Happy Easter everyone! :)
Here is my demonstration of the basic tools of the SMARTboard.
Sunday, March 31, 2013
Project #11 Green Screen Project
Here is my first attempt at using a green screen! Special tribute to my favorite movie of all time!
Friday, March 29, 2013
Blog Post #10
PaperMate and Ticonderoga
From 2006-2009, Apple created 66 ads called the “Get a Mac” series. This series featured a thin, handsome, young and hip actor as “Mac” and an awkward, hefty actor as “PC.” Throughout the commercials, the two would make jabs at each other through wit, sight gags, and one-liners. The cartoon above, also found here, is an obvious reference to this long running commercial series. The PC, or PaperMate here, cost less but is also unreliable. The Mac, or Ticonderoga, while expensive, John Spencer says only “hipsters” use them. Personally, I have always had a PC but longed for a Mac. I would always play with my friends’ and cousins’ Macs and love them. Then through this semester, I have learned new tricks on my computer and had to discover more about Macs. The more I have learned about the computers, I really enjoy my PC, and I don’t plan on “becoming” a Mac! That’s just my personal feelings.
I really like this cartoon because I feel like it’s somewhat true. While some of the programs and software on the Mac is better, they are often associated with hipsters. Also, the price, in my humble opinion, is kind of outrageous.
Playing Games
In Why Were Your Kids Playing Games?, John Spencer talks about how he got in trouble from his principal for “playing games” in class rather than “teaching.” Games are means by which true teaching can occur. So many children have difficulty learning from straight lecture. This reminded me of Randy Pausch’s last lecture where he talks about the “head fake.” The art of teaching involves using engaging and interesting ways to get the children to actually learn the information. From personal experience, the only time that I actually retained the material in any class was when I found it interesting. What’s more interesting than a game? I understand that some subjects can almost only be taught through straight lecture, but anytime it can be avoided, it should. Kids need to be involved, engaged and fascinated in order to truly learn. As Dr. Strange says, “No more burp-back education!”
As I explored his blog some more, I found one very interesting post. Capturing Reality caught my attention first because it was about taking pictures, which I LOVE! While trying to set up for a photo, Spencer’s daughter asks him, “Why do you have to capture it? Can’t this moment run free?” (Side note, kids always asks the best questions!) Spencer goes on to talk about a man who refuses to use cameras at all. That blew my mind! How can you not use a camera? Spencer writes their conversation about how cameras can affect the situation and memory. Paul the Preindustrial Poet says that he would rather live in the moment than “capture” it on a piece of technology. In the end, Paul makes a statement that it just isn’t for him. Spencer then asks himself and his audience an important question. He says, “It has me thinking that maybe we're doing a disservice to students when we teach tech criticism as good versus bad rather than asking, "What is best?" And perhaps we're doing a disservice to students when we teach, "What is best?" rather than "What is best for me in this current context?'” What an amazing thought. If instead of teaching them to ask what is good, bad or even best; ask what will work best in this situation for me and will get the job done. How great would it be to teach the kids to think for themselves and figure out what tech tools they need to use for different circumstances.
They Don’t Need It!
In Don't teach your kids this stuff. Please?, Scott McLeod uses a sarcastic approach to discuss the different sides to teaching technology to students. For the first few moments of reading this post, I almost missed the sarcasm. Personally, I didn’t like his style of writing. I appreciated the sarcasm, but the broken, un-capitalized and limited punctuation style drove me kind of crazy. However, this isn’t of importance, the content is what truly matters.
A few of the arguments he presents, I can agree with. For instance, there is a ton of junk out there! Much of the time, I wonder if we should trust these kids with so much freedom. The entire world is open to them. But, then again, the entire world is open to them! Imagine what sort of amazing things students will be able to do! Technology is all around us and is closing in; there is no possible way to ignore it. The challenge is, not to teach kids about technology (I can guarantee most children can do more on a computer than most adults). It isn’t a question of how to operate it; it’s a question of how to use it! We need to focus on teaching our children and students how to use all the technology and massive amounts of information it comes with safely and effectively.
I thoroughly enjoyed his post, and absolutely love his sarcasm! What really amazes me, is how there are still some out there who think this way. Why should we include so much technology into teaching? What good will it do? Let me answer that, it will do a TON of good; just wait and see!
Side Note
This has nothing to do with the blog post assignment, but it happened this week and applies to EDM310 so I don’t know what to do with it, other than write about it here. While babysitting this week, the kids and I were watching Disney Channel, naturally. During one of the shows, a statement was made that really caught my attention. On the show ‘Jessie’, a young student asks her teacher, “Why do we need to know where Germany is? That’s the internet’s job.” The teacher on the show was very “old school” without even a projector of any sort. The class was looking at a map that was pulled down over the chalkboard (gasp!). Immediately when the character made this statement, I thought of EDM310. This is exactly what we learn about each week. The importance of memorizing and knowing facts and tidbits of information is fleeting. Instead, students are beginning to learn to create, process and THINK! Like I said, this has nothing to do anything, it is simply a side note, but I found it extremely interesting and had to share!
From 2006-2009, Apple created 66 ads called the “Get a Mac” series. This series featured a thin, handsome, young and hip actor as “Mac” and an awkward, hefty actor as “PC.” Throughout the commercials, the two would make jabs at each other through wit, sight gags, and one-liners. The cartoon above, also found here, is an obvious reference to this long running commercial series. The PC, or PaperMate here, cost less but is also unreliable. The Mac, or Ticonderoga, while expensive, John Spencer says only “hipsters” use them. Personally, I have always had a PC but longed for a Mac. I would always play with my friends’ and cousins’ Macs and love them. Then through this semester, I have learned new tricks on my computer and had to discover more about Macs. The more I have learned about the computers, I really enjoy my PC, and I don’t plan on “becoming” a Mac! That’s just my personal feelings.
I really like this cartoon because I feel like it’s somewhat true. While some of the programs and software on the Mac is better, they are often associated with hipsters. Also, the price, in my humble opinion, is kind of outrageous.
Playing Games
In Why Were Your Kids Playing Games?, John Spencer talks about how he got in trouble from his principal for “playing games” in class rather than “teaching.” Games are means by which true teaching can occur. So many children have difficulty learning from straight lecture. This reminded me of Randy Pausch’s last lecture where he talks about the “head fake.” The art of teaching involves using engaging and interesting ways to get the children to actually learn the information. From personal experience, the only time that I actually retained the material in any class was when I found it interesting. What’s more interesting than a game? I understand that some subjects can almost only be taught through straight lecture, but anytime it can be avoided, it should. Kids need to be involved, engaged and fascinated in order to truly learn. As Dr. Strange says, “No more burp-back education!”
As I explored his blog some more, I found one very interesting post. Capturing Reality caught my attention first because it was about taking pictures, which I LOVE! While trying to set up for a photo, Spencer’s daughter asks him, “Why do you have to capture it? Can’t this moment run free?” (Side note, kids always asks the best questions!) Spencer goes on to talk about a man who refuses to use cameras at all. That blew my mind! How can you not use a camera? Spencer writes their conversation about how cameras can affect the situation and memory. Paul the Preindustrial Poet says that he would rather live in the moment than “capture” it on a piece of technology. In the end, Paul makes a statement that it just isn’t for him. Spencer then asks himself and his audience an important question. He says, “It has me thinking that maybe we're doing a disservice to students when we teach tech criticism as good versus bad rather than asking, "What is best?" And perhaps we're doing a disservice to students when we teach, "What is best?" rather than "What is best for me in this current context?'” What an amazing thought. If instead of teaching them to ask what is good, bad or even best; ask what will work best in this situation for me and will get the job done. How great would it be to teach the kids to think for themselves and figure out what tech tools they need to use for different circumstances.
They Don’t Need It!
In Don't teach your kids this stuff. Please?, Scott McLeod uses a sarcastic approach to discuss the different sides to teaching technology to students. For the first few moments of reading this post, I almost missed the sarcasm. Personally, I didn’t like his style of writing. I appreciated the sarcasm, but the broken, un-capitalized and limited punctuation style drove me kind of crazy. However, this isn’t of importance, the content is what truly matters.
A few of the arguments he presents, I can agree with. For instance, there is a ton of junk out there! Much of the time, I wonder if we should trust these kids with so much freedom. The entire world is open to them. But, then again, the entire world is open to them! Imagine what sort of amazing things students will be able to do! Technology is all around us and is closing in; there is no possible way to ignore it. The challenge is, not to teach kids about technology (I can guarantee most children can do more on a computer than most adults). It isn’t a question of how to operate it; it’s a question of how to use it! We need to focus on teaching our children and students how to use all the technology and massive amounts of information it comes with safely and effectively.
I thoroughly enjoyed his post, and absolutely love his sarcasm! What really amazes me, is how there are still some out there who think this way. Why should we include so much technology into teaching? What good will it do? Let me answer that, it will do a TON of good; just wait and see!
Side Note
This has nothing to do with the blog post assignment, but it happened this week and applies to EDM310 so I don’t know what to do with it, other than write about it here. While babysitting this week, the kids and I were watching Disney Channel, naturally. During one of the shows, a statement was made that really caught my attention. On the show ‘Jessie’, a young student asks her teacher, “Why do we need to know where Germany is? That’s the internet’s job.” The teacher on the show was very “old school” without even a projector of any sort. The class was looking at a map that was pulled down over the chalkboard (gasp!). Immediately when the character made this statement, I thought of EDM310. This is exactly what we learn about each week. The importance of memorizing and knowing facts and tidbits of information is fleeting. Instead, students are beginning to learn to create, process and THINK! Like I said, this has nothing to do anything, it is simply a side note, but I found it extremely interesting and had to share!
Monday, March 25, 2013
Friday, March 22, 2013
Blog Post #9
Mr. McClung's World: Volume 4
Mr. McClung is a teacher who has posted lessons he learned from the year of teaching for the past four years. After his fourth year, Mr. McClung talks about only two themes: “you gotta dance with who you came to the dance with” and “challenge yourself.” In the first of these lessons, he discusses the effects he felt personally when stressing over what his peers thought of his teaching. By the end of the year, he says he has come to realize that this isn’t what he is about. He never before worried about what his peers thought about how he taught his classroom. Instead, one rule has gotten him this far, are the kids having fun? I think this is an incredible rule. I have said it in previous blog posts, but learning must be fun. If we as educators don’t believe this, the students never will. There have been many many classes that I have been FORCED to sit through and be bored out of my mind. I don’t want this to be my classroom. I want my students to love to be there, and enjoy learning and discovering the many things the world has to offer them.
Challenge yourself. Mr. McClung tells us how he became too familiar with the subject and the lesson plans and the teaching method. Eventually, he began to lose his creativity and he says himself, he wasn’t teaching well. However, by challenging himself and changing subjects in the year to come, he had to do a lot more work, but he can ensure the students are having fun and learning as much as possible. As a teacher, it is extremely important to keep variety throughout the years. This will not only help students learn, it will also help the teacher be best at what they do.
Both of these lessons are not only applicable to the classroom, but also to life. In life we don’t need to stress about what everyone else thinks of us. In addition, we constantly need to challenge ourselves. By challenging ourselves in life, we can work hard to learn new lessons, and we can avoid being lazy and lame. If we don’t challenge ourselves, who will?
At the bottom of this blog post there was a link to an "update". Apparently, after his third year at the same school, Mr. McClung was leaving Woodland to be an assistant principal at a new school! Many congratulations!
Mr. McClung’s World: Volume 2
After this blog post, I chose to read Mr. McClung’s “What I Learned This Year” post from the 09-10 school year. The first lesson he talks about here is adapting. He talks about how he had to teach a completely new subject (that he was uncomfortable with) to a new grade. I really enjoyed reading how through a little research and work he was able to make even history interesting and relevant. History has always been my least favorite subject, and honestly, I dread having to teach it one day. However, this gave me a little hope that through a little hard work, I will be able to make every subject enjoyable for my students. I also found it interesting that the last sentence of this section, “The lesson to learn from here is to never get too comfortable, change is good and ultimately it makes us better teachers,” is mimicked in his most recent post about challenging yourself.
His second lesson is something that I truly take to heart. All my life as a student, I have been taught by multiple teachers that only one answer and one opinion is right, theirs. I hate that! Not everything in life has one answer. I had one teacher in particular who would ask a question of “In your opinion….” and magically, my “opinion” would be wrong if it wasn’t what we had discussed in class. That is precisely the teacher I don’t want to become. Like Mr. McClung said, “I want my students to be independent thinkers and to only lean on me when they feel like they have hit a barrier.”
All of his lessons throughout this blog are extremely helpful in my opinion. I have never thought about having a “school mom” before and hadn’t thought about the possibility of becoming a control freak in my classroom. However, of the remaining lessons, “Don’t Lose Sight of What’s Important” really stuck out to me. His story about the “grown-ups” he worked with really reminded me of my last job. At the daycare where I worked, the other adults simply acted like middle schoolers. They would bicker and argue over petty things and talk about what you were doing behind your back and flat out lie to get you in trouble. Often times, it was extremely hard to focus on the children and ensure they were having fun and discovering new things because you were so infuriated at the teacher next door. So, I learned a lot from this blog post about what kind of teacher I want to be and how to accomplish it.
All in all, I really enjoyed Mr. McClung’s lessons and feel I have learned a lot that I will remember and reread before starting my first teaching job. I also plan on reading the rest of his posts to learn more lessons to help me in my future classroom.
