EDM 310 Class Blog

Sunday, April 13, 2014

C4T

Ms. Sharon Davison has a very well known blog called Kindergarten Life. In her latest blog post she reminds people of the importance of simple conversations. She states that a simple smile and a gentle hug can go a long way and mean a lot more than most think. She also shows a way her and her students stay connected with students in South Korea through Padlet. In this students share books and other things they are learning in their Kindergarten class.

Blog Post 12

Assistive technologies are very helpful in many ways. A few ways could be:

1) enhance learning

2)remove barriers

3) push boundaries

4)give hope

5)challenge the way we think

1 in every 2500 children in Australia have a vision impairment. This a very high number, about 1 child a day received the news that they have a hearing impairment. There are many new ways technology is helping these impairments, such as text to speech devices, talking calculators, screen magnifiers and also note takers. Although these advancements do not cure the problems they help impaired children on a daily basis.

iPad usage for the blind-Voice over is an enhancement on the iPad for the blind. When voice over is turned on, your options on the iPad are read to you as you scan your finger over them. This is very helpful teachers of the impaired. I think this would be a very helpful tip to use in my future as a special education teacher. I look forward to learning much more about many more advancements in technology when I become a teacher.

Teaching Mom What Her Deaf/Blind Child Is Learning On the iPad. In the next video I chose was a mother learning what her blind child does on the iPad at school. This is an eye opening experience for her. The same as the top video they are using voice over. In this example the teacher is showing the mother notes. This is a very well used application. In this app there are many different typing modes available for notes. This would help in the classroom as no child's condition is the same. There are also applications you can down load free on and iPad that may be of help such as, voice amplifiers and a translator from English to American sign language. These and many other applications are very helpful for he blind and hearing impaired.

Wednesday, April 9, 2014

C4T's

Hadley J F, from Matrix Middle School. Middle School Matrix is the name of his blog. His last post was entitled "Just Laugh." This was a story from the week his class came back from Christmas break. They were all laughing and giggling and he was getting very frustrated. In the chaos, he remembered to let it go and enjoy his class.

Mr. Hadley and his 7th grade students were very anxious to get out of school for the holidays. The only things that stood between him and the Christmas holidays were a 70 minute class and then the Holiday Assembly. While he was searching for something to keep them focused he ran across a map of Africa. HE then presented the class with a project to keep them busy. this included making the "best" map of Africa. They had to determine the guidelines for what he considered the best. The kids enjoyed it and helped pass the time much quicker.

Ms. Sharon Davison has a very well known blog called Kindergarten Life. In her latest blog post she reminds people of the importance of simple conversations. She states that a simple smile and a gentle hug can go a long way and mean a lot more than most think. She also shows a way her and her students stay connected with students in South Korea through Padlet. In this students share books and other things they are learning in their Kindergarten class.

C4K

A Collaborate Story of Visy Recycling Centre by: Faauiagi, Lomio-lee,Judah and Angelo

These chosen students are going on a field trip to see how recycling really works. The students note that there are many big trucks on this sunny day. They also note that everything is not so nice and clean at this place. The students watched a video that they really enjoyed about the recycling process. Below is the picture the students creating showing their experience at the Visy Recycling Centre.

Paula from New Zealand, was my next student assigned to me. She has a very interesting blog post about "Ice Man." She is describing a man caught in an ice storm and ends up in a cave frozen. He then realized he was all alone and had no help. Seals came toward the cave with a mad scientist. The scientist came and busted the frozen block of ice with John in it frozen. He lived and went back home to his family.

Cezar, from England School Auchland, N.Z., is going to visit Camp Kawau Island the next week. At camp he was really excited to go kayaking and also do some sailing. Needless to say he was very excited about his upcoming trip to Camp Kawau Island.

Roimata's, from England School Auchland, N.Z., asiignment for her blog post on Monday was to find a picture of and animal and explain how she found it. She found a picture of a dog and stated that she went to images and searched for the specific dog.

