Author: Austin Hoey

Cyber bullying has become a huge issue especially over the past decade, and have negative impacts on people on many level. Several definitions have been used to define cyberbullying. Bullying has been defined as an intentional threat or act to willingly harm another person. Cyber bullying has been defined as “willful and repeated harm inflicted through the use of computers, cell phones, and other electronic devices”(Nixon, 2014). Other devices that can be used include; email, instant messaging, texts, blogs, websites, and other online devices.Cyber bullying also involves using electronic media to sexually harass people through insinuating sexual acts, photos, of disturbing messages.Due to the advancement in technology over the years, cyberbullying has become more of an issue to resolve. As a future educator, students will encounter cyberbullying at school on social networking, phones, computers, and other technology. Teachers, faculty, parents, and other adults, must be accountable to supervise, restrain, and discipline when cyberbullying occurs.

 

There were three significant scholarly articles that I found appropriate for this subject: “Risk factors for involvement in cyber bullying,” “The impact of cyberbullying on adolescent health,” and also “The Psychological Impact of Cyberbullying.”

In the article, “Risky factors for involvement in cyberbullying,” conducted a study on a large and diverse sample of middle and high school students who completed a self reporting questionnaire during one of their classes. The purpose was to inspect how frequently students are getting cyberbullied (victims, bullies, and bully-victims) and those not being bullied. The study also showed relationships of cyber bullying with categories such as; gender, age, technology use, parental involvement, and safety. The study showed that over 30% of students were involved in cyberbullying, whether it was being a victim or perpetrator. Roughly 25% of student have also reported of being both the victim and the perpetrator within the last 3 months of the study. Students that were involved also had a correlation with spending more time on their electronics, giving passwords to their friends, and also had more violence toward their peers. They discovered that students are first off, greatly involved in cyberbullying. Males were more like to be the “bully-victims,” taken into consideration were the hours per day on electronics and giving away their passwords also. (Mishna, 2017)

In the article; “The Psychological Impact of Cyberbullying,” we will begin to dig a little deeper as to what happens psychologically. Cyberbullying is an increasing concern for both parents and schools. An extremely high number of children are on some form of online device at any given time during the day or night. In a survey given, it was reported that of 12-17 year old children surveyed 94% of them go online from home and 77% are online at school. Of those reporting, 32% have been harassed, cyber bullied, or have been contacted by a stranger. The dangers continue for young people; due to an estimated 50,000 sexual predators being on line at any given time of the day or night.  Incredibly, a whopping 1 in 5 children have reported being solicited for sex, with 25% of them never reporting it to their parents.(Will and Clayburn, 2011). The numbers are alarming and will undoubtedly continue to grow without educating both parents and children on the dangers of online messaging. These behaviors can be harmful and even fatal to those being bullied. Courts have strict laws in place for schools to obey. Laws state that “ school personnel have a duty to create, implement, and consistently enforce policy which assists in the prevention, investigation, and elimination of sexual discrimination and harassment.” ( Will and Clayburn, 2011).

 

Using the scholarly, peer reviewed journal articles with the powerpoints and scenario activity done in class, I have a great understanding for how serious cyber bullying really is. As a future educator, I plan on implementing some of the lessons I have learned about cyber bullying into my lessons. In module 6, cyberbullying is defined as, “willful and repeated harm inflicted through the use of computers, cell phones, and other electronic devices.” For one of our in class activities, we got into groups and talked about different scenarios that could happen and that have happened. I think it is very important to have a strong classroom conversation, as our class did, to have students become aware of how incidents could occur. The sad part about cyberbullying is that it is only going to get worse as the technology keeps growing, the best thing we can do as educators is help prevent it.

In conclusion, cyberbullying is an unfortunate and ever increasing problem among people of all ages. These articles discussed findings that are both alarming and concerning among our young people. Schools have an increasing responsibility to help keep our children safe from the dangers of online messaging. Parents and children need to become more educated on the dangers and uses of online devices. Both need to be vigil by informing those in charge of online bullying or sexual solicitation. Working together can help decrease the number of people affected by those that choose to use on line devices in deviant and unlawful ways.

