Blog Post #10

What can we learn about teaching and learning from Randy Pausch?

Let me begin by saying, I was not looking forward to watching this video. I have let this video be the last thing on my to do list. This was a mistake. I am so glad we were assigned the video for Randy Pausch's Last Lecture.. I was truly touched by this video. One thing we can learn from Randy Pausch is how to live life. He didn't feel sorry for himself even though he was in the end times of his life. If I ever am faced with the situation of knowing my life is coming to an end, I hope I we be able to touch people as he did and not get depressed.

Another thing we can learn from his video is to never give up on our dreams. He, in some form or fashion, accomplished almost all of his childhood dreams. The one dream he did not accomplish, he was glad he didn't accomplish it. He brought up the brick wall a couple of times in his lecture. He said, "the brick walls are there to show how bad we want something." This is so true! How many times have I given up on something because I hit the brick wall and turned around and went the other way. The brick wall is to weed out the people who aren't meant to get on the other side.

I didn't get as much educational knowledge from this video as I did life knowledge. There is one educational aspect I grasped from this video and that was, "the best way to teach someone something is have them think they are doing something else." I like this idea. This is what project based learning is all about.

Smartboard Lesson Project #12 Part A

Project #9 Podcast

Blog Post #9

<

Project #10 Green Screen

Blog Post #8

Making Thinking Possible

I watched the video Making Thinking Visible. This is a video made by Mark Church. Church wants his students to engage in small groups to perform a certain task. His students watched a video and Mark Church wants the students to come up with a headline capturing what the search for human origin is about. The students get in their small groups discuss the project and write down their headline. Church explains that he is going to display the headlines in the classroom. After two weeks he wants to show the students how much their thinking has changed and progressed.

I think this is an awesome assignment for a couple of reasons. It challenges the students to work in a group and come to an agreement on the headline. The headline has to be one sentence, so it challenges them to think and be creative. Also, I think the idea of showing the children their progressive way of thinking is the best part. I think as teachers we should allow the student’s to see their progress. That would also be a way to know, as a teacher, if we are teaching students what they need to know. I believe that at the beginning of the semester the students should be given an assignment to show their starting point in the class. Then at the end of the semester give a similar assignment and show the students their progression.


Sherri Hudson's Blog

I watched Mr. Paul Andersen's Youtube video about the Blended Learning Cycle. Blended learning is a combination of learning with mobile phones, the internet, and being in a classroom. The learning cycle is consisted with engaging, exploring, expanding, explaining with a posed question. All of this inspires the "blended learning cycle."Mr. Andersen claimed that he strayed from what he knew--the power of the question. One thing I can learn from him is letting the students be more in control of their learning. Mr. Andersen began his class with an interesting phenomenon. For example he presented a metallic disk continuously and mysteriously spinning a mirror. When teaching with a posed question we have to be ready to do the following: Investigate/inquire Video Elaborate Review Give a Summary quiz We can learn that teaching is difficult because you have to entice the students. The best way to do that is to put effort in showing the students something new. We have to teach them in a fashion we'd like to learn in. Lecturing is boring and that's what I learned from Mr. Andersen's video. What can I learn about teaching and learning from Brian Crosby In the video, Back to the Future, Mr. Brian Crosby tells us about how he gets his class of multicultural and at risk students to learn using project based learning. He starts off by telling us about his class and how more than half of his students could not tell you what city they lived in, or what country they lived in. Then he goes on to tell us about how he uses technology to gain the interest of his class. In his class they have a ratio of 1:1 with laptops in the classroom. He uses these laptops to allow his students to connect all over the world with other students. All of his students have a blog and allows them to think out of the box a little bit. He then goes on to talk about a balloon project that they did. The students did several activities to prepare for the balloon launch. He requires them to blog about what they had to do and they also post videos from the activities that they did. They also had to create a wiki page, and stories about if they were the balloon. They have a class flickr account. The students also made stratocards with their high hopes that they wanted for their life. Finally, they sent up their balloon. They built their own payload to send up all their stuff.