Sunday, April 6, 2014

Blog Post 11

Brian Crosby- Back to the Future-each class is full of different students. Not only different students in each class but different classes in each grade. No class is the same. Mr. Crosby’s class is a very low income class or live in poverty. Most students could not answer simple questions regarding their home state, address and country. As their teacher Mr. Crosby did not want his students to have a different curriculum than than other students. Mr. Crosby’s classroom is much like any other class room today. He has many technological devices such as laptops, smartboards and video cameras. The class takes part in many different projects and they really seem to enjoy them and it also helps keep them engaged in the material they are learning. After the projects are completed the students use their own working blog to upload the videos of the projects they have just taken part in. The students are also instructed to write a quick summary about what happens in each video. Students in Mr. Crosby’s and also other 4th grade classes at his school also have wiki pages and flickr accounts. This helps the students show what they have learned on a specific topic. after using these softwares online they cut and paste them into their blogs. When the students realized that other people are reading their stuff it makes them feel accomplished and makes them strive to work harder and do better. In this, they also added personal goals. The students were assigned to write a “high hope.” What this is something positive that the students hope to happen in the school, community and also around the world. After doing this the students sent out a plea for people all around the world to add their high hopes in the students comments to send out into outer space along with Mr. Crosby’s classes. This spread around the globe quickly and the students got a great response, in which they had all hoped for. After this project was added to their blogs students from all around the world wanted to take place in this and teachers wanted to know how to complete the project. The students not only used blogs and writing but also video skype to show and teach other students around the world so they could learn and take part in this same activity.

Learning Blended Cycle- Basically all blended learning is doing is taking the parts of an online, mobile and classroom learning and blending them into one classroom setting. There are 5 e’s in the learning cycle, engage, explore, expand, explain and evaluate. This is a great way to present material and material that is to be learned. By putting those two formulas together you get the blended learning cycle. In his blended learning cycle he has 6 steps: 1-it starts with a really great question. hook in learning. students are given data and asked a specific question. 2-investigate and experiment. using given material students try different experiments and are timed at doing so. 3-use a video to help them understand. this is a form of direct instruction. 4-elaboration. reading and research. 5-review. making sure students have a clear understanding of the material discussed. 6-summary quiz.

This video is done by Mark Church, Making thinking Visible. The main idea behind this video is how Mark makes his classroom think aloud. By doing this all the brainstorming is out in the open rather than just sitting quietly in their head. Each group has a couple of minutes to brainstorm a headline of their new lesson. Once the time is up they have to write it down. Later in the lesson Mark will have each group do it again so they can see how their thinking has evolved. This PBL does a great job covering collaboration and self reflectivity.

In this video Building Comics , Sam Pane teaches his kids about internet safety by building their very own superhero. After making the hero the students have to build a comic book strip where the main character is doing something that is not safe on the internet. Then their hero comes in and stops them before it is too late. Before they do all this they have to discuss at their table what are things that are dangerous to do on the internet. I like this PBL because it includes so many things that are important. Discussion of the dangerous actions is a great collaboration method, building their own comic and hero is a great way to build up creativity, and then reviewing each other work is a good reflection method.

Project Based Learning This video is about a school in Canada who combined History, English, and Technology into one class. The students work on individual, group, and class projects that incorporate all three subjects. What we can learn from these teachers is if you really believe in something, don’t give up. When they first started this they hit a couple roadblocks. The program was not compatible in a regular school setting. They worked through the kinks and now the program is up and running.

Roosevelt Elementary's PBL Program Roosevelt Elementary takes a Project Based Learning approach to teaching. What I learned is that Project Based Learning can help bring the community together. It encourages community participation and it encourages teachers to work together. PBL helps the students stay more interested in what they are learning. The students become self motivated, interactive, and critical thinkers. PBL helps students be more prepared the future.

Wednesday, March 26, 2014

blog post 10

Sir Ken Robinson: Bring on the learning revolution!

