End of the Year

Well I can't believe it's the end of the year. This semester just flew by!

I came in to this class thinking that it was going to be a waste of my two credits, besides filling elective requirements (sorry Professor Sorenson, but keep reading!). However, my mind has been changed on the subject (see, it got better). I learned so much about technology and how I can still use it in the third world as a missionary. By creating my website I saw how easy it was to make one and maintain it, opening up great avenues of communication for me and my potential supporters. I also saw that learning the "how" of utilizing new technology without it dominating the class would be beneficial, not matter what country I'm in. That would always be a useful thing to know and apply.

I'm glad that I was able to experience new technology, such as the SMARTBoard, that I probably would never use again. I liek to experience new things and to say that I was able to successfully anvigate a SMARTBoard is a nice achievement (to me).

So thanks Professor Sorenson! Thanks for helping me with all of my assignments and making them "mission major friendly" and allowing me to use this class to benefit my future career! :)

Cultural Differences

One hurdle I know that I will have to overcome is the cultural barrier between American-style teaching and Asian-style teaching.

In Asia, lecture is the primary way of teaching. Students learn too! A stereotype of Asian teenagers is that they are very smart. I personally do not understand how they can soak up all the information from a lecture format of teaching. Most American students (like me) die (or want to die) when they have teachers who are strictly lecuterers. So what do I do as an American abhorer of lecture who is going to teach Asian students who are used to lecture formats?

I plan on mixing the styles. I want to do some lecture but mis it up with class discussion and games. Also some field trips and hands-on activities where the students can learn experientially as opposed pure academic learning. These are some ideas for the classroom, does anyone have any other ideas? I really want to challenge the students I'll have so that they aren't trained to learn only one way. And I want to challenge myself so that I can communicate in more than one way.

Classroom in Five Years

Haha, funny story: I commented on my friend's blog on the same subject, but in my mind I thought I had already blogged about the topic myself (obviously I have not).

I think that my classroom in the Philippines will look much like it does right now: chalkboard, broken pieces of chalk, an old eraser, and worn, broken desks in a stuffy classroom. I think the most realistic technological update that a Filipino classroom will see is the whiteboard instead of the chalkboard. It would be wonderful to have in the classroom because clean would be easier, as well as having improved clarity of the information on the board. An overhead projector would be another realistic and helpful technological advancement to the Filipino classroom.

I think having computers in the school (for students) would be a wonderful advancement, but just not a logical one. Who knows though? Ten years ago no one would have guessed that SMARTBoards and other technology that's in classrooms today would have been here.

Internet Safety Issues

I guess I didn't do this blog because I felt that it did not pertain to me as a missionary, but I thought about it and I realized it does.

A lot of kids in the Philippines go to internet cafes or have access to the internet and therefore are part of online social networks and have e-mail addresses. Unfortunately, human trafficking is very prevalent in the Philippines. If the girls in my classroom are not careful then they could end up giving away too much information about themselves that a predator could use to abduct them and force them in to the sex slave industry.

I now see a need to talk about internet safety with the kids I will teach in the Philippines. It would be important for me to stress that giving out personal information to strangers over the internet is not a good, or safe, idea. This may seem cliche, but I'd rather be cliche than be a teacher who wasn't cautious enough.

Technology = Lazy Students?

People today sing the praises of technology, particularly it's role in education. However, there is a question out there, one that seems to be surprsingly unaswered. That question is: does technology make students academically lazy? Most students do not know where to find good resources for research papers until they reach college; they rely on the internet for their information.

For centuries students and teachers did not have the technology that we have today, not until about a decade ago. Yet the academic society has rapidly adapted to technology and all it has to offer, so much so that old ways of "doing" school are disappearing. Computers are replacing proper penmanship, calculators are repleacing mathematics, and the internet/podcasts are replacing proper researching/learning methods. Yet, these "ways of old" are not inferior. Many brilliant minds that the present generations have yet to match are from the past. Soreen Kierkegaard, Bietrich Bonhoeffer, Aristotle, Charles Dickens, all of these people have at least two things in common: they did not have our common technology and they still profoundly influenced the world of education.

Technology today also allows students to procrastinate more than they had in the past. They now know that their research paper can get a B- or even better, even if it isn't started until two weeks before it was due (out of an eight week period).

Overall I think that technology can profoundly influence students today, but it is up to the teacher and the student on whether that influence is going to be a bad one or a good one.

Final Project

Hey everyone! For my final project I created a website. I wrote it with the perspective that I have been on the mission field for several years and the site is for all of my supporters and friends "back in the States." I hope you all can check it out, I really enjoyed making it!

Here's the link: http://laura.voight.googlepages.com/homepage

I was surprised at how simple it was to create this site. I would recommend Google Pages to anyone and everyone! They made it easy and offer many different designs to work with. I didn't know how to upload a document onto the web, but their site made it easy to do. I was surprised at how professional it looked (to me) at the end.

Let me know what you think!

Some Extras

So in class today I got to look at some tools that are available to teachers/people out there today. There are some amazing things!

One website, http://www.gliffy.com/ allows you to make flow charts, and even floor plans! My teacher pointed out that this would be a great tool for me as a missionary. I could give a visual of my home overseas and then use flow charts to explain how I hope my ministry will progress over the years.

There's another tool called Microsoft Lesson plans that gives you ideas for lessons and how to get the students to interact with the lesson. This is very helpful, especially to brand new teachers or teachers who have taught for decades. I name these two types of teachers because new teachers are usually nervous and don't know how to get the children to interact and older teachers will get stuck in doing something voer and over again, even if the technique is outdated.

These tools were fun to play with, and I didn't want to stop (especially gliffy). so if you're a new teacher or a missionary looking for a way to "spice up" your report home, you should check out these tools.