Blog Assignment #9

At The Teacher's Desk: What I've Learned This Year (2008-2009)

Mr. McClung has a blog where he writes about his years of teaching. At the end of every school year he makes a new blog post about what he has learned from teaching that year. In his blog post for the 2008-2009 school year, he is discussing what he has learned in his first year of teaching.

He starts of by saying that he himself was more concerned about his superiors than the fact that the students were the real audience. He said, " In order to be effective you have to be able to let your audience drive your instruction." I could not agree more! While there may be nerves about being a first time teacher and there are guidelines that teachers must follow at any school, it is important to realize that the students are the ones in the classroom listening to you their teacher. He also says to stay flexible. Things do not always go the way we plan them out to. Mr. McClung goes on to say that, as in any workplace, communication is the best way to work out issues. Be reasonable, is another point he made. He said that not every student is going to meet your expectations and that is okay. Don't be afraid of technology! He said that "technology is our friend and is essential to living in our microwave society of today." I love that he mentions technology and that he urges to not be afraid of it as teachers. We are to embrace it. Listening to your students, he states, is also important. As a teachers we may be the only person to listen to a child. They need attention! Lastly, he says to never stop learning. We are bound to change over time, whether it be thinking, learning, or style. I think that we build our own teaching style over time and I agree with him that we should constantly be learning new things to being into our classroom.

What I Learned This Year-Volume 4 (2011-2012)

In this post, that I selected, we jump to Mr. McClung's blog post about his fourth year of teaching. He said that he didn't learn as much this year as he did in the previous years, but that there were still things that stuck out to him.

He said two things stuck out to him. First, is that he struggled with defining himself as a teacher. He said he had become too concerned with how his peers viewed him as an educator. He says that it is important to stay true to who you are, you can't change who you are. I think that he is right. Your teaching style comes from your personality. His other point was to challenge yourself. He said that this was his third year at the same school teaching the same subjects. He said that if you are not careful you can become lazy in your teaching and slip into a routine. He felt as though that he was not a good teacher. I feel he was right on the money when he said that his goal as an educator is to do everything he can do to ensure that students enjoy class and not resent school as he did when he was a child. As a child I also resented school, especially those classes that were very routine. Challenge yourself to bring life to the classroom.

Project #12 Book Trailer

PLN Project #10

This is my first progress update on creating my PLN. I am using Symbaloo as the tool to bookmark the pages I use most often, all on one page. It is set as my homepage, so when I first get online I have all my favorite and most used sites right in front of me. Symbaloo is a great tool and is easy to use. I have organized my tiles so that the ones I use for school assignments are along the bottom, the ones I use for shopping are at the top right, and my news resources are at the top left. Everything is easily accessible when ever I need to use it.

Blog Assignment #8

This is How We Dream:

In these two videos, This is How we Dream Parts 1 and 2, Dr. Miller is talking about the importance of writing and how writing greatly influences society today. He talks about incremental change being how we use our computer and the desktop is a "work area". We can read, research, and learn about anything without stepping into a library. He wrote a document about the Bush Doctrine entirely from his computer, without going to a library or using any physical books. His document is in print form and online form. The online form of the document is there indefinately, although the printed form can be thrown away.

There are perks to doing a document online, you can add video and audio to your documents. Even newspapers are changing over to online, instead of using print. Websites change over time and can be updated frequently. The internet and online resources give us another chance to share our ideas freely. As Dr. Miller said in the video, the only restrictions we have are the ones we place on ourselves.

Dr. Miller is basically saying to use a computer and multi media instead of using a paper and pencil. Things that are published on the web reach people faster and you can add things to make things you publish online for appealing and eye catching. Writing is a way to express ones self and with technology you can express yourself even more and in different ways. As a future educator, I plan to make sure that my students always express themselves and their ideas using technological resources.

Carly Pugh's Blog Post #12:

After reading Carly's Blog Post #12, I love how she expresses her creativity throughout and even in her fun colorful layout. Carly's assignment ideas was very creative yet simple. She came very close to Dr. Miller's theory. Her assignment allows for creativity and her ten options for the Youtube videos were thorough. Like she says in her post, that in a perfect classroom students need to think. She was very thorough in her work, she listed all the videos she selected and gave reasons why she chose each one. Her idea was great and it is very evident that she put a lot of work into this blog post.

EDM 310 for Dummies and The Chipper Series:

These two videos, Edm 310 for Dummies and The Chipper Series, were great. They both had me laughing the whole time.

Edm 310 for Dummies was a cute idea. Two students show their frustration towards Edm 310 and make a book called Edm 310 for Dummies. I am sure all students in Edm 310 can relate to this video and the frustration of learning the new things this class teaches us.

The Chipper series was such a funny video. It showed the importance of being on time and dedicated. The students that made this video had some great ideas. If I had the opportunity to participate in making a video like these, I think it would be fun to make a video as to why it is important to be the best teacher you can be. I would want to show two different situations, one with a good teacher and one with a bad teacher. It would show students and others why it is important to provide the best education for the students we are to teach. It is a blessing to be able to teach.

Learn to Change, Change to Learn:

The video, Learn to Change, Change to Learn, is an inspiring video. It opens the eyes of those watching to the idea that the classrooms today are inadequate. Students are learning more outside of the classroom, through the internet and social networking. These things are banned in most schools, when teachers could be using them as resources to enhance the education of their students. With technology being ever changing, it is important for students to grasp the knowledge they can, with all of the resources there are. The teachers in this video are encouraging us to grasp the transformation of technology in society today.

I could not agree more with this video and the message that it brings. It is our job to give students the best education we can offer them.