References

Mishna. (n.d.). Risk factors for involvement in cyber bullying: Victims, bullies and bully–victims. Retrieved May 10, 2017, from http://libproxy.uww.edu:2089/science/article/pii/S0190740911003343

Nixon, C. L. (2014). Current perspectives: the impact of cyberbullying on adolescent health. Retrieved May 10, 2017, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4126576/

Will, & Clayburn. (2011). The Psychological Impact of Cyber Bullying. Retrieved May 10, 2017, from https://www.universitybusiness.com/article/psychological-impact-cyber-bullying

 

There are certainly many of characteristics that can be listed to go along with being a good and effective teacher. I believe that it takes not only a wide variety of good characteristics but also being able to fix and correct methods that have not worked in the past. I have had the same definition since the day we started, but I have gained a lot of knowledge as to how to be an effective teacher such as; organization, communication with other teachers, enthusiasm, working ahead and much more. I also think teachers should avoid more rather than do more such as; turning class into lectures, calling out students, not teaching with clear objectives, the list goes on and on.

There is one standard in particular that this class has helped me with and that is teachers communicating well (standard 6). Collaboration, team planning, and being generally on the same page is very crucial in having success of being an educator. It isn’t one dimensional; it is teamwork that helps the students achieve academic excellence. The most significant thing that I learned this semester that will help me in my future career is being my own person and not a “cookie cutter.” A cookie cutter is a teacher that does what the stereotypical teacher is supposed to do and doesn’t do original acts. I think creativity for the teacher and especially the students are crucial to have in the classroom. Creativity helps students figure out what makes them learn in the best way and other methods that could accomplish their overall goal.

What I will do to prepare myself for the job market will be using an ePortfolio. I believe that portfolios will be effective for me because I can add to it as I go along and I can build off of ideas I have had in the past. Portfolios also help with instruction, professional development, assessment, and research. I am able to view it at anytime and let anybody who wants to share ideas also look at it. Teachers are a team and sharing ideas only help each other out, which is what teachers should do more of.​

As the school year is winding down to the last couple of weeks I couldn’t think of a better blog post to write about, motivation. As I am trying to motivate myself I am also thinking how I could teach my motivation to one of my future students. In my career, Physical education, I plan on motivating students by rewarding them with a fun game whether it’s by class, by week, or by unit. In class, we talked about establishing routines, rules, and consequences for students. If the standards are established from day one, the students should understand if they do anything less there will be a consequence. Backward design is defined as a method of designing educational curriculum by setting goals before choosing instructional methods and forms of assessment. Backward design in Physical Education is important to have a set realistic goal for individuals rather than the class as a whole. If a student can make a set goal for his/her self and prepare for the end of the semester, they will accomplish a lot more than trying to think of it all at once. Continue reading Module 5

Differences are something everybody will have to deal with in their careers. So being a teacher, I personally will have a wide variety of differences in my classroom. According to the textbook, multicultural education promotes fairness in the schooling for all students (Woolfork, 2014). There are many differences that I am assuming that I will encounter such as differences in abilities, gender, race, ethnicity, religion and so on. These differences don’t just include students, but parents and colleagues I will work with.

I think a very important cultural difference is student’s races and that it is okay that somebody is of a different race. Stereotypes are used a lot and come into factors on first opinions unfortunately. I think since schools are becoming more diverse, it is very important to understand different backgrounds of individuals. As a future educator, I could help students become informed on others by making different races work together and get to know each other better. A key aspect is to learn as much as I can as an educator about differences among other races.

A few examples of what can be done in the classroom:

* Get to know each student individually. Learn their names and how to pronounce them correctly.

* Divide the class into smaller groups, each with the responsibility of reporting on the material from the viewpoint of a particular minority group.

* Ask students to locate cultural or even discriminatory content in textbooks or other materials.

* Ask for each student’s thoughts about the subject, acknowledging the statement of each as it is made. This lets students know from the very beginning that their thoughts have a place in the classroom, that there are differences, and that the differences will be tolerated.

* Make it safe for everyone to voice their views by accepting all views as worthy of consideration. Don’t permit scapegoat of any student or any view. Team up with a student who is alone out on a limb. (Salley, 2003)

These are a few key aspects to consider when there is diversity in the classroom. A teacher should not make anything obvious that a students is different in any way. Every student should be treated equally, no exceptions. As a future educator, I plan on taking these ideas into action so all kids feel the same as the next.

Salley, R. (2003). ENCOURAGING STUDENTS IN A RACIALLY DIVERSE CLASSROOM. Retrieved April 5, 2017, from http://www.odec.umd.edu/CD/FACILITI/RACETIPS.PDF

Woolfolk, A. (2014). Educational Psychology: Active Learning Edition.Pearson.