I think we can learn from Sir Ken Robinson two primary issues with our education system and a fundamentally innovative way to combat those issues. He discusses a new climate crisis-misuse of human resources/talents. He states that there are two types of people in this world: those that endure instead of enjoy and those who love what they do and identify themselves by their profession. Education should foster that love for what they do, but often times it doesn't. We have to go looking for human resources like natural resources. To do this, we don't need to reform a broken system, we need to revolutionize a transformed system. The first challenge is linearity. We need to challenge what is obvious and what we take for granted. He read a quote from Abraham Lincoln stating we must, "...rise with the occassion...and disenthrall from linearity." We set our children up for following a straight line to "get to college". Life is organic, according to Sir Ken Robinson, and we need to use our talents in circumstances to function. He gave an anecdote of a boy who wanted to be a firefighter. He had a teacher tell him he was wasting his life with that career choice. The student later saved the teacher and the teacher's wife's life. He made the statement, "Human communities depend on a diversity of talents." We place this sense of urgency to get to college, but it isn't urgent. He also commented on the need to reconstitute ability--college does not start in kindergarten, kindergarten starts in kindergarten. Conformity is the next pressing issue. He states that we have built the education system like a fast food chain. It is standardized and depleting the students' spirit and innovation. We need to foster passion, what excites us, and what feeds our spirit. Sir Ken Robinson made the analgoy of needing to move our education system from an industrialized/manufactured model based on conformity and linearity to an agricultural based model where like a farmer, we need to create conditions for human flourishing. We need to customize and personalize our system/teachings to the people we are actually teaching. He ended the talk with a poem encouraging us to tread softly on children's dreams.

Project 15

Exploring the Periodic Table

By completing this project, the students will identify the symbol, atomic weight, atomic number, and name of the elements in the periodic table. They will also find a picture of the element's use to place on their element card so as to apply science to everyday life. The students will then present on the information researched and share with the class. They will then collaboratively create a life-size periodic table on a wall in the classroom for reference for the remainder of the year.

Smart Board Project 12

Sunday, March 23, 2014

Blog Post 9

Ms. Cassidy's Class

First Graders in Ms. Cassidy's Class (4:56) Interview with Kathy Cassidy Part 1 (14:37) Interview with Kathy Cassidy Part 2 (4:55) Interview with Kathy Cassidy Part 3 (12:46)

Ms. Cassidy's teaching mentality is some what of what I hope mine will be one day. Technology is continually growing and getting better in most cases. This use of blogging will make it much easier not only on the teacher but also for the parents. This makes keeping up with their students process virtually at their fingertips with online grade books and also calenders. Although I will probably not get to use this first hand with children with special needs, I really do like that she also wants to teach the students to use the internet in a safe way. She is very precautious as to what her students search for and look up. I foresee equipping children with special with a skill set to accurately judge truthful and untruthful information/websites appropriately. This will also help them filter information and form their own opinions instead of using someone else's.

When I first started this class I looked at implementing technology as a real challenge in my particular field of study. However, Ms. Cassidy has inspired me view utilizing technology as a growth opportunity for my future students and classroom.

Sunday, March 16, 2014

project 9

Project 14

Students as a group will present a persuasive argument for which of the 4 MAIN (militarism, alliances, imperialism, nationalism) causes was primarily responsible for leading to World War I. World War I makes a major change in the progression of history into the modern world. Understanding the causes of this war and how it changed history is necessary for students to understand how history is linked and how current issues are linked to this pivotal point in history.

Blog Post 8

Teachers Network

How you would use it? Teachers Network could be used for many different reasons. The most popular reasons teachers turn to this website is for projects and lesson plans. Teachers Network is also linked to Project Based Learning. Google is the search engine used for this popular website. There is also a way for educators around the world to intact and share information all around the world to other teachers. I hope to use this website frequently in my future an elementary school teacher. There are many different advantages to using this website. There are options for different grade levels and subjects for ideas for projects and also many lesson plans. This website gives tips for new teachers and also advanced educators. I chose this particular tool and use of technology because it is very self explanatory and user friendly. Using this website will make creating a project, looking up information and making lesson plans much easier and not so time consuming. I hope to use techersnetwork.org a lot in my future as an educator.

