Alice

The past couple of classes, we have been using a program called Alice that is a programming program. Alice is an easier way to learn how to program with its drag and drop technique. The program does have some issues with how the objects move, but it is a lot of fun to use. I am concerned that students would get frustrated because it takes a lot of time for a small outcome. I don't know if I would use this in the regular classroom, but I can see it being used in one of the computer classes.

Educational Societies?

So, as a theatre teacher, I suppose I could join an educational society based on English or reading since that is a major aspect of theatre, someone has to read the script. :) However, I do not think that an English/reading society would majorly benefit me or my students. For now, I will stick to joining the National Parent Teachers Association. Being a part of the PTA is a really good way to help open up lines of communication between the students' parents/guardians and the school. The PTA also helps to get educational bills and laws passed, help parents to form a learning environment, as well as a safe environment, at home, and help with anything else that makes decisions regarding the education and well-being of children.

Receiving Feedback

When receiving feedback from people, I like the feedback to be both verbal and written. I get more out of a person when they are verbally giving me feedback because I can focus on nonverbal indicators as well as their voice. I also like written feedback because I can keep referring to it whenever I want to. I mostly appreciate written feedback whenever I am working on a project and can use the written feedback while editing the project.

Multiple Intelligence

Multiple intelligences is a good way to find out the way a student learns best. The assessment is very simple and takes about 5-10 minutes. A teacher can easily give her students the assessment at the beginning of the school year and then use those scores to be able to teach the students in the way that they learn best. Also, multiple intelligences allow students to see that they are smart in at least one area, and that everyone struggles with something.
What I found interesting is that today I took the multiple intelligence test for the second time and my scores had changed. When I first took the test last year, I scored my highest in linguistic and my next highest was intrapersonal. Today, my linguistic was still the highest; however, my second highest had changed to interpersonal with musical and intrapersonal at a tie and not to far back. I still scored fairly low in spatial, nature, and logic/math. Maybe my low spatial score is why I am clumsy. ;)

Response to "Blogs in the Theatre Classroom"

In response to my post earlier this week on using blogs within a theatre classroom, I have come up with some new ideas for the use of blogs. I can use blogs in order to help my students increase their problem solving abilities while introducing them to common problems within theatre and the hierarchy of theatricians. I can start out with simple problems for the students to solve, such as where to find a particular tool and a creative but safe way to use the tool, to more complex problems. The complex problems would involve a variety of variables that can effect the outcome of the issue. For example, you are a stage manager for a theatre's production of William Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream." The set designer and the light designer are having issues with each other's design. The lighting designer does not like the set paint colors because they do not look good with his lighting choices, and the set designer believes that the lighting designer is lighting the wrong parts of the set. To further complicate things, neither designer's design really matches the vision of the director. As the stage manager, how do solve this problem and who do you go to for help with solving this issue?
Having students problem solve within a blog helps them to open up with their ideas because they do not have to speak aloud within the classroom and they can respond within their own time frame and take as long as the need to solve the problems, because problem solving is about 95% of a theatricians job.

So with using a blog, I'm a bit like John Watson in BBC's Sherlock. It's a bit of a find out as I go along. I have never had a blog before, mostly it was because I felt like I did not have a reason to create a blog. We'll see how this blog goes. :)

Blogs in the Theatre Classroom

As a theatre teacher, I will be around technology for the entire school day. Lights, sounds, set designs, show research, costume making, etc. all depend on some sort of technology to be produced. While I know about these technologies, I have never really paid a thought to any sort of technology dealing with teaching my students. Throughout the week and a half of this class, I have already come up with ways to use social media within a theatre classroom. For this post, I will expound upon using blogs within the theatre classroom. Blogs can be used with anonymous names as a way to help students open up and communicate freely as in Dr. Woods-Wilson's study within the Web 2.0 textbook. It would also be an interesting way to open up communication between my students and theatre professionals throughout the world. With a setup like either one of the examples, the students would have to make a minimum number of original posts and responses a week. The students would be graded on a rubric scale with emphasis to writing structure, grammar, and post content. Grading the students on writing structure and grammar will. hopefully, help to increase the students' literacy, something that all teachers are being pushed to work on. With these activities, the goal would be to learn how to effectively communicate as well as to learn about the theatre world through their peers' eyes and through the professional world of theatre. Their posts and the, hopefully, increasing complexity of the students' communication will show that they are learning about the world of theatre as well as how to effectively communicate using proper English language and grammar.