Blog Assignment #6

What do you learn from these conversations with Anthony Capps?

1. Project Based Learning Part 1: Experience of a Third Grade Teacher

A teacher is to use Project Based Learning to allow students to earn their own learning. A goal of a good project is to have an audience, student interests, involves the community, and using content that is driven towards the students best interest. An example that Anthony Capps used is allowing his students to write letters to their congressman about information that the students researched. The most crucial part about using Project Based Learning is revision.

2. Project Based Learning Part 2: Experience of a Third Grade Teacher

In Project Based Learning the teacher should make opportunities for students to go above and beyond the expectations of what was expected of them in a project because they are interested in the information that they are learning. Success in Project Based Learning is that someone was able to learn from the information that they are discovering by researching for it and doing projects for it  themselves. Student choice is a major factor that allows students to learn in Project Based Learning.

3.iCurio

iCurio allows students to look online for information that are for educational uses, allows storage of the information, and historical features. Students can look up historical figures through iCurio because it serves as a directory. iCurio also has a read-aloud component that will read the text to students if needed.

4. Discovery Education

Discovery Education gives videos of information so that texts can be brought to life to help students learn. Discovery Education is used in teaching in Baldwin County.

5. The Anthony-Strange List of Tips for Teachers Part 1

Teachers must be learners because you must always learn new things. Teaching is hard work but if you put your time into it it will be fun. Teachers are to be flexible and creative. Engaging students is a critical element in teaching by using content that motivates the students to learn. Reflection of teaching helps better teachers and students in making them better learners together.

6. Don't Teach Tech- Use It

Technology should be a part of your lessons and should not be taught. Using scaffolding allows students to build on their technology  that they are using and then gets them able to combine what they are learning. Do not expect perfection when allowing students to use technology. Using technology helps students use problem-solving and gets them to learn and ask questions.

7. Additional Thoughts about Lessons

A lesson is at least four layers thick. The lesson needs to be able to fit in the year by being able to cover all of the standards that are needed to be covered. Units should be scaffolding and breaking up information. Weekly lessons should be a breakdown of the information from the unit. Daily work is how you deliver content to you students and being able to figure out where to pick up the next day.

C4K Summary for September

 C4K #1
  Anisha

Anisha's post was about a Revolution Tour that acted out a skit called  #Stopthebull. She talked about how the Revolution Tour acted out the skit about bullying. Anisha learned a lot from their skit. I commented on her post and told her that I am glad that she learned a lot from the skit. I asked her what were some of the things that she learned and if the Revolution Tour was only a local tour in her town.

C4K #2
Sulaman 

Sulaman's post was about one of his favorite soccer players. He wrote his post about Christiano Ronaldo. He talked about how Christiano is his favorite and how he thinks he is a great mid-fielder and forward. Sulaman also plays soccer. He gave tons of details about Christiano Ronaldo. I commented on his post and told him that I see that he is very passionate about Christiano. I asked him if he was planning on playing soccer professionally when he graduates.

C4K #3
Amanda 

Amanda's post was about a couch in her teacher's room. She said that she liked it because it was pink and comfortable. I commented on her post and told her that I was glad that she enjoys the couch in her teacher's room and that the best couches are the ones that are comfortable. I also asked her if she got to sit on  this couch a lot.

Project #8 Book Trailer

My sentence videos

My Sentence Is...



My Passion Is...

Project #3 Presentation

Project Based Learning Presentation



Alabama College and Career Ready Standards and ALEX

Blog Assignment #5

What are Personal Learning Networks (PLN)? How can they help you as a teacher? How are they formed? How can you create your own PLN? Who will be the first additions to your PLN?

In the past week I have been working on creating my Personal Learning Network and figuring out who I want to be a part of my network. A Personal Learning Network (PLN) is a connection with people virtually and can be around the world and allows you to learn new things. A Personal Learning Network allows one to connect with many different people, places, organizations, etc. by using tools such as Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and Youtube. when forming a PLN one finds that the Personal Learning Network allows you to communicate, connect, and collaborate many different things to and from their network. My PLN consists of many of the connections that I have made through Twitter and through blogging. These connections help better my knowledge by allowing me to learn new information and experiences. The PLN has given me a lot more websites to go to and more blogs to read about different things that interest me.

Project #15-Search Engines

WolframAlpha
Wolfram Alpha has all of the algorithms, models, and methods. This search engine is best used as a knowledge based search engine that helps clarify the information.This search engine allows you to put in a free-form language input and then finds the information in a computerized result. I believe this would be a great resource when looking for charts and different data and simple clarifications for each.

Lycos
Lycos is a search engine that allows its' users to rank the relevance of the sites that are used. Reviewers of this site choose the top 5% of sites. This site allows you to use simple keywords to simplify searches. This search engine works by allowing you to search key words and then even simplify the search even more. I believe that Lycos would be a good search engine to use if you were just searching up information by using key words.

Dogpile
Dogpile is a search engine that is a one-stop shop because it finds the sites that are most relevant to your search and eliminates duplicates so that it saves you time. Dogpile works by taking your search terms and sending the information to many different search engines and just provides different gateways to receive the information. I believe this would be a good search engine if you are wanting the most information about different search items.