Sunday, March 2, 2014

project 13

Egg Drop Project #13

By: Anna Meitzler, Evan Grace and MacKenzie Yancy

First the students must work through a bridge building module to understand structures. This module is what we like to call the learning phase. It teaches them about how different shapes and angles are stronger than others. Once they have an understanding of what they are working with then we move on to the next step, the Egg catcher project, where they will apply what they have learned.
My 10th grade Physics class was given a 100 dollar budget and a weeks time to make the best egg catcher model. The class of 20 was broken into 4 groups of 5 students. The models will be tested by dropping the egg 8 feet and using the best model to catch the egg without it breaking. Each group was given the option to buy many different materials including tape, cardboard, tissue paper, foam and regular paper. The students were also instructed to take notes and record results in a journal. These results will be presented in the class presentation of the finished product.
This project will help students in the future by having them work in a group. working in a group can be very trying at times. The egg drop project can also help with the students communication. In order for this project to be successful each group must have a clear understanding of each other and their intentions. Critical thinking and creativity are also very critical in this. At the end of the week each group is instructed to present their project to the rest of the class and prove why their egg drop model is the best. All of these skills will be required in their future.

Blog Post 7

Randy Pausch's Last Lecture.

In this lecture with Mr. Pausch we learn a lot of different things. The main point being, to never give up. He repeats this many times in his lecture in many different ways. In his life he has had many reasons to give up. In all of these trials he never thought about it and never is going to, as he currently fighting a life ending form of cancer.

When Mr. Pausch was younger he wanted to be national football league player. Because of some unfortunate circumstances he was unable to make this dream come true. In this specific instance of not succeeding, Mr. Pausch learned from the experience of trying to make it happen. Another helpful hint he mentions is to start out by making a goal and even if that goal is not achieved learn something from the experience.

summary of c4k's for February

In EDM310 for the kids post I was assigned Cally in Mrs. Reuter's class. The title of Cally's most recent blog post was titled "Comic Website Review." This blog post started out with much controversy on which website to use to make comic strips. The feud was between Toondoo Make Believe Comics There are many advantages to using both of these websites, but they also have their own disadvantages. When weighing the pros and cons for both Cally thinks that Toondoo is the better choice in making her comic strips.

I was assigned Mrs Little's third grade student from Hong Kong International School. My c4k student's blog name is cutie carly. In her latest blog post she shows where she got a henna tattoo as a Christmas present. It is a sunshine painted on the palm of her hand.

Kylie B., a 7th grader Bode Middle School in St. Joseph, MO, was my next assigned C4K blog. Her teacher is Tia Frahm. In Kylie's latest blog post was titled "Color Poem." In the assignment her class was assigned to pick a color and write a poem about it. They were also required to find a visual to go along with the color and poem. Her picked color was blue. In her picture, she has two different pictures to go with her poem. One was of a bird in the sky and the other was of the ocean water. Kylie really seemed to enjoy this blog post assignment. It was a very interesting read and nicely written post with all of the given directions met.

Sunday, February 23, 2014

Project #8

Where The Wild Things Are

Written and Illustrated by: Maurice Sendak

blog 6

Dr. Strange gave us 2 different ways to make our own Personal Learning Network. I used Symbaloo. When directed to that site, I followed the simple steps required to make my profile.

What are Personal Learning Networks? “Is a set of people or tools you can call upon for help.” Dr. Strange sums what a personal learning network is in just these few words. The best example is twitter. This is an online social networking site that allows you to stay connected with your follows and allows you to send short messages to one another very quickly.

How can they help you as a teacher? By having the world at your finger tips this makes solving problems much easier. PLN’s help teachers in everyday life communicate find things out and also ask questions.

How are they formed? There are many different sites to create PLN profiles. Personal Learning Networks are used all around the world. One educator, Steve Anderson, is in connection with other educators on all the other continents.

How can you create your own PLN? There are many different forms of Personal Learning Networks. Some include Twitter, Facebook, different forms of text messaging and also ASCD Edge. (Professional Networking Community for Educators.)

Who will be your first additions to you PLN? In the future I hope to be able to connect with many other educators. I hope to be of help to some and also get help from some. I think this is a great way to stay connected to not only people in your own profession but other people around the world.