Christopher Perry's Blog #8
I think that Mr. Crosby is a great teacher and is a great example of how PBL can motivate students to want to grasp a deeper knowledge of the material that they need to learn. What can I learn from this is that teaching is not about giving students "busy work" and hoping that they grasp all the concepts from that work. I think that teaching is about making the students learn for themselves and from their peers around them. I think by doing projects that allow students to be interactive with each other and other students around the world, gives the students more motivation to learn and want to know more about a subject. Sometimes learning can be boring and tough to do by yourself. But, if you incorporate others into that learning process then each person may gain a deeper knowledge into the material. Learning is not about tests and grades. Learning is about understanding the material and then being able to use that knowledge to perform in real world tasks. As educators we have to understand that not everybody learns at the same pace or at the same level, so we have to create a curriculum that adapts to every student so that the students can thrive and succeed later in life.

PLN Project #9

I used symbaloo for my PLN. Most of the tiles consist of my daily visited site. This is a very neat site because most everything you need throughout the day can be found in one place.

Blog Post #7

Assistive Technology in the Classroom

The two most amazing forms of assistive technology I found were the FaceMouse and the Sip-and-Puff Systems.  Both of these programs are for students that struggle with mobility.   FaceMouse uses the webcams as a computer mouse.  Different movements of the head and different facial expressions will operate different commands on the computer.  The Sip-and Puff Systems uses a student’s breath to operate a mouthstick which according to this site is similar to a joystick. I located this information on the website 8 Helpful Assistive Technology Tools for Your Classroom.  If available, I would definitely use these programs in my classroom.  This would give the students that feeling of independence of not having to rely on help all of the time.

I also watched the video on the ipad using voice over designed for the blind.  This would be a very useful tool in the classroom.  It would give the student a little bit of independence by being able to find things he/she may be looking for without having to get constant help.  The ipad  seemed hard to use.  It would not do some of the things he was trying to show to the audience.  This could have been because he was going too fast trying to get all the information covered in a short amount of time, but what he did cover seemed helpful.  Audio books were available on the ipad which is a great tool because you can get the textbooks on an audio book for the blind as well.

Assistive Technologies by Christopher Perry

Doing this assignment I had no idea what kind of technologies were out there to help with students and their disabilities. I found this assignment to be challenging, and difficult. So the only thing I could think of was to make a phone call to my mom, who is a math teacher at my old high school. I asked about some of the things that they might be using to help with these students. She told me about a few that they had in place and so that gave me an idea of where to start looking.

So I started my research and found that there are numerous technological devices, and apps to help with all kinds of disabilities. One that I found most interesting was a software called Mathtalk. In this software you can write out a problem using your voice and it will input it into the computer. Also this software makes the need for parents to write out these math problems null, if your child/student is blind. Also within this software, it allows the student to print their work in braille, so they can read it and check it to make sure there are no errors within their work. I just thought that this software was the neatest and interesting "new to me" tool to help those students that are blind. Within the website I found several demo videos explaining and showing how to do each different type of math problem that you may encounter. I would definitely like to use this tool if I was lucky enough to have a blind student in my class. I was fortunate to have a blind classmate when I was going to high school, and I was amazed at how her other developed senses allowed her to learn differently than the rest of the class. it might be difficult or more work to have a blind student, but I think that it would be very interesting to learn through his/her method. I want to teach high school math and with this software you can do several types of mathematical problems from, algebra to calculus and more. Click here to view examples of different problems, and commands using mathtalk.


Assistive Technologies for Classrooms by Sherri Hudson In the video, Assistive Technologies for Vision and Hearing Impaired Children the instructors gave their students the opportunity to identify, explore, investigate, question, and interact with their environment using customized learning. Text to speech Text telephones Cameras Screen magnifiers Interacting calculator Another assistive tool is the Mountbatten, a technology for the blind that is designed for audio and tactile feedback. It can receive files from computers as well as save them to computers. The assistive technology for the blind and hearing impaired reminded me that I have to teach English, a form of a communication class. When they write papers I can tell them to use Purdue Owl or Son of Citation Machine to check their works cited page. In Microsoft office there is spell/grammar check, and it will definitely help my students. Dictionaries and thesauruses come in handy too, but there is nothing better than a reference website to help my students know the literary jargon. Glossary of Literary Terms My eleventh grade English teacher read our papers, found common mistakes, and posted them in a Powerpoint for the whole class to see each others' epic fails. When I passed his class I found out he did that to be slightly funny, but mostly to let us learn from each other mistakes. It actually worked. When I'm an English teacher I'll do the same and I'll need a laser pointer to present my students' out of place commas.

