Blog Assignment #11

What Can We Learn about teaching and learning from these teachers? 

  After watching Brian Cosby's video, Back To The Future, I learned that teaching and learning should be empowering and that we should not try to rush students out of school. Students should be taught in ways that keeps them engaged and the teachers will realize that when students stay engaged they are learning a whole lot more. Using projects, such as the balloon project that Mr. Crosby showed in his video, allows students to have a better understanding of what is being taught because they are actually able to have hands-on experiences.
   The video Blended Learning Cycle teaches how to blend in the technology into teaching and how to do so. This video showed how to get students engaged and how to ask them probing questions to make sure that they are understanding what they are being taught.
 An amazing video to watch is Sam Pane 4th grade. This video talks about using internet safety and how to have your students not only use the internet safely but also how they can help others use it safely. Mr. Pane shows his students how to do this by creating super heroes and making comics of how to have internet safety. This is something that all teachers should teach to their students.
  For this post I watched the videos recommended gave a lot of good information about teaching and the learning process. Some of the best things that I learned about teaching and learning are using internet safety with the students and the empowerment of students.

Project #14 Lesson Plan 2

Jessica Harris, Arneetia Johnson, and I made our lesson plan based on science and language arts skills. We created a lesson plan from Buck Institute, our own lesson plan, a group rubric, an individual rubric, and a calendar.

Blog Assignment #10

  I really enjoyed watching the video chat between Dr. Strange and Mrs. Cassidy. In the video chats, she made a lot of good points about technology and about the use of it in the classroom. I loved how she talked about how technology has advanced so much and how it is used by everyone that teachers need to incorporate technology into their lessons and make it as an everyday teaching method.
  I think it is great that Mrs. Cassidy uses blogs in her classroom and allows parents to have access to view their child's blog. I believe this is a great way of using technology because students are able to work on their writing skills and their creativity. This is also a great teaching tool because it allows parents to see what their students are doing and the students' family members can post on their blogs and encourage the students to keep up the good work. When students are encouraged it makes them a lot more confident and makes them want to work harder.
 I definitely want to incorporate using blogs with my students when I start teaching because I want to keep my students engaged and this will give them the opportunity to better their writing skills and they will be able to interact with others by using the blogs. Some of the issues that I might have with using the blogs in the classroom is that some parents may be skeptical about having their children posting online. I would approach this issue by assuring parents that I will make sure that everything is safe and that I will have to approve comments before allowing them to be posted on the students blogs and make sure nothing is negative in the post. Also I will be monitoring that the students are only posted on the blog sites that I give them and that I will be sure to guide them in the right direction.

Smartboard Project #12 Part A

Part A: Mastering SMARTboard Tools

Blog Assignment #9

What Can Teachers and Students Teach Us About Project Based Learning? 

    After reading Seven Essentials for Project Based Learning, I learned that these seven essentials are great ways to keep students involved and excited about learning. These seven essentials consisted of a need to know entry event, a driving question, student voice and choice, 21st century skills, inquiry and innovation, feedback and revision, and a publicly presented project.A need to know entry event can be something like a video of what they are going to do the project on, a professional talking to the class, a field trip to get the students excited and to get them asking questions. A driving question for a project gives the project a purpose and a challenge to the students. The student voice and choice makes the project meaningful and allows the students to design,create and present the products in the way that they chose. The 21st century skills are skills such as collaboration, communication, critical thinking, and the use of technology. Inquiry and innovation allows students to draw their own conclusions and allows students to formulate their own driving questions. The use of feedback and revision allows students to use rubrics to critique other students' work. A publicly presented product makes students care more about the quality of their product. 

    After watching the video Project Based Learning for Teachers  , students learn skills in collaboration, critical thinking, and career and life while meeting standards set by ACCRS and working on thir project based learning project. Instead of teachers teaching the students how to do projects, in pbl students take charge of their learning and this keeps them engaged and allows students to do the work themselves.

    In Project Based Learning and Physical Education, students see what and why they are learning by doing the project themselves. In this blog post the writer gives the seven essentials and how he applied them to a project for his students. The need to know allowed his students to generate questions and engage in the research. The driving question was one complex question that the students were to base their project on to be able to answer this question. The student voice and choice allowed the students to chose their own p.e. unit and had to prove how their project would meet p.e. needs. The 21st century skills that they used were collaboration and presentation. Inquiry and innovation consisted of an open-ended project and allowing students to create something new. Using feedback and revision allowed students to experience eachother's units and then allowed for feedback to help with the revision process. They presented their products to an audience.

    Project Based Learning in PE allowed high school students to create p.e. programs for students in middle school. This project gave students the opportunity to collaborate with other students and allowed them to apply teamwork skills. The middle school students then were able to participate in the program that the high school students created and allowed the high school students to act as if they were the teachers. 

    In Ten Sites Supporting Digital Classroom Collaboration in Project Based Learning, students are given the opportunity to network while using PBL by using communication and collaboration between students, teachers, and experts. This post gave many different resources that students and teachers can use to help in the learning experience of the PBL. Some of these sites were Titan Pad, Wall Wisher, Corkboardme, Google docs, and many more. These sites can help students collaborate and gives them more ideas.

C4K Summary for October

C4K #4- Sean

Sean's post was about "Genius Day". He says that on "Genius Day" he wants to learn how to be a genius. He wants to be a genius because he wants to be a political adviser for the President. He also wants to be able to heal athletes around the world. I commented and told him how it was perfect how he wanted to learn how to be a genius on "Genius Day". I told him how I also enjoy politics and I asked him what in politics interested him the most. I also asked him if he was planning on going to college to become a political adviser.