Bing
Bing is a search engine that one can merely search for brand names and be able to find social profiles. It also keeps track of how many clicks it takes to get to different pages and weighs the relevancy by the clicks. Bing works by taking each of its sources and calculating the word frequency. Bing would be a good source to use if you were looking for a source with certain words in it.

isoHunt
isoHunt is a digital mediabase search engine that allows searches and downloads of many different digital aspects. When on isoHunt you just search for whatever content that you are looking for and then one just downloads the content. I believe that this search engine would only be good for looking up digital information and not for any other searches.

Open Directory
Open Directory is the largest directory on the web to be human-edited. Open Directory allows different people to create their on websites about topics that they are familiar with. This would be a great search engine if one was looking for different opinions for different topics.

Yahoo
Yahoo is a search engine that gives the latest news, entertainment, and much more. Yahoo allows searches to be completed in the United States for a world wide audience. Yahoo is a good site to go to to get the latest information.

Ask
Ask is a search engine that is opinion based and allows one to ask questions and get answers from others. Ask would be a good source to get answers to questions

C4T #1 Summary Post

I was assigned the blog, Quantum Progress by Mr. John Burke. The first post that I read was "A solution to comment writing dread: video reflections" and this post was about how Mr. Burke was not interested in making comments to students anymore because they would never get read or even if they were read his criticism was more than likely never used. He came up with an idea to not have to merely make comments to students but make videos of his comments and make them as if they were in a conversation. He would then ask his students to make videos also and allow them to show him different elements to support the things that Mr. Burke was asking for. I commented on Mr.Burke's post and told him how much I enjoyed reading his post and how I believed that this concept would help him with using his time wisely and not wasting time and also allow his students to actually have to take his criticism and apply it to their work by showing him different examples from their work.

The second post that I read of Mr. Burke's was "A workshop on screencasting". This post was about how he was going to meet with the Math department and have a workshop on how to screencast. He believes that screencasting will allow students to receive background information, definitions, and other things that would help the students think deeper about specific problems. One of the key things about these videos is that they will be no longer than ten minutes. I commented on this post and told Mr. Burke how I really enjoyed his post and how I believed that it was a great idea to begin using screencasting to help the students have greater understanding on specific problems. I told him that I definitely believed that the videos should be no longer than ten minutes so that the students can stay attentive and use them as a learning tool. I ended my comment by asking Mr. Burke how the screencasting has worked out so far and I hope that it has worked out well. Maybe one day I can use this tool in my classroom to help my students better understand different problems.

Blog Assignment #4

Asking Questions: What questions do we ask? How do we ask?

When pondering over the questions "what questions do we ask? How do we ask?" I began to get frustrated because all I could think about are the simple questions that one would ask their students to see if they really understand the material being taught. I came across a blog post from Ben Johnson titled The Right Way to Ask Questions in the Classroom and in this post Johnson states that the most important question is "What does a teacher asking questions of a class expect the class to learn from the questioning process?". This is an excellent question to ask one's self because how can a teacher expect certain answers from students but does not truly have an understanding of what he/she is even expecting the class to have gained in knowledge. Johnson believes that the teacher should chose students randomly to answer questions to make sure that the whole class is thinking about the question being asked. When choosing students randomly to answer questions the teacher should pause a few seconds after the question is asked to allow the class adequate time to think of an answer before picking who will answer the question.

I also came across the post Asking Questions to Improve Learning. This post gave many different ways to improve the questions being asked and how to go about asking the questions. Some of the main ways to improve learning are to remember course goals when asking questions, follow a "yes-or-no" question with another question, and make sure that questions are direct and that you are asking for specific answers.

These two posts really helped clarify how to answer the question, "What questions do we ask? How do we ask?". I learned that if the teacher takes into consideration of allowing students to have time to think about a question and then picking randomly it will better the classroom as a whole because the whole class is having to spend a few seconds thinking thinking about an answer versus daydreaming when the question is only directed to one student. I believe it is a great concept to put another question with a "yes-or-no" question because it keeps a student from just guessing an answer but allowing them to come up with an answer and being able to explain why they decided on that answer.

Blog Assignment #3

How Can You Provide Meaningful Feedback to Your Peers?


In Paige Ellis' Blog Assignment #12, she uses personal experience to discuss how to peer review correctly. She was wanting to help her peer review's paper by pointing out different mistakes but did not want to insult the person so she decided to private message the person and give them specific feedback without letting everyone else seeing this feedback kept from embarrassing the person who's paper was being peer reviewed. She also commented on the person's blog and made general suggestions and gave some advice to show others that it is okay to give advice and help but just make sure that it is positive and will not embarrass the person.

The video What is Peer Editing? and the slideshow Peer Edit with Perfection Tutorial discuss the three steps of peer editing. The first step is to start by telling the person what you like about their paper. The second step is to give suggestions. The suggestions should be specific and should include organizational skills, use of details, and help with their topic. The third step is to offer corrections. The corrections consist of spelling and grammatical errors, sentence structure, and punctuation. When peer editing always remember to stay positive and when giving suggestions and corrections be sure to deliver this information in a kind way. The video Writing Peer Review Top 10 Mistakes discusses the wrong ways to do peer reviews. The mistakes talked about in this video about peer editing were being too picky about spacing, punctuation,etc., not listening to revisions being given, and not being specific about suggestions. Some other mistakes were giving suggestions in a mean way and taking the peer review personally.

After reading and watching this material, I figured out how to provide meaningful feedback to my peers by following the three steps of peer editing which are compliments, suggestions, and corrections. When peer reviewing somebody's paper you need to be specific with suggestions, stay on task and edit your peer's paper to the best of your ability, stay positive and do not embarrass the person that you are peer reviewing for.