Sunday, February 16, 2014

My Sentence Videos

My Passion Is...

My Sentence Is...

blog 5

What can we learn from these conversations with Anthony Capps?

Project Based Learning Part 1: Experiences of a Third Grade Teacher- This is YouTube video is an interview between Dr. Strange and Anthony Capps. Mr. Capps is currently a third grade teacher at Baldwin County Elementary School. He is no stranger to Edm310. He was once and student and also a lab professional before beginning teaching. Mr. Capps is also no stranger to Project Based Learning. In this short video he and Dr. Strange cover some very important topics for PBL. Mr. Capps states that some people think that projects are what is given at the end of a lesson after it’s been taught rather than it being a means to get them to learn something new. In this he also adds that it is extremely important to motivate the children and also most importantly they are driven by content. This meaning, the students know what they have learn by standards given to the school by the government. Specifically, one of the projects Mr. Capp’s makes his students complete is writing a letter to their congressman Jo Bonner. This helps with many different subjects and also covers the ACCRS.

Project Based Learning Part 2: Experiences of a Third Grade Teacher- This video, like the first, is also an interview with Anthony Capps. Another project Mr. Capps third grade class took part in was reading a science article that had to do with the problems in Haiti and also Afghanistan. So, the students had to put themselves in kids from there in their shoes. They were made to look up pictures, watch videos and also write about the things they found. This helped the students use the tools they already had while preparing themselves for the next step in the project. When doing projects like this you sometimes are taking a risk. In his class one of his students father served in Afghanistan. He was not okay with his son knowing specifics on these topics. This particular student did a different science project and it turned out just as well as the other. After all the projects were finished Mr. Capps organized a night for the students to show their parents what they had been studying and also accomplished in doing in so.

iCurio- Mr. Capps fills us in on iCurio and how he uses it in his classroom. In this video Anthony Capps explains that iCurio is an online tool that can serve many different purposes. This makes kids searching the internet very safe. In this students can search for information, videos and pictures in a safe and secure way. All of these things have been pulled and filtered for educational purposes. Another important and also useful feature includes storage units so when students find information they can save it and have easy access back to it. Another feature for iCurio is called historical figures. The feature helps you search by criteria. This helps narrow the search and also makes it much easier for students to find specific information about a specific place, person or thing.

Discovery Education- “If a picture is worth a thousand words, a video must be worth a million.” This is what Mr. Anthony Capps begins by saying. What he means by this is if you give a child something to read and pair it with a visual they will learn and understand so much more. Discovery education is another search engine that students and teachers use primarily on an everyday basis? This helps bring professionals in the classroom via video which is very important for people who may not know as much about a certain topic.

The Anthony-Strange lists of tips for Teachers Part 1- In this video, Dr. Strange constructs a list of 5 key tips for new teachers to think about. Also, in this video he interviews Anthony Capps a third grade teacher after just completing his first year as a teacher.

1- Really be interested in learning yourself. If you are not a learner you will not be a successful educator.

2- Teaching is hard. In education you don’t necessarily have to separate work form play.

3- Be prepared for surprises. Must learn to be flexible.

4- Start with the end in mind.

5- Make sure students are engaged.

Don’t Teach Tech- Use It- Technology is constantly being used all around us, but in some places it is still controversial. Students are very technologically savvy in this day and age. What he means by this is to not but this big project on students in one week. He suggests spreading things out over weeks at a time. In this, he may give one or two steps of the project one week and a few more the next week and so on and so forth until the project is finally completed. This helps the students figure things out for themselves, and also to learn a lot in the process.

Additional Thought About Lessons- Mr. Capps states the first thing to think about when planning lessons are how it fits in your year. What he means is in this lesson are you going to cover all of your content standards? Next, he points out how to devise unit projects. This step is to make sure things flow and that everything previous is a stair step to the next lesson being taught. Mr. Capps also asks, “How are you devising your week so that you can get everything done?” This is also a very important step in process of making lessons. The next part o this process is making sure to look at the daily lessons. In order to make sure you can get everything done on a daily basis.

