The Answer

All I can think of this week is channelling Alan Iverson. "Practice?! We're talkin' 'bout practice?!" The things we did in class last week were incredibly helpful. I don't know if it'll show completely on the final, but it's good to get a hands on experience with this stuff. I almost view the final as an extension of this practice. As I'm sure I won't be any good at any of this for quite some time. This is just one of those skills that isn't going to develop immediately. Without doing this over and over again, there's just no way to get good at it. So, I guess here's to the next round of practice, even though this is for the grade, I'm still thinking "Not a game. Not a game. We're talkin' 'bout practice."

5/17

This week I’ve been trying to get my head around the Educational and Supervisory Platform assignment and I’m not getting anywhere. I don’t really understand what areas I’m supposed to be addressing, and without that base level of understanding I can’t really move forward, so I guess that’s something bad, and also a fact. I’m stuck and need a push in the right direction. Hopefully I’ll be able to get that at class this week. I have no basis for this statement other than paranoia, but I had to miss class last week and I’m sure that everything was explained then and if I’d been there this would all be going much smoother. As an observation, I’m amazed that with a 29 page syllabus there’s something that isn’t spelled out enough for me to grasp it immediately. I can’t figure if this is a failing in the syllabus or in my ability to comprehend it.

This Week

So, it looks like I missed my post last week. I didn't even realize until I sat down to do this one. Sorry to all those looking forward to it. I know it must have left a gaping hole in your week.

So, when it comes to the video from last week and all the different methods of classroom observation, I keep coming back to the same thought. Selective Verbatum is by far the most comprehensive method to ge tthe full picture for what is going on in a classroom. You can take that full transcript and when you examine it later you can come up with all the information you can get from all of the other methods combined, at least in large part. The only problem with it is getting everything. The video tape isn't, at least to my mind a viable choice, as it is pretty obvious and it can change behaviors, at least a little bit, but mostly it just can't visually catch everything, and it isn't designed to catch the audio as well as an audio recorder. If you can put tape recorder or an ipod on your desk you can get full audio quality and you can then focus, whilie you are in the room on visually observing what is going on and take notes on that. When you put those two things together afterward you cna create a complete picture and draw from that any information you, or the teacher, are looking for.