Tuesday, September 30, 2014

Blog Assignment #7

The weaknesses I have when it comes to the ever evolving world of education are very obvious to me. It all starts and ends with technology. I had a large gap in between high school and college where I did not have to utilize any technology outside of entertainment purposes. With the rate at which technology becomes obsolete these days, I was left in the proverbial dust. I do, however, believe that I will be able to overcome this through initiative and self-improvement. My time in the military taught me how to adapt and overcome in situations where I was outmatched. I don't believe this to be any different. I will just have to take the opportunities put before me and get back on track.

Stan Marsh from Southpark with text I learned something today

How to Make An Audio QR Code

This was a very interesting tutorial in how to make QR Codes. It was really a simple process utilizing free websites. I would need to watch it a few more times and probably do 3 or 4 myself before feeling proficient, but it seems to be a fairly easy process to master.

iPad in the Reading Center

This is a really cool video about utilizing an iPad's recording function to help with Kindergarten students' reading. They record themselves reading and then listen to it back while following along in the book. The cool part is that it is interactive for the student. The 5 year olds are using the iPads and making a game out of reading. It's another way that technology is making learning fun. I think this just shows how we can use technology to interest the students into learning. The same type of interactive learning is taking place in the Poplet as a Center and Alabama Virtual Library videos. The students get to utilize the iPads to learn. Not only are they learning the subject matter, but they are learning how to use technology to their benefit. I have a 5 year old at home and he loves to do ANYTHING on our iPad. We have downloaded a few educational apps for him and he love it. This is the same thing. They are just as happy to be learning as they are to be playing Angry Birds.

Mrs. Shirley’s 1st Grade Class: How to use and build a Board in DE for a Project Based Lesson

This video blew my mind a little bit. The project the young girl did was extensive in its use of technology, yet ever so simple. Everything she needed was right there and she didn't even have to leave her seat to finish the project! I think this is a great illustration of how technology is making learning advance at a much faster rate. With all the information so readily available, it is easier to master a concept/subject and move on. Students at a much younger age are learning how to do research and complete projects faster.

Students Sharing Board Builder Videos: Part I and Part II

These are two videos of students sharing some of their virtual projects. It goes along the same lines as the Poplet and like videos above. Something that hit me while watching these and not the others was that the students get to show off their work. My mother has a box in the attic of all my old grade school projects, but these students can let anyone with the internet see their projects. Also, it gives the teacher an avenue to give good praise to students by publishing their projects on YouTube.

Using iMovie and AVL in Kindergarten

Having just completed my very first book trailer, I found this video enthralling. That book trailer took me hours! And these kids can make one and spend 90 minutes editing it. I think that this gives great credence to the "learned helplessness" theories out there. If we would just give our students the chance to knock our socks off, they just might do it. I marvel at the things that my 3 and 5 year olds can do when I leave them to their own intuition. Gone are the days of telling a young student what they can and can't learn in certain grades. We really have turned into supervisors of learning more than teachers of facts. And as the We All Become Learners video points out, sometimes the students will be teaching us how to use some of these things. Today's world of education requires us to stay learners for our entire careers.

Sunday, September 28, 2014

Project #8: Book Trailer

This is my Book Trailer for The Avengers: The S.H.I.E.L.D. Files. The author is Scott Peterson.

Friday, September 26, 2014

Blog Assignment #6

Anthony Capps is a 3rd Grade teacher in Baldwin County. He and Dr. Strange discussed a great number of things concerning our profession. Anthony gave great insight as a new teacher as to what we can expect. The links to each video are posted below with a small summary of what I thought and learned from each one. It was a great series. I highly suggest clicking the links!

Albert Einstein at a chalk board


Project Based Learning Part 1: Experiences of a 3rd Grade Teacher

The biggest thing I take away from this interview is the emphasis on assuring the project that is chosen is one the kids will enjoy. Now, I'm not masochistic enough to intentionally choose projects I know the students will hate, but I also have the mentality that my reasons are more important than the students' enjoyment. What I mean is that I would try to pick an enjoyable project, but if I found a project that had great learning opportunity I would choose that one. I think that the lessons learned should be prioritized over the enjoyment of learning. I never really thought about the students learning more because of enjoyment of the process, even though another, less fun, project might offer more knowledge. I see now that the benefit of the student enjoying the subject might make them take initiative to learn more on their own.

