Project #10 Finding the Right Tool

Finding the Right Tool


When asked to find technology we have not covered in EDM310, for use in our future classroom, I immediately asked myself, "What tools could have made learning more easier at that time for me?" I would like to teach math for middle school, so I thought back to this time in my life. One thing I always had trouble with, was a calculator! My teacher would give out directions once and we were expected to know it for every math problem. This caused lots of confusion in the class and lots of the same questions asked over and over again, until each student had seen it done on their own calculator. I decided to research on new advancements so I could cut down on confusion and time spent on calculator questions.

The technology that appealed to me the most was the TI-Emulator. This software will allow me to have the students calculator on my computer. I could then have it on a SmartBoard, where my whole class could see at one time exactly how to use their calculator. This cuts down on having to individually go to each student and show them what I am talking about. I can also have students do examples and show how they came up with their answer on their own calculator and make sure the process they are using is right!

Blog Post #6

Wendy Drexler: The Networked Student


The Networked Student by Wendy Drexler, is a video that shows just how important technology has become as a learning tool for students. Instead of teachers giving information out of a book, students are able to get scholarly articles from web sites. Students are also able to read opinions on blogs and write their own about a topic. They can even learn by downloading audio books on their iPod's. The possibilities for learning using technology seem to be endless these days.

Will teachers even be needed with all of the networked students? My answer would be ABSOLUTELY! Students have books with all the answers in it, but do they just learn it themselves? Nope. They need guidance and direction to help steer them in the right directions. They also need help learning how to begin using this new technology to learn themselves. I do think that the role of a teacher may change some, but they will not be come extinct.

I am thankful to be learning how to use some of this technology in the course of EDM310 right now. As I did say I didn't think teachers would be come extinct, I do think some may that can't catch up and teach their students with this new technology. I hope to learn as much of it as I can now where I can pass my knowledge down to my future classes one day!



PLN

This video showed a 7th grader's science personal learning environment. I loved the fact that she could even Skype a scientist to ask him a question. That is the type of learning I think will make a huge impact on a student. Her PLE was much different mine, I think. Her's was VERY organized and seemed very easy to keep track of everything. I hope to have mine this way in the future!

My Sentence Movie

Blog Post #5

If I Built a School


Krissy Venosdale wrote, If I built a School. She is a passionate teacher. Her goal is to let her students have a blast at school while learning too. I hope to be as passionate of a teacher as she is. I can tell she genuinely cares about her students. In her blog post she wrote about if she were given an opportunity to build a school, how it would be. She described her dream school very vividly, I could picture everything in my mind. It would be extremely colorful, comfy, hands-on, tech savy type of learning environment. She did not want a strict curriculum, or grade levels by age. She wanted a school were children progressed by their knowledge and wanted to give them more options in a field of study they were interested in.

As I read through the blog post I began to think of how I would want my own school to be. I would want it to be a beautiful modern building that was filled with different wings for each field of study and each wing to have classrooms for each grade level. The wings would be math, science, English, history, music, art, and electives. All the wings would be decorated beautifully according to the subject. All teachers in the wing could collaborate together since they are interested in the same field and help each other grow in their field of study to provide the children with the best teaching possible! Electives would include useful classes like cooking, agriculture, wood shop, edicate, and a class called workplace. All of these classes could provide new interest and give the children real world skills. The class I called workplace would take the students to job sites of many different professions. I think this could be a great class that can help students save money in college. While in college many students change their major many times. Why? Because they didn't know how many job options were out there. I would also like all classes to be as hands-on as possible. Each subject will also take educational field trips. If I have teachers like Krissy Venosdale, my students would be extremely blessed!






Virtual Choir
Eric Whitacre's Virtual Choir has me completely amazed! I have never seen anything like this before. The fact that these people have never met or sang together speaks volumes too. I love this!


Teaching in the 21st century




I think Kevin Roberts has a very strong opinion on how teachers jobs will change in the 21st century. He thinks teachers will not be teaching the "information" as they have been. Students can find this on Google, in blogs, on twitter, etc. He thinks a teacher will teach students how to properly use this new technology to learn. I both agree and disagree with Kevin Roberts theory.

I personally do not think a teacher will never teach again. I think while we may need to implement the use of new technology in a classroom, this will not take out teaching. I think of kindergarteners, will we just teach them how to use technology? No! We must start off teaching fundamentals. The way we teach this may have more technology involved, I do think though. I think Kevin Roberts may be right on some things too. We must teach children about lots of technology and lets them explore and learn some on their own to be prepared for jobs of the future!