Thursday, March 7, 2013
Blog Post #8
Technology Changes Everything
When watching This Is How We Dream Part 1 and 2, I felt like a lot of what he was saying was old news. Then I realized, it’s not. This dramatic change from pencil and paper to computer generated EVERYTHING has only happened very recently. In fact, it still is going on. Dr. Miller begins by saying this is greatest change in human communication in history. With everything from brilliant ideas to people’s food choices being published online, everything lives on. It used to be that only those who you ate with or talked to daily knew what you ate, and only the most brilliant ideas MIGHT be read in a couple of years when it may or may not get published. Now, anyone can know instantly almost anything. Growing up without an abundance of technology or without Google, we only knew what our friends and family knew or what we were willing and dedicated enough to find for ourselves. Finding things on your own meant cracking a book, many trips to the library and asking many people many questions; nowadays, it is as easy as typing one word into Google. Information also can be changed or updated instantly, before, making one change to a published book or paper cost a lot of money, paper, ink and time.
Knowledge isn’t the only thing being affected, what we find can be so much more. Virtually everything online isn’t only text. Information includes pictures, sound, and video. With this, everything must be beautiful, compelling, or contain auditory details to capture audiences. The limits are only those which we place on ourselves. Almost anything is possible.
Dr. Miller also points directly at teachers. “Ideas don’t belong to us individually; they belong to us as a culture. We as educators must be in the business of sharing ideas freely.” Especially with this much technology at our fingertips, being able to share anything instantly, we need to share our ideas. We shouldn’t keep secrets; instead we should share our knowledge and finds with the world. With this we can push ideas into the culture and affect it greatly.
With technology, collaboration is also possible. Meeting in person isn’t always possible, and phone conversations aren’t always easy. Now there is Skype, Google Docs, Facebook, instant messaging, all sorts of devices at our disposal with which we can work together as teams to accomplish great things. Whether it be group projects for class, sharing ideas with coworkers, working with someone to publish an article, even catching up with friends, it has been made easier through the magic of technology.
Towards the end of the talk, before discussing the dream for his college, Dr. Miller talks about the work of Jonathan Harris. One that he mentions searches the web for blogs constantly and finds feelings posted by people around the world. This really caught my attention, mainly because it looked so cool on the video. After searching for maybe ten seconds, I found it. We Feel Fine is really cool. You can really find out what feelings people have posted. You can search by feeling, gender, age, weather, location and date. I had a lot of fun playing around with it. Fun fact: “No feelings found from people on March 6, 2013 from Mobile, Alabama, United States.” This site is so much fun and truly amazing!
YouTube Playlist
After reading Carly's post I was intrigued and inspired. I love this idea. I’ve watched a lot of videos throughout this class so far that I think “I want to remember that!” So why I haven’t made my own playlist beforehand, I have no idea! Then I watched the video she posted at the bottom, which is also the first video in her playlist. At first I was thinking, “YES! I am 100% in the moment and totally committed to all I do…. Okay, most of what I do. YES! I am naturally enthusiastic and excited about life! Do I approach life with the magic, vulnerability, and curiosity of a child? Yes… at least I try to.” Then came the tough questions. When I watched this video, I had been having a terrible day, full of a lot of stress, a lot of annoying friends and a lot of personal issues I won’t even go into (this is why I need a personal blog). Then the video asked, “Are you as honest as a child? Do you love unconditionally? If you fall down, do you get right back up?” The next thing I know, I’m crying! Aside from the assignment part of this, I looked at myself and the tough situation I was in, and honestly, I couldn’t answer those questions like I wish I could have.
So anyway, back to the assignment. When I first looked at the playlist… 57 VIDEOS!?! Are you kidding me??? But her blog post was so interesting I wanted to watch them all! Honestly, I didn’t watch all (several had been removed from YouTube or were private, and I skipped a few that didn’t interest me) but I did watch almost all. I don’t think there is enough room/time to write all my thoughts about each of these videos, but they all inspired me. Here are a few that really stood out for one reason or another. When I Grow Up was extremely thought provoking. No child says they want to grow up and “marry the wrong person” or “commit a crime.” However, many children turn out doing just that. We as teachers have a power to guide these children and can affect the way they turn out. Don't Laugh At Me made me cry again. It’s such a powerful song. Creativity to the Rescue was just so cute. You Can't Be My Teacher basically is what all of EDM310 is about. Sometimes these things don’t seem very important coming from Dr. Strange. It is easy to blow this class off as “busy work” but it is extremely important! In case anyone thinks it isn’t, try hearing it from a child; everything is more powerful when coming from a child!
Thank a Teacher made me not only think about my future as a teacher, it also made me think about my past teachers. I have already sent a few of my past teachers a lovely thank you via Facebook because of this video. Never Stop Learning is just purely inspirational. Goofy - Teachers Are People was an obvious favorite because of Disney! And finally, Leave Your Mark which is slightly morbid and dark, but it is inspiring to want to be more than just a grease spot on the chair.
It was interesting after writing this to go back and see which ones Carly highlighted in her blog post compared to which one I highlighted. It’s amazing how the same set of videos can speak different things to each viewer. Her assignment was completely brilliant! As Dr. Strange said in his comment, she definitely set the bar high. Now, I feel kind of intimidated for Blog Post #12. I think she completely embodied the hopes Dr. Miller talks about in his video. She is using technology to learn and bring together all sorts of ideas in an organized fashion! Not only is she learning and inspiring herself, she is also teaching and inspiring others, all through the power of technology. Many of these videos I never would have known about nor seen if she hadn’t posted about them. I thoroughly enjoyed this part of the assignment for sure. I even passed a few of the videos onto my best friend to watch because they were that awesome!
EDM310 Help!
I think a lot of the trouble that my classmates and previous students have had with EDM310 isn’t necessarily the work (at least from what I have heard). A lot of the problems are with time management. Procrastination is a terrible “disease” sweeping over our nation. I think that a helpful video that should be made is about how to manage your time. Many procrastination and poor time management skills occur because they don’t know how to do it. There are also many cases where the person simply isn’t willing to give the time necessary to devote to class, and that is something that just can’t be helped. However, the ones who just don’t know how can be rescued. I think a fun video would be superhero themed “rescuing students from the pressures of time” by teaching them how to manage and organize themselves for EDM310.
School As We Know It
In Learn to Change, Change to Learn a fascinating statement was made. Schools must change. Technology is taking over the world. It can’t be ignored. One of the men said that by turning off these devices, we are turning off the children. It’s almost like these machines: computers, phones, iPads, iPods, etc, are extensions of the person. These kids can’t seem to function without these things. Students aren’t learning skills they need for life through “right answer vending machine approaches.” The jobs they are going to have will call on their artistic abilities, their ability to work in teams, understand context, and they will be expected to be multi-cultural, multi-lingual, etc. What better place to achieve these skills than on the internet? School isn’t the only place kids learn, they learn at home, in the community and yes, online. Instead of teaching facts, students need to be taught how to find information, validate it, communicate it, etc. This video is extremely powerful and in my opinion, it is very true. The world is changing, kids are changing, school systems must change to. This was the first time that it fully hit me that I will be working in the first complete educational change in history. This is the first time that “education” won’t be chalkboard, pencil and paper. And after this FULLY hit me, I had to take a step back and just take a breath, because that is the most amazing feeling, knowing you are going to be part of something so extreme and so astounding.
Scavenger Hunt
Wow! A scavenger hunt sounds like tons of fun! And it was actually! I found some great tools to use one day in my future classroom! First I read through what I was to find. I got extremely excited about making my own comic strip so I started there. I found Make Beliefs Comix! When I first started, I was going to make a comic for kids. 15 minutes in with hardly any comic and nothing that I liked, I started over. Then I looked at my clock. It was 11:56… I started working on this ridiculously long blog post at 6:00! How had it been 6 hours! I was barely tired (yawn….). So from that thought process, I created…
I had planned on doing my online midterm today… but I guess that will wait until tomorrow. Good thing it isn’t due for a couple of days. I just really got into this blog post and couldn’t stop! On to item number two. Since I’m all about creating things, I decided to find the tool to create a poll. I found Poll Everywhere. So, here is my poll… Feel free to text in your answer! Don’t ask where the last response came from… It’s past midnight and weird things happen in my brain, especially late at night.
Now, for the final item on my scavenger hunt. I decided to find a social platform. I created an account with Edmodo. I feel like a social platform is a great tool to use in the classroom. Not only can the students connect with you and information be shared with the students, this is something the parents also get involved in. Parents can connect with the teacher and keep up to date on what is going on in the classroom.
And so ends a very long blog post. It was very enjoyable and I feel like I learned a lot!
When watching This Is How We Dream Part 1 and 2, I felt like a lot of what he was saying was old news. Then I realized, it’s not. This dramatic change from pencil and paper to computer generated EVERYTHING has only happened very recently. In fact, it still is going on. Dr. Miller begins by saying this is greatest change in human communication in history. With everything from brilliant ideas to people’s food choices being published online, everything lives on. It used to be that only those who you ate with or talked to daily knew what you ate, and only the most brilliant ideas MIGHT be read in a couple of years when it may or may not get published. Now, anyone can know instantly almost anything. Growing up without an abundance of technology or without Google, we only knew what our friends and family knew or what we were willing and dedicated enough to find for ourselves. Finding things on your own meant cracking a book, many trips to the library and asking many people many questions; nowadays, it is as easy as typing one word into Google. Information also can be changed or updated instantly, before, making one change to a published book or paper cost a lot of money, paper, ink and time.
Knowledge isn’t the only thing being affected, what we find can be so much more. Virtually everything online isn’t only text. Information includes pictures, sound, and video. With this, everything must be beautiful, compelling, or contain auditory details to capture audiences. The limits are only those which we place on ourselves. Almost anything is possible.
Dr. Miller also points directly at teachers. “Ideas don’t belong to us individually; they belong to us as a culture. We as educators must be in the business of sharing ideas freely.” Especially with this much technology at our fingertips, being able to share anything instantly, we need to share our ideas. We shouldn’t keep secrets; instead we should share our knowledge and finds with the world. With this we can push ideas into the culture and affect it greatly.
With technology, collaboration is also possible. Meeting in person isn’t always possible, and phone conversations aren’t always easy. Now there is Skype, Google Docs, Facebook, instant messaging, all sorts of devices at our disposal with which we can work together as teams to accomplish great things. Whether it be group projects for class, sharing ideas with coworkers, working with someone to publish an article, even catching up with friends, it has been made easier through the magic of technology.
Towards the end of the talk, before discussing the dream for his college, Dr. Miller talks about the work of Jonathan Harris. One that he mentions searches the web for blogs constantly and finds feelings posted by people around the world. This really caught my attention, mainly because it looked so cool on the video. After searching for maybe ten seconds, I found it. We Feel Fine is really cool. You can really find out what feelings people have posted. You can search by feeling, gender, age, weather, location and date. I had a lot of fun playing around with it. Fun fact: “No feelings found from people on March 6, 2013 from Mobile, Alabama, United States.” This site is so much fun and truly amazing!
YouTube Playlist
After reading Carly's post I was intrigued and inspired. I love this idea. I’ve watched a lot of videos throughout this class so far that I think “I want to remember that!” So why I haven’t made my own playlist beforehand, I have no idea! Then I watched the video she posted at the bottom, which is also the first video in her playlist. At first I was thinking, “YES! I am 100% in the moment and totally committed to all I do…. Okay, most of what I do. YES! I am naturally enthusiastic and excited about life! Do I approach life with the magic, vulnerability, and curiosity of a child? Yes… at least I try to.” Then came the tough questions. When I watched this video, I had been having a terrible day, full of a lot of stress, a lot of annoying friends and a lot of personal issues I won’t even go into (this is why I need a personal blog). Then the video asked, “Are you as honest as a child? Do you love unconditionally? If you fall down, do you get right back up?” The next thing I know, I’m crying! Aside from the assignment part of this, I looked at myself and the tough situation I was in, and honestly, I couldn’t answer those questions like I wish I could have.
So anyway, back to the assignment. When I first looked at the playlist… 57 VIDEOS!?! Are you kidding me??? But her blog post was so interesting I wanted to watch them all! Honestly, I didn’t watch all (several had been removed from YouTube or were private, and I skipped a few that didn’t interest me) but I did watch almost all. I don’t think there is enough room/time to write all my thoughts about each of these videos, but they all inspired me. Here are a few that really stood out for one reason or another. When I Grow Up was extremely thought provoking. No child says they want to grow up and “marry the wrong person” or “commit a crime.” However, many children turn out doing just that. We as teachers have a power to guide these children and can affect the way they turn out. Don't Laugh At Me made me cry again. It’s such a powerful song. Creativity to the Rescue was just so cute. You Can't Be My Teacher basically is what all of EDM310 is about. Sometimes these things don’t seem very important coming from Dr. Strange. It is easy to blow this class off as “busy work” but it is extremely important! In case anyone thinks it isn’t, try hearing it from a child; everything is more powerful when coming from a child!
Thank a Teacher made me not only think about my future as a teacher, it also made me think about my past teachers. I have already sent a few of my past teachers a lovely thank you via Facebook because of this video. Never Stop Learning is just purely inspirational. Goofy - Teachers Are People was an obvious favorite because of Disney! And finally, Leave Your Mark which is slightly morbid and dark, but it is inspiring to want to be more than just a grease spot on the chair.
It was interesting after writing this to go back and see which ones Carly highlighted in her blog post compared to which one I highlighted. It’s amazing how the same set of videos can speak different things to each viewer. Her assignment was completely brilliant! As Dr. Strange said in his comment, she definitely set the bar high. Now, I feel kind of intimidated for Blog Post #12. I think she completely embodied the hopes Dr. Miller talks about in his video. She is using technology to learn and bring together all sorts of ideas in an organized fashion! Not only is she learning and inspiring herself, she is also teaching and inspiring others, all through the power of technology. Many of these videos I never would have known about nor seen if she hadn’t posted about them. I thoroughly enjoyed this part of the assignment for sure. I even passed a few of the videos onto my best friend to watch because they were that awesome!