Project Based Learning Part 2: Experiences of a 3rd Grade Teacher

"[The students] know what they're doing and they know why they're doing it." When Anthony said this, it struck a HUGE chord within me. I think that this is such an important aspect of teaching. Sometimes all a student needs is a reason to do something and "because I said so" or "because it'll be graded" aren't motivating enough to get quality work. I have actually found myself doing some if this is EDM310. I really didn't like or understand our first few assignments, but now I'm starting to see the method behind the madness. It makes putting in the work much easier.

iCurio

I had never heard of iCurio before watching this video. It really sounds like an amazing tool for students! I think it's great that they can learn these digital organization skills early on in their academic careers. I just learned about Google Drive a few weeks ago in this class. I use it all the time now and wish it had been around (or at least I had known about it) years ago. Anthony made a great point about students having to live life by the bell schedule. Having iCurio to save their work and allow them to pick right back up is a big advantage.

Discovery Education

This is another really cool tool for teachers to have in their belts. I really agree with Dr. Strange's point of us now being "Listener-Watchers." Being able to couple an audio/visual aid to go along with the text subject matter is extremely valuable. Especially if it is one from a subject matter expert. I won't always know about everything that I'm teaching, or that a student chooses to learn about, but having a tool where an expert can be easily found is pretty awesome.

The Anthony-Strange list of Tips for Teachers Part 1

Anthony's first point about letting "your work become a fun experience for you" is so right on the money. Our profession is such an ever evolving craft that we will always be a step behind. If we stop to catch our breath, research and technology will have passed us by. It is essential that we stay current on the most effective and efficient ways to educate our students. We have such a great and demanding responsibility of ensuring our students are educated well that we simply cannot afford to be lazy in the perfection of our craft. Learning how to teach does not end upon graduation from South, it just starts a new chapter.

Don't Teach Tech - Use It

This is the first time I have disagreed with Anthony so far in this series, although I don't totally disagree with him. I think his process of scaffolding and implementing something new each week is great. I WOULD, however, teach the technology first. I think a formal lecture with hands on learning would be beneficial before letting the students dive in and learn from their own mistakes. I think the greatest amount of learning will come from the scaffolding and trial-and-error method of which Anthony was speaking, but I think a good knowledge base of the product would be beneficial, too.

Additional Thoughts About Lessons

I was a little lost because I have not had a class on Lesson Plans yet, but this made my head hurt a little. It seems that lesson plans will not be one of the more fun aspects of the job!

Wednesday, September 24, 2014

C4K Summary for September

Logan's blog is really quite impressive for a 10 year old. He, like most boys, seems to have a passion for sports. He had a slide show that listed a sport which began with each letter of the alphabet. I commented on the slide show and how I was impressed he found a sport for all the letters. I talked about how excited I was for football season here in America and asked him which sport was his favorite. It would be kind of cool to start a dialogue with a kid halfway across the world.

Amelia's blog is a little less refined than the other one I viewed. Though, she only has two posts, so the sample size is much smaller. She also hasn't posted since this April. Her post was just a quick recap of a typical 5th grade girl's weekend. Her and a friend had a sleepover, ran through the sprinklers, ate junk food, played Monopoly, etc. I asked her about her weekend and told her about playing Monopoly with my kids. She seems like a really fun little girl. She also talked eating "milk tart." I had never heard of that before, so I did a Google search. You're welcome.

Jillian's blog was very confusing to read at first. Her post was about the "100 word challenge" her class was doing. They had to write a story including 5 given words and the story had to be written using only 100 words. She wrote about an orange crocodile. I had to go back to her teacher's blog to get the context of this unusual story. She used the word "lugubrious" in her story on her own accord. I had to go look it up. It means looking or sounding sad and dismal. I think it's pretty cool that I was able to learn something from this young girl's blog.

Monday, September 15, 2014

Project #3 Presentation

Blog Assignment #5

collage of text with various social networking names

Personal Learning Network (PLN)

Reading the instructions for this blog post is the first time I have ever heard of a "Personal Learning Network." A PLN s the set of people and tools that you can call upon for help, consultation, collaboration, or other assistance. I've actually had a PLN for well over the last 5 years. Many of us have a social network through Facebook or Twitter, but I actually had to utilize a social learning network during my time as a Marine Corps Recruiter. The other recruiters in my area and myself were required to interact and share job related experiences and learning opportunities with each other through a shared drive in Microsoft Outlook. Now, we didn't call it PLN and I didn't even know that that is what we were doing, but it was exactly that. We would share sales techniques, links to leads and interesting articles pertaining to our sectors, among many other things. It was specifically a network to learn more about our jobs and be constantly improving ourselves. That is exactly what a PLN should be.

This same sort of network will be a very valuable asset as a future teacher. It's an amazing age that we live in today. I would have never thought it possible to have real time communication with colleagues anywhere in the world, just 10 years ago. Now, the abundance of peer communication and sharing of knowledge is just a few clicks away. Not utilizing an asset such as this would be like not spending free money that expired at the end of the day.

