In spite of the nagging fear that my car was going to be towed because I'd parked illegally, I really enjoyed Friday's class. We started off the session with an exercise in "decoding," in which we attempted to translate a series of fairly well-known symbols into a verbal narrative. I noticed that this exercise made me feel sort of mentally sluggish- even though I recognized most of the symbols (stick figures, airplanes, "no smoking" signs), it made my brain hurt to try to string them into coherent sentences. It was interesting, though, to hear about the different strategies my classmates used to derive meaning from the series of symbols, and to note that we were all eventually able to understand this unusual "language".
I also really enjoyed the presentation of former MAC student Tom Ward, who explained how he incorporated the Angry Birds game into his math class. I thought that was a really creative idea, and I was impressed by his willingness to be flexible enough to set aside an entire day to playing a real-life version of the game. He mentioned part of the reason his school was supportive of this was that it was an "independent" school, and thus it did not have to focus so rigidly on meeting imposed learning standards. There was freedom to explore since, as Tom put it, it was "not imperative that students learn parametric equations that day". Something to think about as we decide what kind of environment we'd ultimately like to teach in.
In the last part of class, we focused on setting up individual "teaching portfolio" websites on Weebly. I was really glad to be introduced to this site- I loved all the templates that were available and the user-friendliness of the features. I didn't know it could be so simple to set up a website, and I'm excited to have a space in which I can share the work that I do throughout the year.
All in all, a very interesting and productive class. (And my car was still there when I got back. Yay!)
I was in a gold spot the whole time, thank you art fair for drawing attention away from north campus!
ReplyDeleteThat was a very interesting way to gather a new point of view on the use of language. It also leads me to think more about how big of visual learners we all are. We have many symbols coded in to our minds, and we work with them everyday for a reason. We can understand them.
I also think that we need to put a lot of thought into what type of school we would like to become a part of. We have personalities that mesh with specific communities, but we are also adaptable beings who can form part of many types of communities if we are open-minded.
It does feel very productive and satisfying to create a website, or see a finished product on the internet. Hmmmm maybe i should give my students the opportunity to feel this same sense of accomplishment as well.
So glad you didn't get towed and found some takeaways from Friday's class. (Whew!)
ReplyDeletePS - Grahm - superb response!
First, I love how you include your feelings and thoughts from things in your life. I was also extremely concerned about being towed! But anyways, I agree that the symbol exercise was really difficult for me. I felt like I was the only person in the room who couldn't string the story together quickly. It made me feel old! But you are right that it was interesting to see how many symbols we recognize and how everyone devised their own strategy to decode them. Obviously, written language is just symbols as well. I found that activity to be very clever. From an english context, I think it is a great way to help us teacher understand how students who are struggling could be viewing their reading assignments. Also, you make a great point about the kind of classroom environment we want. I think it's important to find a school that will allow us to teach in creative ways which will come into play when I look for a job. I think the speaker gave us a lot of food for thought.
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