iPad Personalization

       I had always wanted to use an iPad for a while to see if I wanted to buy one for myself at some point.  I have an iPhone and iPod Touch so I am quite familiar with the operating system.  I do like the bigger screen on the iPads.  I feel that the picture is a lot clearer, but I didn't notice much of a change in the loading and processing feature between the iPad and iPhone.  The feature I liked most about the iPad is using annotation.  Being able to highlight, circle, and jots notes electronically on a PDF is a really cool feature.  An annoying aspect of the iPad was the wideness of the keyboard.  It made it very hard to hold and type at the same time.  I didn't always have the time to put it down and type and doing so while holding it proved difficult.  The battery life I found to be spectacular even running multiple apps all day.  I only found myself charging it once every three days or so and I used it heavily.  Overall, I didn't see enough differences besides shear size to convince me to buy one for myself.  Annotation isn't worth $500.

Chapter 2: Respect, Liking, Trust, and Fairness

In this chapter, it really jumped out to me that students have so many expectation of a teacher from the moment they walk in the classroom.  We as teacher have to get to know them as students and as individuals.  We need to reveal a little about ourselves to them too if we wish to get anything out of them that will be useful for us as educators to use while educating.

Teachers are expected to as the list states on page 35 "Let us know what to expect from you and from the class, know your material, push us to do our best- and push us equally, do your part, make sure everyone understands, grade us fairly, understand that we make mistakes, don't denigrate us, keep your biases to yourself, don't treat us like little kids, listen to what we think, care about what's going on with us, and don't betray our confidence."  Thats a lot for a teacher to process and practice all at once, but the teacher that care enough will make this all happen to better the students learning experience.

Chapter 1: Knowing Students Well

The part that jumped out at me is that you can learn a lot about a student by what they don't do just as much as what they do do.  I never thought to recognize what they are not doing to learn more about them.  

The amount of information a teacher can know about a student in order to make the classroom more comfortable really stood out as the theme to me in this chapter.  Learning about their hobbies, neighborhoods, and daily schedules make it much easier for a teacher to teach.