C4T #2

During this C4T assignment, I was assigned to Mr. Dean Shareski. I do not know all of the other choices that Dr. Strange had to choose from to assign to us, but I wish everyone could have read Mr. Shareski's blog! Mr. Dean is incredibly riveting with his writing. He covers updated issues with such honesty and openness that you feel like you are sitting face to face listening to him speak. He is also extremely, or at least convincingly, knowledgeable on classroom issues and technology in the classroom. Mr. Dean made me question topics that I had not really thought of. For example, in the first C4T I commented on for Mr. Dean, the topic was on life outside of textbooks. Mr. Dean questioned the use of textbook and researched other means for textbooks. I felt like this was a very closely related topic because I have not purchased a textbook throughout my entire college experience. I have only rented or downloaded textbooks using my iPad. I have saved $100s maybe $1000s of dollars by making this choice. Mr. Shareski mentions and suggests these types of resources. The second time I commented on Mr. Dean's blog, he seemed to be "ranting" about the unfairness on the bureaucratic decisions that seem to be made from political figures. In another comment/blog, he reflects on he, the world, and myself are spoiled by technology. He gave many forms of technology that I definitely know I could not survive without that I honestly do not give much thought to. It was really an eye opener. The last time I commented on Ideas and thoughts, Mr. Dean discussed how teachers can improve and become better through videoing and recording themselves while teaching. My parents are both teachers and they both use those suggestions that he was discussing. This blog really let me understand his point of view and suggest to other teachers the reasons why my parents use videos and recordings. 

Dr. Strange and class of EDM310...Please read just a few of Mr. Shareski's blog! I know that you will enjoy his thoughts and writing just as much as I did, if not more! Dr. Strange, I would possibly brainstorm on an assignment that could be used to implement Mr. Shareski's blog.   

Final PLN

In the beginning, I used my iPhone apps as my only source of PLN. However, the more and more I kept using the same cites the more frustrated I became with constantly searching for those cites. I broke down and finally created a proper PLN using Symbaloo. Symbaloo has become a lifesaver! All of my favorite cites in one central location, what more could a girl in EDM 310 want? Nothing! Symbaloo has created organization and time management in (hopefully) improving my skills with technology and assignments for EDM. Oh Symbaloo, I will use you forever!

Blog Assignment #13

For blog assignment #13, we were asked to go without technology for a whole 24 hours! Initially I thought, piece of cake, but after the first couple of hours I thought I was going insane. A day without television or accessing a computer seemed simple enough, but my cellphone...my precious cell phone was another thing. I planned my day off from "technology/civilization" wisely. My mom visited this past Friday, and I stayed at her house. Now, my mother's house is very unorthodox compared to most homes. My mother does not have a television and when she is at the beach house does not have internet access. Knowing this going in, I knew this would be a perfect place for my 24 hours of technology freedom. The day before I went to my mom's house, I informed my boss, my friends, and family that I would not have my phone so I would not be tempted to look or answer it. This was a complete "success." I did not have any use of my phone, television, or computer. It was actually lovely! I think once a week, or so, unplugging from the world is very therapeutic. I know more than anything, this assignment made me appreciate the technology that we can easily access.  

Project #15

Curiosity Blog Assignment 12A

             

       (Q1) It would be too broad and sweeping a statement to say that ALL schools in the US destroy or inhibit the development of curiosity and creativity in students, but the demands of No Child Left Behind and the emphasis on standardized testing have certainly made it difficult for teachers to create opportunities for creativity and curiosity in students. Unfortunately, standardized tests and educational reform have propagated a “test mentality” on teachers and their lessons. However, some schools and some teachers certainly try to create opportunities for both creativity and curiosity. (Q2)   Curriculum can certainly be developed to increase curiosity in students; however, teachers must feel comfortable and confident enough to carry out lessons that develop curious students. Many teachers do not feel confident enough in their knowledge to encourage curiosity in their students because a curious student makes more demands on the teacher, particularly his or her knowledge of subject matter. One key component of a curriculum to develop curiosity would certainly be technology. Embracing all the information that technology affords this generation, usually at the “click of a mouse,” would encourage a student’s curiosity.  Finding ways to incorporate technology and its resources into a curriculum would be a simple way to allow students to “have questions” but also allow them to find a way to answer those questions, and possibly create more questions to keep the cycle in motion.(Q3)  A curriculum to increase creativity would be a much more difficult task because it is very difficult to assess creativity. Since today’s culture is so “grade conscious” and every assignment must be graded objectively, it is very difficult for teachers to find a balance between grading the content of an assignment and grading the creativity of the assignment. However, there are certainly ways for a curriculum to encourage creativity. For instance, in my Spanish class we were learning the basic vocabulary associated with clothing. We were assigned a project that was to demonstrate our mastery of the vocabulary in a creative way. Some of us chose the very “safe” power point presentations, but others felt comfortable “taking a risk” and choosing a creative way to approach the assignment. One group created a fashion catalog featuring descriptions of garments in Spanish; another produced a live fashion show with the models describing their clothing in Spanish. Because this project could be assessed for content knowledge in a very objective way, it allowed us to be creative and “think outside the box” without fear. 

