Blog Post #14

         My Final Reflection

Final Project #16

Project #13

Project #15 SMARTboard Instruction Part 2

Final Report on PLN

My PLN has grown significantly since I started it. I have added most of the link to the blogs of teachers from my C4T's, as well as many other sites that I have stumbled upon while researching information. I have found so many valuable resources through EDM 310 that will be of great assistance when I start teaching in my own classroom. I have also helped others develop a PLN and organize it with Symbaloo for their jobs. I also created a PLN for my 7 year old daughter. She loves playing educational games on the computer, so I organized her Symbaloo to make getting to all of her favorite web pages easy. I know that my PLN will continue to change and grow with me. Thats what is so great about having one.

Blog Post #13

NO E-MEDIA FAST FOR ME!
Not being able to use any electronic device is impossible for me. It is very difficult in a world where everything revolves around technology to avoid it. There are two things that were absolutely impossible for me to avoid, and that is the computer and the cell phone. Some of my other classes require daily use of a computer, so that was impossible to avoid. I also could not go an entire 24 hours without using my cellular phone. It was not for reasons such as facebook, etc... I have small children and have to be able to be reached for different reasons weather it's to make arrangements for someone to pick them up from school in the afternoons, or in case one of them get sick at school. 
Some media is a very important part of my every day life. Even though I was able to go without all of the other "banned" media, it was not easy. I realized that I have learned to use every media product in an educational way whether it is for me to learn with or for me to teach with. I knew that technology was something that was always changing, but to be honest, I did not realize how important it was going to be when it comes to education.
It is detrimental to the lives of our children that we enforce technology in the classroom. Everywhere you look, a child is listening to an ipod, playing on an ipad, laptop or portable game system. If we bring them into a classroom that only consists of books, pencils, and paper, they are going to be bored. We have to have passion about teaching, which means that we have to always be looking for and learning about new innovative ways to keep our kids engaged. 

C4T #4

Middle School Matrix
Hadley is a Middle School History teacher at Springside Chestnut Hill Academy in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Her most recent blog post, Brain Research for the Classroom #ASCD, was done to see the learning pattern of the kids in a classroom. What they found was amazing! She found that no matter what the task, after 20 minute of class the students lost focus. She decided that she was going to change her teaching strategy to accomodate this learning  pattern. 
I think this is a great idea. If we know the learning pattern of our students, we can plan our lessons around these intervals. This is definitely something that I will think about when making lesson plans for my classroom.


It's Always in the Eyes was a very inspiring blog post. Hadley described the passion of an elementary teacher, Liliana Aguas, who won the ASCD's Outstanding Educator Award. The most interesting fact was that the teacher had not planned to be a teacher, she actually wanted to be a scientist. It wasn't until she took an education class her senior year in college that she changed her mind. Hadley says that the sparkle in her eyes said it all. I love knowing that there are still teachers out there that have the passion to teach children. So many people want to become a teacher because of all the holidays off, or the health benefits that they really do not take pride in what they do. They do not understand that they have the power to shape the lives of these young children. 

Blog Post #12

Using visual thinking methodologies, Kidspiration provides a cross-curricular visual workspace for K-5 learners. Students combine pictures, text, numbers and spoken words to develop vocabulary, word recognition, reading for comprehension, writing and critical thinking skills.

 Kidspiration helps students:

-Develop strong thinking skills

-Strengthen reading and writing skill

-Build conceptual understanding in math. 

*For this assignment, I would like you to download the 30 day free trial from Kidspiration and choose one of the assignment to complete. After completing the assignment, write a blog post explaining Kidspiration, and tell me if you could use it in your classroom.

________________________________________________________________________

Kidspiration works the way students think and learn and the way teachers teach. As students make visual connections, they build fundamental skills in reading, writing, math, science and social studies. Kidspiration offers activities in all curriculum areas, so students use visual learning naturally and confidently.

What it can do:

Develop Strong Thinking Skills

With Kidspiration, students use graphic organizers to express thoughts and explore ideas and relationships. They create graphic organizers including webs, concept maps and Venn diagrams to clarify thoughts, organize information, apply new knowledge and build critical thinking skills.

