Changing Education Paradigms

In my T&L 565 class, The Introduction to Scholarly Inquiry course, we are required to watch this video on how this British gentleman explains very quickly, in an 11 minute colorful and artistic lecture from pictures, about not only the history, but problems that face American schools today. There are so many explanations that it takes a few times of watching the video to get his point. Overall though, I found it really quite interesting and thought provoking. Tell me what you think!http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U

To like or not to like, that is the question......

      It's been forever since I've been on here! Tells you how truly busy I've been since I've lasted posted on here. With three jobs and as a part time graduate student, I can never have a really quiet and boring moment.
      Grad school has been interesting. Really it has! Course it won't be the same like BYUI, but it's turning out pretty good so far. To make it easier, I'll break it down by class:

     *T&L 565: This is my Introduction to Scholarly Inquiry Course. Basically this is like a 101 course in college that preps you for what to expect and understand in a Masters Program. My instructor is from Peru and has been teaching at WSU (Pullman and Vancouver) for over 20 years and is the nicest person I have met! (Ok, one of the nicest which also includes you too! :)). One thing that I have liked about her is that she explains that this course is not meant for us to conform to her style and what she expects from us. Instead she said that this course is designed for us and it is our class and for our own benefit. I love hearing that! Our assignments have consisted of what's called "one-pagers" which are one page, APA style papers that are our responses to the articles, videos, blogs and entries that we read and observe that she has posted on WSU's internet website called Angel (like Blackboard). These articles so far have discussed Classroom Action Research and to the benefits to researching in the classroom. Not a whole lot of students are in my classroom, but those who are include full time teachers plus other substitute teachers just like me! Phew, glad I'm not alone on that one. :)

      *Special Education 301: Now this is an interesting course. I'm only saying this due to the fact with how it's conducted and not on what's taught (although that could come into play somehow lol). This class is conducted through teleconference communication, meaning that me and four other women sit in a minitature sized classroom and face this huge tv sorta stand that contains two tv's. There is a camera on top and another tv on a separate stand next to this two tv case. What happens is that the instructor (whose from the TriCities campus) pulls up on one of the two tv case stand and her powerpoints show up on the separate tv on the individual stand. The camera moves around and goes on each of us when we talk to the instructor. There are microphones on the tables that allow us to communicate with the professor (btw: those microphones are so sensitive, that you can drop a pen and the professor in TriCities would hear it. Yeep!). Overall this course includes three locations, Pullman, TriCities, and Vancouver. This is a general Special Education class where we go over the basics of what Special Education is, the disabilities described, the Federal laws mandated, etc. Basically, Special Education is an ENTIRE new language to learn and it will take time to get use to. Ok, my head just hurts thinking about it at the moment, but I know I will grow so much that it will all fit. :) I'll explain later what I've already learned which is a lot, like RTI, LRE, Referrels, IDEA, and so forth. See you're already confused... lol, j/k! :)

       Overall, I really love grad school, but it's getting some use to for two reasons: one, I've been out of school for a while and two, it's not an LDS school so getting use to the real world education will take some time again. Oh well, that's what education is for!