I have been fighting with my computer and Google Docs for a few weeks. If you go back and notice, my original project 14 didn't show up and neither did another post. Google Docs also deleted my project and kept deleting the work I did to fix it. I finally gave up and recorded a new project. The idea behind my project was to teach my mom, other current teachers, and future teachers how to create a classroom blog. My mom was sick from a bug going around through her school, so unfortunately I couldn't record myself teaching her. With this video, my mom and other teachers could view this.
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Project 15: Book Trailer Slowed Down
I decided to slow down my initial book trailer because the words went off of the screen a little too fast. Since book trailers are designed with younger children as the audience, teachers have to remember that it may be difficult for students to keep up with words that disappear fast.
Sunday, April 24, 2011
C4K #7, 8, 9, and 10 Summary
C4K #7: Tres Cosas Jueves
For my seventh comment for kids, I was assigned to the blog post, Tres Cosas Jueves, in Mr. McClung's World. According to the post, students were taking a break from their normal lessons to learn about a current event. Their current event was a debate about a newly passed bill taking place in Wisconsin. Accompanying the paragraph about their current event lesson was a CNN video about the debate. I told the class that I thought it was great they were learning about current events. I talked about how important I thought current events were. They shouldn't let their learning experience stop at school! Searching for and reading about current events at home is actually a lot of fun.
C4K #8: Charlotte T.
Next, I was assigned to Charlotte. Her class had just performed a dance to "Rockin' Around the Clock" in a school event. She had so much fun learning all the dance moves. She described the dance moves and their costumes. I checked the class blog to watch the video of their performance. They looked so great! They danced great and they all looked so nice in their 50's costumes. I was sure to tell Charlotte how great they did. I also told her that I could relate to her story. When I was in eighth grade, we had a few weeks to learn a special dance to show our whole school. It was a lot of fun!
C4K #9: Mrs. Yollis' Class Blog
When looking through Mrs. Yollis' Class Blog, I saw so many excellent posts. I commented on the blog post about the book the class was reading, Ramona Quimby, Age 8. I liked reading this post because it reminded me of my love for reading by myself and in a classroom. Reading a book in class was always the high point of my school day. In this particular blog post, they talked about chapter 3 of the story. Chapter three is about a fad in Ramona's school. At the end of the post, I was asked if I knew about a fad when I was growing up. I told Mrs. Yollis' class about the Pokemon fad that was present in my elementary school. Coincidentally, Pokemon has become very popular again. I told the class how great the entire blog and individual blog post was. Also, I talked about how I really enjoyed reading. I told them how reading in class was one of my favorite things about school.
C4K #10: Hannah
For my last comment, I was assigned to Hannah. In her blog post she talked about a really interesting Iranian celebration, Seezdah-Bedar. I had never heard of this celebration before, so I really enjoyed reading her post. She included pictures from her fun day at the park and a painting that depicts Seezdah-Bedar. Seezdah-Bedar is celebrated thirteen days after the Persian New Year. Basically, families get to spend all day out in the sun at parks or any other outdoor setting. The children play together, while the adults play cards or talk. They also got to eat a lot of good food and deserts. A big tradition that takes place during Seezdah-Bedar is the throwing of Sabzeh, sprouted wheat or lentils, into a flowing stream. Traditionally, it is thrown at the end of the picnic. They throw this into the flowing stream because it symbolizes sickness and problems. Doesn't this sound like such an amazing celebration? Hannah made her blog post very interactive by asking questions at the end. She asked if readers had heard of or celebrated Seezdah-Bedar, what they think of her tradition, and if readers have a tradition of their own that takes place outside. I told Hannah how great her post was. I had never heard of Seezdah-Bedar, but it sounded so interesting. I told her that Easter is a holiday that many people spend outside. My family would often have a picnic lunch with a bunch of people. The adults would spend time together, while the children searched for eggs or played together.
