Classroom Arrangement

Room Arrangement (Mrs. Gilbert's Class)




1. Use a room arrangement consistent with your instructional goals and activities.
Danita's classroom is set up this way I assume because there is no other way that all of these desks fit into her classroom. Unfortunately, her classroom is extremely small and she has to fit a lot of desks in there. Every desk is filled in every class.
2. Keep high traffic areas free of congestion.
All of the shelves, and laptop storage container are off to the sides of the classroom so students are not in the way of one another. The laptop storage container is right when you walk into the classroom. This is a good spot because students are often coming in to the class to get their charger or their computer while they are not even in Danita's class period at that time.
3. Be sure students are easily seen by the teacher.
Danita's desk is at the back of the class so she can always see what the students are doing on their laptops. Their laptops have to be facing her at all times, they can not turn them around. By putting her desk in the back of the classroom she is always able to see what they are doing.
4. Keep frequently used teaching materials and student supplies readily accessible.
Laptops, and books are all off to the side, not in the way of any of the students but always there for students to be able to retrieve.
5. Be certain students can easily see instructional presentations and displays.
The bulletin board, and projector are at the front of the classroom easily viewable for students to see.

Room Arrangement (My Classroom)



1. Use a room arrangement consistent with your instructional goals and activities.
A lot of the lesson plans are in groups, so I decided to keep the desks separated from one another, that way all desks are easily movable. Along with that, I added in student work tables that way they are not restricted to their desks.

2. Keep high traffic areas free of congestion.
I put the desks separated from eachother, but also away from the wall and storage unit for laptops because that seems to be what students would be having to get up to use the most.

3. Be sure students are easily seen by the teacher.
I kept my desk in the back of the class just like Danita's room because a lot of the projects I assigned are on their laptops and I want to make sure they are focusing on their projects and not something else.

4. Keep frequently used teaching materials and student supplies readily accessible.
The laptop storage container is right when you walk in to the classroom so students can get their laptops first thing when they walk in.

5. Be certain students can easily see instructional presentations and displays.
Students desks face the bulletin board, and projector, this is so we never have to move desks to view any presentations

Maine Memory Network

As a history concentration I love this website! Last year I came across it while researching what certain parts of Maine were like during the Great Depression and New Deal. I took a Great Depression and New Deal class, and this website was so helpful. I was able to find out what the major crops were in Franklin county, and all the specific details of the Great Depression in specific parts of Maine. It made my research paper a lot easier! I would definitely recommend this website to my students if they were assigned a research paper specifically on the history of Maine.

Copyright and Fair use

I decided to take the quiz first and then see the answers to test my knowledge on copyright and fair use. I assumed that I knew pretty well what was "ok" and what was not "ok." After taking the quiz I realized that I did not have as much knowledge as I thought. The quiz was compiled of statements that you answer true or false to. When you go to the answer sheet, it says whether or not the statement was true or false, and then explains why this was true or false. I got many questions incorrect, so this quiz was full of suprises for me!

1. The eighth statement stated: "A student film buff downloads a new release from a Taiwanese Web site to use for a humanities project. As long as the student gives credit to the sites from which he's downloaded material, this is covered under fair use." This suprised me because I assumed that it was ok to use this downloaded release as long as there was a citation showing that this video did not belong to this student.

2. The eleventh statement stated: "A teacher videotapes a rerun of Frontier House, the PBS reality show that profiles three modern families living as homesteaders from the 1880s did. In class, students edit themselves "into" the frontier and make fun of the spoiled family from California. This is fair use." I thought for sure that this was not legal because the students are changing the orignial videotapes into something that was insulting to the original video. Along with that they were using a majority of the videotapes with just their own alterations here and there.

3. The fourteenth statement stated: "On Back-to-School night, an elementary school offers child care for students' younger siblings. They put the kids in the library and show them Disney VHS tapes bought by the PTA. This is permissible." The only reason this really caught my eye was because it happens so often that I thought for sure it was ok, and it isn't! Which brings my attention to how people are not aware of what is legal and illegal when dealing with copyright and fair use.

4. The fifteenth statement stated: "A teacher makes a compilation of movie clips from various VHS tapes to use in his classroom as lesson starters. This is covered under fair use." I considered this legal because the teacher was using vhs tapes that were his, if they were clips from online I could see how that would be illegal, but until the answer gave an explanation why this was not allowed, I did not understand.

