Mr. Pfoutz’s blog

This year I came into finals week ahead of the game.  For once I stayed on top of my work by keeping procrastination to a minimum.  ‘Finals week will be easy,’ I say to myself.  Was it easy? Of course not.

Finals week is never easy.  The added work load combined with culminating fatigue always leads to a difficult week–or in some cases 2-3 weeks.

I stop grocery shopping.

What’s the point?  I’m not g0ing to have time to cook anyways.  This year I finally just accepted the fact that during the last two weeks of the semester I’ll be eating out every meal but breakfast.  You eat when you have time.

The body suffers when we are busy.  We eat out so we eat fewer, but larger meals at longer intervals in between.  We sit in front of screens in that all too familiar C-shaped posture because we are too lazy to engage our back muscles.  Our guts become soft, our eyes droopy, and our skin screams for sunlight.

All in all it’s a good time.

This weekend I have been listening to by body’s cries to stop and become a vegetable, but now, on Monday, when it is time to get into gear again, my body still cries and I have to ignore it.  Sometimes our bodies get lazy too.  Like a dog that has learned the ability to sleep for 20 of the day’s 24 hours.  His body has tricked his mind into thinking he needs this much sleep.  So, I say, fight the urge to be a lazy pile! Go for a walk in the sunshine, rake leaves, exercise, drink water not coffee, and survive this hell week!

I’m taking away some great things from this class.  The best thing about this course was that even if I was already very famililar with the program we were learning I still came away with at least one new thing that I was previously unaware of.  I’ve used PowerPoint and Word a million times in my life but in PowerPoint I learned about action buttons and in Word I learned about using shapes to make fact sheets.

The best parts of the class, however, were when I learned a skill that I was completely unaware of before.  My greatest ah ha moment was learning how to create a digital story.  I really got into that project and can’t wait to make a series of digital stories for my future classes.  I also really enjoyed the opportunity to work with Turning Point and clickers.  I was jealous when I finished my undergraduate degree because clickers were just starting to become a big deal at Salisbury and I never got the chance to use them.  Once again I am hoping that I have the chance to use clickers in my future classrooms.

I think that it is so important to incorporate technology into the classroom these days.  Students are entertained all day by cell phones, internet, tv, etc. so this make it harder for teachers to keep their attention.  Technology (if used correctly) can be a great way to make learning more interesting for my students.  I really hope to incorporate all of the things we learned into my teaching.

(final eschool news blog is the April 9th post)

I am elated to finally see measures being taken across our nation to make our infrastructure more environmentally friendly…its about time.  In an article titled, “Schools eye stim funds for energy efficiency,” you will read that Obama’s stimulus package contains, “$6.3 billion for state and local governments to make energy usage more efficient, including in public buildings. Schools are eligible for some of that money–in addition to a $22 billion zero-interest bond program for school construction projects created in the recovery package.”

I tend to think on the very progressive side of this debate and think that every school should make use of whatever renewable energy sources are available.  If I had it my way every single school would at minimum have their own solar panels and wind turbine.  These types of investments are becoming more realistic and less expensive every year.  For $30,000 a family could invest in a personal wind turbine that could power their entire house with some energy left over.  The power companies are obligated to buy back any extra energy created by the turbine so instead of receiving a monthly bill from your power company you would receive a monthly check (how is that for sticking it to the man).

Some more progressive schools are saving and producing energy in ways that many people don’t know exist.

Did you know that Oregon State University just installed a fleet of human-driven treadmills?  These machines trap the energy that is exerted by the students…by running on these treadmills students are powering an entire building at OSU.  Imagine that, we get rid of our extra energy (in the form of calories) and send it straight into the power grid of our school.  Incredibly progressive…

The topic of evolution versus creation has a history of debate despite the incredible wealth of information supporting the theory of evolution.  This debate is especially heated with regards to how we educate our students.  This week’s eSchool News article entitled, “Evolution theory takes a round in Texas,” reports about the most recent addition to the debate; a vote in Texas that dropped a rule that has stood for 20 years.

Although the theory of evolution is now widely accepted among classrooms throughout the U.S., the state Texas required educators to teach the weaknesses of evolution as a scientific theory; this requirement essentially allowed conservative teachers to undermine the theory of evolution in favor of religious teachings.

This week’s article reports on a new vote that dropped this requirement.  However, soon after the vote was finalized new amendments were made that would make compromises to the conservative voters. 