EDM310 Help!
I think a lot of the trouble that my classmates and previous students have had with EDM310 isn’t necessarily the work (at least from what I have heard). A lot of the problems are with time management. Procrastination is a terrible “disease” sweeping over our nation. I think that a helpful video that should be made is about how to manage your time. Many procrastination and poor time management skills occur because they don’t know how to do it. There are also many cases where the person simply isn’t willing to give the time necessary to devote to class, and that is something that just can’t be helped. However, the ones who just don’t know how can be rescued. I think a fun video would be superhero themed “rescuing students from the pressures of time” by teaching them how to manage and organize themselves for EDM310.
School As We Know It
In Learn to Change, Change to Learn a fascinating statement was made. Schools must change. Technology is taking over the world. It can’t be ignored. One of the men said that by turning off these devices, we are turning off the children. It’s almost like these machines: computers, phones, iPads, iPods, etc, are extensions of the person. These kids can’t seem to function without these things. Students aren’t learning skills they need for life through “right answer vending machine approaches.” The jobs they are going to have will call on their artistic abilities, their ability to work in teams, understand context, and they will be expected to be multi-cultural, multi-lingual, etc. What better place to achieve these skills than on the internet? School isn’t the only place kids learn, they learn at home, in the community and yes, online. Instead of teaching facts, students need to be taught how to find information, validate it, communicate it, etc. This video is extremely powerful and in my opinion, it is very true. The world is changing, kids are changing, school systems must change to. This was the first time that it fully hit me that I will be working in the first complete educational change in history. This is the first time that “education” won’t be chalkboard, pencil and paper. And after this FULLY hit me, I had to take a step back and just take a breath, because that is the most amazing feeling, knowing you are going to be part of something so extreme and so astounding.
Scavenger Hunt
Wow! A scavenger hunt sounds like tons of fun! And it was actually! I found some great tools to use one day in my future classroom! First I read through what I was to find. I got extremely excited about making my own comic strip so I started there. I found Make Beliefs Comix! When I first started, I was going to make a comic for kids. 15 minutes in with hardly any comic and nothing that I liked, I started over. Then I looked at my clock. It was 11:56… I started working on this ridiculously long blog post at 6:00! How had it been 6 hours! I was barely tired (yawn….). So from that thought process, I created…
I had planned on doing my online midterm today… but I guess that will wait until tomorrow. Good thing it isn’t due for a couple of days. I just really got into this blog post and couldn’t stop! On to item number two. Since I’m all about creating things, I decided to find the tool to create a poll. I found Poll Everywhere. So, here is my poll… Feel free to text in your answer! Don’t ask where the last response came from… It’s past midnight and weird things happen in my brain, especially late at night.
Now, for the final item on my scavenger hunt. I decided to find a social platform. I created an account with Edmodo. I feel like a social platform is a great tool to use in the classroom. Not only can the students connect with you and information be shared with the students, this is something the parents also get involved in. Parents can connect with the teacher and keep up to date on what is going on in the classroom.
And so ends a very long blog post. It was very enjoyable and I feel like I learned a lot!
Wednesday, March 6, 2013
C4T #2
GTA and Googleplex? What's That?
For this C4T assignment, I looked at Eric Langhorst’s blog, Speaking of History…….. On December 9, 2012, Langhorst posted 2012 Google Teacher Academy - At the Googleplex Mountain View. This blog post was written while he was flying home to Kansas City from the 2012 Google Teacher Academy (GTA) in Mountain View. Eric discusses his experience at Googleplex. Through the weekend, he learned about tools, the Google culture and the GTA network. He discovered many new tools to use in his personal time and in his classroom. He also got to experience a piece of the Google culture. He says, “The campus is colorful, playful, visually appealing, accommodating the staff and quite honestly might be one of the most amazing places to work on the planet. We saw people riding bikes to get from one building to another part of the campus. People bringing their dogs to work and walking them on the grounds at lunch. Office buildings with bowling alleys, rooms for massages, heated Japanese toilets in the restrooms, tech help stations and every possible feature to help people focus on their job and being creative. It would truly be a great environment in which to work.” Lastly, he talks about the GTA network. Not only did he learn a lot of information, he also got to know a lot of people. They can keep in touch through the social media. He can continue great conversations with people from across the country. As he traveled home, he mentions multiple times how excited he is to get back to teaching and how his time at the GTA will make him a better teacher. I had never heard about the GTA or the Googleplex, and I started my comment with this. His post was extremely interesting. I also told him how incredible Googleplex sounds. Maybe one day I will be able to attend a GTA! Then, I thanked him for his post and left my twitter name and class blog address.
Snow Days
When I went back two weeks later, his newest post looked very interesting. Forget the snow, I'm presenting today anyway! was about a snow day. Eric Langhorst was supposed to present at the 2013 KCPT Education Conference in Kentucky. The event was cancelled because of a snow storm. Instead, he created a 50 minute video to make his presentation anyway. The presentation is about great sites and apps for teachers. The sites and apps he talks about are all located at this site. The video was very interesting and useful. I plan to explore and use many of them in my future classroom. I started my comment by saying I was currently a student at the University of South Alabama and taking an educational technology course! Some of the sites he mentioned in his presentation I have already been interoduced to through this course. I really enjoyed learning even more resources I can and will one day use in my own classroom. In fact, I used one of the sites When Send to send myself an email in a few months to remind me of this post and awesome sites. Again, I thanked him for his post and left my twitter name and class blog address.
I learned a lot from Eric Langhorst’s blog posts, especially the second one. Many of these sites I definitely see myself using in my own classroom one day. I think this would be a great addition to EDM310 in the future semesters!
For this C4T assignment, I looked at Eric Langhorst’s blog, Speaking of History…….. On December 9, 2012, Langhorst posted 2012 Google Teacher Academy - At the Googleplex Mountain View. This blog post was written while he was flying home to Kansas City from the 2012 Google Teacher Academy (GTA) in Mountain View. Eric discusses his experience at Googleplex. Through the weekend, he learned about tools, the Google culture and the GTA network. He discovered many new tools to use in his personal time and in his classroom. He also got to experience a piece of the Google culture. He says, “The campus is colorful, playful, visually appealing, accommodating the staff and quite honestly might be one of the most amazing places to work on the planet. We saw people riding bikes to get from one building to another part of the campus. People bringing their dogs to work and walking them on the grounds at lunch. Office buildings with bowling alleys, rooms for massages, heated Japanese toilets in the restrooms, tech help stations and every possible feature to help people focus on their job and being creative. It would truly be a great environment in which to work.” Lastly, he talks about the GTA network. Not only did he learn a lot of information, he also got to know a lot of people. They can keep in touch through the social media. He can continue great conversations with people from across the country. As he traveled home, he mentions multiple times how excited he is to get back to teaching and how his time at the GTA will make him a better teacher. I had never heard about the GTA or the Googleplex, and I started my comment with this. His post was extremely interesting. I also told him how incredible Googleplex sounds. Maybe one day I will be able to attend a GTA! Then, I thanked him for his post and left my twitter name and class blog address.
Snow Days
When I went back two weeks later, his newest post looked very interesting. Forget the snow, I'm presenting today anyway! was about a snow day. Eric Langhorst was supposed to present at the 2013 KCPT Education Conference in Kentucky. The event was cancelled because of a snow storm. Instead, he created a 50 minute video to make his presentation anyway. The presentation is about great sites and apps for teachers. The sites and apps he talks about are all located at this site. The video was very interesting and useful. I plan to explore and use many of them in my future classroom. I started my comment by saying I was currently a student at the University of South Alabama and taking an educational technology course! Some of the sites he mentioned in his presentation I have already been interoduced to through this course. I really enjoyed learning even more resources I can and will one day use in my own classroom. In fact, I used one of the sites When Send to send myself an email in a few months to remind me of this post and awesome sites. Again, I thanked him for his post and left my twitter name and class blog address.
I learned a lot from Eric Langhorst’s blog posts, especially the second one. Many of these sites I definitely see myself using in my own classroom one day. I think this would be a great addition to EDM310 in the future semesters!
Sunday, March 3, 2013
Project #8
Lighting Their Fires
Video podcast with Brandy Douglas, Rebecca Lathem, and Brelyn Searcy.
Video podcast with Brandy Douglas, Rebecca Lathem, and Brelyn Searcy.
Saturday, March 2, 2013
Project #9 PLN Progress Report
My PLN is constantly growing, with every project, every blog post assignment, every required activity, and every encounter throughout the day. A lot of my online PLN so far has come from Project #10. While searching for new technology to use in my classroom, I found two new blogs which I now follow, Educational Technology for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing and Visualising Ideas. Through this last blog, I discovered an entire list of books teachers should read, which I have also added to my PLN. I would say my PLN is coming along nicely. I have organized my virtual PLN on Symbaloo. I also have added Symbaloo’s EDU Tools webmix to my homepage. Along with this online PLN, I have many people in my life to help me along in my teaching career. Not only do I have my professors here at South, I also have my teachers from elementary and high school which I stay in touch with. I also have stayed in touch with a few teachers from the daycare I used to work at. Two of my cousins teach in elementary classrooms along with a couple of friends. They often encourage me and give me advice when discussing my future. I am very thankful for these people who help me along. I am also thankful for this class; otherwise I wouldn’t know many fundamental things I will need to know to run an excellent networked classroom.
Comments4Kids February Summary
For my first C4K assignment, I commented on Magen's blog from Mrs. Miller’s Baldwin County High 10th grade English class. The class’s assignment was to create a newsletter. On February 8th, Magen posted her newsletter about The Masque of the Red Death. On the first page of her newsletter, Magen wrote about the author, Edgar Allen Poe. A summary of the work was found on page two. The story is about a dying kingdom and the selfish prince wanting to escape the disease. The prince locked himself and his closest friends away in the castle to have an endless party. On the final page, Magen talks about the themes of the story. The prince was trying to escape an inescapable death. Man is mortal; therefore they cannot hide from the inevitable. When I commented on her post, I was sure to add that I enjoy Edgar Allen Poe’s work and I loved that she posted about him. I told Magen how wonderful she did on her newsletter. The layout was great, and the pictures she chose were very intriguing. Then I questioned about the selfishness of Prince Prospero. Magen had stated that he was selfish and didn’t care about others, but he chose his best friends to be locked away to safety with him; therefore, he cared for those people. I then asked her how she would respond if something like that were to happen to her. I encouraged her to keep up the good work and told her that I enjoyed her post.
For my second assignment, I commented on Vodrick's blog from Ms. Muhammad’s 4th grade class at Robbins Elementary from Prichard, Alabama. Vodrick was currently reading Prairie Dogs and Their Burrows. On December 21st, he wrote about different things he learned so far from this book. For instance, what prairie dogs eat and why they burrow. When I commented, I told him how I think prairie dogs are awesome. I also asked if he has learned anything else interesting about prairie dogs. I encouraged Vodrick to keep reading and learning and also keep up the great work on his blog.
For my third assignment, I commented on Lorenzo's blog from Miss Ouano’s Year 5 classroom from Pt England School in Auckland, New Zealand. The assignment for the class was to write about their weekend. On February 20th, Lorenzo posted about his cousin’s birthday party. I got really excited when I found out he was from New Zealand. I have always wanted to travel there and that was the first thing I told him when I commented on his blog. I told him I love birthdays and love chocolate mud cake which is what kind of cake they had eaten. He also had mentioned noodle buiscite. I have never had that, and asked Lorenzo what it was. I also encouraged him to keep up the good work on her blog. I thought it was really cool because I posted my comment on 2/21/13 at 8:05 pm. However, because they are in New Zealand, it showed up as 2/22/13 at 15:05. I just found that extremely cool.
For my fourth and final C4K I was assigned TriShawn’s blog from Mrs. Vannoy’s first grade class. However, TriShawn did not have any posts, so instead I commented on his classmate, Morgan's blog. Her blog post, on February 20th, was about her mom. She loves her mom and tells us that her mom is sweet. When commenting, I told Morgan that I loved my mom, too. My favorite thing about my mom is the way she hugs me. I then asked Morgan what her favorite thing about her mom was and encouraged her to keep up the great work.
Blog Post #7
Watching and Reading
I was genuinely excited when I read the assignment for this week. This was going to be my fourth time watching The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch, yet I was still excited to watch it again (even though I cry every time). When I had viewed it previously, I learned how to live my own life and thought of things I wanted to teach my own children one day. I had never thought about looking for things to use in my own classroom, which is exactly what this assignment was. I was also excited to watch it again, because since I watched it last I have gotten Randy Pausch's book about this lecture and have started to read it. I haven’t gotten very far, but the book gives a lot of insight into what he was thinking before, after and during the lecture. For instance, not even an hour before going on stage, Dr. Pausch was lying on his couch in his office sick, throwing up and in pain wondering if he would be able to even give the lecture. Also, while he was on stage right before the lecture began, he was getting his props ready and such; he also was going through deleting, editing and switching his slides around, minutes before he was to begin. The book is extremely interesting and also tear-jerking. I think that Dr. Pausch’s lecture should be taken to heart. Everything he talks about has some sort of practical lesson, whether it is something to apply to the way we live, the lessons we teach our children and students, or ways to teach. As I have said in a previous blog post, the idea of “enabling the childhood dreams of others” helped along the decision for me to become an elementary teacher.