5. The sixteenth statement stated: "At a local electronics show, a teacher buys a machine that defeats the copy protection on DVDs, CD-ROMs, and just about everything else. She lets her students use it so they can incorporate clips from rented DVDs into their film genre projects. This is fair use." This just sounded silly to me because I did not even know that this machine existed, but that is pretty interesting and useful!

6. The seventeenth statement stated: "A number of students take digital pictures of local streets and businesses for their Web projects. These are permissible to post online." I did not think it was ok because of the businesses, but otherwise I can see why this is all legal.

How to help someone use a computer

"How to help someone use a computer" is a very resourceful article that gives useful advice on how educators can help their students with their computers and/or laptops. One piece of advice stuck out to me more than others because I was able to relate to how this student may feel if this was to happen. It states "they might be afraid that you're going to blame them for the problem. When we first started using laptops in the classroom in seventh grade, if I asked this certain teacher a question because I was stuck, they would come over to my computer and say something along the lines of "well you should not have clicked that and you shoudld do it this way." When a teacher said something similar to this, it made me feel like I could not do anything myself, and that there was only one right way to go about performing the task on the laptop. I will definitely keep in mind that I should not blame them right out of the for a technical difficulty on their laptop. Another thing that I am going to "have to tell myself" is "your primary goal is not to solve their problem. HYour primary goal is to help them become one notch more capable of solving their problems on their own. So it's okay if they take notes." I have a habit of going to help someone and then just fixing it for them myself because I know exactly how to do it. For example, if my fourteen year old sister is at home on her laptop and needs help with a powerpoint presentation, she will ask me how to do something, and I will just quickly do it for her, assuming she caught everything that I just did. I need to remember to walk the student through exactly how to go about fixing the issue that they have. One important rule that really caught my attention was "tell them to really read the messages, such as errors, that the computer generates." I have a bad habit of seeing something pop up and either pressing ok, cancel or the x button. I need to emphasize how important it is to read the messages so you know exactly what you are saying ok, cancel or x button to, otherwise you could unintentionally temporarily mess up your laptop!

This article will be very useful when going about working on our group projects revolving around technology in the classroom. The article gives many useful facts that we can incorporate in our presentation by giving specific examples of different facts and advice that the article offered.

Chapter 10: Going Beyond the Classroom

"Making connections with the world outside school addresses all these issues, and at the same time it usually helps students appreciate and value school more than they did before."(175) When you are able to connect what you are teaching in the classroom to activities that students participate in outside of school, they are going to be more interested in what you are talking about. For example, being able to relate what you are teaching to a sporting event, or even being able to talk about current events in relation to your class is going to keep them interested in what you are talking about. If you are talking about things that are currently on their minds, or things that they cannot relate to, you are not going to be able to keep their full attention. In agreement with Cushman's statement, if you put the time and effort into relating your material to the world outside of school, students are going to take school more seriously and actually enjoy school for other reasons than seeing their friends everyday, and playing on the sports teams.

Chapter 9: When Things Go Wrong

In Chapter 9 Cushman makes a good point referring to new teachers by saying "In their first year or two especially, teachers struggle to find the right balance between maintaining their authority and letting students know they care about them." (167). I found in my first week of practicum in the middle school that I did not say much to the students. I talked to them, and was nice, but I did not want to be overly nice and friendly because I wanted them to take me seriously. I was always available to them, and made sure they knew that if they needed help that I was there to answer any questions they had, but I was not asking them about things outside of what went on in school. By the third week, I was having more casual conversations with the students, asking them about their weekend, etc. I think that as long as you gradually show that you are interested in their lives then that's good, but if you initially just like act like you are their friend, they are not going to want to come to your class to learn they are going to come to your class to want to talk to you about what they did last weekend, and not take your class or learning seriously.

Chapter 8: Teaching Students Who Are Still Learning English

Fortunatley I have had a lot of experience working with students whose second or even third language is English. I was a volunteer my senior year in an intermediate ESL classroom. I was able to learn a lot about how to treat these types of students, and how to work with them. In Chapter 8 on page 154, Cushman says "Don't be afraid to let us use our own lnaguage as we figure things out." One thing I noticed in particular that the teacher did let these ESL students do was speak in their own languages with each other. Just because these students are learning how to speak English, does not mean that they should not be allowed to speak their native language. My Spanish teacher does not expect me to speak Spanish when I am being social with my friends, or when I am thinking to myself outloud, and that is how it should be. If I heard students in class speaking there native language I think it would catch me off guard at first, but I would want these students to be in their comfort level to learn, and if they are not allowed to speak the language that they know best, they are not going to be successful.