3,000+ symbols in Kidspiration's Symbol Library provide visual support for concepts taught in K-5 language arts, social studies and science. Students can also import symbols from other sources. Symbol Search helps students search and find just the right symbols to express their thoughts and ideas.

Strengthen Reading and Writing Skills

With Kidspiration, students create, organize and explain ideas and information visually. They develop stories and descriptions using engaging visual tools and explore new ideas with thought webs and maps. Using Kidspiration, students combine pictures, text and audio to develop comprehension, organize ideas and create stories.

• Integrated Picture and Writing Views connect students' visual thoughts with written expression in a single click. In Picture View, students develop thought webs and other graphic organizers. In Writing View, they expand their ideas into written expression. As they visualize, plan and organize, students build essential skills and confidence in reading and writing.
• Visual continuity between Picture View and Writing View links images with written expression. When students click from Picture View to Writing View, they see symbols from their graphic organizers, reinforcing the connection between words and their meaning.
• Kidspiration pairs symbols and words to build and strengthen literacy. Emerging readers and early learners use Kidspiration symbols and graphic organizers to communicate stories they've heard and ideas they develop. Older students use symbols to explain more complex ideas, show relationships and demonstrate understanding.
• Kidspiration Word Guide supports vocabulary and reading comprehension with easy access to nearly 13,000 words. It includes sight vocabulary from the Dolch and Fry word lists and aligns with TESL vocabulary to support ELL and ESL students. Each entry includes definitions, recorded speech for pronunciation, synonyms and antonyms, parts of speech and sample sentences. Word Guide pairs 1,400 words with images to enhance word recognition and comprehension.

  Build Conceptual Understanding in Math

  Kidspiration extends the proven principles of visual learning to mathematics with visual math tools. Combining the hands-on learning power of manipulatives with all the added benefits of computer interactivity, Kidspiration's math tools help K-5 learners grasp essential and sometimes challenging math concepts.

This is actually a picture of the assignment that I did. This software is absolutely amazing! It is definitely something that I will use in my classroom when I become a teacher. I chose to download my trial as a student so that I could actually try the software as a student to see if it would really work.

Kidspiration includes curriculum content, teacher tools and standards-aligned lesson plans in language arts, math, science and social studies developed specifically for grades K-5, along with 150+ activity templates.

• The templates give teachers classroom-ready resources and provide a launching pad to customize and create lessons for individual learners, small groups and the whole class.

                                                                                                                                                              

Creativity and Curiosity: My Thoughts- Special Post #12A

I do believe that schools in the United States inhibit creativity/curiosity in the classroom today. There are several conditions that contribute to this:

• Need for success, limiting risk-taking or pursuit of unknown.
• Conformity to peer group and social pressure.
• Discouragement of exploration,  using imagination, inquiry.
• Differentiation between work and play (e.g., learning is hard work).
• Disrespect for fantasy, daydreams.
• Reward systems.
• External locus of control.
• Need for closure and rigid time lines.
• Need for security and acceptance of product.
• Perfectionism.
• Low self-concept.
• Anxiety.
• Competition.

These are just a few, but in my opinion, there are a few that are more common than the others. I think that the need for success is the biggest. When I say this, I am referring to the need of the school. When the school's standardized tests scores are not where they need to be, children are taken out of other classes, such as art and P.E. and are doubled up on subjects where improvement is needed. Although these subjects are important in education as well, so is the ability to use imagination. 


There are things that we can do as teachers to facilitate creativity and curiosity.