Blog Assignment 13
ALEX
ALEX, Alabama Learning Exchange, is a useful website for teachers. When you visit the page, you view a little introduction where what seems to be sun expands and shines in front of the word ALEX. You could think of it as a symbol of the resources you'll find when visiting ALEX. It's going to sound cheesy, but it's like ALEX is the light that will bring effective tools to improve your classroom. After viewing the introduction, visitors are brought to the home page with eight links. A visitor's clickable options are as follows: "Courses of Study", "Web Links", "Lesson Plans", "Search", "Personal Workspace", "Professional Learning", "Podcast Treasury", and "ALEXville". No matter which option you click, you will be provided with countless helpful resources.
Basically, ALEX is a website where teachers share lesson plans or other learning materials that they have used in their classroom before, found on the internet or in their school, or created on ALEX. Clicking on "Personal Workspace" allows teachers to create lesson plans and other learning materials to share. "Courses of Study" allows you to search through shared files by subject and grade level. "Lesson Plans" allows you to search only for shared lesson plans by subject and grade level. "Web Links" acts as a portal to beneficial web resources for teachers, administration, and students on other websites. "Podcast Treasury" provides podcasts published by teachers and organizations, such as the Exploreum. "Professional Learning" contains valuable information on grant opportunities, ALEX training opportunities, professional development opportunities, and how to best use internet tools in your classroom. They even had a section about Google, which we already know is very valuable. "Search" is a way for teachers to search through the entire ALEX database. Last, but not least, "ALEXville" is a type of professional learning community. It has news on local educational projects, news provided by ALEXville, and what seems to be a type of forum style community for teachers to join.
When I first started browsing ALEX, I was very impressed. I knew immediately that this would be a tool essential to my first few years of teaching. Also, it acted as a great conversation starter with my mom. I told her about our assignment and she discussed ALEX with me. She told me how beneficial it was to her in the beginning. The only reason she hasn't visited it in a while is because she is in her "groove". She told me that once some teachers have been teaching for a few years, they tend to start using the same learning materials. They slightly modify them each year, but they have a set plan. She isn't saying she'll never use ALEX again, but as of now she has a set plan. When she needs something new, she'll visit ALEX and search elsewhere. Like my mother, I definitely see myself using ALEX my first few years. I can even share it with people who are unaware of this beneficial site.
ACCESS Distance Learning
ACCESS, an acronym for Alabama Connecting Classrooms, Educators, and Students Statewide, is a learning initiative created by Bob Riley's Task Force on Distance Learning on November 1, 2004. This learning initiative is available to all Alabama public high school students. As stated on the website, Access provides "equal access to high quality instruction, an infrastructure that delivers quality learning opportunities, and greater equity for all Alabama public high school students through 21st century technology".
In the "Courses" section, the website offers information on graduation exams, Advanced Placement exams, and instructions for online courses. In the "Educators" section, administrators, teachers, and counselors can find ways to expand their school's course offerings and teach for ACCESS. ACCESS's "Resources" section has links to test prep, homework help, and other resources like ALEX. The "Student" section provides information for students and parents about the ACCESS program, exams, and courses.
To be honest, it took me a lot longer to figure out ACCESS compared to ALEX. I knew that I was looking at a tool for teachers, but I was also looking at a resource for students and parents. Some of the information is still being worked on, according to the website, but what is already there is quite valuable. I also thought it was wonderful that ACCESS contained information on ISTE, something I was introduced to by Beth Still.
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Blog Assignment 12
Choose Your Own Assignment
For those of you who have read my recent C4T Summary, my assignment will sound very familiar. The teacher I was previously assigned to was Justin Tarte. His blog is called Life of an Educator. Justin's blog was very inspirational. His words moved me and caused me to read more of his posts. Not only can he be an inspiration to current and future teachers, but he provides such valuable resources and highlights other useful blogs. I intend to visit Justin's blog often. I am an Educational Blogger... was a particular post that stood out to me and will also be apart of my assignment.