Flipping the Classroom

I'm starting to think I should take back about what I said in the previous paragraph, about teaching in the 21st century. Maybe I won't actually be teaching to the class, but recording my lessons for them to watch at home, known as flipping the classroom. I have to say I am a huge fan of this idea already. I would like to be able to teach math one day, and this seems perfect! Katie Gimbar's video were my favorite and has me extremely excited to begin my teaching career. I also watched the FAQ videos she had and any questions I may have had about this system working, she completely cleared them with her answers. This is the first I have heard of this teaching style and I am surprised. Last semester in college I had a math professor who taught the lesson in class and gave us his youtube channel where the lesson also was. This approach is the only reason I passed the class, because I was able to go back and review. I would deffinately like to use this teaching style in my future classroom!

Project #5

C4T #1

       I read an article by Karl Fisch. I thought it was perfect to read, especially after all I have read about how far behind our education system is. This made me rethink some things. I tell myself I will never be the "lecture" teacher and will use tons of technology. In all reallity, that may happen in a perfect world but we are not in that perfect world. Sometimes I may give a few lectures and pass out some of the old timey work sheets.
         In Mr. Fisch's blog he was stating how he's tired of reading all the time about people bashing lectures, worksheets, and notes. This bashing is not a critique, just bashing and putting these methods down. He states methods to make these critiques better. He says that being criticall will only make things better but we also must back it up. Give reasons and in depth ways to execute a plan.

         In the next post by Fisch, the message I got was, while twitter can be useful for a teacher, know that it can be deceiving too. We can look on people's twitter and feel like crap for what we are doing in our classroom. It is great for us to learn from others and try to incorporate their ideas, but we must remember instead of feeling like a horrible teacher we just have to learn to improve constantly and not everything on twitter is exactly true. People like to stretch the truth, no school is perfect. He also states there are laws we MUST follow as teachers. Don't go on strike and make the student's learn nothing. There are better ways to handle those situations!
         I have loved reading Karl Fisch's blog! They seem like confidence boosters directed right at teachers. While I'm a teacher I will use twitter to gain fresh ideas. I will not let it discourage me. The "perfect," classrooms we see on twitter, are not so perfect. Try to improve, but know that the tweet is somewhat of a lie. All classrooms everywhere need improving, not just mine!

Blog Post #4

Langwitches Listening-Comprehension-Podcasting


I find myself suprised every week in this class. I began this assignment thinking it would in no way be beneficial for me. I was completly wrong and can see myself using these methods to teach one day. In this blog I read by Langwitches I see how the teacher was not only teaching about a podcast but helping sharpen her students listening and comprehension skills. The teacher made her students create the Hebrew story of Purim, in a podcast. She also mixed up there recordings and made the students put them back in order. The students gained listening and comprehension skills, but also they learned the language easier. In highschool I took Spanish. On our test we had a listening portion. It would have made it easier if my teacher had used a technique similar to this one, to help us learn the words and also what they sounded like. I think teaching this way will make students have fun while also learning.


Langwitches 1st Graders Create Their Own Read-Along Audio Book


I loved this idea and I would have never thought of this. The teacher had the students record a Magic Tree House series book. She had different students for the characters. When she was finished she put them all in order and printed out a read-along for the students. I feel like students get bored of the same kind of reading time they always have. Either the teacher reads or students read in their regular voices and it is difficult to focus. This makes them proud of their work and wanting to listen to hear their own voice as a character. It also makes them be able to picture the story easier with all the charaters having different voices. Langwitches also had the recording make a noise at the beginning of each chapter in case a student lost their place. I think this is a great teaching method and would love to do this in my own classroom one day!


Langwitches- Flat Stanley Podcast


I can remember reading Flat Stanley when I was younger and sending my Flat Stanley off and so excited to receive him back. This gives students a way to learn about different places and other ways people live. The class I read about sent their Flat Stanleys to London (England), Antarctica, Alabama (USA), Space, Israel, Tokyo (Japan), North Pole, Illinois (USA), New York (USA), Hollywood (USA) and Michigan (USA). They then recorded what their flat Stanley had encountered. All of their voices were so adorable! They had to learn to be very discriptive and change the tone of their voice and to create pictures in the listeners mind. This includes sounds Flat Stanley, smells, and description of what he saw. Children love this project and don't even realize what they are learning!


