This is a cartoon that John Spencer posted on his blog. At first I did not understand it, but once I thought about it for a while, I figured out that it was mocking the "I'm a PC, I'm a Mac" commercial. I have a PC, and I like it alright. It was way cheaper than a Mac, and I can do almost everything I need to on it, but I do understand why a Mac would be a better choice. In the future when my PC does eventually mess up, I am going to look into buying a Mac.
Why Were Your Kids Playing Games?
This blog post is also from John Spencer. It tells about a teacher who is getting in trouble by his principal because he was letting his students play a game. The principal would not even let the teacher explain his reasoning because he was convinced that there was no way that the students could "memorize" what they needed to by a game. The crazy thing is that the students were getting excited and actually LEARNING the material through playing, in comparison to only memorizing the material for only a short period of time-like the principal would rather have.
Another post by John Spencer is Remember Pencil Quests?. I liked this one because he tells about a time when a teacher got him excited about learning through trying something a little different than normal. He then creates the comparison between this experience of when he was a student, to his students now that get excited about using technology in the classroom and with their project they create. He says that looking back on this memory of when he was a student, he realizes that was only the start, and he wonders when his students grow up and look back, how much things will have changed for them.
Don't Teach Your Kids This Stuff. Please?
Dr. Scott McLeod is widely recognized as one of the nation’s leading academic experts on K-12 school technology. In his blog post Don't Teach Your Kids This Stuff. Please? he uses satire to show his belief in using technology in the classroom. I agree with Dr. McLeod that technology will benefit students learning, and all teachers should incorporate technology in their teaching because in the future they will be a step ahead.
Mr. Joe McClung
I really like this blog assignment because soon we are going to be starting off our new teaching careers, and by following Mr. McClung, we can see what it was like for him as he went through his fist couple of years of teaching and take his advice. This is just another example of how using a blog is a great way to share ones knowledge and experiences with others. When I become a teacher, I am also going to create a post at the end of each school year to share what I learned. This way other teachers who are just starting off can benefit from the things I learned while I was teaching, and they will be better prepared when they become teachers as well. May 27, 2009 What I've Learned This Year (2008-09)
After Mr. McClung's first year of teaching, he shared what he learned in this blog post. One of my favorite pieces advice that he gave was to always focus on the students comprehension of what you teach instead of worrying about what your superiors think. The most important thing is to make sure that you do not lose touch with your audience-the students. Another great tip he gives is to be flexible. Things are not always going to go the way you plan, and the best thing to do is not get angry and just work with the situation that you are in. He says that, "NO LESSON IS EVER PERFECT. THE LESSON YOU TEACH AND THE ONE YOU PLAN ARE ALWAYS DIFFERENT". Mr. McClung also says to not be afraid of technology. Because I am in EDM 310, I don't think I will have a problem with this one! However, I think this is good advice for teachers who have already been teaching for several years. For example, my mom has been teaching high school for over 30 years, and she really is an excellent English teacher, but she has never used technology in her classroom because she did not know how. Now that I am in EDM 310 and learning all of these new ways to use technology while teaching, I go home and tell her about what I have learned. Even though she has been teaching the same way all of her life, she gets excited when I tell her these new ways to use technology in the classroom, and she is now getting me to teach her how to make a blog so she can use it in her class next year! That was fun for me to see that even older teachers are now catching on to using technology.
Version 4 Post (2011-2012)
After Mr. McClung's fourth year of teaching, he left this blog post explaining all the things he had learned in the that year. He said that he realized that he did not learn much from his fourth year, so instead of leaving a lengthy post, he would concentrate on two main points. The first point was "You Gotta Dance With Who You Came to the Dance With." This means that as a teacher you should not worry about what your peers think about you as an educator. You did not become a teacher to impress them, but to reach students and touch their lives in the best way that you can. His next point is to "Challenge Yourself." He explains that it is not good to get complacent and use the same lesson plans year after year. This will only make the subject you are teaching boring, and your students lose interest. Instead, you need to challenge yourself as a teacher to improve with each year, because there is always new and better ways to reach students and make learning fun, and you will never find them if you become a lazy teacher.
