of weekly meetings from mid-February to mid-March to prepare for the four days of work that we would have in Puerto Cabezas. This unique student teaching opportunity involved working alongside Nicaraguan teachers and our own professor, as well as being able to teach in both Spanish and English. The minutes of some team meetings are shown below, including a one-on-one subteam meeting between myself and Amalie Gorbold, the graduate teaching assistant and translator for our team. Our assignment to contribute to the group was to draw up an agenda for the technology side of education—that is, working with the Nicaraguans to expand their use of technology in the classroom while not focusing entirely on the internet. These two team planning events are but a few of our formal planning sessions. While we were at the airport, on the plane, or staying at the hotels, our team also planned on the fly to accommodate changes for the following day. It was especially clear after day one at the school that two daily meetings needed to be held for communication and material purposes. Eventually, we spent lunchtimes debriefing for the morning and briefing for the afternoon sessions and while we waited for dinner, we debriefed the entire day and received our new assignments for the next day. According to the theory of essentialism, we all played a role on the team that was somewhat defined. As the next pages document, certain team members were shown to be stronger at with the children while others served better teaching the professors. The essentialist would categorize each of our strengths into groups such as “working with students or working with staff”, “proficient in Spanish or not” and so on. Ironically, the presence of educational essentialism is indeed very heavy in Nicaragua, where the emphasis on literacy and mathematics drives the school every day. In fact, linguistic skills are so revered that the principal of the school found a study affirming that schools who have students learning more than one language are more likely to succeed in keeping its alumni out of poverty. When we are talking about the second most impoverished nation in Central America that is a huge feat! Therefore, it was no surprise to us that the community sought for us to teach English, and by day three, it had enormously tested every member of the team—even those like myself who were not slated to teach English. 1|Page
Combined Team Tecelote Initial Meeting: February 19th, 2009 Training Ideas for the Nicaragua Project English Teaching English as a second language to Cabezan children while reinforcing the skills of those who already speak it at home alongside Creole and perhaps Spanish • • • • •
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Morning meeting--date, weather, daily repetition, greeting, English websites TPR-incorporate gesture with word, internalize meaning, give command, give back word Themed units—use Howard Gardner's methods with themes of weather, sports, etc. Puzzles o family and permanent characteristics, compete to find the card after teacher calls out the word, compete within team o match English word with Spanish word Bingo o picture and word o make bingo boards Word on back and others describe Add new words to games Labeling the classroom o large labels o homework of labeling for teachers Cognates o list of words that are the same o use with other new vocabulary Songs o with movements to teach English o song exchange Games o all my friends and neighbors o musical chairs Rhymes Ball of twine o English and Spanish words Dora the explorer o fill in the word englishforkids.com
The initial team meeting was a combination of introductions, brainstorming, and pre-lesson-building strategies. It is apparent that the team thought from the practical approach of utilizing the limited resources that would be available to compose the above ideas. In the end, most of the materials above were acquired for us to take to Nicaragua to be used for their purposes listed above. 2|Page
Technology Expanding the use of available technology for Nicaraguan teachers to implement in the classroom. We know that they have a computer lab but a hindered internet and software problems are not unlikely in such communities. • • •
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Spanish websites Interactive o typing games PowerPoint o sequencing o give an activity to do Microsoft word Create a website Exchange with FCA students Pictures online Blog o photos Video chat Email pals o one time written PowerPoint presentation of your city Math games online o math game with soccer Basic technology o comfort with technology o turn on/off computer with ease Excel o crossword puzzles Note cards of instruction Template of word, PowerPoint,
Kids We are not going to Nicaragua to entertain the kids, but we are going to make learning an enjoyable experience for them. What activities can we come up with that will allow kinesthetic learners to flex their strengths? •
Songs with movements Simon says Heads, shoulders, knees and toes Hokey pokey o Itsy bitsy spider o Old Macdonald o
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Fifth grade students at the Colegio Academia de Puerto –Cabezas (CAP) greet us
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Games o o o
Scavenger hunt Soccer/action verbs Field day-relays,
Training Methods Ideas • • • • •
Collaborative awards Team efforts for computers Tech idea--give an activity to do CD with English words with songs Always teach something that can be used in class
Materials • •
Lamination Ball of twine
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Note cards Web cams Digital camera Photo printer Spanish-English dictionaries Flash drives o include hard copies of templates and other materials that may be on the internet Name tags (?) Beads and string
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Team Tecelote, meaning Owls, celebrates an accomplished week of teaching after arriving in Managua following four days of intensive training at Puerto Cabezas, Nicaragua.
