Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Blog Post 6

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    Randy Pausch's Last Lecture video was truly inspiring. He broke down the hour long lecture into three parts: his childhood dreams, how to enable the dreams of others, and useful advice. I found the last section quite useful. The useful advice is something I can take and apply it to my future teaching. In this blog post I will be stating some of the useful advice he gave and try to apply it to my future class. 

   The first piece of advice that I thought was useful was that he learned to never set a specific bar for his students to reach. He learned that if he did not set the bar then the students would go above and beyond the limitations. I think that this is good advice because you do not want your students just to reach the bar that you set and that be it, you want your students to go above and beyond and to succeed in so much more than what you have just set for them to reach. 

   The second piece of advice that Pausch's lecture gave was, "brick walls are there for a reason, they let us prove how badly we want something." This statement is very true, because if we run into a brick wall and we want it bad enough then we will stop at nothing to go over that brick wall. This is good advice to one day use in the classroom because it teaches students to never give up and to try until they have succeeded. 

   This next statement is something that everyone needs to hear, "don't complain, just work harder." This is useful not only to students but also to teachers. People tend to complain about the easiest things, myself included, when things could be so much more difficult. I could use this advice in my classroom by telling my students this when things get tough and they start to complain. 

  Some other useful statements he gave were: "Don't bail, the best gold is at the bottom of barrels of crap", "Get a feedback loop, and listen to it", "Show gratitude", and "Always be prepared".  This lecture was very inspiring. I can use a lot of these lessons in the classroom in the future. 

Monday, February 20, 2012

Blog Post 5

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    Dr. Scott McLeod is an Associate Professor of Educational Leadership at the University of Kentucky. He founded the Center for Advanced Study in Technology Leadership in Education, which is the nation's only center for technology needs for school administrators. He has received numerous awards for the videos and books he has put on and written. 
   This particular blog post was very interesting. I agree with what he is trying to say about how people put a bad name on technology. I believe that there are pros and cons to all technology and as educators we should be teaching the positives of technology. 


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   Travis Allen's iSchool Initiative's video is arguing that schools should trade in their pencil, paper and books for an ipod touch. He believes that schools today are wasting the technology that we have been provided, so we should have an iSchool. This video explains how students would learn using their itouch. Some of the basic uses for this would be, keeping track with homework, using some apps to help them better understand the material being used.  
   My opinion on this video is that is that the iSchool has some high points, but I would not want to use that as my main resource in the classroom. I would use the itouch as a tool in the classroom, but I would not want it to be my only means of teaching students. It is very useful to students and teachers, but I do not see how you could solely rely on the itouch for teaching students. 



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    Wow is all I can say after watching that video. This video shows the how powerful technology can be. Eric Whitacre used the internet in an amazing way. The way he showed the group as a whole and then zoomed in on a particular person, it really felt like you were watching a choir of 185 people preform live. 


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    Kevin Roberts thinks that teaching means to be a filter to students. Students can access information anytime and anywhere, as teachers we should teach them how to filter that information and make it useful. We should teach students how to use all of this technology that they are given access to. I agree with Roberts in this video. I believe my role as a teacher is not just to teach them academics, but to teach them things that they will need to know in the corse of their life. My role as a teacher is not to tell them they can not use certain recourses that I know they have access to, but to help them know how to use it properly. This video really helped me understand better where the educational system is going. 



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   The Reading Rockets website is a wonderful tool for teachers. One thing that caught my eye was the section that has several apps that helped children with their reading comprehension. In that slide show there were several games and lesson apps for children to practice on. 
   I liked that they had different sections for parents, teachers and principals. I would use the teacher section to browse new books, and have new ideas. I really enjoyed reading some of the tips they had for teachers to help struggling readers.  


Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Blog Post 4


 

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     According to Joe Dale some of the benefits of podcasting is, it is a good way of communicating with the students outside of the classroom, students today are familiar with technology so it intrigues them, it works with the high levels of Bloom's Taxonomy. These are just a few that he mentioned in his video and webpage.
     My thoughts on Podcasting is, it helps keep the students interested in what they are learning and is a very effective in teaching students many things. In my particular podcast I hope to be creative and innovative. This webpage helped me better understand what a podcast was all about.

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  I had no idea that you could use your Ipods for so much. I knew that it was for more than just music, but having study guides and podcast? No idea. I believe that this webpage will forever by in my bookmarks. I can use this now and all though out my teaching career. The amount of podcast they have on here is awesome. The ESL podcast caught my eye. For students who are learning english as a second language this could help them tremendously. The Educational Podcast Network would help teachers everywhere. It is used to collect information and help you teach students on all different levels. I will definitely be looking at these podcasts before I do my podcast.

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  The Podcast Collection by Judy Scharf was very helpful. It explained what a podcast actually was, gave some examples on how to make a good podcast and a handout on the benefits of podcasting in the classroom. Scharf better helped me understand what podcasting was all about and how to use it effectively in the classroom. I will be referring back to it while making my own podcast later in the semester. 

Sunday, February 12, 2012

C4T Assignment

I was assigned to David Wees's blog David Wees


Post One
This first post I commented on was on Ipads in the math classroom. David was commenting and analyzing a study done by Stephen Downes that said, 20% of students improved on their state math test scores by using an Ipad loaded with HMH Fuse. David found some pros and cons with this study which he posted in this blog post. One important thing that he pointed out was in this test they did not state what they hoped to accomplish by improving the math instruction. Tests are important, but are they going to remember this beyond the test. That statement is what I put as my comment.

