Friday, November 19th, 2010 by Farmen

Today started with a bang!  We immediately took out our planners, to write down our homework for the Thanksgiving break.  The first bit of homework we talked about was PLN 21; which should be written on the video called “Changing Education Paradigms”.  You can find this video on her website that I have hyperlinked here.  Once you go to her site, scroll down and you will find the link.  Our next piece of homework was very important!  We were reminded of our “This I Believe” essay which should be written and edited a few times over break.  The reason for completing a solid rough draft over break is because it is due soon after we get back, and it would be good to have Mrs. Smith or someone from writing lab revise your essay on the Monday or Tuesday of our return.  After talking about homework, we had some great students present their PLN presentations.  We started with Nick F, then Brendan C.  Both of their presentations were about PLN 19, called “Lost in Electronica” by George Will.  The article they both wrote about talked about the thought processes of men, and their great ability to become easily bored and distracted.  After Nick and Brendan presented, we had Connor M present a PLN.  His PLN was a free choice PLN, in which he read an article called “One Proud Uncle” by Abmin.   In this article, he explained, Abmin talks about how we are focused on receiving a good grade, instead of focusing on learning.  This article said that school needs to be about kids’ learning, rather than kids’ scoring.  When PLN presentations were complete, Mrs. Smith devoted the day to working on our essays.  All of the students in class worked hard to get some work done on their essays.  Overall, if you missed class today you missed some great presentations, and need to complete PLN 21 along with your “This I Believe” essay.

PLN17

In the article What if? by Karl Fisch, Fisch discusses how the use of cell phones and iPods during class has been banned at Arapahoe High School and he disagrees with this rule because he feels these devises can be used as tools to better kids learning. The ideas and concepts in the article matter to me, education, and the world. The ideas in the article matter to me because as a student of Arapahoe I have these rules imposed upon me. I know that these devises can be used inappropriately during school, but I also believe that with the consent of the teacher in question students should be allowed to use their devises to schedule homework and use tools on their phone such as a calculator. The ideas in the article matter to education because schools need to accept that cell phones and other mechanical devises can be used in educational and positive ways and then make their rules accordingly. The concepts in the article matter to the world because mechanical devices such as cell phones are becoming more widely and more frequently used. Therefore businesses, schools, and people will have to adapt and incorporate new technologies. The ideas and concepts in the article What if? by Karl Fisch matter to me, education, and the world.

November 15, 2010 Scribe

On this November morning we walked into Smith’s class and retrieved our laptops. Then when the bell rang Smith walked in the door and enthusiastically said, “Hello everybody!” Smith then told us all of our homework for Monday, which was our vocabulary card for the word benefactor, “This I Believe Essay”, and the Scopes Monkey Trial presentation which is due on Thursday. The class period was focused on the Scopes Monkey Trial and we used the class period to work on our presentation for the Scopes monkey Trial. We will be in groups and will choose one of these categories to present on: Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925, H L Mencken, William Jennings Bryan, Clarence Darrow, Charles Darwin, John Scopes, evolution vs. creationism: what can be taught?  For the presentation power point is not allowed so prezi.com is a tool that is good for making your presentation interesting, also use Glogster.com or Tagxedo.com. Wordle.net is also a good resource to make your presentation interesting and good. The presentation needs to include all of the points below and for bonus points exceed the expectation.

1.       Provide sufficient background and detail.

2.       Everyone in your group needs to present.

3.       Good presentation strategies.

4.       Teach do not lecture, it needs to be interesting.

5.       Document resources. (Works Cited) Go to easybib.com

For easybib.com copy the url address go back to easy and choose what you are citing and then figure out when the article was published, then hit create citation. Then save as a word document and then you can post or print for your presentation. Then we got together in our groups and worked on the Scopes Monkey Trial presentation for the rest of the class.

Scribe November 9th 2010

H.W.: study for test: characters, study guide, map.

Class:

Practiced vocabulary word: Benevolent, root Bene, meaning good, part of speech: adjective, meaning: intended for benefits rather that profit, antonym: maleficent, picture: Robin Hood giving money to poor people.

Read the Odyssey pg.562- pg.566

Took quiz on books 21, 22, 23.

PLN 17

What happens to us when we grow up? how does it connect to what we learn in school: math, english, history, etc...? In Mr. Fisch's "Can't We just Memorize A Formula To Plug Stuff Into?", Mr. Fisch used a quote talking about a child creating an amazing amount of things in ten minutes while his adult mother talks on the phone drinking coffee. I find that as we grow older some of the great ideas we had as kids get completed by other people first and we give up when we could keep going and improve on the original idea and complete our goal. Instead we give up and say, "It's already been done, what's left to add?" All we need to do is listen to what the inventor did wrong and we can do it right then we can be the person who didn't stop and completed our goal.Mr. Fisch goes on to talk about how yes we have to learn the equations that just require us to "plug in" what we need to and be done as well as the equations that take extra steps and extra work to complete. These different equations match lots of different world philosophies because it connects to how we do things and how we get things done as well as how we act and proceed through life.

Connor B Scribe 11/5/10

Hello, it is November 5, 2010 on this awesome Friday morning. It is awesome of course because it is almost the weekend but also today the ski resorts Keystone and Copper open! This is pretty sweet because it’s finally ski season. Today in class we start of my turning in our vocab cards for the word maleficent and also people turn in their other work that is due today because it is the end of 6 weeks. Things that are due are Pln’s up to 16, Google Earth Entries, essay redo’s (if you did them) and all the other missing work you have, if any. We also get back our group quizzes that we took in class yesterday for Book 10 in Homer’s The Odyssey. Today we worked in class on finishing up this work and doing the homework for this weekend. Homework for this weekend is to do Pln 17, and get reading finished for book 12 in The Odyssey and finish the study guide for book 12, if you didn’t finish in class.

Scribe 11/3/2010

The day started out like any other, music playing and going over our homework today which was to turn in the Google earth entries, by Friday everyone should be through PLN 16.  After that we reviewed our vocab word, Maleficent which means: to have a harmful or evil intent, make sure you have this for Friday. After that all we did was read from book 10 of the odyssey if you have your book it starts on page 513. We did finish book 10 so if you were gone you will need to read it and do the study guide that goes with it.

Connor B Scribe 11/1/10

It’s November 1, 2010, the day after Halloween and we shouldn’t have school today because it’s the day after Halloween, and people have probably stayed up late like I did, and other schools don’t have school today. On this rainy morning and we start off in Ms. Smith’s class by getting the new vocab word, maleficent. We then continue reading Homer’s epic, The Odyssey, out of the big brown book at page 490. After reading to the end of book nine we went over a little about what we read and some of the characters. We then got a sheet that we filled out with 12 of people’s names that will be partners for the partner quiz tomorrow over book nine of The Odyssey on page 486 in the big brown book. We then watched a video that was about what we just read. We didn’t finish the video before class ended so we had to stop it and leave for the rest of our day.