Symbaloo logo

A PLN can be utilized using any media outlet. I'm a member of several groups on Facebook that deal with multiple different topics. I follow a multitude of sports writers on Twitter (obviously I'm not learning academically there, but I am constantly learning about the current activities in the sports world). It really only takes a group of like individuals to find a medium through which they can share knowledge and experiences. I just created an account on Symabaloo to start my own PLN. You can check it out here.

When I eventually get my first teaching job I will probably try to join some already established PLNs. I also will keep one of my own. So far, I really like the Symbaloo site. I can keep both professional and pleasure activities from one home page. I like that I won't have to have two different sites or pages to conduct my life. This is probably one of the cooler things I've been able to experience so far in EDM310. I'm looking forward to exploring into it much further.

Sunday, September 14, 2014

C4T #1

I was assigned to read a great blog called See Mary Teach. Mary is an English teacher and has been blogging since 2009. Her blog is very extensive and contains a multitude of posts ranging on all ends of the spectrum of subjects.

The first post I commented on was a brief synopsis of a multigenre project she did with her high schoolers. I was interested in the way she instituted "to-do" lists to help get some of her students organized. She also used a kind of depressing and sorrowful literary passage to evoke an emotional response and discussion from her students. I really liked that technique and appreciated its boldness. I think it is important to push students outside of their normal comfort zones to illicit profound and new thoughts from them.

The second post was a very short post in which she links a New York Times article which discusses the decline of the English major. Her post a simple short comment on the article and a link to it. The article had a section calling on educators to do a better job in explaining the purpose of the humanities to students. This resonated with me and I commented on that to Mary. We, as educators, need to be able to sell our knowledge as something beneficial to prospective students. We can't just hope they sign up to, or are mandated to attend, our classes.

Thursday, September 11, 2014

Project #15: Search Engines

text reading I wonder what is better google yahoo or bing wait i will google it

The following is my review on 8 separate search engines. But, wait! Where's Google?! Why don't you have Google in your reviews?! I know, I know. Google is the mother of all things on the internet and must be included, right? Well, our instructions are to not use Google in this review. Though, in reality, does anyone really need a review for Google? Don't we all know that it's the best? I'll compare the others by using Google as the gold standard. Alright, moving on to the other 8 search engines.

Yahoo!

Everyone with a working knowledge of the internet should be fairly familiar with Yahoo!. It actually was founded before Google. It works in the same way as Google. It has a search bar and you simply type in what you want. It has an auto-fill feature and displays results in the same format as Google. They are essentially clones of each other. Yahoo! can be used to search for just about anything and will yield good results. It is a solid competitor to Google.

Bing

Bing is probably the next best known engine. It is newer, having just been released at the end of last decade. It is very similar to Yahoo! and Google. It has the same type of search bar with auto-fill feature. It also has the same layout to display search results. Essentially, this is an equivalent of the other top engines previously mentioned. It has great results and is easy to navigate. One could use this engine to search for pretty much anything, as well.

Ask

Ask is another popular search engine, albeit less than the previous ones, with a pretty solid reputation. Modeled much like the others, it is very efficient. It has a "Q&A" section on the right hand column that prompts possible questions to whatever the search criteria was. I find this feature to be useful when searching for a specific answer to a question, not just information on a topic. It would have to be a simple question, as the answers provided don't go in depth.

SearchAll

SearchAll is a engine I have never heard of until about 5 minutes ago. It has a search bar, but it does not auto-fill. Which I found to be rather annoying. It displays the search results is the same basic way as a Google or Yahoo!. It has a related searches feature and a recent searches feature. This site isn't really ascetically pleasing. Not that that has anything to do with its capabilities, but in today's age it is important to please the eye. SearchAll is a lesser version of a search engine. One could find everything it could get from here, but in much better quality, on any of the above mentioned sites.

DogPile

DogPile is a search engine that provides results from Google and Yahoo!. It is has a related searches feature and "Are you looking for?" feature. It has the typical search bar, but it does not auto-fill. This site is more atheistically pleasing than SearchAll and seems to provide some higher quality search results. Yet, the results are all provided by Google and Yahoo!, so it would seem more logical to go to each of those sites first. DogPile is one of the search engines that will give you a link to whatever information you are trying to look for.

DuckDuckGo

DuckDuckGo is another search engine of which I had not heard. It is the better of the unknown ones about which I have written so far. It has an auto-fill feature in its search bar. It has a "news" feature at the top of the results page that links to recent articles containing the search topic. This is a really cool feature. This would be a great site to look up news on for a specific topic from multiple news sources at one time.