• Provide an environment that is rich and varied in stimulation, safe, and accepting.
• Teach with materials and methods harmonious with each other and with the teacher.
• Delineate clearly and repeatedly the aims of this type of program.
• Allow free interplay of differences.
• Make environment and materials friendly and nonthreatening, thereby allowing disagreement and controversy without hostility (this allows children to engage freely in behavior underlying creativity).
• Reduce anxiety in classroom, especially that created by teacher.
• Handle differences as confrontations, not as conflicts.
• Find integrative elements in differences.
• Allow unifying concepts to emerge.
• Allow individuation and differentiation within the unity.
• Foster positive change in directions congruent with student's predilections in cognitive and affective areas.
• Provide situations that present incompleteness and openness.
• Allow and encourage lots of questions.
• Produce something, then do something with it.
• Grant responsibility and independence.
• Emphasize self-initiated exploring, observing, recording, translating, inferring, testing inferences, and communicating.
• Provide bilingual experiences resulting in development of greater potential creativity due to the more varied view of the world, a more flexible approach to problems, and the ability to express self in different ways that arise from these experiences.
• Allow rather than control.
• Be receptive.
• Value and model intuitive behavior.
• Give opportunities to investigate ideas of successful, eminent people who used intuitive processes.
• Give opportunities to try out intuitive behavior (e.g., in problem-solving).
• Treat the child with respect and allow freedom to explore the universe.
• Create an atmosphere with really good music, books, and pictures as a natural part of the child's world.
• Treat ideas and questions respectfully.
• Respect the child's privacy.
• Value the unusual, the divergent.
• Help the child learn by mistakes.
• Avoid sex-role stereotyping.
• Encourage self-expression.
• Teach the child to look and really see.
• Help the child learn to trust the senses.
• Permit the child's own creativity to emerge.

I truly believe that if these things were done in every classroom, that the rate of "killing curiosity" would decline. There are many jobs that require creativity to a certain extent, teaching being one of them. When you are a teacher, especially at the elementary level, you must not only be creative, you must inspire creativity and curiosity. It is our job as future educators to want to do this. 

Elspeth Bishop is a writer for InGoodMeasure.net. She was born and raised in Colorado and now enjoys skiing, playing tennis, and hiking in the mountains of Salt Lake City, Utah.Find out more about Elli through Google+

Progress Report on Final Project

My group, TACE, has decided that we are going to make a video of two future classrooms. One will be with a teacher that has continued to be a lifelong learner, has kept up with the technology, and uses it in the classroom. The other will be of a teacher who does not. We want to show the importance of the use of technology in the classroom by examining the environment in which students are more stimulated. We have a meeting set up for this week to discuss it further. I am really excited about this project!

C4K Summary For April

Angie was the student that I was assigned to mentor in the Student Blogging Challenge. She is 11 years old, in year six, and lives in Australia. Angie started blogging a year ago, and loved it so much that she decided to enter the blogging challenge. I was really excited that I was assigned to Angie, she has commented back every time I have written to her! That was a first for me since starting Comments For Kids. Being a "beginner" blogger, it is a truly amazing feeling to communicate with people all around the world through blogging. Angie and I talked about the events leading up to her Easter break, which for her was the end of term 1. I found that she enjoyed supporting fundraisers for the children's hospital, which I thought was amazing. She also had a really touching post about Easter, and what it meant to her. I was really thrilled when she made her last post before her break where she mentioned myself, and another EDM 310 student on her blog. She wrote about how great it was to receive such nice comments from us, and how interesting our blogs were. That, for me , was a very rewarding feeling.

Daniel is a student in room 9 at Pt England School. Daniel was assigned to make a personal profile of himself to present to the class. I thought this was a great idea. Making a video of yourself is a great way for people to get to know you. It is much better than just writing down some things about yourself because it allows for you to show a bit of your personality. The greatest part is that the students are learning important ways to use technology in the classroom.

Blog Post #11

Ms. Kathy Cassidy's Skype Interview and First Graders in Ms. Cassidy's Class
     Ms. Cassidy takes the same approach in her first grade class that we are using in EDM 310. She was given five computers about ten years ago and decided that she must find a way for her children to use them. Her class now has a webpage in which they can access to go to different sites with educational material incorporated such as alphabet videos. In order to secure the privacy of her students, Ms. Cassidy sends home a form at the beginning of the year that has to be signed in order for the children to get online. She also does not use the students last names, or put their names on any of their pictures. Ms. Cassidy knows the importance of using technology in the classroom. She made a comment that Dr.Strange has made to us several times, we have to be  lifelong learners. The ways that we were taught years ago just do not work anymore. We have to keep up with the technology and incorporate it as much as possible.
     I love the idea of having a class webpage. It is like having different learning centers in your classroom for the children, but they are all on the computer. The only problem that I could see would be not having enough computers for all of the children to use. In this case, you could break the class into groups and let so many use the computer at a time while you are working with the rest of the class on something else, then you could alternate. Like Ms. Cassidy says, we must take advantage of the tool that we have today!
   

