Brian Crosby's video "Back to the Future" was very interesting to see. He teaches a set of students through 4th, 5th, and 6th grade. Of course some will move and come in and out, but I am assuming most stay essentially the same. The students he teaches, more than 90%, are second language learners. The students are also children of poverty.
In Brian Crosby's class, he has one computer for every student. He goes into a couple of the projects that he does, and the students response. Instead of testing the students on why the class did the project and the outcome, he will have each student blog about the project. The students will embed the video on the project and talk about why the project works.
One of the projects the class did is send a balloon into the earth's atmosphere. Mr. Crosby had the students write a story as if they were the balloon. They embedded pictures taken from the camera attacked to the balloon, and pictures taken from the launch.
Active learning is Mr. Crosby's main teaching thought, much like Dr. Strange's thought process. I have said many times that I disliked this thought process for the first part of this semester. It took me a couple weeks to get use to this idea of rather than asking the teacher what to do or having the teacher tell me exactly what to do, I had to figure it out for myself. It was mind blowing to me and honestly, has changed my outlook on learning.
Mr. Crosby's students look excited and wanting to learn in all of his videos. In the times I would shadow teachers, the second language learners never looked like that way. They looked bored, and when called on to answer a question, they 80% of the time did not know it or need help to understand what the question was asking. Which I though was understandable, because they were second language learners. Although I have not seen Mr. Crosby's students when called upon but active learning did them like it has done to me then they are doing fantastic in their classes.
Another thing I like about Mr. Crosby is that he teaches through activities. I am a hands on type of girl. I guess I learn better than way. I learn and want to teach by the motto of "Teach me; I'll forget. Show me; I'll remember. Involve me; I'll understand." It actually is a Chinese proverb. I have a feeling Mr. Crosby goes by it too.
The first thing that anyone watching "A Vision of Students Today" that is a student in any college or university at least in the US that is "I Know!" The 200 students at Kansas State helped to form what was to be said in this video that ranged from "18% of my teacher know my name", "I complete 49% of the assigned reading", "I will spend 3 1/2 hours a day online", "I will be in $20,000 in debt after graduation". This video did not just mention all the things that the teachers, students, or the colleges and universities are doing wrong, but what is happening in a whole.
I think that this video is a dramatic message to teachers and administrators. First, the thing that I think a great deal of college student will be going through is that debt. I understand some of the thing that a college student has to pay for, yet some are a little much. I am not going into specifics on that subject. I know that I as a college student do not read all of my assignments. I do not think any college student could and get all their work done. Also there are some teachers who still give us busy work, which I do not understand. The reason for busy work in the grade schools was literally to keep the students busy, yet we, college students, have a lot of other work more than likey to do for that class as well. So we could just work on that big project at the end of the semester. I am not talking about this or any class I have this semester. I actually love all my teac
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