Dan Quinn, a spokesman for the Texas Freedom Network says that the board, “slammed the door on creationism, then ran around the house opening up all the windows to let it in another way.”

As a science person, it is almost impossible for me to not believe in evolution.  The evidence supporting the theory seems limitless.  However, I also feel that spirituality can play a very important role in peoples’ lives.  I do not believe that evolution and religion must clash.  In fact, both Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict have made statements that accept the overwhelming evidence for the theory of evolution, and they too feel that religion and evolution do not have to necessarily disagree.

Though religion does have a place in this world, I do not believe that that place is in our science classrooms.  In the science classroom we teach science.  The difference between evolution and creationism is that evolution is science and creationism is not.  Science is based on research and evidence, and there is no research or evidence that supports the theory of creationism.  It is important that as science teachers we distinguish between those things that can be considered science and those things that cannot be considered science.  Teaching creationism as science is contrary to this important distinction and can muddle our students’ views about what science actually means.

Dr. Noguera spoke about the inequalities that have developed in our public school system.  He is an advocate for those students who are more likely to receive a poor quality public school education.  These divides develop primarily because of the location that these children grow up in.  Most of the problems he mentioned are central to areas like inner city Detroit, Chicago, and Los Angeles. 

There are multitudes of reasons why children in the locations mentioned above receive a lower quality education, but one of those—the decreased exposure to technology—is highly relevant to this course. 

To preface this argument, I do not believe that access to technology is necessary to produce a literate graduate.  Even Dr. Noguera admitted that some of the island nations he visited had little to no access to technology yet were consistently graduating literate students.  However, I do believe that technology can do two major things to help a student succeed: 1) Internet grants the student access to an incredible amount of information, and 2)  Technology is an essential in linking the material students are learning with real-world practices.

The internet is an incredible resource.  Personally, when I have a question related to the material I am learning I go to the internet before I go to a textbook.  The internet offers multiple perspectives and multiple ways to present the same information.  Secondly, technology is such an incredibly important part of our society today; there are very few careers remaining unaffected by technology.  How are we supposed to convince our students that what they are learning is important to their future without the use of technology? 

The lack of adequate technology is not the only reason why some public school systems are failing, but it is certainly a factor.  Dr. Noguera spoke about Beyer laboratories opening an apprentice lab within the alternative school where he working.  This lab proved to be incredibly successful.  The students learned how to use modern equipment that would be useful in the real world.  This is just one example of how technology can make a difference in the lives of these under privileged children.

First of all, if you have not heard of the TED conference, you should be ashamed of yourself.  No, I’m kidding, but really it is something that everyone of us should know about and use as future teachers.  The TED conference started as a secret meeting of the world’s brightest minds but has evolved to become a gathering of the year’s one thousand most innovating, inspiring, and creative people.  These folks come together to perform in front of one another.  In most cases the performance is a talk, in some cases a demonstration, in other cases a musical performance.  The best of these performances have the ability to change lives.

The attached video is not a life changer, (to witness one of those (youtube Sir Ken Robinson’s talk on creativity) but it is still incredible.  Johnny Lee found a way to make expensive white board technology accessible to any school.  I’ll introduce the video with a quote from Mr. Lee, “something that motivates me is when I see simple opportunities to drastically change the distribution (of technology)…and make it widley accessible to a much larger group of people.” Check him out…

 The value in this video is easy to see. In the classroom I am observing is full of students with a lot of energy. The teacher keeps them pretty active, but still lectures with overhead transparencies. A $50 Wii remote white board could add some excitement to the classroom!

Online course work is becoming more and more important to our education system as a whole.  This week eSchool news published an article titled, “Internships help prepare future online teachers.”  The article describes a new program at the Florida Virtual School (A program offered by the University of Central Florida) in which pre-service teachers spend 7 of their 15 weeks of internship as an online instructor.  

There is much to be said for the first-hand experience gained by these interns.  Much of what I have read in relation to distance learning speaks to the idea that first time online educators often struggle.  Much of their frustration comes from technology issues and other things related to teaching from an unfamiliar platform.  The students of the Florida Virtual School will learn how to handle these frustrations through their course work, and then will have the opportunity to experience online teaching first hand through the 7 week internship.  This experience is invaluable.  I see the graduates of this program being in high demand in the ever increasing online education market.  

Greetings fellow science nerds!  You have entered the world of Mr. Pfoutz.  I will be doing my best to make this world exciting, informative, and interesting.  Stay tuned for updates!