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It is not about teaching; it is about learning

Ken Messersmith
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Ken Messersmith's Discussions

What do you plan to do that is new this fall?
4 Replies

Started this discussion. Last reply by Ken Messersmith Sep 9, 2009.

Today's teenagers
2 Replies

Started this discussion. Last reply by John Moloney Sep 15, 2009.

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Ken Messersmith

Jan 27, 2012
Ken Messersmith commented on Erin VanDeWalle's blog post Erin's Finally Blogging--Have the Aliens Landed??
"You asked about how easy it is to set up a Ning network. It used to be very easy and anyone could set up a network at no cost. The sites were supported by ads that appeared on your page but they didn't take up much space and didn't really…"
Jun 22, 2011
Ken Messersmith commented on Shannon Cole's blog post Google Tools
"I read about a teacher who set up a Google site for her elementary classroom after she had parents tell her that her students didn't talk much at home about what was going on in the classroom. She started ending each day with a 5 minute wrap up…"
Feb 25, 2011
Ken Messersmith commented on Michelle Adler's blog post Blog=Never Stop Learning
"I love your 1000 awesome things idea. It would be good therapy for all of us to make that list."
Feb 25, 2011
Ken Messersmith commented on Beth Johnson's blog post Buscando blogs
"Another good educational video site is WatchKnow.org. It is a site that indexes videos on the Web by topic and grade level. It is being built upon the same theory as Wikipedia. Teachers can create an account and add links to the videos they find.…"
Feb 24, 2011
Ken Messersmith commented on Trish Heins's blog post Following My Favorite Blogs
"I also found the "Flipping Classrooms" blog to be interesting. It makes a lot of sense. I am just completed reading a book by Mike Schmoker titled "Focus" where he argues that we don't do enough of having students read in…"
Feb 15, 2011
Ken Messersmith and Debra A Heithold are now friends
Feb 6, 2011
Ken Messersmith commented on Ken Messersmith's blog post I am changing the way I talk about teaching
"John. Maybe we need something like what is happening in Egypt. Could teachers and students take over a school peacefully and make it into something they could be proudto own?"
Feb 6, 2011

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Ken Messersmith's Blog

40th Anniversary in the Teaching Profession

Today is a milestone for me. It is the 40th anniversary of my first day as a teacher after completing my education at the University of Nebraska and becoming certified as a high school Vocational Agriculture teacher. I am sure I was much less nervous about walking in to my class this morning than I was on that first day of teaching in St. Paul, Nebraska on January 25, 1971. I am also quite sure that I was better prepared this morning than I was on that first day.



Much has changed…

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Posted on January 25, 2011 at 7:52am — 2 Comments

Do we have the schools that we want?

We had two professors, Dr. Joel Anderson and Dr. Haroon Kharem, from the State University of New York (SUNY) on campus yesterday to speak as a part of our Martin Luther King observances. These men both grew up in New York City and had to survive the gangs, inferior schools, etc. that existed in their neighborhoods. In spite of these odds, both men have earned PhD's and are prolific scholars in the areas of education and government policy with regard to schools. They wrote a book titled, "…

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Posted on January 19, 2011 at 9:53am — 3 Comments

Adding a hyperlink to your blog

A hyperlink has two parts. One part is the words you want your reader to click on to follow the link and the second part is the URL of the page you want to go to when the link is clicked. Here is how to create a hyperlink.



1. Type in the words you want to use as the hyperlink.

2. Select the icon that looks like two chain links from the blog edit window.

3. Paste in the URL of the page to which you want to link.…



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Posted on October 2, 2009 at 7:30am

Google search tips

I found this video to be very informative about how to be more effective at putting together Google searches.

Posted on September 29, 2009 at 3:08pm — 2 Comments

Should lectures be banned?

A good friend and colleague stopped by my office a couple of times today. He was not enthused about a lecture he was going to give today and was having serious doubts whether he could deliver it without inducing a coma in his students.



He teaches two sections of the same class. One of the sections is online and the other is a traditional face-to-face class. Much of the content of the course is written down in a textbook that students are required to read. He does not lecture to his… Continue

Posted on September 22, 2009 at 10:30pm — 3 Comments

Comment Wall (8 comments)

At 2:07pm on February 14, 2008, Dennis Potthoff said…
Ken,

Thanks for doing this. Are you inviting members of our cohorts--present and past--to join this group?
At 2:38pm on February 14, 2008, Barb Mohrman said…
Hi Ken,

Things are good but hectic as always. We continue to work on our intervention strategies with students. There is much work to do! How are the new cohorts doing?
At 3:36pm on February 14, 2008, Dennis Potthoff said…
Ken,

I think we can find lists and check out ESU email addresses. This would be fun, I think.
At 8:39pm on September 12, 2009, John Moloney said…
I'm having deja vu, but I think I posted something similar to this elsewhere.

Oh, well. I going to attempt to provide as many different technologies based experiences to my students as I can in an environment that is strictly intranet based. It is my genuine hope that within the classroom I can engage student pairs, to option to use any one of many approaches to "present" to their peers, the parts of the required textbook concepts they would option to develop. Given hardware and component restrictions, I will still provide a the stock in trade items I have on the same topic(s), so that idle time can be filled, while waiting for equipment to come available. It will best be described as a work in evolution.
At 10:34pm on January 1, 2011, John Moloney said…

Hope 2011 is a good one for you. Haven't been back to the ning in a while and certainly miss some of the activity. Judging by the short list either some have just moved on or have given up the ghost. Oh well, to each their own. Glad to see the opportunity is still to be had at UNK.

John,

At 7:23pm on January 12, 2011, John Moloney said…

I saw your commment here as well as a similar one on Fireside Learning (which you might want to visit to see comments I posted there). I set up my own "ning" a while back, but did not see it worth pursuing, as my "following" was too small and now Pearson has wipe all trace of it away. There are a lot of other alternatives out there for the small potato people like myself and until I can find a "key" to really get it kick started, I'll wati and see how

 http://i-actualize.blogspot.com/ and http://i-actualize.weebly.com/ go for me. I'm even developing similar items for my students as they only have intranet (no real internet experience) by creating similar activities.

 

Thanks for reserving a spot for me within the limited numbers you have as I plan to contribute as often as I can and continue to follow the course of educational thought and development. Teaching is a passion of mine and the ground is fertile in this ning as much as it is anywhere else on the web. In fact, if this is the less traveled road, I'll probably stay on it well past say graduation in the Instructional Technology if that's okay with you.

 

John,

At 9:42pm on January 13, 2011, John Moloney said…
  Ivory Tower not withstanding (in Kearney...really!), I remember hearing that the opposite of idealism is fatalism. I don't think any person truly devoted to academic disciplines would survive or persist very lone if they were fatalistic. At least I would hope not.

John,

At 9:43pm on January 13, 2011, John Moloney said…
Oops, forgot to mention...idealism is often inspirational! ;-)

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