            (Q4) In my opinion, a teacher who models curiosity will certainly encourage curiosity in his/her students. Any time I find something interesting and do personal research about something, I will try to share my experiences with my future students. If a student doesn't know a word by context, he/she is encouraged to look it up and share the information with the class. If an allusion or an analogy is made that isn't immediately recognized, we will research the allusion(analogy) and share the information, encouraging curiosity. (Q5) Along the same lines as question three, teachers have many opportunities to encourage creativity in students. By accepting that there are many different ways to learn content standards and embracing the different learning styles of students, teachers can certainly create opportunities for students to learn in creative ways. The Spanish vocabulary lesson (see above) is just one example. I once had a history teacher in my school who had us “act out” myths from mythology with a modern twist. Although this can be “risky” for the teacher to relinquish control, it is a lesson that I will always remember and enjoy. It came me and my class control of the learning experience and encouraged creativity.

         (Q6) As a teacher, I would feel more open to creativity if there was not the burden of testing and grading. If school systems would encourage  creativity in its teachers and administrators and NOT feel the pressure of the test scores or AYP (yearly progress reports for schools), teachers may feel more willing to take creative risks in their classrooms. Also, if teachers have an opportunity to collaborate with other teachers (in their building, their system, and even outside their systems), it would foster a sense of creativity. (Q7) I’m not certain that people can become curios. Curiosity seems to be something innate in a person or not. There are simply people (teachers and students) who are NOT curious. On the other hand, there are people who are naturally curious. The balance for teachers and schools would be to create opportunity to encourage the reluctant curiosity of some while nurturing the curiosity of the innately curious student. Probably the best thing a teacher or school could do would be to give opportunities for curiosity to be cultivated. And that is exactly what I plan on doing!

Blog Assignment #12

In my past blog assignments, I have mentioned that I want to become an elementary educator, but I also plan on getting my Master's degree in Spanish. In high school, I worked with Robertsdale Elementary School's first grade class in Robertsdale, Alabama. I worked with them on simple classroom object and the correct pronunciation. For my assignment, I thought about allowing my students to watch a video on the Spanish Alphabet and to hear the correct pronunciation of each letter. This assignment is for 1st graders and the subject is Spanish.

Step 1: Click on the link and watch the Spanish Alphabet video: Spanish Alphabet...ABC.

Step 2: Practice, practice, and practice.

Step 3: Once you have practiced, please schedule a time with Ms. Shartzer to create your video. In your video, you will video yourself saying the English letter and the Spanish letter. 

Step 4: Ms. Shartzer or one of her teacher aids will help and instruct you on how to embed the video on our class blog. 

Step 5: Continue to learn and have fun!

[My example video for this assignment will be posted tomorrow. My computer does not have a camera. Yes, I know my computer is ancient. Also, this is the video that I am asking my students to watch. ]

Final Project Summary

Not to brag, but my group is pretty amazing. We have been meeting once a week discussing how we will work on our projects. Right now, we are focusing on project 15. We plan on implementing text messaging and google docs for certain! Like I said, my group is pretty amazing. So keep your eyes out for us! (Erica Roush, Kaitlin Boatman, and myself!)

C4K April Summary

The C4K assignment has definitely become my favorite assignment of EDM 310. I love the idea of connecting my future classroom with other classrooms from around the world, and this assignment allowed me to practice. 

Week 11(April 1,2012): My student's name is Matt. Matt is from Canada. He seems to be such a GREAT kid. The first blog post I commented on was Do You Like To Read? In this post, Matt created a book trailer similar to the book trailers we were assigned to create. Matt decided to review the Hobbit. As I told Matt, I think his trailer is way better than mine. He seems to have a better clue on how to use technology in the classroom better than I do. 

Week 12 (April 5,2012) Again, my student's name was Matt. Since he had not written a post since his, "Do you like to Read" post, I had to back track on his blog. On February 29th, he wrote about a program his school participates in to Put An End To Bullying. To put an end to bullying, Matt's school wears a pink shirt on the last Wednesday of February. Matt explains that the program began when a male student wore a pink shirt to school and was picked on for being gay. Some older students observed the teasing and decided to all wear pink shirts and take a stand to bullying. I thought this was such a neat program with a neat story behind it. 