 

The big difference between behaviorist and cognitive learning perspectives is that behaviorism is more about explaining things through ones outward behavior or something that can be observed. Cognitivism is more based around cognitive processes like decision making and memory. These two perspectives are important when a teacher is deciding the methods of teaching styles are working or not. The students will have different learning behaviors between students and grades, so it is important as an educator to use these methods to best fit your class. It is important to apply these perspectives of learning to instruction when we mentioned in class about Albert Bandura’s theory that environmental, personal, and behavior factors all flow together from one to the other. Whats good about this theory is that it really defines what kind of behavior will be seen in the classroom. A reason why one student may act very good compared to really bad is that their parents may be more nurturing rather than neglecting. What’s important about this is that just because the good student is grown up to be a good person, it would be good to understand why the misbehaving kid is bad. My dad is a teacher, and he has told me a number of times of when kids that are less fortunate at home acted out. Then he has realized that a lot of the kids didn’t have a father figure, so he became a positive role model and made a connection, and believe it or not, he has turned a lot of kids around in a positive direction.

In the classroom, the role of the teacher is to understand how well your students progress and what makes learning easy to them. One teaching method year after year will not be good enough, different students learn in different ways each years and it is the teachers job to figure that out. The views that reside within my own beliefs in regards to the role of teacher, peers, and students is social cognitive. I really like the idea of students learning after each other and communicating. Sometimes a student may not understand a correct way of doing an assignment or activity, so working together may help improve their study habits and communication. What is important to me though is that since I personally like that method the best for me, other students may not like that idea. So when I personally teach, I plan on trying different methods and theories to figure out which environment the students like the best.

Chew, S. (2011, August 16). How to Get the Most Out of Studying: Part 3 of 5, “Cognitive Principles for Optimizing Learning”. Retrieved March 14, 2017

Woolfolk, A. (2014). Educational Psychology: Active Learning Edition. Pearson.

Dewer, G., Dr. (2013, March). The authoritative parenting style: Warmth, rationality, and high standards.

 

In today’s blog post I will be talking about child development and how it correlates with teaching methods. A crucial part of teaching is understanding where a class stands in their development. This means that the teacher should notice if the class is understanding the material or not. One year a class may excel and the next year they could have much slower students. What we learned in class was if the students had too much of a challenge or not enough of a challenge, they wouldn’t focus as much in their classes. If an educator believes that the students are capable of doing the work that is assigned to them, the best thing to do is believe in the students and stay positive. I saw a cognitive test online for different levels of elementary level shown in the link below. As we learned from the readings and class, you could also use a method like Piaget’s theory.

students.http://tests.com/practice/COGAT-Practice-Test

In our module 2 online activity we had to talk about television families. I noticed that the family I talked about, the Simpsons, were influenced heavily by their family and friends. Bart tried to act up in front of his classmates, but when he did something wrong, he felt remorse because of his mother, Marge. Lisa, on the other hand, doesn’t want to turn out like the rest of her family so she studies very hard to prepare for her future. This happens in real life too, for example, myself. My dad is a teacher so he understands the importance of staying on top of your school work so me and my siblings have always done well academically.

There are many benefits and few limitations to Piaget’s and Bronfenbrenner’s theories. In Piaget’s theory, you could help students with instructional strategies, social skills, improved understanding of cognitive development, etc. The only negative part I noticed was that in a cognitive test like his, different students possess abilities at an earlier age than others. In Bronfenbrenner’s theory, this is how certain things in a student’s life can affect how their life inside and outside of school works. These theories are standardized tests, which should see the levels your students are at or should be at. The negative parts about testings like these are that students abilities are different than others at every age. For example, when I took the ACT in high school, I didn’t know some of the material the first time I took it, but I took it again after I took a math class and scored much higher. If a teacher is looking for a general idea on where the class is at, I think these tests should be okay to base them off of, but teachers should also know not to completely base information off of tests like these ones.

