David Theune

David Theune presented so many ideas that I would love to incorporate into my classroom. He seems like a really enthusiastic teacher that continually tries to think of ways to benefit his students. The thing that I liked most about Mr. Theune was that he is an innovator in the field of teaching. He doesn't stick to the classic playbook for teachers, and I appreciate that.

While Mr. Theune teaches English the core principals of teaching that he is trying to get across are relevant in all domains. He explains how students are more motivated when they have an audience. This makes sense because when students know that people will see their work then they will make it their best work. Also, he talks about having real life purposes for assignments helps the students get more involved in projects and assignments. I think these two ideas go hand in hand because a lot of times having an audience and a real life purposes are the same thing. When I think about this concept in terms of teaching Spanish, I think it would be really cool to have the students teach younger students in their district some Spanish. This way students have an audience and a real life purpose.

Another part of Mr. Theune's presentation that I loved was how he talked about community. I find it truly inspirational that he is taking real issues from the school and raising awareness about them. He also gets his students involved in this, like when he co-authored a book with one of his students about bullying. Not only is he raising awareness, but he is also getting students involved in the process. I would love to do something like this in my classroom as well. I could tie in culture and getting involved in the community, by doing a project that involves the Hispanic population in the community.

Overall, I liked the different approach to teaching that Mr. Theune uses. He thinks about what the students need first. He does not do the same thing year after year with his students, but adapts his lessons and projects to grow with his students.

Connections Across Disciplines

We had to create lesson plans around the debate of Bring Your Own Technology (BYOD) in the classroom. My group decided to make our lesson plan revolve around the students debating the issue in Spanish. We made the assignment very literal by bringing the prompt itself into the lesson plan, so it was interesting to read other groups lesson plans that had the same prompt, but very different objectives.

The lesson plan that I looked at mainly was made for a History class made by Jimmy, Paul, and Carl. They employed using many different types of technology including YouTube, Evernote, and Google blogs. I thought that this was really clever to show students how technology in the classroom could be really useful. I think the technology that they chose to use was practical and would not distract students in class. That being said, it might get difficult in school districts where not all students can afford a laptop or tablet to bring into class; the standards might have to be broadened to phones or other devices.

I thought a very interesting feature of their lesson plan was that they had students relate history to the present day. I think it is really important to do this in history classes, so I really appreciated this aspect. Also, I really enjoyed that they used activism in the 1920's and then had the students relate how they could use technology today to be an activist for their issue of choice. I think it is a wise ides to show students how the internet can be used for good, and this is a way to show students how they can express themselves on the internet in a productive way.

Something that would be a nice addition to this lesson plan, is just generally teaching the students how to be respectful on the internet. I think a major problem in society is that people abuse the internet, and use it to be hateful towards people anonymously. It would be nice, that while teaching content by using technology, we could also show students how to use it properly. It could be a great time to instill appropriate codes of ethics for using the internet.