Library Lecture

It was very helpful to put a face to a name last night. It was a lot of information in a little amount of time so I will probably need some help getting stepped back through all of that. I hope at some point in the next couple years here I remember to use all of those little helper items because it seemed like that was a very good way to find information for papers and projects.

I really like that we have "special" website type things for each major here at Luther. I think that is a very good idea and makes finding information, specific to your major, a lot easier and more organizable.

Also, I like this information source because it may be something that I can/will use after I am out of college and into my own class room. Hopefully by then I will be able to navigate around the Eric web page fluently, it seems like an extremely useful resource.

Chalk and Wire

Chalk and wire seems like a waste of money to me. I understand why we have it, but what happened to real paper? I'm not into all this updating and all the computer use because part of me still thinks that the web is going to crash and then what? All that hard work we did to put it all together is just lost! That's frustrating! Also, it's like we're such a low paid profession so charge us more for little things that we could just get on a piece of paper with a file. I don't know it just seems a little unnecessary but then again I'm not the one that has to deal with all of those files, I'm sure they add up pretty quick.

On the other hand, I do think it is a very cool program and has a lot of advantages. I know nothing about it but I'm sure it has a bunch of neat little settings that make it worth while to have. Plus the more I can just keep my stuff on the computer, the less chance I have of losing some random piece of paper.

All in all I don't want it but I understand why we have it and I see it's advantages, I just like my paper and pencil life. Simple!

Paideia lecture

Professor Claude Mertzenich gave a very interesting lecture on "going green." This was for a paideia class. He talked about green chemistry, which involves replacing processes that have negative effects on the environment. Mertzenich went over many things about chemical products and synthesising but one thing I picked out of his lecture was him saying that we should try to prevent waste instead of trying to clean it up. He also talked about using non-toxic chemicals and no hazardous substances.

Trying to prevent instead of clean up is the biggest lesson I took from this lecture and is something I think I can, as one person, make an impact on the world. Even as small as something in my classroom or trying to teach the kids tricks I've learned over the years about how to reduce my personal waste. There are a lot of actions I can take to help reduce waste on a small level but I'm helping the world little by little and if I can pass that on to my students then in some way I am helping the world "go green" in a little bigger way. And isn't that one of the main goals of teaching? Passing on your knowledge and tricks you learned about life through living it.

Lions for Lambs

I thought this movie was very interesting. I liked seeing all the trouble the teacher had with his students and how he reacted to those problems. It was cool to see him get through to his students in a way that most teachers can't or won't take the time to try. The teacher said, "teachers are more like salesmen...we're selling you to you." In my eyes that is extremely true! Look at the things teachers are taught in their education classes, it's a lot of how to "deal" with certain kids and certain situations but really what we are being taught is how to sell different kids to themselves in different ways.

Not only did this movie hit on how the teacher delt with trouble, it showed a glimpse of how he picked out what kids were worth his time. This is interesting to me because in school there are always kids that like to just simply cause trouble but then there are the good ones that get a little lost along the way and those kids can look and act a lot a like, so how do you tell them apart?

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