(2014, September 11). Retrieved February 22, 2017, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wj5QlG_EHtg

Hoy, A. W. (2017). Educational psychology: active learning edition. Boston: Pearson

 

It is almost a necessity for educators and researchers to communicate in the education field. This could really help educators determine what is useful and what is not useful methods to teach inside the classroom. If the researcher and educator each exchange ideas, it could change a big process on how they teach. A teacher is going to have a new set of students every year, so it is crucial to find out what you can do in the future by changing different teaching methods in a positive direction. I don’t necessarily think that teachers need to be researchers or researchers need to be teachers, but I do think they need to at least exchange thoughts and ideas of what they can change for the improvement of education. For information literacy, this could be very helpful by analyzing and evaluating different resources for the best efficiency. What is great about information literacy is that we have great library data bases with reliable sources that we can take advantage of. As a future educator, I plan on taking advantage of libraries and databases to better myself as a teacher and to further my knowledge.

Assigning or not assigning homework is a big dispute in schools today. I think that homework should be talked about by teachers so students don’t get an overload. I plan on teaching Physical Education and I know schools are trying to interpret homework more in this subject so this is very important to me. For homework, I believe that educators should do their best to make it more fun for the students, such as reading a book a kid wants to read instead of a class book. Sometimes I felt like, and still feel that homework is sometime done just to get it over with. I take more time and precision when I don’t have as many assignments. I would like to find more studies in the future on researchers opinions on when homework could be good or bad.

From the articles I found, they all seemed to somehow say giving homework sparingly is good for the students, but seems to be worse when there is an abundance. Another important part about giving homework is giving appropriate feedback back to the students so they know what to fix for next time. From a personal standpoint, I have been stressed plenty of times from homework overload. I think every now and then an assignment should be to play an outside activity for an hour so students can have some free time. To sum it up, research should help teachers decide what kind of homework, if any, to give to students in the classroom in each subject. Research is a great way for students and teachers to reach their full potential in knowledge by looking at scholarly articles. Since I know what it’s like being a student, I am going to plan on taking these ideas into consideration for when I become an educator in the near future.

Mitchell, M., Barton, G. V., & Stanne, K. (2000). The role of homework in helping students meet physical education goals. Journal of Physical Education, Recreation & Dance, 71(5), 30–34. doi:10.1080/07303084.2000.10605142

Novak, B. E., & Lynott, F. J. (2015). Homework in physical education: Benefits and implementation. Strategies, 28(1), 22–26. doi:10.1080/08924562.2014.980873

Should physical educators make greater use of homework? (2005). Journal of Physical Education, Recreation & Dance, 76(2), 15-18. doi:10.1080/07303084.2005.106073

Ours, E. S., & Scrabis-Fletcher, K. A. (2013). Implementing Active Homework in Secondary Physical Education. Strategies, 26(6), 23-27. doi:10.1080/08924562.2013.839433

Should students be given homework? (n.d.). Retrieved February 06, 2017, from http://www.debate.org/opinions/should-students-be-given-homework

C. (2009, February 20). Retrieved February 06, 2017, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFp9Ll11vSg

I remember seeing this clip on CBS and I thought it was a good relation to what we are currently talking about in class. It’s about a child who believes teachers assigning homework should be considered slavery and should stay in the schools.

 

My name is Austin Hoey and I am pursuing a degree in Physical Education with a minor in Health Education and a license in Adapted Physical Education. It really doesn’t matter at first which grade level I teach, but I am hoping to get a job that I can coach baseball as well. When I get bored of that I plan on getting my masters degree in Athletic Administration. I want to be an athletic director hopefully locally but I will settle for whatever job I can get. The reason why I chose this path was from my previous teachers that were in my field of study. They were the most fun teachers and coaches that I have every had. I was very close with them and they influenced me a lot as a kid growing up so I felt like I could influence others like I was. In my opinion, I feel a good teacher is someone that will be remembered in a positive way and will influence a student inside and outside of the classroom. In the video clips I saw, video clip 1 looked way more effective for the obvious reason that he made the class way more interesting than the teacher in video clip 2. I know it’s very exaggerated but when I think of a good teacher, I remember the teachers like the one in the first video. One of my teachers in high school told me, “if you don’t make the subject enjoyable, you won’t learn a thing.” I actually was confused at first because I always got A’s and B’s regardless if I liked the class or not, so I asked him about it. I then took it as, “if you don’t make the subject enjoyable, you won’t RETAIN a thing.” I take that as a life lesson with everything I do which is to just have fun. I hope I can impact a student like he did for me because that comment was nothing to him and probably forgot he said it but I took it with me.

Welcome to Blogs.uww.edu. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!