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Our Nicaraguan colleagues showed us the extremes of teaching: these teachers work in classrooms with no airconditioning, extreme heat and rain, and poorly equipped classrooms and children. Apart from a whiteboard, desk, and chairs in the classroom, there is nothing else to assist the teacher during classes. Worst of all, since the roof of the academic building is designed to allow wind to flow under it, while surviving a hurricane, noise overflows from every classroom. In return, the children and parents of the school community prize their teaches very highly, calling the teachers, “profe”, the Spanish equivalent of “professor”.
Sub-Team Meeting: Technology Sub-Team With Amalie Gorbold, Graduate Teaching Assistant in the School of Education and teammate for the Nicaragua Project Technology training: Amalie Gorbold and Jacob Choi Designed for two days’ worth of successive training following the first two days’ worth of basic computer knowledge and applications. Day 3 Activity
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Find the location of a certain file we have already put on—Jacob will make PDF of it on hard drive (for portable use) o Pull up a certain file o Activity Reading about blogs and their uses (see annex 1 at the end of this)
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Blog
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Images Files Words 5|Page
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Sun dial (activity 4) o Angles o How the world moves around Solar kit Wind sock
Review Items in first activity • • •
On/off Copy, paste, cut (Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V) Word processing o Save (Ctrl+S) o Open (Ctrl+O)
New Item Objectives Go to website o o o
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Show our blog (activity 2) Sign in and create website Make your own with your own content Name Subtitile Post Write about experience Upload an already saved photo (have this pre-saved for them to find) Getting photos from camera (activity 3) Get photos from the camera Save photos Edit photos Move photos to blog How to access it
During the technology planning, it was apparent that we would run into trouble if the school o had any electrical problems, so we set up some back-up, non-electronic technology resources that could be used for teaching. The sundial and wind sock never flew, but they were handy to have for contingency purposes and there were a few times when we were close to calling them in. Upon arriving in Nicaragua, we found that the school had gained access to about a dozen computers and a technician was on hand for professional development with the teachers. Far from the Promethean Boards that I was used to at Bethesda-Chevy Chase, a lagging internet and infective problems discouraged the teachers at Colegio Academia de Puerto Cabezas (CAP) from using computers. 6|Page
Day 4 Activity •
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Look up someone else's blog (activity 1) o Copy down address o Link between blogs Edit blogs (activity 2) o Add quote or photo to side of blog World of YouTube and other websites (activity 3)
Other websites (favorites-other group?) 1. Google Earth 2. YouTube 3. Wikipedia 4. Facebook 5. Email/Gmail (ask first group to set up it) 6. Contact spreadsheet sites
Annex 1: Blogging Document designed for Day Three of Technology Tutorials The following document was designed to be written as a PDF for an exercise where the Nicaraguan teachers would be able to seek, find, and open a specific file on the computer, given its description only. This meant that we would have rather obvious names for folders, such as “Documents”, into which another subfolder would be nested, called “Blogs”. The subfolder was designed so that the teachers could write and save their own blogs prior to uploading them online and Amalie and I designed it for the ease of use and security of saving a document. Part of the skills that we were trying to teach the Nicaraguan teachers included the basic logic computers—binary thought. In effect, we were teaching them to think as Bernoulli did: “There is no philosophy which is not founded upon knowledge of the phenomena, but to get any profit from this knowledge it is absolutely necessary to be a mathematician.” Thankfully, mathematics is a universal language and thus, teaching the technology tutorial was anticipated to be easier than teaching English. Debriefing from a day of teaching, our team relaxed in the hotel lounge to finalize teaching plans for the next day. On the left of the picture is Professor Kimberly Palombo, who led the trip and facilitated the professional development for the team as well. At these debriefings, it was an open forum for constructive criticism and feedback regarding the day’s activities.
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El DĂa Tres: Blogging A blog is a website usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order. "Blog" can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog. Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject; others function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, Web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs. Most blogs are primarily textual, although some focus on art, photographs, sketches, videos (vlogs), and music, which are part of a wider network of social media. Micro-blogging is another type of blogging, one which consists of blogs with very short posts. As of December 2007, blog search engine Technorati was tracking more than 112 million blogs. With the advent of video blogging, the word blog has taken on an even looser meaning — that of any bit of media wherein the subject expresses his opinion or simply talks about something.
. An example of a blog, showing The Nicaragua Project as authored by Professor Kim Palombo, inside a web browser while other programs are running simultaneously with multiple tabs. This particular blog is hosted on blogspot.com and primarily used for text entries. It is accessible for anyone around the world, although it can also be made private by securing a password.
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