Project #14

Blog Post #10

Do You Teach Or Do You Educate?
     There are many reasons for which I chose Education for my major, but it wasn't until after having children of my own that I knew that's what I wanted to do. As a mother, it is a wonderful feeling when your children learn to say their first word, or take their first steps. It is such an incredible milestone, and you were the one who showed them the way. Before you can blink you are teaching them to tie their shoes and how to ride a bike! Young children are like little sponges waiting to soak up everything that they can, and I wanted to continue helping not only my own children, but other children to learn everything that their    little heart's desire. It is truly an AMAZING feeling!
     To teach someone is to show or explain how to do something, to give information about or instruction in, to encourage someone to accept something as a fact or principle, or to cause someone to learn or understand something by example or experience. To educate is to give intellectual, moral, and social instruction to someone. The two should go hand-in-hand, shouldn't they? I think that it is important to do both. When you are a teacher, your students are with you at least seven hours a day, 10 months out of the year. I know that my children love their teachers dearly. They look up to them in such a way, you would be amazed. You have to not only teach them, but you have to guide them. They are our future!

Tom Johnson's Don't Let Them Take The Pencils Home
     In the post, Mr. Johnson is having a disagreement with Gertrude, the School Curriculum Instructional Interventionist Academic Specialist about weather the children should be allowed to take their pencils home from school or not. Gertrude insists that by them taking the pencils home, the wrong message is being sent. She claims that research shows low-income families see pencils as toys. She also believes that they will have lower standardized test scores if they take the pencils home for this reason in particular. 
     What Mr. Johnson is arguing is that this is total nonsense. I can't help but to agree! Does the so-called "drill-and-kill bubble test" really measure what someone has actually learned? I don't think so. I have written about this same topic a few times now, and my opinion hasn't changed thus far. In most cases, as soon as the information that was "drilled" is tested, it is also forgotten. But to appease Gertrude, Mr. Johnson says that he has met with the parents and students and explained ways that the pencil should be used for learning. Gertrude still doesn't believe that the students will be held accountable at home. In reality, all that matters are the test scores. They are what determines many things for the school. It is really a shame that the emphasis on a standardized test score can threaten the jobs of teachers. The biggest question that needs to be asked is: What are they really learning? 

Blog Post #9

What I Learned This Year , by Mr. McClung (2009)

     These are some of the points that Mr. McClung made in his post following his first year of teaching.How to Read the Crowd

• Don't lose touch with the audience. 

• Check for student comprehension.

• In order to be effective you have to be able to let your audience drive your instruction.

Be Flexible

• No lesson is perfect.

• The one you teach may be different from what you have planned.

Communicate

• Communicating is the best way to resolve any issue in the workplace.

Be Reasonable

•  Often we build our expectations too high for students, and become upset when they do not meet the expectation.

We should never forget that we are dealing with children.

•  Our job as teachers is to simply pick them up after they fail, dust them off, and encourage them to try again.

Don't be Afraid of TechnologyGrown adults everywhere are afraid of computers like it's a bad horror film and computers are trying to take over the world. Technology is our friend and is essential to living in our microwave society of today. We should not become overwhelmed by technology and simply give up before we start. We cannot expect to master computer skills the first time we attempt them, so jump in head first....the water feels fine :)
Listen to Your Students

• You may be the only person that does.