Sunday, February 9, 2014

Project 3

Blog Post 4

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

According to Webster’s Dictionary a question is a sentence, phrase or word that asks for information. A matter or problem that is being discussed: a subject or topic.

Questions, Don’t Teachers Ask Them?-I must be honest, this has never crossed my mind. In Dr. Maryellen Weimer’s blog post some very important questions are covered. I have not always wanted to be an educator but when I did think about teaching students asking me questions never really seemed to stick out. Also in Dr. Weimer’s blog posts she suggests preparing questions, playing with questions and also preserving good questions.

Prepare Questions-Dr. Weimer states that she asks questions to her students without giving them an adequate time to prepare. She now admits that this was often frustrating for her and her students. After reflecting on this she wanted to find a way to make this a lot less stressful not only her but also her students. She now realizes that more prepared question are much better for her and her students think through and answer.

Play With Questions-I’m sure I wasn’t the only one in school that was given a question and wanted to find the easiest and shortest answer that could answer the given question just to get by. In fact, I believe that many students think this way at some point in their school career. This yes, is the easy way out, butt ultimately could end up hurting you in the long run. Dr. Weimer suggests making the students think more logically. He also suggests using a board with a question already on it when the students enter the classroom.

Preserve Good Questions-Educators are encouraged to ask questions for any reasons. One of those reasons could include making students think in depth and also think for themselves. Maybe, in some instances, even make critical thinking decisions. This will help students in the future with many life changing decisions.

There are no Wrong Questions-In the video Dr. Strange assigned us to watch Dr. Chesley takes on the question “Are there wrong questions?” In the video she states there are two types of questions, those being, an open ended question and a closed ended question. What she means by this is a closed ended question she expects a yes or no answer and sometimes a reply. By open ended question Dr. Chesley states this is more of giving information but not necessarily getting an answer to a specific question.

Questions, Yes, Of Course Teachers Should ask Questions- As an educator asking the right questions at the right time can be very critical. It is very important to know what questions to ask. In high school I thought my teachers just thought of questions to ask students, little did I know the thought process behind the questions being asked.

C4T summaries

In EDM310 I was assigned a general studies teacher named Silvia Tolisano. The title of her blog and website is “Langwitches”. She updates this page on a very regular basis. From the page you can tell she really enjoys all aspects in the blogging world. The first post I commented on was titled “Blogging Beyond One Classroom” from the name I’m sure you can guess it was mostly about kids that blog in middle school and preparing them for the high school world. What made this post most interesting were the many parts and differences from middle school to high school. The most common problem the middle school children are having most trouble with include posting illustrations. This blog post kept my attention the whole time and left me wanting to know more about the always changing blogging process.

"Collecting Quotes for Future Blog Post's," in this post Mrs. Tolisano is giving a brief tutorial on how to save quotes to use for not only future blog posts, but they can also be used for other forms of writing. This is a very interesting blog post and will be very help to me and I am sure many other people who run across this post. ONe of the sources she uses is CoCmment in Google Notebook.

Teacher Tom

I was assigned the teacher Tom Hobson. Mr. Hobson is more commonly know as Teacher Tom. He is a preschool teacher. In his latest blog post he covers the importance of students being independent and not relying on their parents or teachers to do everything for them. One example he gives is when his preschoolers come in and their parents are holding their lunch boxes instead of them doing it for themselves. In many different ways Mr. Hobson points out the importance of responsibility for young children. He states this is also a priority in teenagers lives as he is a father to a teen. He claims, "the more rights she assumes, the more responsibly she behaves."

"This Is Child Abuse," was the next very interesting post I read by Teacher Tom. This post is mainly about the many standardized tests that are required for preschoolers to take. Yes, standardized tests for a 5 year old. Clearly, in this post Mr. Hobson is not happy with these required tests. He gives many links to examples of other schools around the nation with these same requirements. He is not the only person so outraged about this topic. Many parents are petitioning to start their own kindergarten in that area for the 15-16 school year. This seems to be a very hot topic around Woodland Park, and only seems to be growing.