Lessons I Learned
One of the hardest lessons I think Dr. Pausch talks about is becoming self-reflective. We need to find out how well we work with others. We must also change with the results so that we are easy to work with, because no matter what we do in life there will always be people we have to deal with. I will also remember, “When you’re screwing up and no one says anything, it means they’ve given up.” This is a lesson to look at both inwardly and outwardly. I don’t want others to give up on me, but I also don’t want to give up on others. I personally plan to put one of his “lessons” into practice with my future family. I do plan to let my kids paint their room if they so wish. I absolutely loved that his parents let him do this. I even watched the tour of his childhood room. This is a section of the book which Dr. Pausch goes into great detail about. I think it is important to allow kids to be creative and imaginative. However, it is also important to remember that he was in high school when he was allowed to paint his room; I don’t think I will give a four year old a tub of paint and let them go at it.
Lessons I Plan to Pass Along
There are many lessons Dr. Pausch talks about that can be used not only in everyday life but also in a classroom. For instance, the lesson he repeatedly mentions is the “head fake”. Kids can learn indirectly while having fun. “The best way to teach somebody something is to make them think they are learning something else.” This reminded me of Mr. Miyagi of “Karate Kid” teaching karate through other tasks. We as educators also need to remember that kids can do amazing things, we shouldn’t limit them. Dr. Pausch gives an excellent example, the first assignment he gave his class, they came back and he says they blew his mind. After talking to his mentor, Andy van Dam, he went back to his class and looked them in the eyes and said, “That was pretty good but I know you can do better.” A lot of the time we don’t know where the bar should be, and we only do students a disservice by placing it anywhere. They can be amazing; we have to help them get there.
Dr. Pausch reminds us that brick walls are there for a reason. They separate out the people who don’t want it bad enough. I think this is an important lesson to learn at an early age. There may be bumps along the road, but if you want something bad enough you may be able to work it out. We also need to remember that there is a good way and a bad way to say anything. There is a huge difference between “I don’t know!” and “Well, I don’t have much information, but I want to learn more.” Kind of like Dr. Strange’s motto: “I don’t know. Let's find out." It is helpful to think of better ways to put things, especially when dealing with children.
We also need to teach our children and students the “simple” lessons. For example, help others. Not only is it important to offer help, we must teach them that you can’t do everything alone, therefore, you must also ask for help. It seems our society is so used to taking the easy road and giving up when things get rough. Children and adults alike must remember not to give up. Instead of complaining, just work harder. It’s so easy to complain rather than do the work, and it’s a bad habit that is difficult to break. As teachers, we should help children break this habit early on. We also need to find the best in everybody, even if you have to wait for it, it is there.
Most importantly, we need to teach our kids to have fun. Perhaps we need to learn this from our kids instead. Children are the masters of fun. However, we need to teach them and remind them to have fun in everything they do. As Mary Poppins says, “In every job that must be done, there is an element of fun; you find the fun, and – SNAP! – the job’s a game!”
Sunday, February 24, 2013
Blog Post #6
Connectivism and the Classroom
In Networked Student, Wendy Drexler shows just how far the average classroom can go. In this example, the high school student only meets in class three times a week. The rest of the week he is learning on his own through the magic of the internet. He can find scholarly journals, blogs, articles, videos, practically any information on his subject. He collects all this information and saves the links online. Then he can start his own blog to reflect on this information. This is a pretty awesome setup for a classroom. The part that I found extremely important, and something that I hadn’t thought of, was that not only does one student learn from this hard work and searching, upcoming students can also learn from the information he has collected. Because all of what he has learned is online, other students can view it and they too can broaden their knowledge.
However, this setup begs the question, if he is learning online, why does he need a teacher? As shown through this video, a teacher is necessary for many reasons. Before he can begin his scavenger hunt through the plethora of information, he has to be taught how to do it. A teacher teaches the student where to begin, how to build his PLN, how to communicate properly, and which information is good and which is bad. The internet is full of great information. It is also full of a lot of false information. If a student is going to learn online, he first must know how to differentiate between the two.
I liked the last comment about what exactly the teacher does. She teaches “how to turn a web search into a scavenger hunt and get EXCITED when he finds that pearl of content.” A teacher not only teaches about the information, she also teaches how to be genuinely enthusiastic about learning! Imagine a student excited to learn something new, to find a great educational website. Amazing!
Personal Learning Environments and Networks
While watching Welcome to My PLE! by a 7th grade science student, I realized that she is learning a lot of information that I am now learning through EDM310. Before this class, I would have never been able to imagine an individual and independent learning setup in my 7th grade class. That just wasn’t something you did, in fact the computer and internet was barely allowed as a source for information in my classes.
The student made a comment during the video which stood out to me, probably because since I began my college career, I have found it to be extremely true. She said, “Because there is so much freedom, you have the inclination to be responsible.”Throughout my schooling days, it has been mandatory that you are in class, if you weren’t at school, your parents were called. You also were made to do your work. If you didn’t do an assignment it wasn’t simply a zero, the teacher would hound you for it even as a late assignment. Most of my teachers were even lenient in that there were many assignments I could have turned in the day before graduation and still gotten full credit. That completely changed when I graduated. No one really cared if I was in class, no one was going to call and check up on me. For that matter, they didn’t care if I did my work. If it wasn’t turned in by the assigned time, it was a zero. There was so much freedom. As Eleanor Roosevelt said, “With freedom comes responsibility.” I had to make sure I was in class; I had to make sure I did my homework, and I had to study. No one was going to follow me around making sure it got done.
I also liked how the student mentions that the assignments look really cool when they are done; it’s neat and orderly, and fun to view. That is something I have also found true in EDM310. I don’t mind doing the assignments; in fact I enjoy doing them most of the time. Another thing I noticed in the video was the website she was using to organize all of her websites. It looked brilliant. After finding the site, I have decided to set up my own Symbaloo to organize my personal favorite sites and the sites I often use for school.
In Networked Student, Wendy Drexler shows just how far the average classroom can go. In this example, the high school student only meets in class three times a week. The rest of the week he is learning on his own through the magic of the internet. He can find scholarly journals, blogs, articles, videos, practically any information on his subject. He collects all this information and saves the links online. Then he can start his own blog to reflect on this information. This is a pretty awesome setup for a classroom. The part that I found extremely important, and something that I hadn’t thought of, was that not only does one student learn from this hard work and searching, upcoming students can also learn from the information he has collected. Because all of what he has learned is online, other students can view it and they too can broaden their knowledge.
However, this setup begs the question, if he is learning online, why does he need a teacher? As shown through this video, a teacher is necessary for many reasons. Before he can begin his scavenger hunt through the plethora of information, he has to be taught how to do it. A teacher teaches the student where to begin, how to build his PLN, how to communicate properly, and which information is good and which is bad. The internet is full of great information. It is also full of a lot of false information. If a student is going to learn online, he first must know how to differentiate between the two.
I liked the last comment about what exactly the teacher does. She teaches “how to turn a web search into a scavenger hunt and get EXCITED when he finds that pearl of content.” A teacher not only teaches about the information, she also teaches how to be genuinely enthusiastic about learning! Imagine a student excited to learn something new, to find a great educational website. Amazing!
Personal Learning Environments and Networks
While watching Welcome to My PLE! by a 7th grade science student, I realized that she is learning a lot of information that I am now learning through EDM310. Before this class, I would have never been able to imagine an individual and independent learning setup in my 7th grade class. That just wasn’t something you did, in fact the computer and internet was barely allowed as a source for information in my classes.
The student made a comment during the video which stood out to me, probably because since I began my college career, I have found it to be extremely true. She said, “Because there is so much freedom, you have the inclination to be responsible.”Throughout my schooling days, it has been mandatory that you are in class, if you weren’t at school, your parents were called. You also were made to do your work. If you didn’t do an assignment it wasn’t simply a zero, the teacher would hound you for it even as a late assignment. Most of my teachers were even lenient in that there were many assignments I could have turned in the day before graduation and still gotten full credit. That completely changed when I graduated. No one really cared if I was in class, no one was going to call and check up on me. For that matter, they didn’t care if I did my work. If it wasn’t turned in by the assigned time, it was a zero. There was so much freedom. As Eleanor Roosevelt said, “With freedom comes responsibility.” I had to make sure I was in class; I had to make sure I did my homework, and I had to study. No one was going to follow me around making sure it got done.
I also liked how the student mentions that the assignments look really cool when they are done; it’s neat and orderly, and fun to view. That is something I have also found true in EDM310. I don’t mind doing the assignments; in fact I enjoy doing them most of the time. Another thing I noticed in the video was the website she was using to organize all of her websites. It looked brilliant. After finding the site, I have decided to set up my own Symbaloo to organize my personal favorite sites and the sites I often use for school.
Project #10
Searching For A New Technology
When beginning this project, I had no idea where to even start. There have been so many things that I have learned through this class alone which I never knew existed beforehand. My first thought was that I want to teach the deaf, so there is a undoubtedly TON of information and technology that I don’t know about and will have to learn at some point. It was just a matter of how was I going to find these discoveries? Naturally I turned to Google first. I simply googled “technology to use in a deaf classroom.” Instantaneously there were more than four million pages of things I never would have known how to find otherwise. (Technology and the internet still amaze me!)
The first page took me to a really interesting article Accessibility - Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART). CART is a tool which can “caption” anything being said for a deaf or hard of hearing person to read in real time. The captioning can be displayed onto little screens, for personal or small group use. It also can be shown on larger screens for an entire room to see, on a giant screen for big events, on the internet, or even broadcasted via satellite. CART was provided for the author of this article at a conference so that although she was deaf, she could be an active participant in the workshops.
The way that CART works, is as the words are being said, they are also being typed into a stenotype machine using shorthand the machine can decipher. The software translates the shorthand into words and the “captions” appear on the screen almost instantly. The author writes, “The process is so fast that there is hardly any lag time between what is said and what the deaf person is able to read.” Wireless CART services are provided through equipment called a StenoCast X7. The CART reporter’s computer is attached directly to the X7 device. Then there are small receivers which are plugged into the laptops or computers of the students. The students can now sit anywhere up to 300 feet away from the reporter and still receive the “captions.”
CART services are not difficult to get hold of. Some companies offer services locally and nationally. It is also possible to become a CART Services provider. Many of the reporters begin by developing court reporting skills, because the skills used for CART are very similar. This sounds absolutely amazing! This type of technology would work great in a classroom with one or a few deaf students. The problem with CART for a classroom setting is the teacher would also have to have a reporter to type what is being said. Although I’m not entirely sure how this would work in a classroom, I am very interested in learning more about CART and also think it would be really neat to become a reporter for one.
Finding Other Cool Things Along the Way
But I couldn’t stop there ; I wanted to go to all of those other Google pages too! So I continued on. The next page I found was a blog “Educational Technology for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing”. A teacher who has taught deaf education for 15 years was sharing her experiences and advice! How wonderful. After exploring her blog a little I found Technology: Where Do I Begin? (Part 1) where the author talks about almost everything a teacher needs to do and know about technology. Highly recommended to read! The first thing she talks about is developing a PLN and how to do it (gee, where have I heard this before?). She suggests many hashtags and names to follow on Twitter, one of which was #deafed. So I went over to my TweetDeck and set up a new column following #deafed. After exploring some of those tweets, I discovered yet another blog. Visualizing Ideas is a blog written by a teacher who teaches English as a FOREIGN language to deaf and hard of hearing students in Israel. Not only does she teach the deaf, she is teaching them a new language! I just think that is amazing. In one of her posts, Books Teachers Recommend to Other Teachers, she gives a list of books that all teachers should read. This list has already been added to my Pinterest board of books I want to read!
All of this to say, I still get amazed at how easy it is to find all sorts of information. Through one Google search, I have found a cool new piece of technology that I would love to learn to use, two new amazing blogs to follow, a new hashtag to follow on twitter, a list of books I will read to help me be a better teacher and expanded my PLN.
When beginning this project, I had no idea where to even start. There have been so many things that I have learned through this class alone which I never knew existed beforehand. My first thought was that I want to teach the deaf, so there is a undoubtedly TON of information and technology that I don’t know about and will have to learn at some point. It was just a matter of how was I going to find these discoveries? Naturally I turned to Google first. I simply googled “technology to use in a deaf classroom.” Instantaneously there were more than four million pages of things I never would have known how to find otherwise. (Technology and the internet still amaze me!)
The first page took me to a really interesting article Accessibility - Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART). CART is a tool which can “caption” anything being said for a deaf or hard of hearing person to read in real time. The captioning can be displayed onto little screens, for personal or small group use. It also can be shown on larger screens for an entire room to see, on a giant screen for big events, on the internet, or even broadcasted via satellite. CART was provided for the author of this article at a conference so that although she was deaf, she could be an active participant in the workshops.
The way that CART works, is as the words are being said, they are also being typed into a stenotype machine using shorthand the machine can decipher. The software translates the shorthand into words and the “captions” appear on the screen almost instantly. The author writes, “The process is so fast that there is hardly any lag time between what is said and what the deaf person is able to read.” Wireless CART services are provided through equipment called a StenoCast X7. The CART reporter’s computer is attached directly to the X7 device. Then there are small receivers which are plugged into the laptops or computers of the students. The students can now sit anywhere up to 300 feet away from the reporter and still receive the “captions.”
CART services are not difficult to get hold of. Some companies offer services locally and nationally. It is also possible to become a CART Services provider. Many of the reporters begin by developing court reporting skills, because the skills used for CART are very similar. This sounds absolutely amazing! This type of technology would work great in a classroom with one or a few deaf students. The problem with CART for a classroom setting is the teacher would also have to have a reporter to type what is being said. Although I’m not entirely sure how this would work in a classroom, I am very interested in learning more about CART and also think it would be really neat to become a reporter for one.