In Justin's post, he talks about his introduction to blogging and he talks about how important blogging has been to him. He lists all the ways that blogging has changed his life. My assignment is to list or write 1-2 paragraphs about how blogging has changed your life and how it can change your career. It's easier for Justin to talk about blogging pertaining to his career because he actually gets to do it, but students should already be able to see how it will change their future career by the assignments they have been completing. I think this assignment would be great for the middle or end of the semester. I think I speak for a majority of the students when I say, we didn't know just how much we would get from this class. We knew what blogging was and some of us might have even blogged before, but we didn't know the potential of these technological tools for our future classroom. If you were to assign this towards the middle of the semester it would be after the first few assignments. At this point students would have started realizing how powerful the technological tools were. If you were to assign it towards the end, then students could complete this assignment with full knowledge of everything in this class. It could really show what they learned. You could even broaden the topic. Instead of blogging, someone could talk about Google Docs or Twitter.
For my completion of this assignment, I will list how blogging has changed my life and will change my future career.
Even though I was just recently introduced to blogging, it has made such an impact in my life. Here is how:
- I have found a way to interact with some of my peers.
- I have met so many knowledgable teachers, that have inspired and taught me.
- As I blog more, I will hopefully inspire future teachers or other people around the world.
- I feel that blogging has helped me improve my writing skills and find my true writing style.
- My blogging has started to make an impact on others.
- I have helped my mother and her classroom by teaching her about classroom blogging.
- A classroom blog would help my future students improve their writing skills.
- Classroom blogging would allow my classroom to connect with other classrooms around the world.
- I could find thousands of creative projects for my classroom from teachers who share ideas on their blogs.
- My students could learn life lessons, such as respect and positive statements, from writing quality comments.
- Blogging could be a creative outlet for my students and myself.
Final Project Progress Report
The group for our final project is Brandon Caten, Brittni Sasser, and myself. We will be creating an original documentary about the USA Show Choir's perfomance at St. Elmo Elementary School. Brandon, as director of the USA Show Choir, was asked to help coordinate a performance at a PTA meeting. The Show Choir, including Brandon, will be singing and dancing to two very inspirational songs. Brittni and I will be recording their practices and interviewing Brandon, some students from Show Choir, and Anthony Capps. We will combine the footage we have with the footage of the actual performance to make a very interesting documentary. We chose this for our project because this will make a great impact on the children at the event. I know they will be so inspired by what they see. The USA Show Choir has already started practicing for this exciting event. In their practices, we have found ways to incorporate technology. It's so great that we are already using some things that we learned from this class.
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Blog Assignment 11
I love how Ms. Cassidy incorporates technology into the classroom. Honestly, I would like to use technology in every way she does. Through her classroom video and other assignments from EDM 310, I have seen the benefits that come from the bits of technology she uses. The first thing that I would like to include in my class is blogging. As many of the children said, it helps them write better. In my ideal classroom, I would have a class blog website. It would include my blog and an individual blog page for each student. The children's parents and the rest of the community could see all the great things that we are doing in my classroom. For example, when I was in elementary school we were required to buy a composition book to put a daily journal entry in. The entry was either discussing a topic of the teacher's choice or free writing. We would have to include an illustration. Since I will be introducing blogging to the classroom, my students can basically do what I did in my composition book using their blog.
I don't see myself running into a lot of problems. Right now, I could only think of two. There could be those days, like Sunday for me, where technology just fails. For example, computers could freeze or all of the projects you created could disappear. Moments like these could be teaching moments for the children. I could teach patience and a positive attitude until the problem is fixed. Also, I could teach children sharing. When the student is having a difficult problem with their computer, they can share with another student. This would be called cooperative learning. The only other problem that could possibly arise is cheating. There is an easy solution to this, that Ms. Cassidy talked about in her Skype interview. It is up to the teacher to ask for the content in a different way each year. I could assign the same video to watch, book to read, etc. I just have to ask my questions in different ways or ask for different things.
As I stated earlier, I see the techniques Ms. Cassidy uses to be very beneficial to her classroom. For this reason, I think it would be beneficial to my classroom. I already discussed this a bit, but blogging helps children write better. I expect students to work hard, but I don't expect them to be perfect. Blogging allows children to get positive feedback. Their parents, peers, or I could say how they could have written the sentence better (ie: grammar or spelling mistakes). The techniques Ms. Cassidy uses also teach valuable life skills, like sharing, communication, and collaboration. I had a DS and Nintendogs when I was little, but I never thought that they could be used as a learning tool. I would love to incorporate the games children love, like Ms. Cassidy did. They had to work together to make their puppy happy, but they also had to share the DS system in their groups. Another tool that used communication and collaboration skills was their wiki. I feel like I could go on for days about how great all of these tools are. I must say I learned about a lot of things that I could incorporate into my classroom.
