Shane Warren's ED554 Blog

In his Ted Talk, Do Schools Kill Creativity? , Sir Ken Robinson talks about how no matter where you go on earth, there is a hierarchy of subjects in each education system. He mentions that math and languages are at the top and that at the bottom are the arts.   He points out the reason why he believes that this is the case, “there were no public systems of education really, before the 19 th century. They all came into being to meet the needs of industrialism,” (Robinson, 2006). Sir Ken Robinson makes a great point, that while the subjects that were most important at the time were given the most value, times have changed significantly since the 19 th century.   He uses an interesting example talking about his conversation with Gillian Lynne.   She was a poor student who had trouble staying still in school.   Luckily, rather than being labelled with ADHD she was taken to a specialist who understood that she just needed to be able to move to think.   Unfortunat...

To create my first digitally manipulated image I went to the website pixlr.com and created a free account.  After watching a few instructional videos, I used the Pixlr X photo editor to manipulate an image that I envisioned using at the start of a nutrition unit to help engage the students interest in the topic. In order to create this image, I took two pictures of myself with different facial expressions.  In the first image I smiled in order to show happiness and that I was feeling good.  In the second image I was frowning and holding my stomach to show that I didn't feel well.  After uploading these pictures to Pixlr, I then removed the backgrounds of the images, added stock photos of different foods (some healthy and some not) and added accompanying text to further clarify what the pictures were meant to show. The Virginia SOL that my image was created to address is Physical Education SOL "3.5 The student will describe energy balance.  b) Identify one food p...

I recently learned about storymaps and how they can be used to create great content for teaching students.  For my first attempt at creating one of my own I used the website  www.arcgis.com .  For anyone who would like to learn more about storymaps or how to create one I would definitely suggest giving this site a try.  There are many different templates to choose from and each one has a tutorial that walks you through the process one step at a time.    For my first attempt at a storymap I created a mini lesson on the five geographic regions of Virginia.  This would go along with VDOE standard "VS2. b) The student will demonstrate an understanding of the relationship between physical geography and the lives of the native peoples, past and present, of Virginia by locating and describing Virginia’s Coastal Plain (Tidewater), Piedmont, Blue Ridge Mountains, Valley and Ridge, and Appalachian Plateau," (VDOE, 2015). Basically, I thought that this storymap c...

After viewing the videos in the "See It In Action" section of the chapter, I chose to focus this post on Trailblazer Elementary School in Colorado Springs, Colorado.  Trailblazer Elementary serves approximately 350 kids in grades K-5.  Trailblazer Elementary shifted to a blended learning model in 2015, but " Trailblazer views their work on a continuum through which they are able to meet individual teacher’s needs. Some classes currently look more traditional and others are more personalized, based on where each teacher falls on that continuum," (Trailblazer, n.d.).      Most topics at Trailblazer are introduced with a pre-assessment to determine the student's knowledge level.  Using the data gathered from the pre-assessment, the students are then able to make choices from the "Learner Pathway".  These choices include things like what resources to explore, what pace to move through the content, and how they can show what they have learned.  Learner...

I recently visited the code.org website and took part in their Hour of Code activities.  I was a little hesitant heading into the activity because my only coding experience before this was a Java coding class that I took way back in high school.  I remember having a hard time grasping the coding language and that it was one of my least favorite classes at the time.  However, I also know how powerful and useful coding can be so I wanted to give coding another try.   The Hour of Code Activity that I chose to work on was Code Your Own Sports Game.  I chose this activity because it was listed as one of the coding activities for grades 2-5, which are the grades that I am targeting to teach, so I thought it would be helpful to see the kinds of activities that would be relevant for my students.  In addition, I saw that this activity used block coding which seems to make more sense to me as someone who didn't love my previous coding experience.    A...