Week 13 (April 10,2012) I can honestly say that if Matt was a bit older and lived a little closer, I could see us being great friends. Matt is a huge sports nut. He especially loves hockey, and more specifically he loves the Ottawa Senators. Since I am from Gulf Shores, Alabama, I am not a huge hockey player or a hockey fan; however, my mom is! This was a really fun post to comment on because I am a HUGE sports fan, and anything written about sports is interesting to read. Matt's team, at the time, was competing his league's peewee playoffs. He never posted if he won or not, but if he plays anything like he posts, I think he will do GREAT!  

Week 14 (April 22,2012) The last C4K in EDM 310! Oh yeah! The finish line is getting so close. My student, in this C4K, is named Aneelis. She is from New Zealand. Aneelis and her class have recently visited Butterfly Creek; which is a butterfly zoo or farm. She shares a picture of herself and the beautiful butterfly that landed on her. Aneelis seemed extremely happy and enjoying her class field trip. Also, Aneelis attached a video of her describing her Beautiful Butterfly. 

I have really enjoyed being apart of the C4K's this semester. I think all of the students and teachers I have commented on are great! They all are excellent examples on how technology should be used and implemented into classrooms. I strive to be like the teachers that these students are lucky enough to have! Thank you Dr. Strange and look for Ms. Shartzer's class in a couple of years to add to your C4K list. 

Blog Assignment #11

Little Kids...BIG potential!  
Size/age doesn't matter in the eyes of technology.In this video, Ms. Cassidy has a very energetic approach to the use of technology. EDM 310 has really opened my eyes to incorporating technology into my future classroom and the endless possibilities my students can have. Even though I am still a little skeptical about blogging, I believe that is an fascinating utilization of technology.One of the most influential things about blogging is that it can help invigorate the students' abilities to write, and gives them access to many world wide opinions/issues, all by a click of a mouse.I have noticed that more and more elementary schools are incorporating computers into their lessons, some as early as kindergarten. I think this would be an interesting way to display forms of work for my future kindergarten classes. Another technology that I like and hope to implement, is the use of Skype. I would love to steal the idea of skyping with a geologist or possibly a class from China. I would love to somehow set up a weekly Skype session in my own classroom! I think to keep kids excited about learning, we have to throw out the old and come barging in with the new. After watching Ms. Cassidy's video and hearing her excitement, I can not help but be excited and anxious to have my own classroom. I can not wait to walk into my classroom one day and say, "Good Morning class. Today we are going to Skype with Ms. Blank's Kindergarten class from China!" I can already see and hear the excitement now!

Blog Assignment #10

Do you teach or do you educate?         When I was in kindergarten, I had an educator named Ms. Neidrach. Ms. Neidrach was simply amazing and one of the key influences in my decision to become an educator. She was very supportive, patient, exciting, and everything I feel an elementary teacher should be. In my opinion, she is the ultimate teacher. An educator is someone how inspires and empowers, which is exactly what Ms. Neidrach does. She is the model I hope to emulate in my future classroom. An educator's influence affects people, many for a lifetime. Every educator is a piece of a child’s life puzzle.          My aspiration is to educate my students, instead of just teaching them. I hope to immediately instill insightful thinking and beliefs in every single one of them. For example, I wanted to be a singer one day. Yes, I said a singer. I can’t sing to save my life, but Ms. Neidrach allowed me and the other “aspiring singers” time to “perform” for the class. She always allowed us to be ourselves and think outside of the everyday norm. When we were learning the alphabet and to read, she devoted an entire week to each letter and provided many activities and "teachable moments" relating to the letter being studied. Although we didn't understand it at the time, we were learning cross-curricular concepts in a fun and exciting way. I hope to inspire my students to aspire. Since I want to teach Kindergarten, I would find out what my students aspire to become and possibly invite guest speakers to talk to them. I want to create interesting projects and use new/updated technology to catch the attention of my students. Being an educator is so much more than memorizing rote facts; it is inspiring them to learn and to teach others.

