Skype Interview

Blog Post #9

What I've learned this year

By: Mr. McClung

Mr. McClung wrote a wonderful blog post about the things he learned during his first year. He talked about how lessons should be student centered and be based on student comprehension. I certainly agree because sometimes we feel like we have to make it just right to look good for the principal when we need to make sure the students are our top priority. One thing he learned really hit home with me. It was that we need to have better communication with teachers. This is something that I think teachers really need to establish. If we started talking about issues and helping each other out then the school would be more beneficial to the students and the workers. Arguments happen in schools but if we can just communicate better then some of these problems wouldn't occur. He talked about how technology should be our friend and that we should never stop learning.


When he started talking about not building expectations too high because we set up our students for disappointment, I thought back to some of my past teachers who had done this. This is something that we need to be aware of because we don't want to discourage them if they fail. That is where we need to help them and tell them that they still can succeed. This sometimes is the only encouragement they might get! We also need to get to know our students so that they are able to trust us. All this takes is really listening to them and understanding where they come from. I know as a teacher we will not have a lot of time but this is something I believe we should make time for.


I am so glad that we were assigned to this blog post. It was very inspiring to me and I can't wait till the day I can make a post after my first year of teaching!!

Comments for Kids #2

C4K 4

I was assigned to comment on Litia's blog. She goes to the Pt England School in Auckland, NZ. She is in the 6th grade and is an excellent writer. She wrote a blog about the earthquake in Christchurch. She stated how it was devastating and that 300 people are still missing and there has been 75 confirmed deaths. Many buildings and streets have been destroyed. The cathedral (shown above) is an old historic landmark and it has collapsed on one side. I went and looked at an older blog she posted and it was a video to all the residents of Christchurch. In it she stated that she hopes they are okay and to never lose hope.

 When commenting on her blog, I told her how excellent of a writer she is and that she seems like a really sweet kid who is genuinely worried about the residents of Christchurch. I then went on to talk about the devastation over there and how I hope rescue teams can find some of the people missing. I also commented on how it is a real tragedy to see all these gorgeous, historical landmarks ruined.

C4K 5

 

I was assigned to Helen's blog. She is in year 7 at the PT England Intermediate School in Aukland, NZ. She is in room 21 and her teacher is Mrs. Lagitupu. In her blog post she talks about netbooks and how her school had them use them in a trial and error study. They are going to be able to keep them for their personal use as soon as they get the okay. She talks about how she has enjoyed using them for blogging, emails, and games as well as in class. In her class, she has used them for statistics and has learned how to make graphs on them. She says that her most exciting time is getting to use them to learn literacy.

I responded to her blog post first by telling her that I loved her post and was excited to see what they were doing. I also told her that I have a netbook and am very fond of mine as well. I went on to talk about how as a future teacher I cant wait to be able to incorporate technology in the classroom and that I love how her teacher is doing that. This really inspired me to be a motivator for technology in the classroom because I see how it has helped Helen.

C4K #6

I was assigned to Nathan O's blog. He is in Mrs. Phares' fourth period class. The blog post was about bullying and how it is increasing in the schools and the world. He talks about how little comments can soon turn into heated arguments which can result in fighting. He believes that bullies should be punished by having to spend at least one day in prison!

When commenting back on his post, I talked about how bullying is becoming a serious problem and how we need to make teachers and parents realize that it is going on so that something can be done about it. It has become a serious threat and there are students that are committing suicide because of bullies. I left him with the thought that we need to come up with a good way to deal effectively with bullying for the victims and the one who is bullying. This could then be turned around for good and we could make a change in the students life.

Smartboard Presentation Group #1

This was a collaborative project worked on by: Brittany Hamilton, Courtney Starkie, Joshua Ragsdale, and Rashad Adams



After we taught we sent our "students" the quiz online to take. Here our the results. They did very well and we were pleased with how they came out.

Click the image above to see our full response.

I really enjoyed being able to teach using a Smartboard. This isn't my first time using one but my first time really teaching a lesson. During my observation hours I was under an amazing teacher who let me use hers in the classroom and I was also allowed to teach her students a new spelling game on it. I really enjoy using a Smartboard. It gives me a new way to teach students where they can interact with the lesson. I loved doing a game at the end of our lesson.  I think as a future teacher this is a great opportunity to see if your students are retaining the information.

I learned a lot using the Smartboard during this lesson. I loved that we were able to learn new ways to make forms by using Google Docs. I have really enjoyed being able to save my work online and access it from any computer. This is very convenient for me. I also liked how we had to use the smart notebook software to create the lesson plan. This allowed me to download it and I am now able to play around with it. I am very glad I got this opportunity.