Finding Other Cool Things Along the Way
But I couldn’t stop there ; I wanted to go to all of those other Google pages too! So I continued on. The next page I found was a blog “Educational Technology for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing”. A teacher who has taught deaf education for 15 years was sharing her experiences and advice! How wonderful. After exploring her blog a little I found Technology: Where Do I Begin? (Part 1) where the author talks about almost everything a teacher needs to do and know about technology. Highly recommended to read! The first thing she talks about is developing a PLN and how to do it (gee, where have I heard this before?). She suggests many hashtags and names to follow on Twitter, one of which was #deafed. So I went over to my TweetDeck and set up a new column following #deafed. After exploring some of those tweets, I discovered yet another blog. Visualizing Ideas is a blog written by a teacher who teaches English as a FOREIGN language to deaf and hard of hearing students in Israel. Not only does she teach the deaf, she is teaching them a new language! I just think that is amazing. In one of her posts, Books Teachers Recommend to Other Teachers, she gives a list of books that all teachers should read. This list has already been added to my Pinterest board of books I want to read!
All of this to say, I still get amazed at how easy it is to find all sorts of information. Through one Google search, I have found a cool new piece of technology that I would love to learn to use, two new amazing blogs to follow, a new hashtag to follow on twitter, a list of books I will read to help me be a better teacher and expanded my PLN.
Saturday, February 16, 2013
Blog Post #5
Dreaming Up Schools
After exploring her blog, I found that Venspired by Krissy Venosdale is an excellent site to be used by teachers. I absolutely love her blog, in fact I subscribed to it by email already. I discovered a post that I believe every teacher and every future teacher should read, What's Not Written in Our Curriculum. In this post, Krissy basically says to do what you love and help students find their passion along the way. I also found a post which spoke directly to me, Day 3: Photography in the Classroom. This post called out to me because I love photography, so I began reading. Krissy introduces ten ways to incorporate photography in a classroom. I love this idea! The projects sound amazing and so much fun, allowing the students to play around with photography and get behind the camera.
In If I Built a School,Krissy talks about what her school would be like if she was able to build one from scratch. This is quite possibly the best thing I’ve ever read! Throughout the post, you can sense her passion she has for learning. Her vision for what a school should be goes right along with mine. The feeling that kids wouldn’t be there by force, but because learning is so stinkin’ awesome they would want to be there, all the time. Being handed over a property and being told that I can build a school of my own there and that anything I say goes, is something that I have actually thought about beforehand. I can honestly say I wouldn’t even know where to begin. However, since we are only dreaming. I would want my school to be, in a word, EPIC. Everything would be colorful and give off a happy vibe. Much of the school I have created in my mind is almost the same as Krissy’s, a treehouse indoors, café set up cafeteria, and different classes the kids chose themselves to take. The thing that I struck me as most special in Krissy’s imaginary school was the teachers’ parking spots. I absolutely love the idea of each teacher having “a sign decorated by a student that would tell them what they mean to them. So, it would be the first, and last, thing that teacher sees every single day throughout the school year.” That is just beautiful. I know that it would be my favorite part of everyday as a teacher. I also like the “grade levels” that she created. Each student “leveling up” based on their readiness, not their age. Reading this post made me want to go back to elementary school even more than usual. As long as I can go to her school!
Using Internet in a New Way
After watching and listening to Eric Whitaker's Virtual Choir and the NPR Interview, I couldn’t even describe my thoughts. This was the most amazing and cool thing I’d ever seen! I knew the internet brought people from across the globe together, but this was even better. I loved the way Eric Whitaker said it in the interview, “all of these individuals… alone in their rooms… brought together… so that we can BE ALONE TOGETHER.” Through this choir, not only was beautiful music made, but these people from all different countries were instantly connected. I could have never imagined something like this or thought it possible to create. This completely blew my mind and truly amazed me.
As far as Jennifer Chamber's blog post goes, I completely agree with the title. “I think I have become a Blogger.” I have wanted to start a blog for a long time, but never had the time or the knowhow. Through this class, however, I have learned not only how to blog but how much fun it is to get your ideas out into the world. I am currently compiling a list of ideas for my future personal blog.
Teaching: That's SO 20th Century
In Teaching in the 21st Century, Kevin Roberts presents the tough question all teachers and future teachers are asking themselves, “What does it mean to teach in the 21st century?” The role of teaching has drastically changed in the last decade. With the amount of technology in everyday life, students… actually anyone can have the answer to any question in their homes, hands, and pockets. Anything can be “googled” in a matter of seconds. If that is the case, what is the point of teaching facts, dates, theories, information, etc.? Kevin Roberts shows the different skills which need to be taught and the different questions which need to be asked. Instead of prohibiting the use of technology tools, we need to teach students the skills of how to use them correctly.
I personally believe that he is correct and this is the approach we as educators need to take in the classroom. This presentation brought up many homework questions and activities that I would love to use one day in my own classroom. We must ask students to use the technology available to find the answers, but ask them to also evaluate and analyze why the answer they find is correct. This abundance of technology also allows students to create for themselves, rather than just looking at what others have created. This “theory” will change the classroom forever.
Flipping Classrooms
Why I Flipped My Classroom taught me some very valuable information. I really enjoy the idea of flipping a classroom. After watching Katie Gimbar’s video and her FAQ videos, I would really like this to be the way my future classroom is set up. A lot of the questions she answered were questions I had while watching the original video which was extremely helpful. However, I am still a little skeptical of how this would work in a classroom which teaches multiple subjects. Dr. Lodge McCammon's FIZZ and Ms. Munafo's Flipping the Classroom both presented the same information as Katie Gimbar’s video. This style of teaching is wonderful and what I would love to do one day.
After watching all of these videos, I decided I might as well explore the website they all were suggesting. I found that the Friday Institute website not only had an area for teachers, but also for undergraduates. The FIZZ program trains both teachers and undergrads to flip their classrooms. Both current teachers and students can apply and complete assignments to receive a certificate for teaching in a flipped classroom. This is a program that I am extremely interested in applying for in my future.
However, then I think about my future. What I am planning and would love to do is to teach the deaf. This approach is something that would not work in this type of classroom. If I instead end up in a “normal” elementary classroom, I will absolutely implement this teaching method. This is something that I will remember in the future and consider if it can be used in my classroom.
After exploring her blog, I found that Venspired by Krissy Venosdale is an excellent site to be used by teachers. I absolutely love her blog, in fact I subscribed to it by email already. I discovered a post that I believe every teacher and every future teacher should read, What's Not Written in Our Curriculum. In this post, Krissy basically says to do what you love and help students find their passion along the way. I also found a post which spoke directly to me, Day 3: Photography in the Classroom. This post called out to me because I love photography, so I began reading. Krissy introduces ten ways to incorporate photography in a classroom. I love this idea! The projects sound amazing and so much fun, allowing the students to play around with photography and get behind the camera.
In If I Built a School,Krissy talks about what her school would be like if she was able to build one from scratch. This is quite possibly the best thing I’ve ever read! Throughout the post, you can sense her passion she has for learning. Her vision for what a school should be goes right along with mine. The feeling that kids wouldn’t be there by force, but because learning is so stinkin’ awesome they would want to be there, all the time. Being handed over a property and being told that I can build a school of my own there and that anything I say goes, is something that I have actually thought about beforehand. I can honestly say I wouldn’t even know where to begin. However, since we are only dreaming. I would want my school to be, in a word, EPIC. Everything would be colorful and give off a happy vibe. Much of the school I have created in my mind is almost the same as Krissy’s, a treehouse indoors, café set up cafeteria, and different classes the kids chose themselves to take. The thing that I struck me as most special in Krissy’s imaginary school was the teachers’ parking spots. I absolutely love the idea of each teacher having “a sign decorated by a student that would tell them what they mean to them. So, it would be the first, and last, thing that teacher sees every single day throughout the school year.” That is just beautiful. I know that it would be my favorite part of everyday as a teacher. I also like the “grade levels” that she created. Each student “leveling up” based on their readiness, not their age. Reading this post made me want to go back to elementary school even more than usual. As long as I can go to her school!
Using Internet in a New Way
After watching and listening to Eric Whitaker's Virtual Choir and the NPR Interview, I couldn’t even describe my thoughts. This was the most amazing and cool thing I’d ever seen! I knew the internet brought people from across the globe together, but this was even better. I loved the way Eric Whitaker said it in the interview, “all of these individuals… alone in their rooms… brought together… so that we can BE ALONE TOGETHER.” Through this choir, not only was beautiful music made, but these people from all different countries were instantly connected. I could have never imagined something like this or thought it possible to create. This completely blew my mind and truly amazed me.
As far as Jennifer Chamber's blog post goes, I completely agree with the title. “I think I have become a Blogger.” I have wanted to start a blog for a long time, but never had the time or the knowhow. Through this class, however, I have learned not only how to blog but how much fun it is to get your ideas out into the world. I am currently compiling a list of ideas for my future personal blog.
Teaching: That's SO 20th Century
In Teaching in the 21st Century, Kevin Roberts presents the tough question all teachers and future teachers are asking themselves, “What does it mean to teach in the 21st century?” The role of teaching has drastically changed in the last decade. With the amount of technology in everyday life, students… actually anyone can have the answer to any question in their homes, hands, and pockets. Anything can be “googled” in a matter of seconds. If that is the case, what is the point of teaching facts, dates, theories, information, etc.? Kevin Roberts shows the different skills which need to be taught and the different questions which need to be asked. Instead of prohibiting the use of technology tools, we need to teach students the skills of how to use them correctly.
I personally believe that he is correct and this is the approach we as educators need to take in the classroom. This presentation brought up many homework questions and activities that I would love to use one day in my own classroom. We must ask students to use the technology available to find the answers, but ask them to also evaluate and analyze why the answer they find is correct. This abundance of technology also allows students to create for themselves, rather than just looking at what others have created. This “theory” will change the classroom forever.
Flipping Classrooms
Why I Flipped My Classroom taught me some very valuable information. I really enjoy the idea of flipping a classroom. After watching Katie Gimbar’s video and her FAQ videos, I would really like this to be the way my future classroom is set up. A lot of the questions she answered were questions I had while watching the original video which was extremely helpful. However, I am still a little skeptical of how this would work in a classroom which teaches multiple subjects. Dr. Lodge McCammon's FIZZ and Ms. Munafo's Flipping the Classroom both presented the same information as Katie Gimbar’s video. This style of teaching is wonderful and what I would love to do one day.
After watching all of these videos, I decided I might as well explore the website they all were suggesting. I found that the Friday Institute website not only had an area for teachers, but also for undergraduates. The FIZZ program trains both teachers and undergrads to flip their classrooms. Both current teachers and students can apply and complete assignments to receive a certificate for teaching in a flipped classroom. This is a program that I am extremely interested in applying for in my future.
However, then I think about my future. What I am planning and would love to do is to teach the deaf. This approach is something that would not work in this type of classroom. If I instead end up in a “normal” elementary classroom, I will absolutely implement this teaching method. This is something that I will remember in the future and consider if it can be used in my classroom.
Thursday, February 14, 2013
Sunday, February 10, 2013
Blog Post #4
First Grade Podcasting
I have never made a podcast before, and I would never think it was something to be used in a classroom. In 1st Graders Create Their Own Read-Along Audiobook and Podcasting with First Grade, I learned exactly how it can be used in a classroom. This seems like a project which allows the students to learn while they enjoy themselves quite a bit. I found it very interesting that the “shy and quiet students were coming out of their shell.” I was a very shy child, and still am, but I love to break quiet and shy children out of their shells. Podcasting, according to these articles, seems to be just the trick!
The Flat Stanley Podcast was my favorite. I love Flat Stanley and enjoy making them too. Listening to the children talk about different places around the universe was awesome. Of course, I loved hearing about Alabama, although I think they should have learned to say “War Eagle” instead. This shows an amazing way to use podcasts and fun activities to teach children about other places.
Podcasting Language
While reading Listening-Comprehension-Podcasting, I couldn’t help but think of my senior year of high school. My friends and I were taking our fourth year of Spanish with the same teacher. I loved our teacher, and loved the language. In my third year of Spanish I was pretty good at speaking Spanish. Then because there wasn’t enough room or time in the day, our class was combined with Spanish 3. Our teacher would have to spend one or two day with Spanish 3 and the next one or two days with us. It got to be very confusing. At the end of the year I had given up on Spanish, and ultimately lost the majority of my Spanish-speaking abilities. This article talks about using a podcast to teach language through listening- comprehension, speaking skills, and fluency. After reading, I think that if we had spent our year of Spanish 4 creating podcasts and editing them, I would have been able to practice and keep the language easier.
Education: Podcast Style
The Benefits of Podcasting in the Classroom taught me many different ways that podcasting can be used in the classroom. This generation of students is very technology based, “they haven’t experienced life without technology.” Joe Dale proves this with some shocking statistics. 10,000 hours are spent playing video games, 10,000 more hours spent on the phone and 20,000 hours spent watching TV. Students today need a technology based learning which they will be familiar with. Podcasts can be used in all sorts of ways to help students learn, from them creating their own podcasts, podcasts being used to help sick children keeping up, and parents being able to know exactly what is happening in the classroom.
Judy Scharf Podcast Collection is a very helpful site which covers all the ins and outs of podcasts. First off it explains what a podcast is exactly, which is nice. It also gives some benefits of podcasting in education. For example, podcasts are available 24/7, it isn’t a learning tool which can only be accessed in the classroom during class time, and therefore there are no excuses for missing anything. Podcasting also allows for students to enhance their communication skills. Communication is used in everyday life. Thus, it is pertinent to be an effective communicator. Students creating their own podcasts can help them to learn how to communicate; what to and what not to do. There is also a lot of information on how to start a podcast. This is something that will be very beneficial to me when starting our podcast for EDM310, because I have never made one before.
