John Finch's Presentation on Jan. 30, 2014

John's presentation was full of information. He mentioned important points  about "Bring on your Own Device" idea and integrating Technology into our schools. It was a teaching for me how John lead the discussion for about an hour and half. He came to this discussion with no notes or power point presentation. He asked the class to suggest some of  the issues we have to integrate technology into our class room, from the class feedback he led a very interesting points.


John discussed how the province's schools are going to integrate technology more than before. He shared with us the challenges facing our schools to do so. He mentioned how lack of tech oriented  teachers in our schools plays role a negative effect  taking technology into the classroom. Another challenge John mentioned was divisional differences using the internet in the schools makes it hard to use technology for educational purposes.


Finally, John shared with us how cooperating teaching in middle schools opens kids eyes to relevancy.


Have a good day!!

George Couros's Presentation

It was really very informative discussions we had with George Couros yesterday. His points from how we as  new teacher candidates presents ourselves to the community we are going to teach to the effect  digital foot-print have to our future job opportunities, from how useful connecting with other educators through social-media might create more opportunities finding jobs to what most Principals and superintendents want from new teachers during recruitment.


When he was talking about how personal e-mails to a friend or a family members also considered as an online posting because any body can take a picture of the email and post it online anybody to see it, wow I have never thought about that.


The other interesting thing he talked about was how teachers might discourage students from learning if we say" stupid technology" or "stupid science or math". Teaching is not about grade or it is not about finishing one outcome and move to the other outcome, teaching is when students ask question, explore and master what they are learning.


Have a good day.

Teachers Comment On Declining Math Scores

Teachers Comment On Declining Math Scores


by Meredith Martin Thursday January 30, 2014


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iP9MtHH2Kk&feature=player_detailpage 

Do you know that it is still year 2006 in Ethiopia?

If we all were in Ethiopia at this moment we could have been 8 years younger than we are because it is still 2006 in Ethiopia. I will discuss the reasons why Ethiopia's calendar lags by 8 years.



In our last class we discussed about the good and the bad about the internet. How our world is changed since the invention of internet. In our class, we said technology is not all about good or it is not all about bad, it is in the balance of both worlds.


Internet encourages people around the world form a community for a common cause, internet made information easily accessible, help people share information or share a new invention to each other. Internet makes our life much easier than it was for example I can buy my beloved soccer team's jersey online without travelling to London, England to buy it, we are quick to hear an important news happening almost from every part of the globe within minutes or hours.


Internet has also its bad side: one of the main challenges we face using internet is cyber-bullying, stealing people's identity, our internet activity when we were young has now an implication whether we can be hired or not by some employers.


Finally, one of the fascinating thing about internet is how fast we are getting important information around the globe, from death of Nelson Mandela in South Africa to the birth of Prince Williams's first child in England, the Arab spring in Middle East to the human right conditions in China, the Earth quake in Haiti to the major disaster in Japan, we get information within minutes after it has happened.


However, there was no internet 2000 years ago or no modern transportation, that is one of the reason people believe Ethiopia's calendar lags 8 years from the rest of the world. The reason some people give is the news of the birth of Jesus Christ took almost 8 years to reach in Ethiopia because those days people had to walk from Ethiopia to Israel and then back to Ethiopia to tell the news. The calendar begin its counting after the news reached in Ethiopia.


Have a good day!!!!

7 Ways Teachers Use Social Media in the Classroom

I found the article by Jess Fee interesting regarding teaching and social media. you can read the full content from the link below.
http://mashable.com/2013/08/18/social-media-teachers/


Have a good day.

Dean Shareski's Presentation.

I was so interested from the whole context of Dean Shareski's presentation. From his explanation form how teaching and learning different in 2013 to the levels of engagement from setting class goals to using technology in class. In my today's blog I want to say something from his presentation regarding setting class goals.


I always think as a new teacher I will have a very had time setting class goals for my students based on their interest at the beginning of the school year because all of my students don't have the same reasons why they chose to attend high school. For me this is not about  planning for the year of preparing lesson plans, rather I will be worried what skills my students will get at the end of the school year, I will be worried I may spend too much time on things which have nothing to do with the skills my students need in the real world, am I  going to have enough time to teach students critical thinking or problem solving skills? am I going to asses my students based on the goal I set at the beginning of the year or am I going to use the traditional assessment tool to asses every student as if they are all going to college.


Finally, we should all try to set class goal based on what skills we think  our students should acquire by the end of the school year. As Dean Shareski said on his presentation though, the basis of our class goals must include 1) Learning is social and connected   2) Learning is personal and self-directed     3) Learning is rich in content and diversity and 4) learning out to be fun!!!!!!


Have a blessed day!!!

My First Blog

For the past weeks I was in a constant struggle with myself how/where to start writing on my blog. I was so worried that my blog might not be good enough to others or the content might not make sense to others and so on.
One other reasons to my struggle on blogging my thoughts was my experiences when I was in my home country. In my home country people could be mocked, bullied, harassed, detained or even killed for what they wrote or said. We were taught not to disagree or have different opinion against any the establishment.


I have cousin a prominent journalist in Ethiopia. He was sent to prison for 15 years for writing his opinion on a newspaper. Almost 10 years ago I'm also detained with a group of students for going public regarding basic human rights in the country. Because of constant harassment and intimidation I had to flee Ethiopian and lived in Kenya as a refugee for 5 years.


Living in wild, desert  refugee camp  was a different challenge and life experience to me. My main aim in the refugee camp was to stay alive because there was no enough food, no enough water, the locals are nomadic people who used to come to  the camp and killed refugees to steal our little food.


One of my fondest time in the refugee camp was when I was hired to teach math/ science to refugee children. For the last 3 years in the camp I taught hundreds of children in the camp and I had witnessed how education change people life, way of thinking and build a nation.


Sharing a little bit of my experience in this blog is not about to get sympathy for I went through in Africa  rather to share how dangerous can be blogging your opinion in some parts of the world and why I was struggled to start blogging in this site for the past few weeks.


I will promise you that my second blog won't be about my boring life experience.


Have a great day!!!!!