Week+11+Reflection

 =Week 11 Reflection = This past week was particularly difficult for me. I did sit down and talk with a second grade teacher who moved here from ALA Charter School in Spanish Fork. I did not do this submission timely.

The week started out Monday with a phone call from my mother-in-law to my home where my husband was getting ready for work. I was, as usual, already at work and getting ready to go outside and help with unloading children. She informed my husband that there had been a sudden, unexpected downturn in her husband's health. Although he had been diagnosed with Alzteimers and Prostate Cancer, he had been doing fairly well. Due to an overly aggressive, unnecessary treatment of an infection, he had gotten dehydrated and unable to eat because he had no bacteria left to digest food. He had been in the emergency room on Sunday night and Grandma was unable to wake him on Monday morning.

My husband left Tuesday morning for the 8 hour drive to his parents and the week was spent trying to take care of a family that was very concerned and wanted to know what would happen next. Finally, on Friday evening, about 8 PM, Rex passed away. Saturday, his widow declared her intent to stick to the Monday funeral schedule and we were all thrown into a massive effort to make our way to Idaho for the funeral. I am home now and very grateful that we were able to have a funeral and a gathering of all the family we could. I am finding that there are still loose emotional ends that I must deal with.

But on the brighter side of things. What I did last week was prepare a power point presentation for the Elementary School Teachers about UTIPS. UTIPS is the program built on the internet for All Utah school teachers (public, including charter school) with the goal of putting all testing, assignments and any other assessment of the students on the internet. The intent was that the teachers will have it in place for their class curriculum that did not change each year. This is meant to allow the teachers to put more focus on preparing for and focusing on their students. It is meant to free the teachers from spending time grading, assessing and record keeping in any way that a computer can do the work.

This year, there was a new teacher hired for the second grade who had taught at ALA before coming here. When I was instructing the new teachers at the beginning of the year about UTIPS, she showed me her page from ALA. I was impressed. She had used the UTIPS site to compile a large number of websites her students could go to to expand their learning experience. She had links to lots of very good websites. Some were math problems that gave students more opportunity to develop in math. There were advanced puzzles and science activities. There were links to Magic School Bus websites that are related to subjects that 2nd grade studies.

When Ms. Smith wants the students to use a web page link that instructs on a subject they are studying, she publishes that media to her public page and instructs the students on how to find that page. I am hoping to help the teachers develop this part of their UTIPS pages this year.

In the process, Ms. Smith talked about the experience of working at and leaving ALA. Our discussion brought up several issues that I am concerned about at this time.

For millennium, teachers read to students from scrolls or tablets and had the students write on various types of material. Eventually paper replaced any other instrument for the students to write on and books replaced scrolls. Some time after that, the pencil became the standard, most commonly used instrument for students to write with. I think one of the most post powerful changes that took place is the invention of a board that the teacher could write on for the whole class to see and be instructed from at the same time. This tool, called a chalkboard, changed how a teacher taught. It changed the relationship of the teacher to the students. It made mass education possible. For the first time, students could see when they wrote down their teacher's instructions incorrectly and receive immediate feed back from their peers as a consequence.

A similar thing is now happening with the entrance of the internet into the classroom. For the first time, mass education meets with individual needs. The use of the internet by each student to meet their own needs while working within the teacher's expectation. I think the internet, like the chalkboard, is currently a hit and miss thing now. There have been several other efforts to meet the individual needs of students. However, the internet is beginning to show that it can incorporate nearly all accomodations.

This in an interesting phenomenon to be a part of. I have watched it develop from the first computer program that I wrote for the LDS Welfare Program while I was a student at BYU in 1980. The Biology Department had obtained one of the first Apple PCs on campus and were exploring its uses in Agriculture as well as others fields. I built a program and entered the data so that the user of the APPLE could know at any time, the yield averages of any grain in any part of the USA. As with this example, of one of the first uses of personal computers was to manipulate data. They began as machines used to calculate difficult equations. Gradually they developed from equation calculators to data manipulators to data storage and word processing to communication networking tools to educational tools to complete sources of education. They have become a tool that extends the whole world of education to anyone who wishes to participate.

In the world of unlimited computer access, any limitation to education can be overcome. The one exception to that statement might be the limitation of mind capacity. However, I do not believe that will be true for long. I see computers being used by SPED students to an even greater extent than the top performing students just because the computer takes care of all the details they would loose track of without a computer.

The reason it is important to me to understand the past, is because we are faced with a future that is uncertain. This is forever true. We never know how things will turn out. So we have to try to pin down things that are certain. Here are some I can think of: 1. There is an economy in all things. 2. As time passes, progress happens. 3. The passage of time is progress. 4. The main role of parents, then teachers, then employers is to channel the flow of time or progress. 5. Teachers who are today struggling to learn how to use the internet will soon be replaced by teachers well versed in the uses of the internet in the classroom. Each teacher will eventually move into that group of techno supported teachers or move out of teaching. I am sure blackboard paint was expensive and difficult to get when first made available. Students used slate boards that cracked easily. Someone figured out how to paint a board so that it resembled a 'slate'. I am sure it was by trial and error that the community learned to supply the teacher with a properly smoothed board to paint with the blackboard paint. Eventually they learned to purchase professionally prepared boards. Eventually, paper and pencil became cheap enought to replace the student's slate and chalk. A metal board became the standard backing for the teacher's chalkboard providing the ability to use magnets to hold up the paper print outs from computers. 6. The chalkboard is a standard piece of equipment in every classroom. Computers will change education as chalkboards did. Computers are already changing the standard chalk board. 7. In a set number of years, student computers and smart boards will be standard equipment in every classroom. 8. The number of years it takes to bring the computer to every student in the classroom will depend on the education of the parents. When the parents expect to walk into a classroom and see a computer at every child's desk, just as they expect to see a chalkboard on the wall, then we will begin to see mass education move from raising good soilders and factory workers to raising thinkers. The question will then be, is the teacher professional enough to train the children to also be doers who get up from their desks and engage in physical activity stimulated by their thoughts. 9. No matter what changes in the classroom or the home, nothing will replace the value of a child learning to work hard physically as well as mentally. Every child has this fundamental and basic need. Every child needs to figure out that they can work well on their own, being self motivated, and work with others, being a team member. 10. There is no replacement for human interaction.