Blog Post#6

What do we need to know about asking questions to be an effective teacher?


I watched questioning styles and strategies. The speaker starts off the class by asking the students to describe a place children perceived the place as they read about it. The student's write down their answer and discuss it. He then calls on children and asks them to tell what they wrote. This is an effective way of asking questions because if you didn't call on someone directly you may not get any participation. He then asks the student to call on another student. By having a student call on andother student it gets the students more involved. With each question he asks he gets a little deeper and it requires a little more thinking. Most students will participate in the thinking process, because they do not want to be caught blindsided if called on with no answer.

I also watched, Asking better questions in the classroom by Joanne Chesley. She informs us that there are two types of questions. There is the open-ended question and the closed-ended question. We as teachers, in order to get our students to think, need to ask open-ended questions. Open-ended questions require thinking and not just a one word answer, yes or no, for example, which is required to answer a closed-ended question.

C4T#2

In Mr. Sladkey's next blog he focuses on the second portion of the student engagement wheel, which is small group interaction. His blog states that small groups help the time pass and also helps students to speak out and ask questions, who otherwise would not speak in regular class settings.

Mr. Sladkey has not posted my comment yet. I left him a comment with a link for flipping the classroom on youtube.  Flipping the classroom also uses small group teaching.

C4T  Post #2

In Mr. Sladkey's April 24th blog, he shares a math tool called the Desmos Online Calculator. It seems to be a very useful tool in teaching graphing to students.

In my comment I thanked him for sharing this tool.

He posted my comment, but did not respond.

Project# 8: Book Trailer

Project #7

My Sentence is...




My Passion is...

Blog Post #5

Let me begin my saying, before this Blog, I was not 100% sure what a podcast was. I had no idea how to begin making a podcast, or how it would be useful.

I begin this assignment my reading Landwitches blog about first grades creating their own read-along book. What a great way to get the students involved. Not only are the students having fun, but they are also practicing their reading skills in the process. In her blog, she informs us how she made the podcast. I like the fact that she made a booklet to go along with the podcast for the children to read along with. Also, this is a great way for parents to listen to their children whenever they want to. It allows parents to see how far their students have progressed with their reading skills. A great idea would be to let the children do a book at the beginning of the school year and to do a second reading of the same book at the end of the year. What a great keepsake this would be for parents. Also, the children could hear how much they progressed throughout the year and it would boost their confidence level. She also posts in her blog that she converts the read-along book into an .epub file and is able to upload it to her itunes. I know this will probably be hard to do, but wouldn't it be great to start in kindergarten and let the children begin their own virtual library. Something that they will continue to add to throughout their progression in school. I would love to go back and look at all the books I read in school. Langwitches also goes on in her blog to mention her thoughts on this project, her next steps she will take with the project, and her reflection on the project.

I also listened to Harry Dell's youtube video on The Benefits of Podcasting in the Classroom. He is a social studies teacher who uses podcasting to make the lives of his students a little easier. When his children are sick and they have an important test coming up, they are able to access his podcast and get the study guide podcast from the comfort of their own home. He wanted the children to read a book. He started off by thinking he would read the book to them. Later, he decided he would record a podcast of him reading the book. Dell then decided to hand pick other teachers in the school to help him record the book for podcasting. The teachers were in character as they read the books to make it more interesting for the students. He then lets the students reflect a little about the enjoyment of podcasts. At the end, he recorded some of his students making a podcast.

I also visited Jody Scharf's Podcast Collection. In her blog she explains what a podcast is. I have to be honest, it never crossed my mined that podcast was a cross between broadcast and ipod. Also, by her stating, "podcast is a "radio-style" talk show", she really explained to me what you can actually do with a podacst. That sentence was amazingly helpful because she made me realize that it is not just a recording for books or lessons. Earlier in this assignment, I thought podcasts were a great idea, but I thought they were only for recording lessons and books. I now realize that podcasts can be used for anything. You can use a podcast for an idea or anything that you want the world to hear. Scharf also gives a few tips to succeed with podcasting in classrooms. She also gives the time schedule to create a podcast and suggests some podcasts topics for assignments. She gives suggestions on how to research topics and then gives step by step instructions on how to create a podcast. She concludes with the rubric for podcasts and some examples of great podcasts.