Friday, February 8, 2013
Wednesday, February 6, 2013
C4T #1
Flexibooks?
I read and responded to 2¢ Worth’s post The Purpose of Textbooks. The one I read was “The Purpose of Textbooks: Part 2”, therefore, I felt I also needed to read Part 1. Throughout both posts, David Warlick talks about textbooks and how the purpose is changing. Years ago when the availability of information was scarce, education was based on remembering. Today however, because of the abundance of technology, education is based on being “skillfully, resourceful and responsible learners.” He goes on in Part 2 to say how we don’t necessarily need textbooks, what we need is “flexible digital textbooks.” Ones that can grow and change with the student as he learns new information, something that can be kept for life to constantly change and adapt. “Learning tools need not be turned in at the end of the course, but carried on, edited, adapted and grown.” When I commented, I focused first on the idea of a “flexible digital textbook.” I wish I could have a ‘textbook’ that changed with me and showed the knowledge I have gained. However, textbooks cannot be completely thrown out; they serve as an excellent springboard for deeper research. Also, many students aren’t motivated enough to be without a given text to know. Maybe these students need a flexible textbook rather than, as Dr. Strange would say, burping back the information put into their heads.
Taxes for Kids
When I went back to David Warlick’s blog 2 weeks later, I read “World Tax Comparisons” by Ryann Warlick. In this post, Ryann gives an excellent conversation starter to be used in a classroom. She gives a link to an infograph (photo above) and instructions of how to use it in the classroom. First, discuss with students why taxes are needed, what sort of things tax money is used for, and think about “what would the world would be like without the government having money.” Then show the students the infograph. She then poses questions to ask the students and find ways, other than taxes, which the government could use to gather the necessary funds. I found this extremely interesting. I would love to hear what sort of things the kids would come up with. Even some adults could come up with some funny stuff. After exploring this blog a little more, I found there are tons of fun activities like this which could easily be used in a classroom. I plan to keep up with this blog and use some of the methods demonstrated in my own classroom.
I read and responded to 2¢ Worth’s post The Purpose of Textbooks. The one I read was “The Purpose of Textbooks: Part 2”, therefore, I felt I also needed to read Part 1. Throughout both posts, David Warlick talks about textbooks and how the purpose is changing. Years ago when the availability of information was scarce, education was based on remembering. Today however, because of the abundance of technology, education is based on being “skillfully, resourceful and responsible learners.” He goes on in Part 2 to say how we don’t necessarily need textbooks, what we need is “flexible digital textbooks.” Ones that can grow and change with the student as he learns new information, something that can be kept for life to constantly change and adapt. “Learning tools need not be turned in at the end of the course, but carried on, edited, adapted and grown.” When I commented, I focused first on the idea of a “flexible digital textbook.” I wish I could have a ‘textbook’ that changed with me and showed the knowledge I have gained. However, textbooks cannot be completely thrown out; they serve as an excellent springboard for deeper research. Also, many students aren’t motivated enough to be without a given text to know. Maybe these students need a flexible textbook rather than, as Dr. Strange would say, burping back the information put into their heads.
Taxes for Kids
Special Blog Post #1
Searching WolframAlpha
When I searched WolframAplha to “Compare the Population of India, China, and the United States” I found that India and China have even more of a lead on the U.S. than I had previously thought. China has the largest population with 1.35 billion people. India isn’t far behind China with 1.21 billion people. The United States only has 309 million people. We don’t even have half a billion people, and China almost has one and a half billion! That’s incredible. WolframAlpha also showed the life expectancy of each country. I found it really interesting. The people of India are only expected to live to be 69.9, and China’s life expectancy is 73.5. What I found the most interesting is that although the U.S. has the smallest population, the life expectancy is the highest with 78.1. I’m not sure what this says about these countries, I just found it cool.
I continued to use India, China and the United States for my second and third comparative searches. For my second search, I compared the number of students in each of these countries. WolframAlpha gave way more information than I ever expected. I not only found the number of students total in each country, I also found the number of students specifically in elementary school and high school and college. I was also told the number of teachers for elementary and high schools and also the student-to-teacher ratio. In total, India has the most students with 251.3 million people in school. China follows with 233.3 million people. Again, the U.S. is last with 67.62 million. But again, we must consider the population. By doing some math, I found that this means, 20.8% of India’s population is considered a student; 17.3% of China’s population is considered a student; and 21.9% of the U.S. population is considered a student. So it may appear that we have the least amount of students, but the U.S. has the highest percent of the population in school right now. I think that’s pretty cool!
For my third comparative search, I compared the number of internet users in India, China and the United States. Again WolframAlpha blew me away with information. In one second I knew how many people in 3 countries across the globe were paying for internet. I also was able to know the number of people in each country which were using all different types of technology. For example, cell phone plans, television/cable users, even newspaper subscriptions. China has the highest number of internet users – 516.1 million (that’s more than the entire population of the United States!) 243.8 million people use the internet in the United States. Only 125 million people use the internet in India. Another thing I thought was cool about WolframAlpha was that it also gives you graphs and charts so that visual people can understand it easier and more information can be shared. For example, I learned that although China has the most internet users, this huge spike only occurred in the last four years.
I feel that WolframAlpha could be used greatly in a classroom. This site has information on anything you could possibly imagine! Which means it is great for personal use and learning, and also for students. I was already somewhat familiar with WolframAlpha, because this is the site used by Apple’s Siri. There have been many questions my friends and I have asked Siri, and a WolframAlpha search pops up as her response. This site is great for students of all ages. It is very easy to use and holds a ton of information. Kids could easily and quickly use this site to find information for themselves or for school projects.
Social Media Changing the World Forever… and FAST
Social Media Count is a website which shows in real time the number of all sorts of social, mobile, gaming, and heritage things happening around the world. Above, I’ve included a screenshot of how many things happened in one minute on all different social websites. Going to the site and watching how fast the numbers change kind of made me dizzy! But it’s interesting to see. In ONE MINUTE, there were 2,237,038 likes and comments made on Facebook!!! I can’t even wrap my mind around that. Social media is taking over the world! And it’s not something we can stop. Instead, we have to go along with it and find ways to include these things in our classroom in an educational way. Honestly, this stresses me out a little bit to think about.
When I searched WolframAplha to “Compare the Population of India, China, and the United States” I found that India and China have even more of a lead on the U.S. than I had previously thought. China has the largest population with 1.35 billion people. India isn’t far behind China with 1.21 billion people. The United States only has 309 million people. We don’t even have half a billion people, and China almost has one and a half billion! That’s incredible. WolframAlpha also showed the life expectancy of each country. I found it really interesting. The people of India are only expected to live to be 69.9, and China’s life expectancy is 73.5. What I found the most interesting is that although the U.S. has the smallest population, the life expectancy is the highest with 78.1. I’m not sure what this says about these countries, I just found it cool.
I continued to use India, China and the United States for my second and third comparative searches. For my second search, I compared the number of students in each of these countries. WolframAlpha gave way more information than I ever expected. I not only found the number of students total in each country, I also found the number of students specifically in elementary school and high school and college. I was also told the number of teachers for elementary and high schools and also the student-to-teacher ratio. In total, India has the most students with 251.3 million people in school. China follows with 233.3 million people. Again, the U.S. is last with 67.62 million. But again, we must consider the population. By doing some math, I found that this means, 20.8% of India’s population is considered a student; 17.3% of China’s population is considered a student; and 21.9% of the U.S. population is considered a student. So it may appear that we have the least amount of students, but the U.S. has the highest percent of the population in school right now. I think that’s pretty cool!
For my third comparative search, I compared the number of internet users in India, China and the United States. Again WolframAlpha blew me away with information. In one second I knew how many people in 3 countries across the globe were paying for internet. I also was able to know the number of people in each country which were using all different types of technology. For example, cell phone plans, television/cable users, even newspaper subscriptions. China has the highest number of internet users – 516.1 million (that’s more than the entire population of the United States!) 243.8 million people use the internet in the United States. Only 125 million people use the internet in India. Another thing I thought was cool about WolframAlpha was that it also gives you graphs and charts so that visual people can understand it easier and more information can be shared. For example, I learned that although China has the most internet users, this huge spike only occurred in the last four years.
I feel that WolframAlpha could be used greatly in a classroom. This site has information on anything you could possibly imagine! Which means it is great for personal use and learning, and also for students. I was already somewhat familiar with WolframAlpha, because this is the site used by Apple’s Siri. There have been many questions my friends and I have asked Siri, and a WolframAlpha search pops up as her response. This site is great for students of all ages. It is very easy to use and holds a ton of information. Kids could easily and quickly use this site to find information for themselves or for school projects.
Social Media Changing the World Forever… and FAST
Social Media Count is a website which shows in real time the number of all sorts of social, mobile, gaming, and heritage things happening around the world. Above, I’ve included a screenshot of how many things happened in one minute on all different social websites. Going to the site and watching how fast the numbers change kind of made me dizzy! But it’s interesting to see. In ONE MINUTE, there were 2,237,038 likes and comments made on Facebook!!! I can’t even wrap my mind around that. Social media is taking over the world! And it’s not something we can stop. Instead, we have to go along with it and find ways to include these things in our classroom in an educational way. Honestly, this stresses me out a little bit to think about.
Sunday, February 3, 2013
Blog Post #3
Peer Editing
Peer Editing is a video used to teach students how to peer edit. I found it nice that they chose to define “peer” and “editing” separately before defining “peer editing.” Peer editing has been an important part of most of my education thus far. However, I feel this video would have helped me grasp the correct way to peer edit faster when I was first learning. This is a great tool I can use in my own classroom. The teacher who created this presentation also used it to present the kids assignments. Tutorial Peer Editing presents the same information as the video above, but in a slide show that would be very easy to use in a classroom, where you could slow down and make sure the students understand the information.
My favorite was Writing Peer Review TOP 10 Mistakes. First of all, those kids did some great acting, I know my 4th and 5th grade classes wouldn’t have been able to pull off this video at all. Aside from the cute kids, this video makes great points. I know that I personally have been Picky Patty, Whatever William, Jean the Generalizer, Mean Margaret, Off-Task Oliver, Speedy Sandy and Defensive Dave at some point. That’s seven of the top 10 mistakes that I know I have made. What about you? Peer editing, like everything, takes practice. It isn’t something you can automatically do, it must be mastered. I’ve been peer editing for about 13 years now, and I still am not fabulous at it. Sure, I can tell you most things that are wrong with something, but am I doing it right? Am I being nice? Or am I taking it nicely? It’s definitely something to think about and work on.
Assistive Technologies
This section of the assignment really called out to me, because I would like to teach a deaf classroom. After watching these videos, I am also thinking about the possibility of teaching a blind classroom. I had never thought about the technology options available to hearing or vision impaired students. The Mountbatten is a marvelous invention which allows blind students to type, take notes and keep up in a classroom. I believe that all students should be taught about these types of disabilities. Technology like this could be used in a normal classroom in order to teach all children about disabilities, and also how to use this technology.
As a math lover, I found Teaching Math to the Blind extremely interesting. It never occurred to me that learning math is tremendously difficult for blind students. This device which Professor Art Karshmer developed is amazing. Blind students can now learn the basic math which otherwise would be very hard for them, simply because the way math is written isn’t “standard” for them.
The VoiceOver option, used in iPad Usage For the Blind and Teaching Mom What Her Deaf/Blind Child Is Learning On the iPad, wasn't completely new to me, I have seen this used before. However, I played around on my personal iPad to view all the features available to students with different types of disabilities. I discovered, not only are there options for the blind, there are also many options for deaf students, and handicapped students, who may not have complete motor skills.
These technologies will be used in my classroom. Even if I don’t end up in a disabled classroom, I would want my students to learn about these cultures so that they may know how to react in real life. Also to learn the adaptations which the deaf and blind must adjust to, in order to accomplish what “normal” students find so easy.
Student's Digital Smarts
Vicki Davis brings up many great points in Harness Your Student's Digital Smarts. I really liked her take on looking at the students’ strengths and interests and adapting the flow of the classroom to each group of students. Each student learns differently, therefore, there must be a way in order for each student to be taught. As Davis says, “When you have only paper, and only pencil, then only certain types of children are going to succeed.” Linking the students through the internet with people across the world was really cool too. Kids need to learn how to collaborate with others. That is a part of every “real world job” out there. Students might as well get used to it now. Having students work with other students from other countries not only helps their “people skills,” but also teaches them about other cultures.
After exploring Edutopia a little, I discovered amazing tools I can use now to get ready for my own classroom. They have blogs, videos and guides for anything a teacher could think of needing. There is even an option for looking by grade level. I even found a couple of parenting guides, summer ideas and ways to help your school go green. I also found a classroom guide which I feel pertains directly to EDM310, Classroom Guide: Top Ten Tips for Teaching with New Media. This is an awesome website, which I will use for my own classroom.
My favorite was Writing Peer Review TOP 10 Mistakes. First of all, those kids did some great acting, I know my 4th and 5th grade classes wouldn’t have been able to pull off this video at all. Aside from the cute kids, this video makes great points. I know that I personally have been Picky Patty, Whatever William, Jean the Generalizer, Mean Margaret, Off-Task Oliver, Speedy Sandy and Defensive Dave at some point. That’s seven of the top 10 mistakes that I know I have made. What about you? Peer editing, like everything, takes practice. It isn’t something you can automatically do, it must be mastered. I’ve been peer editing for about 13 years now, and I still am not fabulous at it. Sure, I can tell you most things that are wrong with something, but am I doing it right? Am I being nice? Or am I taking it nicely? It’s definitely something to think about and work on.