Lastly....Never Stop LearningIt's never too late to change your way of thinking, learning, or style. We do everything short of beg students to learn on a daily basis, but sadly some of us refuse to learn and grow as professional educators. We work in a learning environment, so why not soak up as much as you can? We owe it to our students.
     As future educators, these are things that we could all learn from. If you think about it, all of the things that Mr. McClung mentions are things that could happen to anyone, and that he has actually experienced, in a real classroom setting. I tink my favorite part is the last paragraph where he talks about being in a learning environment and continuing to learn, even as the teacher. He is yet another blogger that I will be adding to my PLN.
What I have Learned This Year (2011)     I wanted to skip to 2011 to see what new experiences Mr. McClung had during his third year, and to see if taking his own advice made for a better year. This is what he had to say...
Know Who Your Boss Is

• Don't get wrapped up in trying to please the adults and forget who you are really there for... The Students!!

Don't Expect Others To Be As Excited About Change As You Are

• Always give new ideas a chance.

Don't Touch The Keyboard

• Let the students learn by actually doing.

• Don't take over and do the work for them.

Don't Get Comfortable

• Dont be to passive

• If you get into to much of a routine, you are just going through the motions.

     Once again, Mr. McClung has written an extremely educational post that is sure to help any teacher, or teacher to be. What stands out to me the most is where he says that "often times when we are teaching a task to a student and they are having difficulties completing the particular task, it is very easy to take over and basically do the work for them...because we can always do it better. However, the major issue with this is that if we do the work for the students then they will never fully master the skills. No matter how difficult it may be we must resist the urge to take control of the keyboard." This is so true. I have not had this experience as a teacher obviously, but I have had it as a student. I have found that learning by doing is the best way to learn. That will definitely be the teaching method that I will use in my classroom. 

 

C4K Summary for March

Tahibah

     My C4K for March was Tahibah, from Bradford Schools, and was on the Miriam Lord 100 Word Challenge. This is where the students were given prompt words, and required to make up a story using the prompt words. My student wrote a wonderful story about a little girl named Ann who had a day off school and decided to take a nature walk and finds a spider. She then goes home, then has a dream where she uses the prompt words to describe the dream. It was actually very entertaining. I told her that it must have difficult to write a story knowing that you had to use certain words that had to be used. I also told her what a great job she had done. I think that that idea really made the children think and use their imaginations. I love that!

C4T #3

Do I Dare Disturb The Universe?

     Scott Elias is currently in his second year as the principal of Conrad Ball Middle School in Loveland, Colorado. Prior to coming to CBMS, he spent three years as an assistant principal at Loveland High School and two years as an assistant principal at Greeley West High School. He spent the first 9 years of his professional career in the Broward County School District in South Florida serving as an assistant principal, technology coordinator, and a teacher of math, statistics, and physics.
     For my first comment, Mr. Elias posted about the test scores at his school. He was not particularly happy with them, so he decided to establish a "Professional Study Group." He is against taking students out of P.E., art, etc..., and overloading them with the subject matter in which  the scores were lower. He wants something better for his school. I replied that it was refreshing to hear of such a thing. Usually, the only concern is to get the test scores up for the benefit of their pocketbook, instead of actually doing it for the children. I asked if he would respond and let me know how it was going, but I haven't heard back from him yet. 


PhocuseD 3: I'm doing this why?
     When I went back for my second comment, there had not been another post, so I looked through the older posts. I could not help but to comment on this one because I related to it so closely. It was about him getting his PhD. He talks about the difficulty, and how you can find so many reasons not to do it. Although I am not seeking a PhD at the time, I have found that returning to college after 10 years is not an easy task. It was nice to see someone speak honestly about their experience, it was actually quite encouraging. 

Blog Post #8

This Is How We Dream, Parts 1 & 2
    Professor Miller is the author of As if Learning Mattered: Reforming Higher Education (1998) andWriting at the End of the World (2005). His published articles concern developing a philosophy of consciousness that promotes transformative teaching and writing practices. He has delivered over fifty invited talks across the country and abroad on how literacy is being redefined by Web 2.0 technologies. His current research concerns "the end of privacy" and how education is being changed as a result of the proliferation of hand-held devices that enable instant publication and global distribution of anything that can be seen or heard. He now publishes exclusively on his website, text2cloud. 
     What Dr. Miller says is that we no longer need to use the paper and pencil method of communication. We are in an era of instant global communication. We are able to use a real time document to enhance the visual effects of learning. This makes learning much more interesting. We no longer have to actually go to a library to research and and write about something, we can do it right from our computers.
     Being able to colaborate virtually from anywhere in the world, with anyone, anywhere else in the world is an amazing opportunity, so why not use it? It is our job to expand the use of these amazing technologies as educators.