Tonya Murphy"s Project #3 Presentation

C4T assignment #1

The blog page I have been assigned for this semester is Reflections of a High School Math Teacher . Mr. Sladkey believes his students should be engaged in the class. If they are engaged in the teaching, the students will learn more. He also has the engagement wheel on his blog, to measure the engagement of the students in a classroom.When leaving a comment, I informed him that I agree with engaging children in  the learning process and gave him an example of something like this that happened in my life.  I also explained to him how I will be applying this technique when I begin my teaching journey.

In Mr. Sladkey's next blog he focuses on the second portion of the student engagement wheel, which is small group interaction. His blog states that small groups help the time pass and also helps students to speak out and ask questions, who otherwise would not speak in regular class settings.

Blog Post # 4

The tool I decided to focus on in 21st century learning is "flipping the classroom."

 What is "Flipping the Classroom?"

Flipping the classroom is a way of enhancing learning. As a math teacher I find this tool very interesting. In Katie Gimbar's video, Why I flipped my classroom, she points out a very important  fact concerning classroom learning. She points out that there are three learning types in the classroom: the "middle" group, the "high level" group and the "strugglers." The Middle group in her video is the students who are the average students who are keeping at the normal pace of the class. The "High Level" group are displayed in her video as the sleeping students because they are advanced and bored. The "strugglers" are the students who have no idea what is going on in class and cannot keep up. Flipping the classroom takes learning outside of the classroom and makes learning more of a self paced form of learning. The students who are struggling are able to watch the videos over and over again to try and understand what is going on. This also allows for the advanced students to be able to get ahead in class and push themselves and work at a higher pace. Also, I like how Gimbar set her classroom up in her diagram. She put the teacher in the center and the students, grouped according to learning classification, around her. This allows her to be able to get around to all the students and answer questions.   


Christopher Perry's #4 Blog Post

Google Chromebook What's one machine that can keep all your documents, files, and friends all together and allows you to share them instantly and easily? It is built and designed like a MacBook, but is an eighth of the price. That would be the Samsung Google Chromebook. This computer comes automatically with built in apps that allow you to collaborate freely with your friends. It comes with Google drive for sharing documents, as well as Google Play for listening or downloading music, and has a built in photo editor and media player to watch your friend's movies or your own. The Chromebook allows you to keep all these apps in one place and will keep everything organized for you. Do you remember the days when you were looking for that document or file and you couldn't find it. Well no Chromebook easily will find it for you, and keep it stored right where you left it. Do you have multiple children, or adults needing the same computer? Well no problem with the Chromebook. You can have multiple users on this computer and have no problem with someone downloading unwanted apps onto your account. Viruses and other "nasties" are all taken care of with the state of the art virus protection plans. This state of the art computer is light only weighing 2.4 pounds, so you can take it anywhere and not be bogged down by weight of carrying a heavier laptop. You don't even have to carry your charger with you because the battery life on this computer is 6.5 hours. Do you have trouble remembering that website you always visit, not a problem for the Chromebook. Now this computer will start downloading that webpage you visit often as soon as you start typing in the url address. Tired of waiting on that slow boot-up time of your old computer. Well now with the new Chromebook, it boots up in less than ten seconds. Now I know you are asking yourself, "Where can I get one of these awesome machines?", and "How much is this new device going to set me back?" Actually they are very easy to find and do not cost that much at all compared to other computers and devices. You can find these computers by simply searching in google or you can go here. The costs of this machine is only $249. I think that this new innovative machine can be a really great investment in all classrooms and schools across the nation and the world. I think it is less expensive then buying bulky computers that take a lot of IT support. These computers allow you to minimize this support and the chrome operating system seamlessly updates and improves itself automatically, and with the available web-based management system allows the administrators to control the access to the different apps from the Chrome app store. There are thousands of apps to choose from and most of them are FREE! What better way to promote collaborative learning then giving students the power and the means to do it with. This machine allows you to talk and video chat with up to nine people at a time. Talk about making group projects easy. I would definitely want to use this device in my future classroom.