Scavenger Hunt 2.0:

This video, Teaching in the 21st Century, was made through a tool called Prezi. Prezi is a site where you can get more for your money, with prices at $4.92/month or $13.25/month. Prezi has many tools to help make presentations more interesting than it would be if your just the regular powerpoint. For educators or students, this is a great deal for a great tool.

Animoto, is a video tool that I have never used before. It has some great features. It allows you to upload photos from your computer, Facebook, Instagram, and other networking sites. It has its own music library, with hundreds of songs, that you can select for your videos. Animoto also makes it easy to share your video on practically any site such as: Youtube, Facebook, Pintrest, Twitter, and other sites as well. This video tool also allows you to pick the resolution you want your video to be in, even in high definition. Animoto also has an application that you can download onto your phone (iPhone or Android) to create videos.

Here is the poll I created using Poll Everywhere. I loved that it took less than a minute to create!!

C4T #2

Eva Buyuksimkesyan is an English teacher, she has been teaching for twenty years. The first time I read her blog, her post that I commented on was about a new tool that she had discovered called Edcanvas. Edcanvas is a tool where you can create online lessons using videos from Youtube, URLs, and your own documents. It looks like a really great tool to use and something that even students can use. After commenting on this blog post I received a follow from Edcanvas on Twitter, so awesome!

The second time that I commented on Mrs. Buyuksimkesyan's blog, her post was about another tool that she found. This one is called Smore. Smore is on online flyer creator. You can use it for many different things such as: an event, describe a product, and create a class newspaper. She explains that you can also embed your flyers on your blog. Seems really neat and I am definitely checking this out. I really enjoyed reading Mrs. Buyuksimkesyan's blog.

Blog Assignment #7

The Networked Student By Wendy Drexler:

The video, The Networked Student, that Wendy Drexler's high school students created is about the concept of connectivism. Connectivism is education through various networking sites. The video shows how a student that is studying a specific topic can share the information he finds on the topic through networking sites. It also shows how the student found reliable sources through networking sites as well.

The teacher in this video may seem obsolete; but as it shows at the end of the video the teacher is there to help the student with problems and questions, she provides a model of how her students should use the networking sites in their studies, and she is to help her students best organize the information they have found. The teachers in these settings are not the ordinary lecture based teachers.

It is important for teachers to incorporate the internet and social networking into their classes. With the advancement of technology teachers need to stay ahead and be able and ready to teach their students the proper way to use the internet and networking. Students need to see how networking can help enhance their learning process. As shown in the video, students can use sites to find sources and then post the sites they have found on a bookmarking site so that others can see them as well. I like the idea of connectivism and I think it is a great teaching method that all teachers should incorporate in their classrooms.

A 7th Grader's PLE:

A 7th Grader's Personal Learning Environment(or PLN), was a great video. The seventh grade student showed how useful networking has been for her. She used a program called Symbaloo, which seems like a great tool. It looks like a tool I would like to try out. Her PLE seemed very organized and she seemed excited about using it. I think that this is a great way to get students more interactive with their school work.

Her PLE was similar to my PLN from EDM 310. Every week ours is becoming more detailed. I think that when people see our PLN they can see how much time and work we put into it. I am excited to see the outcome of my PLN at the end of the semester and continue to expand it even after the semester is over.

Project #8

Blog Assignment #6

Randy Pausch's Last Lecture

Randy Pausch is such an amazing speaker. This video of his last lecture, Randy Pausch Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams, was inspirational. I learned some valuable things from watching this video. At the beginning of his speech he gave a list of his childhood dreams and he told how, in some way or another, he achieved each one. I was amazed that he achieved them all, some were not easy to accomplish.

My favorite thing that Randy Paush said in this speech was that, "experience is what you get when you don't get what you want." I think that when we look at a list of things we want to do and we try to accomplish them, we do not always succeed. Although, when we take time and work hard at other tasks and obstacles we tend to find ourselves at the opportunity to achieve our dreams. We tend to not take time and look at the big picture, instead we focus on getting what we want as soon as we can get it. Dreams take time, dedication, and heart.

Randy Pausch also used the term "brick wall" often in his speech. He said, "brick walls are not there to keep us out, they are there to show us how badly we want something. Brick walls let us show our dedication." In life there are always obstacles ("brick walls") that may seem to push us further away from our goals, but when we work through those obstacles we can see that those "brick walls" were just another step to reach our goals. Life is full of "brick walls" and the only thing that matters is how we come out of that experience.

He used such a great sense of humor in his speech. You could tell, by the stories he incorporated into his speech, that he used humor and creativity in his teaching. I plan on using humor to help liven up my classroom once I graduate and have a classroom of my own. Randy Pausch seemed like a teacher who reached out to his students and made a great impact on their lives. He speech was very inspirational and I hope that the way I teach has an impact on my students like Randy Pausch had on his students.

Project #9a Time Toast Timeline

C4Ks for September

Paul

For this week I commented on Paul's blog. Paul is a year 5 student at Pt England School in Auckland, New Zealand. The post I commented on was a summary of a story called Ocktapodi. It was a story about two octopus that were in love. He did a really great job on his blog.

Henry

This week I commented on Henry's blog. Henry is in room 15 at Pt England School. The class is for eight and nine year olds. So, Henry is either eight or nine, his blog did not say specifically. The post that Henry wrote that I commented on was a story that he wrote called The Frozen Beach. The story was well written and very interesting. He included some good pictures along with the story. I commented on his post saying that he was doing a good job and that his story was good and the pictures helped make the story come to life.