Assistive Technologies
As a math lover, I found Teaching Math to the Blind extremely interesting. It never occurred to me that learning math is tremendously difficult for blind students. This device which Professor Art Karshmer developed is amazing. Blind students can now learn the basic math which otherwise would be very hard for them, simply because the way math is written isn’t “standard” for them.
The VoiceOver option, used in iPad Usage For the Blind and Teaching Mom What Her Deaf/Blind Child Is Learning On the iPad, wasn't completely new to me, I have seen this used before. However, I played around on my personal iPad to view all the features available to students with different types of disabilities. I discovered, not only are there options for the blind, there are also many options for deaf students, and handicapped students, who may not have complete motor skills.
These technologies will be used in my classroom. Even if I don’t end up in a disabled classroom, I would want my students to learn about these cultures so that they may know how to react in real life. Also to learn the adaptations which the deaf and blind must adjust to, in order to accomplish what “normal” students find so easy.
Student's Digital Smarts
Vicki Davis brings up many great points in Harness Your Student's Digital Smarts. I really liked her take on looking at the students’ strengths and interests and adapting the flow of the classroom to each group of students. Each student learns differently, therefore, there must be a way in order for each student to be taught. As Davis says, “When you have only paper, and only pencil, then only certain types of children are going to succeed.” Linking the students through the internet with people across the world was really cool too. Kids need to learn how to collaborate with others. That is a part of every “real world job” out there. Students might as well get used to it now. Having students work with other students from other countries not only helps their “people skills,” but also teaches them about other cultures.
After exploring Edutopia a little, I discovered amazing tools I can use now to get ready for my own classroom. They have blogs, videos and guides for anything a teacher could think of needing. There is even an option for looking by grade level. I even found a couple of parenting guides, summer ideas and ways to help your school go green. I also found a classroom guide which I feel pertains directly to EDM310, Classroom Guide: Top Ten Tips for Teaching with New Media. This is an awesome website, which I will use for my own classroom.
Sunday, January 27, 2013
Blog Post #2
Did You Know
The video Did You Know? brought up many facts that I did not know, but I wasn’t completely surprised by them. The world is changing so fast. Technology is changing every second. Someone is always coming up with new things to “better our lives.” The video brought up the fact that “we are currently preparing students for jobs that don’t yet exist; using technologies that haven’t been invented in order to solve problems we don’t even know are problems.” In all honesty, that scares me; I can’t even imagine that.
I personally know two mothers who parent in very different ways. My best friend’s mother is what some call old-fashioned. She is an older mom with seven children, her youngest being seven. Her kids have so many restrictions on what technology they can use at what times. All of her many children are great students. They make wonderful grades and are all readers. On the other hand, my cousin, who is a newer mom, her oldest being seven this week, shows a whole new side of parenting. Her son is constantly watching tv, playing Wii, or playing on his very own iPad. I am not criticizing his mother; it is simply the new age of parenting. That seven year old is brilliant (which he always has been - knowing the difference between an orca whale and a killer whale when he was two.) He read more novels in one summer than I have in three years. He even read the King James Version of the Bible twice! I don’t know how much the presence of technology has affected him, because I know that a lot of it comes naturally to him. However, I do believe that it has had some major impact.
Technology is becoming more and more an active part of everyday life. We can’t even hang out with friends without constantly checking our cell phones. Many children nowadays have some sort of access to a computer, smart phone, gaming system, or some sort of technology 24/7. I feel it is our job as teachers and parents to teach children the smart ways to use these “smart” machines. Technology will have an impression on our kids’ lives, and we must decide if it will be for the good or the bad.
Mr. Winkle Wakes
Mr. Winkle Wakes by Matthew Needleman talks about how much in 100 years technology has changed. Mr. Winkle goes throughout a city full of office buildings and finds that all the technology and frustration (haha I liked that! Because technology is often very frustrating) was beginning to make him feel bad. Therefore, being a wise old man, he goes to the hospital. The hospital makes him feel worse! Technology is everywhere! Everywhere except school. Mr. Winkle finds that school is much like it was before his slumber. I really liked the comment that school “went on without interruptions from the outside world.”
However, this video is a little out of date. This video was only made four years ago, and already a lot has changed. While school is pretty much the same, teachers lecturing while students take notes. In the technology aspect, it is much different. In almost every classroom now there is a SMART board and at least one computer, if not many. Just look at EDM 310. Almost everything we do is online, where Dr. Strange can see it instantly while we aren’t even near the campus.
This isn’t happening only at the college level, this is also happening at an elementary level. While babysitting one day, the kids and I were watching the Disney Channel. A ten year old boy was being interviewed about an app HE CREATED. He made an app all by himself, at TEN! I wouldn’t even know how to begin something like that. His app was currently being used in his own school and he was gradually working on it being used nationally. His app was demonstrated on his iPad in his classroom. The teacher could post assignments, the students could submit their assignments (if the teacher chose), and they could take notes. This program reminded me of Sakai at South Alabama; however it was kid-friendly, created by a ten year-old. I would have never imagined this as a kid, much less known how to create it. The world is changing; therefore the people in it are too.
The Importance of Creativity
Sir Ken Robinson discusses many interesting thoughts in The Importance of Creativity. In the beginning he states, “If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.” However, in our school system, and even in life, we are constantly putting pressure on those around us, especially kids to do the “right thing.” We don’t want to be wrong; we always want to be right.
He also talks about being “educated out of creativity.” When he said this I immediately thought of my all time favorite Broadway musical, Wicked. In this musical, my favorite character, Fiyero says, “The trouble with schools is they always try to teach the wrong lesson.” In a way, that is very true. Sir Robinson goes on to tell the story of Gillian Lynne and how if she had been in school in this day and age someone would have given her some pills and told her calm down. However, that wasn’t the case, she was a dancer. I think that is a powerful statement. Constantly more and more children are being medicated for a “condition.” Many of the cases are simply kids being kids. When I was working at Dauphin Way, we had one little girl that was very strong willed and hyper. The teacher came and talked to me about how the mother was having her tested. “That isn’t her problem,” she said, “She is only being a little girl.” I feel as though we give out these medicines too easily.
Sir Ken Robinson goes on to say when children are in school, there may be things he is very good at or enjoys. However, because these things aren’t in the top tier of the hierarchy, they are besmirched. As Sir Robinson says, we are given a great gift of human imagination. We need to use this gift wisely and also teach how to use it wisely. The video ends with Sir Robinson talking about the need to educate the WHOLE being, so that they can face their future. “We can’t see the future, but they will. Our job is to see that they will make something of it.”
PINTERESTing Classroom
Pinterest is a site that I have been using almost since it was created. I absolutely love it! I use it to organize everything. One of the first boards I created was “Teaching Corner,” in which I pinned things for my future classroom, or neat ideas for teaching.
In Four Ways to Use Pinterest in Education, I learned a new way to use Pinterest in my classroom. I never thought about allowing my students to use Pinterest to help with their class projects. It is perfect even for group projects because of the collaboration tool that is available.
From the article The 20 Best Pinterest Boards About Education Technology, I began to follow many new pinners. I chose the following: ‘Vicki Davis’ because she has more than 20 boards dedicated to teaching inspirations; ‘Edudemic’ and ‘Students Like Tech!’ because both of these pinners had a lot of infographics, and I am a huge fan of infographs; ‘Patricia Brown’ had 3 education boards and many other boards I love for my personal life; ‘Twitter Resources, Apps, and Tools’ which has a lot of information about twitter which I could use for EDM 310 and beyond; and ‘Ed Tech Articles’ and ‘Technology’ simply because I liked many of their pins to use in my own future classroom.
I plan to continue using Pinterest for myself and pinning things I want to remember for my future classroom. In addition, I also plan to use these new found ideas in my classroom. I really like the idea of students using Pinterest to work on projects, “break the ice,” display their own artwork, etc. I also like the idea of using Pinterest to organize my classroom and allow the parents to stay up-to-date with what is happening in our classroom and what they need to know or remember.
The video Did You Know? brought up many facts that I did not know, but I wasn’t completely surprised by them. The world is changing so fast. Technology is changing every second. Someone is always coming up with new things to “better our lives.” The video brought up the fact that “we are currently preparing students for jobs that don’t yet exist; using technologies that haven’t been invented in order to solve problems we don’t even know are problems.” In all honesty, that scares me; I can’t even imagine that.
I personally know two mothers who parent in very different ways. My best friend’s mother is what some call old-fashioned. She is an older mom with seven children, her youngest being seven. Her kids have so many restrictions on what technology they can use at what times. All of her many children are great students. They make wonderful grades and are all readers. On the other hand, my cousin, who is a newer mom, her oldest being seven this week, shows a whole new side of parenting. Her son is constantly watching tv, playing Wii, or playing on his very own iPad. I am not criticizing his mother; it is simply the new age of parenting. That seven year old is brilliant (which he always has been - knowing the difference between an orca whale and a killer whale when he was two.) He read more novels in one summer than I have in three years. He even read the King James Version of the Bible twice! I don’t know how much the presence of technology has affected him, because I know that a lot of it comes naturally to him. However, I do believe that it has had some major impact.
Technology is becoming more and more an active part of everyday life. We can’t even hang out with friends without constantly checking our cell phones. Many children nowadays have some sort of access to a computer, smart phone, gaming system, or some sort of technology 24/7. I feel it is our job as teachers and parents to teach children the smart ways to use these “smart” machines. Technology will have an impression on our kids’ lives, and we must decide if it will be for the good or the bad.
Mr. Winkle Wakes
Mr. Winkle Wakes by Matthew Needleman talks about how much in 100 years technology has changed. Mr. Winkle goes throughout a city full of office buildings and finds that all the technology and frustration (haha I liked that! Because technology is often very frustrating) was beginning to make him feel bad. Therefore, being a wise old man, he goes to the hospital. The hospital makes him feel worse! Technology is everywhere! Everywhere except school. Mr. Winkle finds that school is much like it was before his slumber. I really liked the comment that school “went on without interruptions from the outside world.”
However, this video is a little out of date. This video was only made four years ago, and already a lot has changed. While school is pretty much the same, teachers lecturing while students take notes. In the technology aspect, it is much different. In almost every classroom now there is a SMART board and at least one computer, if not many. Just look at EDM 310. Almost everything we do is online, where Dr. Strange can see it instantly while we aren’t even near the campus.
This isn’t happening only at the college level, this is also happening at an elementary level. While babysitting one day, the kids and I were watching the Disney Channel. A ten year old boy was being interviewed about an app HE CREATED. He made an app all by himself, at TEN! I wouldn’t even know how to begin something like that. His app was currently being used in his own school and he was gradually working on it being used nationally. His app was demonstrated on his iPad in his classroom. The teacher could post assignments, the students could submit their assignments (if the teacher chose), and they could take notes. This program reminded me of Sakai at South Alabama; however it was kid-friendly, created by a ten year-old. I would have never imagined this as a kid, much less known how to create it. The world is changing; therefore the people in it are too.
The Importance of Creativity
Sir Ken Robinson discusses many interesting thoughts in The Importance of Creativity. In the beginning he states, “If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.” However, in our school system, and even in life, we are constantly putting pressure on those around us, especially kids to do the “right thing.” We don’t want to be wrong; we always want to be right.
He also talks about being “educated out of creativity.” When he said this I immediately thought of my all time favorite Broadway musical, Wicked. In this musical, my favorite character, Fiyero says, “The trouble with schools is they always try to teach the wrong lesson.” In a way, that is very true. Sir Robinson goes on to tell the story of Gillian Lynne and how if she had been in school in this day and age someone would have given her some pills and told her calm down. However, that wasn’t the case, she was a dancer. I think that is a powerful statement. Constantly more and more children are being medicated for a “condition.” Many of the cases are simply kids being kids. When I was working at Dauphin Way, we had one little girl that was very strong willed and hyper. The teacher came and talked to me about how the mother was having her tested. “That isn’t her problem,” she said, “She is only being a little girl.” I feel as though we give out these medicines too easily.
Sir Ken Robinson goes on to say when children are in school, there may be things he is very good at or enjoys. However, because these things aren’t in the top tier of the hierarchy, they are besmirched. As Sir Robinson says, we are given a great gift of human imagination. We need to use this gift wisely and also teach how to use it wisely. The video ends with Sir Robinson talking about the need to educate the WHOLE being, so that they can face their future. “We can’t see the future, but they will. Our job is to see that they will make something of it.”
PINTERESTing Classroom
Pinterest is a site that I have been using almost since it was created. I absolutely love it! I use it to organize everything. One of the first boards I created was “Teaching Corner,” in which I pinned things for my future classroom, or neat ideas for teaching.
In Four Ways to Use Pinterest in Education, I learned a new way to use Pinterest in my classroom. I never thought about allowing my students to use Pinterest to help with their class projects. It is perfect even for group projects because of the collaboration tool that is available.
From the article The 20 Best Pinterest Boards About Education Technology, I began to follow many new pinners. I chose the following: ‘Vicki Davis’ because she has more than 20 boards dedicated to teaching inspirations; ‘Edudemic’ and ‘Students Like Tech!’ because both of these pinners had a lot of infographics, and I am a huge fan of infographs; ‘Patricia Brown’ had 3 education boards and many other boards I love for my personal life; ‘Twitter Resources, Apps, and Tools’ which has a lot of information about twitter which I could use for EDM 310 and beyond; and ‘Ed Tech Articles’ and ‘Technology’ simply because I liked many of their pins to use in my own future classroom.
I plan to continue using Pinterest for myself and pinning things I want to remember for my future classroom. In addition, I also plan to use these new found ideas in my classroom. I really like the idea of students using Pinterest to work on projects, “break the ice,” display their own artwork, etc. I also like the idea of using Pinterest to organize my classroom and allow the parents to stay up-to-date with what is happening in our classroom and what they need to know or remember.