Post Two
The second post that I commented on was a post about MUD, a video game that involves typing. David stated that he played this game in college and unknowingly it made him a better typer. He said that in this game the way you navigate around is by typing on the keyboard, nothing like video games now. He was posting about wanting to incorporate this in the classroom. I commented that this would be a great idea, because the typical typing class is very redundant and boring. This would help the students become faster and better typers without knowing it, like it did David.

Monday, February 6, 2012

Blog Post 3

Blog Critique
I was assigned Kayla Shepherd's blog to edit in this assignment. Her post on the videos in post two was really good, but I felt like it ended abruptly. I felt like she did not complete her thought that she was writing about in her post. I will be telling her this through posting a comment on her blog, because maybe she had a reason for doing it this way. All in all her post was very good, made sense and flowed up until the end.

Technology in Special Education
This video was very informative. I had no idea that computers could help children with special needs do better in school. The computer seems to be a very handy tool for this teacher. I really enjoyed the students interacting with their computers so we could better understand their excitement about these tools.
The teacher in this video seems to be pretty awesome. I can see her passion for helping these students. As a teacher I can use a smart board in my classroom for special needs children. I have learned different techniques to teach the special needs children while using the smart board.

Apple Apps
The App I found that would be helpful to students with special need is the Intro to Letters, by Montessorium. This app allows the student to choose a letter from the alphabet and learn how to pronounce it, read it and write it. The description on the app store it: "Learn to trace, read, write and record letter sounds, names, and phonograms, based on the proven methodology of Montessori." It is also available in different languages.
This would work great with children with learning disabilities or disabled students. The app talks to the children and allows them to record the way they are saying it to see if they are saying it right. I would use this in the classroom for all types of students.

Social Media Changes
The stats on this webpage is crazy! The amount of time that we spend on social media and on the internet itself is amazing. If it is this large of a number now I can only imagine what it will be like in 5 years. This means a lot for me as a future teacher. This means that there will be new technology and social media for me to implement in the classroom, but it also means that it will be more distracting to the students.
These stats are also not surprising to me, because I live in a world that is consumed by social media and technology. This can be a good and bad thing. The good is that the future of technology and social media has no much to offer. The bad is that is can become consuming and distracting from every day life.

A Vision of Students

I agree and have experienced many aspects of this video, as a college student myself, but I agree, many of these issues the students create for themselves. You could get more out of class by actually paying attention instead of texting,going on the internet for Facebook. College isn't easy, and shouldn't be easy & students need to take it more serious.
This video let me see things form a different perspective. It is very important as students, and future educators, to think about things differently. I sometimes need to check myself on how I am going through college and often see I need to be more serious. This video was great.

Friday, February 3, 2012

Blog Post 2

Did you know?
The video made by Dr. Strage, on YouTube, was very eye opening. All the topics that were pointed out were mind blowing. Knowing that China will have more English speaking people than America made me really think about how our country is so behind on most things, education especially. India having more honers students than all students in America made me want to be a better teacher, and help my future students learn more.
Karl Fisch and Scott McLeo's version was also eye opening. When they said how many babies were born during the corse of the video I was in awe. The text messaging statement was not that surprising to me. The video was done in 2008, so the amount of text messaging sent in 2012 would probably be greater than in 2008.

Mr. Winkle
Mr. Winkle Awakes made me think how much our schools have not changed technologically. Our schools have changed some, but not as much as office buildings or hospitals. Schools should be the first with updated technology, so we can use it in the classroom as often as possible.
Students do not need to just sit and listen to the teacher throw information at them and try and throw it back at them on a test. Mr. Winkle should have seen the same, if not better, technology in the school.

Creativity
Ken Robinson's talk on creativity in schools was ver interesting. When he talks about creativity being as important as literacy I believe he is right. We tend to under-mind and down play children's creativity. As teachers we should be inducing and feeding our student's creativity. When he states that "if you are not prepared to be wrong then you will never come up with anything original", it really got me. As teachers we are so set on our students being right and wrong that sometimes we do not think about them being creative with their answers. We should teach them that it is okay to be wrong sometimes.
The main point that really made me think was the statement, "we do not grow into creativity, we grow out of it". I agree with this statement because we teach children to be a certain way, to live a certain way. Most of the time we make them think that it is not okay for them to be themselves in certain situations. We should, as teachers, let them show their creative side in every subject, not just the arts.

A Vision for 21st Century Learning
The main arguments that I got from this video is that our students really are not learning a whole lot in schools, they need to be more integrated with their learning. The makers of this video seem to think that we should integrate this video game into our schools. By doing that the students will learn more with out even knowing that they are learning, is their argument. My response to this argument is that I do not believe that it will work. Students need to have a more structured learning environment and interaction with other students and teachers, not just a video game.

Vicki Davis

I think what Vicki Davis is doing in Georgia is great! I really like the idea of her student's using their creativity in her classroom. When she states that students get bored with a pencil and paper, I think she is right. She is there to help them whenever they need her, but it is great to see them doing it on their own.
I also like that she has taken a rural town and placed them online so they can experience cultures around the world that they might not be able to experience other wise. It is important to expose your students to different cultures, and she has done that while teaching them something also.