Lycos

Lycos is a search engine that yields results in the same fashion as some of the "big boys." It has a search bar, but does not auto-fill. It has a large database and appears to work very proficiently. It offers an image search section, much like Google, and is very compatible with most searches I tried. Lycos also opens up the chosen link in a new tab. I don't like this, but that's a personal preference. I would use this engine, but it would be at the bottom of my list.

WolframAlpha

This is another engine that I have never heard of before a few minutes ago. It markets itself as a "computational knowledge engine." I think that is the perfect description. It has a search bar with auto-fill function on its homepage, but that's where most of the similarities end. The search results don't provide links with mentions of the searched word or words, but with information pertaining to the searched word or words. It's really fascinating; I have yet to experience a site like this. When the search bar is given a general topic, such as "football", it returns multiple secondary search bars for more specific and related topics, such as "football player" or "football teams". This is an excellent site to get reliable information about any topic, not a site to find a site that has the information for which one is looking. This was, by far, the most interesting site I visited for this project.

Wednesday, September 10, 2014

Blog Assignment #4

Blue button with Ask Questions written on it

The Right Way to Ask Questions in the Classroom

Ben Johnson makes a great point in calling the question "Does everyone understand?" useless. Rarely will students ever admit to not understanding a concept, especially if no one else admits to not understanding either. No educator, worth his or her salt, would move on from a concept with a simple assurance from students that they understand. Educators ask questions of students to check for understanding. Asking these types of questions is a valuable tool for an educator to ascertain how well the students are grasping the knowledge presented before them. Another Strong point made by Johnson is that students tend to shut down if a question is directed at another student or if there are perpetual "always answers the questions" students present in the class. Educators must find a way to keep ALL students engaged in the class. He mentions the questioning strategies of Mary Budd Rowe, which seem to be useful eliminate the problems mentioned above.


Asking Questions to Improve Learning

This article is from The Teaching Center and covers strategies for asking good questions. The strategy I found to be the most helpful was the "avoid asking leading questions" one. I have always found open-ended questions to be the most thought provoking. A leading question doesn't leave much room for the student to explore their own thoughts.


Three Ways to Ask a Better Question

Dr. Maryellen Weimer wrote this blog. It's a pretty simple formula she has suggested. Prepare questions, play with questions, and preserve good questions. This is probably what most of us have been doing to start with, but never quantified as such. You should always prepare your questions beforehand. You should revise or "play" with the questions, so that they maximize potential in the classroom. You should always keep good questions to use again when the subject comes back around. If you are conscious of being a good questionnaire, then this is probably a system you were already using, maybe even subconsciously.


scientist Isidor Issac Rabi with his quote my mother made me a scientist without ever intending to every other Jewish mother in Brooklyn would ask her child after school so did you learn anything today but not my mother Izzy she would say did you ask a good question today that difference asking good questions made me become a scientist

Our Main focus as educators is to ensure our students understand the material we have been charged with teaching them. The best way for us to quantify their understanding is through examination. This is why we have tests, assign papers, give quizzes, etc. A questions is the most basic form of examination. The thing we need to know about asking questions to be a good teacher is what is the best question to ask to give our students the best possibility of exploring their own unique thoughts. We must formulate questions that drive students to think beyond the knowledge they heard in a lecture or read in a textbook. We must educate ourselves on how to ask the right questions to do just that.

Sunday, September 7, 2014

Blog Assignment #3

Political cartoon of scientist walking a gauntlet of other scientists with weapons

Peer reviewing or editing papers or works is always a stressful task. I worry about tact and hurting someone's feelings, I worry about not doing a good enough job, I worry about a lot of things. Being the person who is reviewed is never fun either. I do my best not to take it personally, but I think it must just be human nature to a certain level of offense when one is told they did something wrong. I very much appreciate the peer review process as a necessary part of the learning/writing process, but I still strongly dislike the whole thing.

After viewing the three videos What Is Peer Editing?, Peer Edit With Perfection Tutorial, and Writing Peer Review Top 10 Mistakes I have more understanding of the proper way to do things, now. I appreciated the 3 step process of Compliments, Suggestions, and Corrections. It is a much more structured way to approach a review than I have ever before implemented. I look forward to trying it out on the next review I have. The Top 10 Mistakes video was enlightening as well. I had not thought of some of the issues the kids brought to light. I know that I tend to be over-critical in my reviews and don't give enough compliments. I think that is one of the main things I should work on utilizing the techniques I learned watching the 3 videos.