Saturday, January 26, 2013
Friday, January 18, 2013
Blog Post #1
About Me
Hi friends! My name is Katelyn Fleming. I was born and raised here in Mobile, Alabama. I attended Cottage Hill Christian Academy for 18 years, and am currently a sophomore at South Alabama pursuing an Elementary Education degree. I am a God loving Christian, raised in a good ol’ large southern family. I only have one sister; however I have many aunts and cousins which I am just as close to, if not closer. I am attending South Alabama mainly because of the location. I couldn’t stand to live far away from my family and miss out on our many parties (my family looks for reasons to have a party, from birthdays to surgeries to “We haven’t seen y’all in about a week!”). I love children and always have enjoyed working with them, which is why I am studying to become a teacher.
I like reading (always looking for new authors, series, or books), watching movies (mostly Disney classics), spending time with my best friend, Annie Hii, crafting (I LOVE crafts!!!) and sleeping (I love my naps). I also have a passion for being behind a camera. Ever since I was little I have loved playing around with a camera. For my sixteenth birthday my family gave me a Nikon D60 and I’ve been attached to it ever since. I especially love to take pictures of my many little cousins. In my opinion, children are the best to photograph because no matter how many poses or smiles we try to force on them, their true feelings will always show instead; therefore, a great picture will always be genuine. I am presently trying to learn to play the ukulele. I have never been musically inclined, but when I found a cheap ukulele online, I just had to get it, but I am finding that my lack of music skills is difficult to overcome. I also enjoy singing (I sound terrible, but I love it nonetheless).
This past summer I worked as a counselor at Dauphin Way Baptist Church’s summer camp program. I loved it so much I continued working throughout the past semester as a floater in their daycare department. I absolutely loved working with the children and getting to watch them grow and learn. I unfortunately had to quit because school was getting put on the back burner a little bit. I walked away from that job with new wisdom and many lessons learned. Aside from the experience, this job reassured me of my career path. I now know without any doubt that teaching is my calling and where God wants me to be.
My Future Classroom
I hope my classroom will be a little different than most students I graduate with, simply because I plan to teach the deaf. When I was younger and finally old enough to attend “Big Church,” I would rarely hear what the pastor was even saying. Instead I would be focused on the interpreter for the deaf section. I would watch that lady the whole time, trying to pick up on words that I could use every day. As I’ve grown, that hasn’t left me. One of my friends actually minored in ASL (American Sign Language) and has been teaching me a little. Since South Alabama doesn’t offer a minor in ASL, I plan to take all of the courses available to me, and work after graduation toward a Master’s degree in deaf education. However, this is something I am still thinking and praying about. I am not positive this is the road I will take, but for now it is a wonderful plan.
Other than ASL, I have a passion (a strange passion, some may say) for math. I have been fairly good at math throughout my many years of schooling. I can still remember the day we learned short division in third grade. My teacher held a competition of who could solve the division problem on the board the fastest. I was among the five to compete against my teacher! Of course she won, because we were all using long division. Amazed, we all took our seats and Mrs. Martin continued to describe how to use short division. I have many moments like that which I remember quite vividly of different techniques my own teachers used to teach us new ideas. I plan to take those memories and inspirations to use in my own classroom. Since I can remember the enjoyment I got out of learning short division through a competition, I plan to use that one day to teach my students.
I want my classroom to be a fun and happy place. I have had a teacher stand on her desk and sing and dance for us. I hope one day I can be as crazy and fun and surprising as she was. I hope that my students will enjoy learning as much as I did. I have been told, and experienced that if the teacher enjoys the subject matter, the kids will too. There are areas (like history and science) which I have hated all my learning days. These are the areas I feel I need to work on personally to figure out how to enjoy myself so that the children will not end up struggling through like I did. Because I am such a “crafty” person, I feel there will be a lot of arts and craft time in my class. English is also important to me because I am a stickler for good grammar. And as I said before I am a math person. I would like to teach 3rd or 4th grades mainly because this is when they get into what I consider “fun math.”
I think I am still stuck in my childhood days of playing school at home. I love a good old-fashioned chalkboard. However, technology is taking over. Don’t get me wrong, I like technology and enjoy playing with the SMART board in my cousin’s classroom. With the way technology changes so fast, I can’t positively say what my classroom will be like or how I will cope without colored chalk. What I do know is that I plan to put everything I have into being the best possible teacher I can be with whatever tools I am given. I want to inspire my students like so many of my teachers did for me.
Randy Pausch and Time Management
Randy Pausch talked about many interesting things in this video. I actually had to watch this clip twice before all of the information fully sunk in. The first thing he talks about is asking “Why am I doing this?” No one ever stops to think, why is this so important that it made its way onto my ‘to do list’? His next question goes hand in hand with this one “Why will I succeed?” This part is somewhat skipped over, but it’s an interesting thought. Not only why do it, but why do you need to do a good job? It’s something that I think everyone needs to figure out, even in the simplest of tasks. Pausch goes on to say it is much more important to do the right things, “It doesn’t matter how well you polish the underside of the banister.” You need to focus on the important things, instead of doing a fabulous job on something that doesn’t even matter. He says it is important to plan each day, each week and each semester. Personally, I am a lists fanatic! I make lists for everything; I wouldn’t be able to function without some sort of checklist for everything that I have to accomplish in the day! I even have a list for going to bed and what I need to do every night. But I never plan out a semester in advance. I have my calendars and syllabuses from my classes but I don’t look at them until the week before usually. This was an interesting concept that I am going to try to work on starting now. Another thing he pointed out was tackling the big tasks first. This is a common sense thought, but rarely put it action. It’s more comfortable to forget this and start off easy, accomplishing the small things. This is another area in which I plan to work on my personal habits.
A couple of years ago, I was introduced to Randy Pausch’s “Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams.” I laughed, cried and have tried to put his teachings into practice. I enjoyed it so much and learned so much from this one video. In fact, I watched the lecture again after watching this time management clip. When I first saw it, the idea of “enabling others childhood dreams” really stuck with me and helped along my decision of becoming an elementary teacher. I had planned on buying the book about his Last Lecture, however a few weeks went by and it was out of sight, out of mind. So, thank you, Dr. Strange, for reminding me about Randy Pausch and his book which I have purchased and awaiting its arrival.
Penn State’s Time Management Page
Many of the suggestions made in this article I was happy to find were things I was already doing. In the beginning of this week, I had already made a weekly schedule for myself and have been sticking to it. Some of the topics covered were things I hadn’t thought about and things I plan to include in my future study sessions; for example, keeping an extra notepad next to you while studying to jot down random thoughts in order to focus on the subject at hand. Another area which I am personally working hard on, is saying no. I have a hard time saying no when someone asks me to join them for lunch, help them or just hang out. If I am going to cut my procrastination habit and manage my time better, however, I am going to have to learn to say no. This page made a number of very helpful suggestions which I needed and will learn to implement into my personal life.
Hi friends! My name is Katelyn Fleming. I was born and raised here in Mobile, Alabama. I attended Cottage Hill Christian Academy for 18 years, and am currently a sophomore at South Alabama pursuing an Elementary Education degree. I am a God loving Christian, raised in a good ol’ large southern family. I only have one sister; however I have many aunts and cousins which I am just as close to, if not closer. I am attending South Alabama mainly because of the location. I couldn’t stand to live far away from my family and miss out on our many parties (my family looks for reasons to have a party, from birthdays to surgeries to “We haven’t seen y’all in about a week!”). I love children and always have enjoyed working with them, which is why I am studying to become a teacher.
I like reading (always looking for new authors, series, or books), watching movies (mostly Disney classics), spending time with my best friend, Annie Hii, crafting (I LOVE crafts!!!) and sleeping (I love my naps). I also have a passion for being behind a camera. Ever since I was little I have loved playing around with a camera. For my sixteenth birthday my family gave me a Nikon D60 and I’ve been attached to it ever since. I especially love to take pictures of my many little cousins. In my opinion, children are the best to photograph because no matter how many poses or smiles we try to force on them, their true feelings will always show instead; therefore, a great picture will always be genuine. I am presently trying to learn to play the ukulele. I have never been musically inclined, but when I found a cheap ukulele online, I just had to get it, but I am finding that my lack of music skills is difficult to overcome. I also enjoy singing (I sound terrible, but I love it nonetheless).
This past summer I worked as a counselor at Dauphin Way Baptist Church’s summer camp program. I loved it so much I continued working throughout the past semester as a floater in their daycare department. I absolutely loved working with the children and getting to watch them grow and learn. I unfortunately had to quit because school was getting put on the back burner a little bit. I walked away from that job with new wisdom and many lessons learned. Aside from the experience, this job reassured me of my career path. I now know without any doubt that teaching is my calling and where God wants me to be.
My Future Classroom
I hope my classroom will be a little different than most students I graduate with, simply because I plan to teach the deaf. When I was younger and finally old enough to attend “Big Church,” I would rarely hear what the pastor was even saying. Instead I would be focused on the interpreter for the deaf section. I would watch that lady the whole time, trying to pick up on words that I could use every day. As I’ve grown, that hasn’t left me. One of my friends actually minored in ASL (American Sign Language) and has been teaching me a little. Since South Alabama doesn’t offer a minor in ASL, I plan to take all of the courses available to me, and work after graduation toward a Master’s degree in deaf education. However, this is something I am still thinking and praying about. I am not positive this is the road I will take, but for now it is a wonderful plan.
Other than ASL, I have a passion (a strange passion, some may say) for math. I have been fairly good at math throughout my many years of schooling. I can still remember the day we learned short division in third grade. My teacher held a competition of who could solve the division problem on the board the fastest. I was among the five to compete against my teacher! Of course she won, because we were all using long division. Amazed, we all took our seats and Mrs. Martin continued to describe how to use short division. I have many moments like that which I remember quite vividly of different techniques my own teachers used to teach us new ideas. I plan to take those memories and inspirations to use in my own classroom. Since I can remember the enjoyment I got out of learning short division through a competition, I plan to use that one day to teach my students.
I want my classroom to be a fun and happy place. I have had a teacher stand on her desk and sing and dance for us. I hope one day I can be as crazy and fun and surprising as she was. I hope that my students will enjoy learning as much as I did. I have been told, and experienced that if the teacher enjoys the subject matter, the kids will too. There are areas (like history and science) which I have hated all my learning days. These are the areas I feel I need to work on personally to figure out how to enjoy myself so that the children will not end up struggling through like I did. Because I am such a “crafty” person, I feel there will be a lot of arts and craft time in my class. English is also important to me because I am a stickler for good grammar. And as I said before I am a math person. I would like to teach 3rd or 4th grades mainly because this is when they get into what I consider “fun math.”
I think I am still stuck in my childhood days of playing school at home. I love a good old-fashioned chalkboard. However, technology is taking over. Don’t get me wrong, I like technology and enjoy playing with the SMART board in my cousin’s classroom. With the way technology changes so fast, I can’t positively say what my classroom will be like or how I will cope without colored chalk. What I do know is that I plan to put everything I have into being the best possible teacher I can be with whatever tools I am given. I want to inspire my students like so many of my teachers did for me.
Randy Pausch and Time Management
Randy Pausch talked about many interesting things in this video. I actually had to watch this clip twice before all of the information fully sunk in. The first thing he talks about is asking “Why am I doing this?” No one ever stops to think, why is this so important that it made its way onto my ‘to do list’? His next question goes hand in hand with this one “Why will I succeed?” This part is somewhat skipped over, but it’s an interesting thought. Not only why do it, but why do you need to do a good job? It’s something that I think everyone needs to figure out, even in the simplest of tasks. Pausch goes on to say it is much more important to do the right things, “It doesn’t matter how well you polish the underside of the banister.” You need to focus on the important things, instead of doing a fabulous job on something that doesn’t even matter. He says it is important to plan each day, each week and each semester. Personally, I am a lists fanatic! I make lists for everything; I wouldn’t be able to function without some sort of checklist for everything that I have to accomplish in the day! I even have a list for going to bed and what I need to do every night. But I never plan out a semester in advance. I have my calendars and syllabuses from my classes but I don’t look at them until the week before usually. This was an interesting concept that I am going to try to work on starting now. Another thing he pointed out was tackling the big tasks first. This is a common sense thought, but rarely put it action. It’s more comfortable to forget this and start off easy, accomplishing the small things. This is another area in which I plan to work on my personal habits.
A couple of years ago, I was introduced to Randy Pausch’s “Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams.” I laughed, cried and have tried to put his teachings into practice. I enjoyed it so much and learned so much from this one video. In fact, I watched the lecture again after watching this time management clip. When I first saw it, the idea of “enabling others childhood dreams” really stuck with me and helped along my decision of becoming an elementary teacher. I had planned on buying the book about his Last Lecture, however a few weeks went by and it was out of sight, out of mind. So, thank you, Dr. Strange, for reminding me about Randy Pausch and his book which I have purchased and awaiting its arrival.
Penn State’s Time Management Page
Many of the suggestions made in this article I was happy to find were things I was already doing. In the beginning of this week, I had already made a weekly schedule for myself and have been sticking to it. Some of the topics covered were things I hadn’t thought about and things I plan to include in my future study sessions; for example, keeping an extra notepad next to you while studying to jot down random thoughts in order to focus on the subject at hand. Another area which I am personally working hard on, is saying no. I have a hard time saying no when someone asks me to join them for lunch, help them or just hang out. If I am going to cut my procrastination habit and manage my time better, however, I am going to have to learn to say no. This page made a number of very helpful suggestions which I needed and will learn to implement into my personal life.
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