Fran Mauney’s Blog
Hello Teachers! I have so much to say and I’m very excited about my new blog. I’ve been teaching 25 years and I love learning about the newest and greatest technology. I enjoy reading about the latest brain research as it relates to students’ learning and how being actively involved in the learning process is really the best way to teach young children. I’ve been reviewing the theorists and studying Piaget and Vygostky and I remember how reading about them in college helped shape my views about learners. I’m so thankful that I’ve had principals that allowed me to be creative with my students, let them create projects, star in plays, dance and exercise in the room, read stories to staff members, and have fun while learning. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this! I also am passionate about Howard Gardner’s Theories of Multiple Intelligences and how we as teachers should build on our students intelligences of Nature Smart, Body Smart, Math Smart, Picture Smart, People Smart, Self Smart, Word Smart and Music Smart. It’s too bad that most teachers concentrate and teach to the Word Smart students and expect everyone to learn like that……taking notes, sitting quietly, no collaboration,etc… I also firmly believe in cooperative learning and building teamwork in a classroom. Technology is one of the ways that I teach my students to work together as they share ideas and help each other with games, strategies, how to locate web sites.
August 27th, 2008 at 10:54 am
I wonder how/if technology smart works into Gardner’s theory. Here’s a startling fact I recently came across–we are preparing students today for jobs that do not yet exist. Makes teaching and learning how to use technology all that more important.
August 27th, 2008 at 8:49 pm
I wonder if Technology Smart will be a new intelligence that will be added to the other intelligences, or is it a culmination of the other intelligences? I’m learning about a new software program by scientific learning called Fast Forword. It trains the brain to hear sounds, and stimulates different parts of the brain by playing games. There is a component called Reading Assistant that I tried last Friday and it was incredible. The program used science and social studies articles to help students with reading comprehension and fluency. Students wear headphones with a microphone and read to the computer. If they miss a word, it lights up and they try again. It will tell you the definition of the word on the side of the page. It also asks you comprehension questions after each paragraph and page. The questions were not easy. They had to read the passage 2 or 3 times, then they took a quiz and were awarded points for their fluency and tests. It was an individualized running record with help from the computer. Quite Powerful! http://www.scilearn.com I believe is the website. The program I did was for middle and high school.
February 23rd, 2009 at 9:50 pm
[...] work together as a team and share our students’ successes with each other. Communicate using blogs and wikis and lead in-services at your grade level meetings, faculty meetings and local [...]
February 23rd, 2009 at 9:58 pm
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