Sunday, February 2, 2014

Blog Post #3

What is Peer Editing? - The word peer is most commonly known as someone around the same age as you. Editing is when you revise or make changes to something. There are 3 steps in the peer editing process. Step one- use compliments and always stay positive. Step two-make suggestions about how to make their writing better. This could also include word choice, using detail and organization. Step three-making corrections. When making corrections in peer editing always look for punctuation, grammar, the use of proper sentences and most importantly spelling. When peer editing always remember to stay positive, be very specific about what you are editing and also and complete all three of the above steps listed.

Peer Edit with Perfection- Peer editing can be a lot of fun done in the correct way. In this slide show it shows different ways to stay positive, be specific and using the three steps of compliments, suggestions and corrections are also used. When peer editing always stay positive. Maybe tell them what they did right before immediately jumping to what needs to be corrected. This technique could also be used in the compliment step. When peer editing it is also very important to stay specific and that the reader knows what you are trying to tell them to make their work better. Word choice, using detail, sentence structure and topic are also every important things to check while peer editing.

Writing Peer Review- peer editing is not meant to be used as a mean technique. It is supposed to be very helpful to the writer. Word choice as the editor is also as important as the writer’s word choice. There are many different ways to peer edit in the wrong way. Always remember to stay positive, make suggestions and follow the well known three steeps. The steps include being, using compliments, making suggestions and also helping correct the mistakes. While using these steps the peer editing process has been known to run much more smoothly. These steps are used nationwide and in many class rooms around the world.

Sunday, January 26, 2014

Blog Post 2

Mr Dancealot- The central message in this video is that Mr. Dancealot does conduct class. The students come in day after day and he teaches but yet the students do not learn anything. He tries to show them how to do the different dance moves but none of the students are able to see the professors feet to know if they are doing the moves correct. I do not agree with the conclusion of this video or the way the final exam was given. Mr. Dancealot never gave the students a chance to try and see if they could do the different dances he had previously gone over in the class.

Teaching in the 21st Century- by Kevin Roberts.
Outline of some of the arguments Mr. Kevin Roberts is attempting to make.
1) Teaching could be a lot different in the future.
2) Teachers can instruct students in a lot of different ways in the 21st century by using new and improved resources.
3) By making students use their imagination and create things on their own.
4) Learning things that could actually be used in the workplace. To better their future.
5) Knowing the difference in entertaining people and keeping them engaged.

The Networked Student- Why does the networked student even need a teacher? By Wendy Dexler. That is very good question. Technology is continuously growing. There are many different opportunities out there on the web that can help in so many different ways for learning about different subjects. I believe as technology keeps growing before we know it more than half of all classes will be internet based classes.

Harness your Students’ Digital Smarts- by Vicki Davis. In Ms. Davis’ class her students are very technical savvy. They learn many things to do online that most high school students have no clue about. This will defiantly have them more prepared for college and the work field. I completely agree with her argument and only wish I could have had a teacher like her in high school to prepare me the way she prepares her students.

Flipping the Classroom- Flipping the classroom is new to me. I do however this technique could be very useful to me as a teacher. I can see this being used all over the world for many more subject than just math as used in the example video. This will save a lot of time and also give the students more one on one time that they miss out on otherwise.

Sunday, January 19, 2014

Blog #1

At the beginning of the semester I was a bit skeptical about taking EDM310. I knew it was required, but by no means was I looking forward to it. I have heard a few different things about it being hard but also quite interesting. I've also heard there are many projects and not enough time in the week to accomplish them all. Not to mention, on average about 40% of the students drop the class before mid terms. In the first class meeting I was told that I have to set aside 9 hours to complete the weekly tasks. I must admit I am a bit nervous trying to figure out how I am going to focus on 1 class for 9 hours a week. I am fearful I am not going to achieve this on a weekly basis. EDM310 is not like any other class I have ever taken in the past. With that being said, I am excited to learn new things that I am sure will help me as a teacher in the future. I think if I stay focused and optimistic over the course of the semester I will learn a lot and do well in the class. I am extremely nervous yet excited to see what the rest of the semester holds.