Sherri Hudson's #4 Blog Post

21st Century Tools Improving Learning and Technology I have to start off by admitting that this assignment was slightly difficult for me. I'm pretty sure that I was making it harder than it is. Let me remind all of you that I want to be a high school English teacher. I am accustomed to English class being a critical thinking environment. Critical thinking has always been enough of a tool for me. This assignment made me realize that I need to expand my methods in using technology with my students. I tools like Microsoft Office's PowerPoint and Smartboard are my lovely assistants when I teach English. They can be used when I interact with students simply because they are visuals. I had to think harder. Hmm...what else could I use? I have to teach grammar and literature in an interesting manner. After all, it's the best two subjects in the world! Between you and me, I honestly favor writing. I want my students to get comfortable with writing and reading because it's the two activities students dread. Even I dread it if the material is a snooze fest. The easiest way to get comfortable with writing/reading, in my opinion, is getting involved with your favorite genre. Since iPads are becoming more popular in schools around the nation, I think the iPad can become a vital learning mechanism in my classroom if I use it in this way. 1) Initiate occasional group assignment in my lesson plan. 2) Compose a survey that tells me which genre each student likes and place them in groups according to the survey. (This assures that the students can somewhat get along with one another) 3) Make each group compose a short story or analyze a piece of literature using their iPad for note taking using one of my favorite apps: Evernote. I've been using Evernote since 2011 after my husband introduced it to me. It's constantly updating with ways to be a more efficient app. I use it when I am away from my laptop by using my android app. Whether I'm thinking about a project, a paper, or my book I can always log in to my Evernote account and take notes instantly. The notes can be as short or as long the students want them to be. They can also create several journals to keep their thoughts, class notes, and personal notes organized. Since I believe critical thinking is the primary tool in an English class I believe getting my students to install the Evernote app provokes the critical thinking since it forces them to translate their thoughts into words. Since it works though email they can email their group thoughts to me and I can evaluate their learning. In addition, they can use it outside of class if they like sitting on a hammock to meditate on their thoughts. If you have a messy notebook and sticky notes lining the bottom of your purse/bookbag GET EVERNOTE! Here is a link on how to use it on the How to use Evernote on the iPad .

Blog Post #3

In Paige Ellis' Class Blog, she discusses peer editing. She is unsure as to whether or not she should post her editing suggestions publicly or privately. She displays her emails to and from Dr. Strange in this blog with the question of whether or not to edit on the blog publicly or privately. Dr. Strange wants her to help the student and wants Paige to decide which way she wants to comment. Paige decides to go both directions, she comments on his/her blog and sends a more detailed e-mail.

In video, What is Peer Editing, as to who the author of this video is, I am not sure. The author explains that there are three major steps in peer editing, these points are compliment, suggestions and correction. She brings up the point throughout the entire video of staying positive. When correcting, the editor needs to be polite. Most people do not enjoy being corrected and sometimes it is even a little embarrassing to be corrected. The editor must keep embarrassment and the feelings of the writer in mind and not just getting the job done.

In the slideshow, Peer Edit with Perfection! Tutorial , Adriana Zardini reiterates the same three steps used in, What is Peer Editing, which again are: Compliment, Suggestions and Correction. Zardini gives examples of paragraphs in need of editing and offers the reader the chance to edit using the three main steps of editing.

I personally enjoyed this last video the best. Writing Peer Review Top 10 Mistakes, is a video of a group of children explaining the top 10 mistakes of peer editing. The first is "picky patty", who over analyzes and picks out every pick little thing. "Whatever William" did not care about his edits. It was very clear that he didn't want his paper edited because he didn't care. "Social Sammy" was not being of much help to the student's paper he was editing. He was more worried about talking to everyone else about the editing. "Jean the Generalizer" was very generic. I think most of the time peer editors may be generic because it seems a little nicer. If I am generic when editing, I don't feel as though I am pointing out all of the writer's writing flaws. As I am writing this out in my blog I realize, being nice and general is not helping anyone learn anything. At the same time, I am not a confrontational person and I feel it is hard to point out someone else's mistakes. "Mean Margaret" was just mean. She definitely did not watch the previous videos mentioned in this blog regarding staying positive and complimenting. "Loud Larry" on the other hand was very expressive with his compliments. The only problem with his editing, it was done loud enough for the world to hear it. This, I believe, could also go back to Paige Ellis' Class Blog , regarding whether editing should be done publicly or privately. Even though, the editing that was done by "Loud Larry" was positive, editing should still be a private matter. "Pushy Paula" was a student who believed that her editing suggestion was right (it was not) and it should be edited that way. "Off Task Oliver" was similar to "Whatever William" in the fact that he did not care much about his paper. This hyper child had too many other things on his mind. "Speedy Sandy" was in too much of a hurry to get through the editing process. She did not help the writer and would not answer her questions. "Defensive Dave" was more worried about why he was being edited and not about get help with his paper. This video was definitely the best video watched so far in this class. I love the fact that the kids were the actors and actresses. It would not have been as entertaining if adults were doing these examples of mistakes in peer editing.

