My teaching philosophy...

Anyone with open eyes and ears can detect that in the world we live in, there is a lot of room for improvement. I believe that the greatest changes take time, but every great change requires a catalyst. I believe that every person has something to contribute to the betterment of society. Whether your passions lie in conserving the environment, reducing poverty, spreading awareness, ironing-out politics, and so forth-- it is our greatest responsibility to pursue our passions and help shape whatever change should occur.

As a teacher, I believe it is my greatest responsibility to help students discover their passions and realize how significant their actions are. I believe in the power of choice. You can choose to smile, be friendly, be timely and to be respectful or you can choose the opposite. Beyond revealing passions and teaching mathematics,.. it is a teacher's highest priority to help students understand the implications of every decision they make and simultaneously show them that it is okay to make mistakes so long as they know how to rise above them.

Lastly, but absolutely foremost, I believe in leading by example. Every teacher should live their lives as if they were being watched by their students in every moment. We should never stop learning, and we should always be applying what we have learned through out the course of our lives.

My goals and aspirations...

I described my fundamental objectives within my teaching philosophy. In order to teach these character principles, I plan to use social media such as blogging, twitter, google, and other WEB 2.0 tools to increase my students technological literacy, exchange teaching strategies, and enable cultural exchanges.

The more a teacher can safely expose their students to, the more opportunities their students will have to discover their passions. If I recommend they watch a classic movie that might build character or reveal social enigmas, they might discover their interests in film by witnessing first-hand the power of quality movies. I hope to also establish connections between students around the world and my own so that my class can see what they should appreciate about their own experiences and what they could strive to gain; this in conjunction with a government lesson might help them discover their fire for politics or ambassador work.

The possibilities are endless, but it all boils down to reaching beyond the classroom walls into the lives of others and seeing what my students find. I want them to be able to do this with a variety of tools and I plan to employ books, technology, media, and community engagement to do so.

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

igoogle

As a result of learning about igoogle in my EDM 310 class, I have become the biggest fan of google. Never before has it been so easy for me to access news from multiple networks such as CNN, FOX, BBC, MSN, etc. The best part about it is that all of them are centralized to one personalized web page that I have designed with ease under igoogle.
Since becoming an igoogle user, I have been able to think of ways to incorporate it into my classroom. The chat features would allow students to create comradeship and answer each others questions outside of class, regardless of friendship ties. Also, they could design their own web pages so they can stay up to date on the things they are interested-- and I can learn what my students are curious about. I will incorporate this into my classroom by encouraging them to create a website, and sharing what they have learned from it periodically-- like the first ten minutes of every class, or every Friday. This would help set the tone for the class, create a voice for the students, and focus discussion among peers.

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