Sunday, April 3, 2011
C4T#3 Summary Post
Blog Post 1: Let's Make A Difference
In this post Mr. Tarte lists ten ways a teacher make a difference in their school and classroom. The list consists of things that a teacher can do without being held back in any way. Mr. Tarte realizes that many people are hesitant about blogging and using Twitter because of certain situations. This is why he created a list that no matter what situation you are in you can make a difference. I found the list so inspirational. It included such things as "Praise a student for demonstrating an act of courage or high character to another student" and "Say 'hello' to as many students as possible and ask them how they are doing".
I replied by saying that this was a great list that anyone could perform. We must remember that every little thing we do counts. Students will often look up to their teacher like they look up to their parents. We need to show that we care and respect them by doing things on this list. We can also create great relationships with coworkers by some of the things on Mr. Tarte's list.
Blog Post 2: I am an Educational Blogger...
This was another great post by Mr. Tarte. In this post he discussed his introduction to blogging and the benefits he has attained thus far. His list is very similar to mine. To summarize his list, I would say educational blogging causes a teacher to inspire another teacher, improve their classroom, and become the best teacher they want to be. I hope to be a teacher like Mr. Tarte one day. His words have inspired me and caused me to reflect.
I told him that in my comment. I want to be in the shoes of the teachers' I have met in this class. They inspire each and everyone of the students in EDM 310 and so many others around the world. I hope to one day be like that. Maybe Dr. Strange will even assign my blog post to one of his students and I'll inspire this student just like Mr. Tarte has inspired me. I also told Mr. Tarte about my experience with blogging. At first, I was curious of what I would gain from blogging. I never expected this. I have enjoyed it so much and it has made me learn a lot.
I chose the picture for my blog because it is sometimes a struggle for teachers to start blogging. They are very hesitant because they are unaware of the benefits.
Blog Assignment 10
An Open Letter To Educators
Morgan's blog post on Dan Brown's video was very interesting. Also, it was very thought provoking and caused me to form three different comparisons. I compared Morgan's experience to mine, Morgan's experience to Dan's experience, and my experience to Dan's. After analyzing the comparisons I made, I realized that my experience and thoughts were very similar to Morgan's.
As Morgan puts it, I often feel cheated in our educational system. Like I said in my comment, I didn't fully realize this feeling of being cheated until setting foot in Dr. Strange's class. It's like the feeling was always there, but never fully present until Dr. Strange showed us what we have been enduring. I compare it to some kind of trance we are put into by the "institutionalized" school. Dr. Strange woke me up from that trance.
Another thing Morgan and I agree on is the fact that we wouldn't resort to the extremes that Dan did. I see that some parts of our education system are flawed, but I would never fully give up on it. Yes, these flaws are hurting our education but not all teachers are like that. I promise! The teachers I "meet" everyday in this class are living proof. Dr. Strange is living proof! You have to look close, but the teachers are there. These teachers that are so unlike the "past teachers" are lighting the spark in the next generation of new teachers or leaders. The new generation is going to step out and never make a student feel the need to do what Dan did. I feel so strongly about this. I will never allow it to go that far.
Honestly, this class is showing me how to become a better teacher because it is showing me the best way to educate. There is no memorizing to simply forget, there is just learning. I love it and I know so many other students love it.
Don't Let Them Take the Pencils Home
This blog post was really enjoyable to read. It was also different compared to what I've been reading. I liked finding the meaning hidden in the dialogue. Even though these two educators were faced with a peculiar problem, there argument in there discussion is so important to our careers. We need to engage students. By interesting them, we give them a little bit of the reigns. In my opinion, giving the children a little bit of the reigns is a good thing. The students know we are the educator and they are the student, but the reigns symbolizes them wanting to actively participate in what will shape their future. Students accepting the "reigns" will often find ways of learning on their own, without even realizing it. In this age, doing different things often results in a learning experience.
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