UEN Reflection

As I mentioned in last week’s blog, I am not planning on staying in Utah to teach, so I am not sure how UEN will be of use to me in other states. But in the interest of this assignment, I will answer as if I was going to stay.

I plan on using UEN in many ways in my future classroom. It is an invaluable tool for teachers who want a safe, educationally based place to go to get curriculum lesson ideas for their classrooms. There are fun lessons to integrate into your lesson plan, and a long list of helpful courses that you can take to make you a more effective teacher.

There is a part of the site called “K-12 Student Center” where students to go to get information for their classroom assignments, where they can play grade-based and educational interactive games, where they can get help on their homework, and it even has links to other important and helpful sites like Pioneer Library and the official NASA website. At the bottom of the main “K-12” page is a pull-down list of more sites or things of interest that a child can visit or watch, such as Bill Nye episodes and a site on “Kid’s Health”.

As I plan on teaching 1st to 3rd grade, it will be helpful for me to use UEN for many of my lessons and assignments, simply because of how children need new, interactive, and fun things to do to keep themselves interested. For me personally, the ready-to-use lesson plans in the “Core Curriculum” part of the site will be a lifesaver, especially the ones like the “Add It Up” lesson that requires students to work with beans to help them count. I feel lessons that include physical objects that the students can touch are important for their overall understanding of a subject.

UEN’s link to Pioneer Library is another tool that I will use in my classroom. The portal for students gives them access to many helpful links such as EBSCO (and through that, the “Searchasaurus” tool that gives children search browser much safer than Google), World Book Encyclopedia, SIRS Discoverer, and many other sites that are safe and fun to visit. And to tell the truth, the portal for instructors is no less enjoyable or safe. It was a little too fun for me, looking through it and getting ideas for my future classroom!

VIDEO

I highly agree with Sir Ken Robinson’s argument. I liked how he put the story about his son’s Nativity play, and how the little boy said “Frank sent this” instead of “Frankincense”. And he’s right. Children are not afraid to make mistakes. However, as we get older, that fear is instilled in us by our teachers, our parents, and even ourselves. I also agree with him when he said that creativity and the arts are being left by the wayside to make room for “real education” (meaning math, science, languages, excreta). I believe that the arts should be considered just as important as any other subject. Just think how many geniuses have come out of their early educations but are stifled by general expectation for them to become a professor or a corporate zombie in the upper levels of school? I can tell you—it’s a lot. And that is a pity.