Blog Post #8

Richard Miller: This is how we dream

Richard Miller gives a great lecture about how things are changing in technology and how the school system needs to get on board. He talks about how he loved books and inspired to write one. He finally did and now it is out of print and you can buy it on ebay for like .57 cents. He talks about how technology has changed from students using books to now finding virtually everything on the web. Miller says that most newspapers and books are also now available in web pages to better suit people's needs. It also now has links to photos and audio is included.

Miller says that the education system isn't prepared for this because they don't have Inspiring teachers or spaces. He said until all teachers get on board, nothing will change and therefore students will be behind. Am I prepared to write with multimedia? Before taking EDM I would have said no but from what I have learned in this class and from the web, I think I will be prepared for this change that will be taking place. This is something that will need to take place and that means that teachers will need to get out of their comfort zone and learn about the programs the students will be using. How can we teach something if we don't know anything about it?

Will my students be able to do this? I honestly think they will. As an elementary teacher I will be establishing this in them at an early age. The good thing about this is I will be able to help them and this will almost be all they know. If we can get kids using multimedia at an early age then it will not be as difficult for them when they are made to use it in higher grades. Besides, kids today are so use to technology that this will be another part of their life that they will be incorporating it into. This is where education is going to and I am excited to be a part of it!

Chipper

Chipper was a video about a girl who is in EDM 310 and doesn't do her work. She procrastinates so much that she ends up making bad grades in Dr. Strange's class and decides to leave the university because of him. She then opens up her own  flight school where students can make their own schedules and come whenever they feel like they should come. It ended up being shut down because there was no quality education and people can't fly without actually practicing first. After this she gets an online degree and Dr. Strange helps her get a job with a school. She then gets fired because she never went to class. Afterwards, she got a job as a waitress thinking it would be easy and could go to work whenever she wanted to but she also got fired from there. Chipper then decided to become a nanny because she thought it would be easy and she could get paid for just staying on Facebook but the parents didn't offer her the job. She then decided to become a garbageman and afterwards had a "cleansing" of her mind. She went back to school to get her Master's and decided to really focus in school and not to procrastinate.

EDM310 For Dummies
This was a video about two girls that at the beginning are very overwhelmed with the work in EDM. Then they have a book pop on the screen that is called EDM310 for Dummies. It is a book about all the websites and projects that you will use in EDM310. It has tutorials and a step by step guide on how to survive EDM. This book ended up helping these two girls enjoy the class and get a lot out of it.

In these two videos I learned a lot about EDM and what not to do. I know not to procrastinate or you will not get the assignments done on time. I also know that with a little help this class can be enjoyable and not that difficult.  I would like to create a video on the process of using the flip cameras and how to edit it on imovie. I know it isn't the difficult but it took me awhile to figure out how to take things out of video without messing it all up. I'm still not really sure. This would be very beneficial!

Learn to Change, Change to Learn

This was a video from distinguished educators on how the education system needs to change. They talk about how education is the same as it has always been and the world around the school is changing. Studies show that coal mining is more IT intensive than education!! That is really disturbing!! This means that the education system needs to change. The video talked about how students are surrounded by their social networks all day and when they get to school the things they use the most aren't allowed in the classroom. If they were, students would be getting an education that is geared towards the students involvement and their independence. These things are what is going to make the 21st century education so vital. First, they need to have these technologies and changes established with the teachers. Without them, none of it will be possible. I agree with what the educators in this video are saying. We need to get the schools to incorporate technology so that we can move up the top 55 and become more IT intensive than coal mining. This is a change that has needed to be made for awhile now but we have to start somewhere and now is the time!

The Secret Powers of Time

In this video, Professor Zimbardo starts off with saying there are 6 different time zones: 2 focus on the past, 2 focus on the present, and 2 focus on the future. The people from the past are either past positive or past negative. Some people are present oriented and only are concerned about what is going on now. The future oriented people are worried about what is going to go on later in their life. People in the south are more past oriented and people in the north are more present oriented. Robert Levine wrote a book about the pace of life. The pace of life is where people divide their own experiences into timezones. It is also divided into time duration which is usually divided by whether they are bored, excited or not.  He goes on to talk about how a child in America drops out of school every 9 seconds. He says that it is worse for minority groups and the male population. This is because kids are in a society where they live in a society where. technology is everywhere except for in schools. Kids are in a rush all the time and are use to not having to wait. There is a fundamental change going on in the society and schools need to jump on the technology train and get with the program. We need to understand peoples time perspective. People are forgetting their family's to make sure they become successful. This is something that needs to change as well. There needs to be more emphasis on family values and all it takes is people changing their perspective on time.

Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

Daniel Pink discusses what motivates someone. He says there are two studies that he wants to discuss and they are 1) if you reward something do you get more of the behavior you want? and 2) If you punish something do you get less of the behavior you want? He then goes on to talk about a study that MIT did that showed how students reacted to the test they were given and how well they did for different types of rewards. The higher you got, the better the monetary reward was. They concluded with a shocking result that most people wouldn't think but it was: above rudimentary skill the less the reward matter meaning the reward doesn't work that way. I would have never thought higher incentives would lead to worse performance. Another thing he talks about is how money is a motivator and if you don't pay people enough, they won't be motivated. This was easy enough for me to see because money is a big deal to most humans. What I didn't know was if you pay people enough it will lead to them being focused on the work and not the money. Autonomy helps people be better workers especially when the boss gets out of the way and lets the worker do the things they need to do. Mastery is a way that people do things they love and not worry that they don't get paid for it. Purpose is something that people really care about as well.

I love how this video talked about what can help us change the world and make it better for us all. If these were emphasized in the classroom then our students would be excited about the things they are doing. Success could become a major thing in the classroom when the teachers get behind the students and let them be independent thinkers and learners. These were both amazing videos and I enjoyed a lot of things they discussed.

Blog Assignment #7

Randy Pausch: The Last Lecture- Achieving Your Childhood Dreams!

Dr Pausch gives an excellent lecture about how to achieve your dreams and how to enable others to achieve theirs.Dr. Pausch taught computer science and worked for Carnegie Mellon Univeristy, where he instructed a class based on virtual reality. He titled his lecture "The Last Lecture" because normally it is the last thing you talk about before you die. He was diagnosed with liver cancer but he had a great attitude and just lived his life. He begins his lecture by giving us a list of all his childhood dreams. They were:

• Being in zero gravity
• playing in the NFL
• winning stuffed animals
• authoring an article in the World Book Encyclopedia
• being Captain Kirk (later changed that to meeting Captain Kirk)
• being a Disney Imagineer

He was able to achieve all these childhood dreams in some way. Though some were harder than others he never gave up on them. He talked about how he was able to and what pushed him to keep going. On the one about playing in the NFL he talks about "head fake" which is a way to learn indirectly. He said that most kids don't even realize they are learning about communication skills and teamwork when their playing football. This is a sneaky way to learn. This was extraordinary because I don't even remember what my childhood dreams  were. He said the only catch is that we tend to push them in the back of our minds and only see them as things that we dreamed about, but could not possibly come true.During the lecture he talked about brick walls and how they are there for reasons.One of them was to let us prove how badly we wanted things. This was so true because I know that when I hit a brick wall I just strive to work harder. This is a great teaching lesson!! This part of the speech led into the main thing: How can I enable the childhood dreams of others? This is what he began to ask himself.

This is where he becomes a professor which helps him really be able to help others pursue their childhood dreams. He is now in the setting to encourage them and teach them things that many others might not have a passion for. He has 50 students randomly picked for his class and they are put in groups and are asked to work together. Each group has to make a virtual world. Afterward, they are asked to rate how easy their partners were to work with. This was a great reflection for them and can be considered one of the best things to teach your students. When Dr. Pausch is talking about the Alice Project he talks about how the students are then going through "head fake" because they are having a lot of fun on the computer that they don't even realize how hard the computer programming is they are mastering. When he uses props this helps students learn in a visual way. Props help students see things as they are and they find the material much more interesting.

He then talks about lessons learned and how the role of parents, mentors, and students are a major part in achieving your dreams. At the end Dr. Pausch brings in some thoughts that he wants to leave others with. A few of them are: Have fun, help others, loyalty is a two-way street, listen to feedback and use it, show gratitude, don't complain-just work harder, and find the best in everyone-maybe their good side will come out eventually. I really like these thoughts and will make sure that I remember them. His lecture was very entertaining and I am glad that I got to listen to it. I learned some very substantial material from him and I hope to apply it with my students so that they can achieve their childhood dreams.

Project 10- PLN Progress Report 1

My PLN is definitely a work in progress. At first, I honestly did not know what it was or how to form it. After watching the videos, I decided to use Symbaloo for my PLN. While in symbaloo, I decided to go ahead and make a personal one so that I can keep up with all the websites that I go to. This will be a big help with me planning my wedding right now. On my EDM webmix I have:

• Blogger.com- for my personal blog and also for the EDM 310 class blog
• Twitter.com- to follow the EDM staff and other educators
• Skype.com- to use when interviewing someone, etc..
• Gmail- to keep up with what is going on in my class
• Youtube.com- to upload my videos
• Dropbox.com- to have access to many documents used in classes
• google images- where I get majority of the images I use for my blog post
• Dictionary.com- to help me look into different words and their meanings

These are just a few of the items that I have put on there now but I am sure that it will continue to grow as the semester continues!