This Is How We Dream Parts 1 and 2
Richard Miller's videos are about how communication and writing are changing. He states that he believes that we are living in the time of the greatest change for communication in human history. I believe that he is 100% correct! Technology is changing everything about the way we write and communicate with each other. It is now possible to not only talk to but visually see a person that is on the other side of the world with just a click of a button. This advance in technology has also been introduced to the way we write.
One of the great improvements that have come from technology is that now instead of just writing a standard essay, one can incorporate visuals and audio. I feel like this would make their information they are trying to present way more exciting. Using audio and a visual aspect could really make the presentation come to life-compared to a standard essay. This really excites me because this is something new that I could use when I become an English teacher. Instead of getting my students to write a standard research paper every time, I could get them to create a multi-media project that includes video and audio that go along with their research. I feel like this would also get the students more interested in what I am trying to teach them, because it is not just writing but visually showing what they learn as well.
Another change that Mr. Miller talks about is how we no longer have to go to the library to do research, but now we can be anywhere and just use our laptops. Also, It is now possible to collaborate with others without ever meeting with each other. This would also be a very good project I could give my future students. I could get them to do a group project and only let them communicate with each other using Skype or Facetime. When I become a teacher, I feel like I will be able to write multi-media papers because of this class, and if I don't know how at first, then this class has also taught me that I am capable to teach myself. I also think that my students will be more than able to write multi-media papers.
All of the new changes that technology has provided for us truly gives our generation an advantage over all the generations of the past combined. Creating multi-media presentations and getting to publish ones work over the internet creates a faster way to get information out. Things that would normally take two years to get out now only takes months or even weeks. The use of Youtube, Google, ect. takes away limits and restrictions that past generations had to deal with, and they provide an opportunity to get ones ideas out into the world very quickly.
Blog Post #12 by Carly Pugh
Carly Pugh did an awesome job on her blog post #12! She really went into great depth with her research. Her post greatly resembles an assignment that Mr. Strange would create himself. I believe one of the reasons I thought it was so interesting is because she added so many video references. This goes back to Mr. Miller's thoughts about using multi-media in ones writing. The Chipper Series And EDM310 for Dummies
These were two very funny but informative videos. They both show the struggles that students go through when they are in EDM 310, and they both explain ways to help students. In The Chipper Series, it shows a student who has the same attitude that several students who take this class have. Chipper tries to get by with doing the least amount possible, and it never works out for her. All she ends up doing is wasting her time. This is a good lesson for everyone who takes EDM 310 because if you are not going to do your best, then you might as well not do it. In the video EDM 310 for Dummies, it shows how most of the students who start out in EDM 310 feel. Students who are just starting off in this class will most likely feel overwhelmed, but this video gives students a way to help themselves by getting the book EDM 310 for Dummies.
Learn to Change, Change to Learn
This video shows how much schools are behind compared to other industries because we have not yet incorporated technology in our classrooms. The men and women in this video are very concerned with getting technology into schools. This is not something that can magically happen overnight, but there are several schools that are slowly making the change.
One of the points that they made in the video is that standardized testing is not going to help students once they get into the real world. They say that teachers should focus on the students creativity and ability to work together in groups. I agree that this would help better prepare students for their jobs that they will have the rest of their lives.
Scavenger Hunt 2.0
1. The tool I found for videos is called PhotoPeach.com. It takes any pictures you want and puts them into a slide show. I created an example and put all of the pictures that I have had in my past blog posts. BlogPost Pictures on PhotoPeach
2. The tool I found to create a poll is called www.polleverywhere.com. Its very easy and fast. 3. The tool I used to make my comic was www.readwritethink.org. This is my comic I created.
DAVID WEES Thoughts from a 21st century educator. Over Coaching
The first blog post that I commented on for Mr. Wees focused on teachers over coaching their students. He felt like teachers "baby" students too much. For example, he thought that telling students what page of the book that certain problems were on and answering students questions were too much help.I commented that I also felt like it was important for teacher not to over coach their students, but that I would probably not use all of he suggestions in my future classroom. I said that not telling students where they could find the problems that they need to work on in the book could be discouraging for most students, and that would give them another reason not do their work. I also felt like not telling them where the correct problems were in the book would be a waste of time for the student because they could use that time to actually be working on the problems. The books are so big, and to have to search to find the one page you need is too much.