My Podcast


Not only did I take things away from this blog post to use in my future classroom but also techniques for my own Podcast. I must remember to not be monotone and have variation in my voice. I also want to be able to paint a picture in my listeners head and not make it be boring. I can't wait to use what I have learned!

Special Blog Post #1

WolframAlpha
I have to admit that I was one of the people who misinterpreted the data from the video Dr. Strange made. I was upset we had another assignment because of this, but I think I learned some useful things! We were asked to compare the populations of India, China , and the United States. India's population was 1.21 billion, China was 1.35 billion, and the United States population was 309 million people. I loved learning about the website WolframAlpha. It had so many educational and also fun facts. I can see it being very useful in my classroom one day. Not just for my use, but also my students. I conducted two more comparative searches. I wanted to know what was the smallest city in the U.S. and what was the largest city. The smallest city came back with 61 cities having no one living there and many only having one person. The largest city is New York City having 8.175 million people.

The Count
Gary Hayes social media account amazed. It has a total of people logging into facebook, tweeting, buying iPads, sent texts, how much the post office has made and many other things. I could not believe how high the numbers would rise. You can change the different time frames to see the number rise on different types of social media. Just in 5 seconds 200,000 likes and comments were made on facebook. I think this will have an amazing impact on me as a teacher. This website has opened my eyes as to just how much social media is in people's lives. When I start teaching I would guess the majority of my class will have phones, emails, and either a Twitter or Facebook. Instead of trying to fight my students from using these things I want to be creative and use this technology to my advantage of teaching!

Blog Post #3

Peer Editing:

       Paige Ellis' Blog assignment #12, the video, What is Peer Editing?, and the slide show, Peer edit with Perfection Tutorial, all had a common theme. While teaching us how to edit, they all give similar steps on how to edit. The first step is to give compliments. We are reading the work someone else just spent a lot of time on, there is no need to start off by bashing there work. Let them know what you liked about their writing. The second step is suggestions. We are all trying to make each other better writers, so if you see a way to make someone a better writer, I say go for it!. The last one is corrections. We are not perfect and our writing won't be all the time either. This step is to fix spelling mistakes and grammatical errors. Remember to always be nice and not negative!

       The video, Writing Peer Review TOP 10 Mistakes, was a funny video made by children, and show how to not peer review. Some of the stars in this video included Negative Nancy, Mean Margaret, and Picky Patty. This video shows that there is two sides of editing. The editor and the one receiving the positive criticism. The editor shouldn't be negative or picky and the receiver should fully listen and accept the help their getting. I think this video would be great to show in my future classroom!

       The classmate that I edited was Brittney Patrick. I found no spelling or grammatical errors. Her clarity was great and everything was organized. Everything I told her was very positive feedback. I loved her writing style and told her things that really made her writing stand out! In the future when I have to fix spelling errors or grammatical things I will leave them as a comment. We are all learners here and none of us are perfect, so I think it is appropriate to leave corrections in a comment. It also might help others as they write their own blogs.


Assistive Technologies:

       The Mountbatten seems like such a wonderful tool to to have for a specials needs students in the classroom! It is a very modern technology and gives student immediate feedback both audibly and tacitly. It also helps students be involved in more things in the classroom than just being left out. Most teachers are not taught braille and this will also help them tremendously.

       I want to be a teacher who can teach anyone, including the blind and deaf. It might be more challenging, but there is tons of new technology to help. I want to help the children hold prosperous futures. We have one way of thinking how to do things but as a teacher I will have to learn how to think outside of my normal comfort zone.These children deserve the education everyone else is getting.

       I found the video, Teaching Math To the Blind, to be very fascinating. It does make sense now but I never thought it would be harder for someone who is blind to struggle in math. This struggle can also limit the jobs they can get without the basic math needed. The grid seemed very interesting to me. It can help the blind set up math problems in a column formation and help then learn at least the basic algebra. This is a new technology i would love to have in my classroom. I would also like an iPad in my classroom. I never knew some of the things they did to help the blind. They can read books aloud to them and read things to them when they touch the screen. This seems very beneficial to have!


Vicki Davis:

      This was a very inspiring video. It also made me question what I watched in a video last week. The video said that we are preparing our students for jobs that don't even exist yet. How can we do that with only pencil and paper? Ms. Davis is doing a wonderful job at this I think, because you can see her students' so involved. I think they will learn with technology better because we are in such a tech savyy generation and it is more hands on.

       I would love to strive for this in my own classroom someday. The only downfall I see is the use of the cell phone. I know I am addicted to mine and couldn't focus with texting and Facebook looking right at me!