Carly Pugh's Blog Post #12
    Carly had an amazing idea in her blog post. She proposed that everyone create a playlist from their YouTube video's. This is exactly what Dr. Miller is talking about in his video. Making use of the collaborative tools that we have today. It was a very original and creative idea! 


    The Chipper Series and EDM 310 for Dummies were both somewhat comical videos. I must say that I have had the same feelings at some point this semester. I also must say that once you find a good strategy for time management, everything runs much more smoothly. If I were to create my own video, I would like to document the use of technology in a classroom that has never had access to any. Just say that we would film a normal day of learning in a classroom, then the next day we would introduce the same lesson using technology, weather it be an Ipad, Ipod, etc... I would love to document the difference in the learning atmosphere for the children, and how much more they learned using technology.


Learn To Change, Change To Learn

     I think that my favorite statement from this video was about the standardized testing. This is exactly what we need to get away from in our schools. He says that the jobs these children will be doing are not based on right answers. This makes perfect sense! To learn, we must do! Also, the fact that the children have so much more stimulation from places other than school. This is really sad! All of the thing that are going to teach our children the most are not being used in the classroom. We have masterminds creating video games for our children, so why cant we have them create this same stimulating learning environment for them in our schools? 


EDMONDO
     This is a social network for teachers that is similar to Facebook. What makes it even better is the fact that it is strictly for students, teachers, and parents. This would be a great tool to use in the classroom because you can get ideas from other teachers, you can get feedback from parents, and you can post assignments and make announcements to your class. It has now become an addition to my PLN!


ANIMOTO
     Animoto provides an array of tools for creating videos in your classroom. It automatically analyzes music, photos and video clips, and orchestrates a custom video, leaving you free to focus on the content and narrative of your videos. Spotlight lets you give specific image added prominence and screen time in your video. Mix relevant messaging, statistics and quotes among the pictures your videos to educate your audience and inspire them to action. Animoto makes it easy to share your videos via email, on a blog/website, exported to YouTube, or downloaded to a computer for use in presentations.

Create interactive meetings at Poll Everywhere

Short Movie- Project #11

Project # 12

Book Trailer

Project #9b

The Evolution of Technology in the Classroom on Prezi

Blog Post #7

                                                                                                     

     In The Networked Student, Wendy Drexler explains what it means to be a networked student. Being a networked student means that you will need a quality PLN (Personal Learning Network.) Having a good PLN will connect you to some of the best Professors, Lectures, Blogs, etc... in the world. When you have a PLN, and create a blog or WIKI of your own where you put everything that you have learned, you are then helping other students and may even come part of their PLN. 

     Being a networked student doesn't mean that you don't need a teacher. Your teacher will be the one that shows you how to build your network and take full advantage of the opportunities presented by your network. The teacher will be the one to help you if you have a problem, teach you how to ask properly for help, and to help you decide what information that you find should or should not be used. 

     In EDM 310, we are currently learning how to be networked students. If it were not for Dr. Strange, this wouldn't be possible. He has guided us by giving us projects and teaching us how to use the tools necessary. We do not have a textbook, and we do not meet in a classroom every day. But, we are connected through technology where we can collaborate with him, and our fellow classmates.  

     Being a teacher in the 21st century will mean that you have to be a lifelong learner, as will your students. I think with the help of my PLN alone,  I am ready to be a networked teacher. 

A 7th Grader's PLN

The PLN that this student created is much like the one that I created. Because we are both students, we have all of our links needed for school on our PLN. Using Symbaloo is an easy way to organize your PLN to where you know exactly where everything is, and it is all on one page.