C4T#2

The teacher I was assigned for my second C4T is Mr. Karl Fisch. "He has been a teacher for many years and now is a director of technology at a high school(Karl Fisch, About Me, The Fischbowl)."
The first post I commented on is one about reflective blogs in Algebra. Karl Fisch gave his students a writing/blog assignment their first day of class. This assignment was about setting goals for the semester. The three types of goals they were to set were: 1. A goal related to the class (Algebra) 2. A goal related to their semester in high school altogether and 3. A goal related to something outside of school. Then at the end of his post he encouraged his viewers to take a look at his students goals for this assignment. So I went and looked at some of his students goals they were pretty realistic goals they can achieve if working hard. I commented on this post stating that I was a student at the University of South Alabama and am currently enrolled in EDM310. I told him I think this is a great way to kick off the semester or the beginning of a new class with the kids making goals for themselves. It gives them something to work toward and see if they can accomplish their goals. I believe if more teachers gave this assignment out in the beginning of a semester it would give the teachers a better understanding of their students and see what they're willing to try and accomplish.

The second post I commented on was very interesting to me. This post was about a homework assignment his daughter Abby brought home. The assignment was one where she was assigned a certain country and had to find "interesting and relevant" facts about her country. Her country she was assigned was the Bermuda Islands. Mr. Fisch helped his daughter find some facts from websites they looked at pictures of Bermuda and also looked up its location on Google Maps. Mr. Fisch then states " Now, at this point, it's an okay if not particularly engaging assignment and, again, I don't know where the teacher/class is going next with this." Then he asks his daughter "if she would want to try and talk to someone in Bermuda and ask them some questions." Abby agreed, so Mr. Fisch sent a tweet out saying "My daughter is researching the Bermuda Islands for social studies. Looking for 10 specific, relevant facts. Anyone from Bermuda out there?" Within in a couple of minutes he had a reply from someone suggesting another person that actually lives in Bermuda. Then a few minutes later they got a reply from the person that was suggested(@Bermyguy). @Bermyguy asked "what do you need to know." Mr. Fisch and @Bermyguy agreed to a Skype conversation the next day. Mr. Fisch's daughter thought about some questions to ask Shannon (@Bermyguy) for the next days Skype. In this Skype conversation, which was posted as a video on Mr. Fisch's blog also in this post, Abby got to see what Shannon's house looked and sounded like and learned some very interesting facts. "Did you know that in Bermuda they collect their rain water for all their water needs?" So after talking/Skyping with Shannon, Mr.Fisch and Abby were talking about the how they use the rain water and Abby said "Wow, they must get a lot of rain." So when thinking back to the whole assignment I believe that actually skyping with Shannon had a bigger impact on Abby than finding her facts mainly from websites and seeing still pictures of Bermuda. It's great that others would take the time to help with a school assignment like this one! I think it was great for them to share the experience and I told him that I thought it was a great suggestion for the teacher.