Adventures of Pencils

          Mr. Johnson is simply dazzling. Tom Johnson's Adventures in Pencil Integration is very clever in his use of technology as metaphors. For example, Gertrude, an academic specialist, explains to Mr. Johnson that pencils should not be taken home because students will use them for entertainment rather than for school work. By allowing students to take their pencils home, not only will they not be used in the desired way, but their tests scores will steadily lower. In my education classes (especially in EDM 310), technology plays an important role in becoming an effective educator for our future classrooms. Students are sneaky and smart, which can be a difficult predicament for teachers to handle. Students often misuse their technology resources for games and chatting with friends, rather than using it for school work. I can not lie; I have been one of those sneaky students. In my opinion, this is what Gertrude is referring to with the use of pencils. Even though students are playing games and chatting with friends using their pencils, they are unintentionally learning. They are playing games that are requiring a thought process, spelling, word association, and much more. I like how they contradict the statement above about test scores automatically lowering because students are learning with their computers, even if it is not used in the appropriate form. It is not an automatic response that students will necessarily do poorly on tests. Mr. Johnson does an excellent job when he does little to highlight this concern. He is continuously suggesting new solutions for students and their “pencils.” As I consider my own future classroom, I want my students to bring home their pencils/computers . Yes, classrooms are made for learning, but so is the world. Anyone, everything, and everyone can teach us something new. Why just allow students to learn at school? Shouldn’t students continue their learning above and outside the walls of the classroom?

C4K March Summary

February 27- March 4, 2012,

During the last week of February and beginning of March, I was assigned to Ferry Lane Primary School Year 6 class blog;  I was assigned to the first blog,  which was a beautiful poem about Joy. Atifa penned a poem that created  a nice visualization of the  characteristics  associated with spring and joy. For being a year 6 student, Atifa has captured a magical time of the year and expresses her feelings beautifully with words,  which is not always an easy task at any age.  She really does an exceptional job at personifying Joy, giving it the animate characteristics of  an actual object or person. The best part of the poem was how Atifa ended the poem with a question. The question compels the reader  to  focus on things that make  him/her feel joyous and visualize some favorite things to evoke truly pleasurable feelings. 

March 5-March 9, 20012

This week was Spring Break and we were not assigned a C4K.

March 19-March 25, 2012

For this C4K, I was assigned to Ms. Stone’s  class at Bradford School. The post I commented on was the “100 Word Challenge-Week 25.” Ms. Stone and Ms. Skinner decided to challenge the students to work on their conversational writing. The prompt the teachers assigned was, “How can I help you?” Even though this prompt is extremely vague, I thought this was a very creative way to motivate students to incorporate “how can I help you” into their conversational writing and use a limited amount of words to get their points across to the reader. The concept of this blog emphasizes succinct and thoughtful writing for students. More importantly, this was a good project  for me to actually observe how educators are implementing blogs into the classroom in a meaningful and  thought-provoking way for students, without neglecting content standards. Additionally, this is an excellent example of  how to properly manage all of the students’  blogs and comments so that the teacher is not overwhelmed by the posts but able to effectively interact with students in a way that the students find engaging. 

Blog Assignment #9

 Mr. McClung’s blog First Year, he discusses attention abandonment from students and others. He states this is a major issue with beginning teachers. Mr. McClung states that his mindset in college and internship was all about teachers and being assessed by peers and educators. He credits those factors for his lack of focus pertaining to his audience. Maintaining the focus on the students and remaining flexible are some of the main keys to becoming a successful educator. Mr. McClung says, “NO LESSON IS EVER PERFECT. THE LESSON YOU TEACH AND THE ONE YOU PLAN ARE ALWAYS DIFFERENT.” Educators must maintain flexibility. Rolling with the punches and being a chameleon. Flexibility and the ability to take on many roles are other aspects of becoming an effective educator. Communication is another key to being a successful teacher and faculty member. Being an effective communicator can not only benefit the teacher in the classroom, but with faculty relationships. Creating bridges with others can create more resources and possibilities for yourself, your classroom, and your students. Another good piece of advice seems simple: Set reasonable and obtainable goals for students and yourself. Sometimes creating unreachable or unrealistic goals can be harmful or discouraging to students. Another suggestion Mr. McClung makes is listening to the opinions of students, faculty, and others. The last point from Mr. McClung’s first year is continual learning as an educator. With technology constantly evolving and resources becoming more available and effective, teachers should never lose the desire to improve and learn. 

In Mr. McClung's Third year, he discusses his experiences and reflections. Similar to his experiences in the first year, he reiterates that teachers should never forget that students are the main focus. Constantly keeping the students in mind is still the main way to be effective. Mr. McClung mentions teacher’s crossing over to the "dark-side." The "dark-side" is when educators ignore students and do not consider the opinions of others. I refuse to ever cross into the "dark-side" of teaching. I really admire the teachers who sit with their students at lunch and appropriately communicate/relate to their students. Also, teachers should teach their students to do activities, not just how to do it. Mr. McClung identifies teachers as being "movers and shakers," continuing to always move forward and shaking the normality. Educators should never become comfortable with their teaching strategies. Keep moving and shaking as well as learning and growing! 

Project Assignment #14