While editing my group's last blogs, I struggled with the same question as Paige in her blog, Paige Ellis' Class Blog . When I am a teacher, I will not display the writing mistakes of my students. I would find this to be humiliating if it were done to me. I will pull the student aside and discuss how the mistake should be corrected. If other students are suffering with the same problem, I will bring the mistake to everyone's attention, by putting it on the board or something of that nature. By doing this, no other student will know who made the mistake and who did not. I learned in the videos listed above that editing is needed in order to learn and grow in writing. Therefore, I need to edit thoroughly and stay positive. Most importantly I learned, always compliment first!

Blog post # 2

In the video, Professor Dancelot, Professor Dancealot's teaching is a great example of what burp back education is like. This is what many classroom's are like today. He didn't allow the students to demonstrate and be engaged in the lessons to make sure they were understanding the dance steps. Dr. Dancealot then expected the students to regurgitate everything he had "taught" in the classroom. The students did not seem to know what was going on during the final exam because they were not able to participate during the lesson.

Teaching in the 21st Century

Kevin Roberts sees the future filled with technology. I agree with the idea that teachers should be teaching their students about computers. The world is at your fingertips with computers, as long as you have the knowledge of how to find it. I believe that computers should be a must in schools today ,and not just the simple typing classes, but the basics of the internet. The world is going green; everything is becoming computerized. While all of the subjects (math, science, english, etc) are necessary, it will be hard to get a job without the knowledge of computers.
Roberts also pointed out the fact that we need to engage our students, not just put a teacher in front of the classroom. The students need to have fun while learning. We need to allow them access to their phones in school as a learning tool. At the same time the school board cripples teachers in that aspect, because the principals will not allow phones on the premises. A technology class should be offered where cell phones are welcomed in at least that class.
REVISED

Harness Your Students' Digital Smarts Blog by Christopher Perry

Mrs. Vicky Davis is a great example of what we need from future generation teachers. She believes that if you give the students the tools and accessibility to look up information that they may not know they can find out for themselves. In one part of her lesson she told them to do a certain thing that she did not know how to do. She required them to look up how to preform the operation and then report back to her and teach the rest of the class and herself. This operation that she had them do was called terraforming. She also went on and connected her students to other students around the world in a global collaboration to work with students around the world. Those students coming from a rural community in southern Georgia are learning things that are a head of their time. Basically, what she is trying to say is that we as educators should not be trying to discourage the process of learning but taking away the most powerful tools that we have available today.

The Networked Student by Sherri Hudson

In the Networked Student Wendy Drexler used caricature to show a young college student aspiring to succeed in American Psychology. The college student's teacher never lectured, so how was he supposed to learn? Well, she believed in something called Connectivism, and she used her belief to encourage the class to gain their own education through a learning network.

The college student took control of his education's destiny through reaching out to other students via learning network. Through that learning network, he gathered tools he needed in order to succeed American Psychology. His professor acted as a "Learning Architect" and improved his ability to communicate.

Why do we need a teacher?

We need teachers because teachers have a status that ordinary citizens don't have. Teachers are expected to have expertise in a specific field like English, math, science, or history. That's okay. Think about it. If somebody who bagged groceries told you he wanted you to join a learning network to become immersed with your education, you'd probably ignore him because he doesn't have the status that suggests he knows something success. It's the cold truth about this world. In most cases, we can't (and shouldn't) trust information from illegitimate sources. The college student in the video needed the professor because she was a reliable source to go to in case he needed extra help. We need teachers because knowledge will not be obtained and passed on without their hard work. It's the student's job to work also.