Rethinking Our Anti-Bullying Efforts
The second blog post that I commented on for Mr. Weese was on trying to prevent bullying in our schools. He says that if at the end of a day a student still feels lonely or isolated, then we have failed as an institution. I said that I agreed that teachers should get to know their students and strive to make the school more like a community. Also, I agreed that teachers should teach empathy and compassion to students, and I believe that the only way to do this is to lead by example. He also shared a video on bullying that was very interesting.
Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture
I thought that Randy Pausch’s lecture was very inspiring, not only for making me want to become a better teacher, but on how I live my life. The lecture was very motivating, and I think that everyone should watch it. One of my favorite parts is when he talks about brick walls. He says that brick walls-or obstacles preventing us from achieving what we want- are their for us to show our dedication and to weed out the ones who are not willing to do what it takes to achieve their goal. This is a great analogy for life, and it is perfect to share with students in order to motivate them to accomplish their dreams.
Randy Pausch was a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, and he began a new class that focused on building virtual worlds. This class quickly became a huge success, and many people would come to see the class give their presentations. I think that this would be an awesome class to take at the college level. The way he designed the class, the students would be placed into randomly chosen teams to create a project, and they would have two weeks to do it. After the two weeks were up, he would shuffle the group, and the students would begin to work on creating a different project with their new group. I think that shuffling the groups like this is a good way to create a classroom community. It also helps with communication between students. I really like how he gave his students peer evaluations. This way each student can see how well they work with others in groups and know if they need to improve, and like he says,"The best gift an education can give is to get someone to become self-reflective."
Another think that Randy Pausch believed in was project-based learning, and he did not like teaching from books. This reminded me a lot about EDM 310. So instead of having tests, all they had were five projects to do. I really liked the part where his students did way better than he ever thought possible on the first project, but even though he was amazed by what they were able to create, he told them that they still could have been better. I thought this was amazing, because as teachers, we do not need to set a goal for our students and then become complacent when they reach it, but instead we need to keep raising the bar higher and push them as far as they can go. It is the teacher’ job to continue to inspire the students and not let them settle.
Randy Pausch also talks about his program Alice that is a novel way to teach computer programming. I think that this would be a lot of fun to use in my classroom. Since I am going to be either an English or a history teacher, I could get the students to recreate the scenery of a novel that I have them read, or they could create how they thought it might look during a different time period of history. The great thing about using Alice is that the students are actually having fun while learning, because they think that they are using computer software to tell a story or build a vision with their minds.
As soon as I watched A 7th Grader's Personal Learning Environment, I could not wait to try out Symbaloo! I downloaded it immediately and began to work on my PLN. Symbaloo is the perfect tool to get started on ones PLN. It helps keep all of my websites that I use organized, and it is so easy to travel from one website to the next quickly. I can put links on Symbaloo of teachers blogs that let me access them with just one click, and at the same time, I can also pull up Twitter or Google to search for other ways to expand my PLN. I now use Symbaloo everyday! In Steven Anderson's Building Your PLN - A Primer for Anyone, I really liked the way he explains the uses of a PLN and how it is a way to make connections with teachers throughout the would. My favorite part is when he mentions that he doesn't have to know everything, because he has a network of thousands of educators to ask questions with, and they are there to help find the answers.
Trang Nguyen
My first comment I left was for Trang Nguyen. He is a 13 year old boy from Vietnam. He explained how he visited the United States when he was nine years old, and he also tells about what his favorite activities. When I commented on his post I shared some information about myself, and i also told him to watch out for run-on sentences, but that his post was very informative.
Makayla
Makayla was the second student that I left a comment for. She is in the fourth grade, and she told about how her teachers inspired her to become a better reader by having a ”Reading Like a Rock Star” assembly. I told her that I was very impressed that her teachers were willing to go the extra mile to get their students excited about reading, and that she is very lucky to have teachers that care about their students that much. I said that her teachers also have inspired me to go the extra mile and be the best teacher I can be when I begin teaching.
Night
The third comment I left was for Night. He is a fifth grade student from Auckland, NZ. His post was about a recent trip to the beach that he went on. He had a nice picture with his post, and I told him how much I liked it. I also shared with him that I live near a beach and go there often in the summer.
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