C4K #5- AanandM
Aanand's post is about "A Day In The Life Of My Pencil". This blog post is written as if Aanand's pencil was real and could express it's feelings. Aanand talks about the master of the pencil making the pencil do things that the pencil does not want to do. I commented on this post and said that I enjoyed reading this post. I also said that I hoped that pencils did not really feel the way that it was described in the post because I have to write a lot so I am sure that my pencil does not like me. I asked Aanand if they write with pencils a lot in class.

C4K #6- Rayne
Rayne's post is about "School". In Rayne's post, she said that she likes to read at school. I commented on her post and told her that I am glad that she enjoys reading. I also told her that I love to read also.I then told her to keep up the good work and that reading is always fun!

C4K #7- Mubashshir 
Mubashshir's post is about "The Man in the Moon". "The Man in the Moon" is written by Sue Farely. In this post, Mubashshir answered two questions about the book and created five questions that he would ask the character in the book if he could. I commented on Mubashir's post and told him that he did a great job and that I must now go and read this book so that I can figure out why Mubashir answered the questions the way he did. 

Implications and Teaching Opportunities for Camera Use in Teaching and Learning

    Part A

      A study by Zogby Analytics gives many different percentages about the use of smartphones of people ranging from ages 18 to 24. These statistics truly affect education, schools, teachers and learners in a very big way. They will be affected because with how much smartphones are used in the outside world children will need to be taught by using technology to actually understand what they are being taught. The use of technology in schools for education purposes is a great resource, teachers just need to be able to lead their students in the right direction on the usage of technology.
    The usage of smartphones has a huge impact on children because they have lived their whole lives using smartphones. The teachers must incorporate their lessons with things such as smartphones, iPads, and computers to keep the students engaged. In reality, students can use these devices better than anyone else and will even be able to teach the teachers more about the devices.     

Part B 

How a smartphone or tablet with a camera could be used in teaching: 

• Recordroid- transcribes audio recordings into notes 
• myHomework- lists deadlines and tracks the difficulty levels of homework 
• Instapaper- turns any webpage into a readable offline content
• Endless Alphabet- fun way to learn the alphabet and how to spell 
• Studyblue- digital flashcards 
• Duolingo- helps learn a second language 
• Easybib- helps with citations 
• Poplet- creates a book web
• iMovie- students can create videos and book trailers 
• iCurio- directory for educational use 
• kidblog- students can create their own blogs 

Project #9 Video Book Commentary

Video Book Commentary Group 9

C4T #2

C4T #2-1

 Tyler Rice

Mr. Rice's post is about "The Curse of the Standarized Test". He talks about how an end of the year exam that decides whether students graduate or not has made him change his teaching habits in a bad way. He does not like textbooks and giving his students worksheets. He likes to teach hands-on and keep his students engaged in what they are learning. He is trying to figure out how to allow students to learn and be able to pass this exam and because not only does it depend on if a student graduates or not, but it also may depend on if Mr. Rice will be able to keep his job. I commented and told him that I really enjoyed reading his post and that he should not give up on teaching his students hands-on. I suggested that he teach his students hands-on about the information that will be on the exam and maybe once a week teach them about "real-world  learning" experiences.

C4T #2-2

Mr. Rice's post is "Make Time for...Getting Socratic". His post is about improving the questions that he asked. He wants to better his questions to get students thinking, improving the Professional  Learning Community of his colleagues and himself. I commented on his post and told him that I am so pleased to read his post because I just learned about asking the "right" questions. I told him that it was great how he was not only focusing his questions on his students but also his colleagues.I suggested for him to ask questions that are not looking for just one answer but asking questions that make others question why they chose the answer to the question.

Blog Assignment #8

What Can We Learn About Teaching and Learning From Randy Pausch?

             After watching Randy Pausch's Last Lecture, I learned quite a few things about teaching and learning. In teaching, the power of enthusiasm goes a long way and gives the students confidence. A major thing that teachers should do while teaching is to have the opportunity to allow their students to have an opportunity to experience how it feels to make other people excited about what is being taught. The most precious thing to give is for an educator to make students learn how to become self-reflective. 

       When learning most of what is being learned is from indirect learning. Mr. Pausch explained that indirect learning is when someone learns but does not realize that they are learning. An example that he gives is playing some of the games that his students have created but in actuality it is teaching people how to create different things and learn how to make things, such as a java script. A major point about learning is to listen to feedback given to you. A great quote that Mr. Pausch talked about that pertained to teaching and learning is "when you're screwing up and nobody's saying anything to you anymore, that means they gave up". This quote is great because when one feels like someone is being hard on them whether it is a faculty member, educator, or a peer they need to realize that they are just being hard on them because they care and know that they can do better. One should become worried when nobody is saying anything at all because it means that they no longer care. 

Project #13 Lesson Plan 1

Jessica Harris, Armeetia Johnson and I made our lesson plan from Third grade Science. Here is our lesson plan, rubric, and calendar.

Project #7 Part B

Blog Assignment #7

 After watching the videos that were given to us this week, I learned that I have a lot to do in the next couple years to get me ready to start teaching. These videos show how advanced these children are and I want to be able to teach them the correct way to use different resources and for them to help me learn different things from them. Some of the strengths that I have are that I have already had some experience with using iMovie and Padlet in EDM310. Some of my weaknesses are that i am unfamiliar with a lot of these different resources that were talked about in the videos and how to use them.




How to make an audio QR Code
 On this video the viewer is being taught how to create an audio QR code. One of the websites that is provided is recordmp3. When using the recorder on this website, be sure to not start talking until it has rolled over to one second. Students can record themselves as much as they want to and then when they are happy with their recording they press save recording and the computer will generate an URL for their audio recording. Then the students will go to the website, qrcode-monkey and past in the URL that recordmp3 created and then create a qr code. Once the qr code is created, copy the qr code and paste it onto a word document and have the student put their name underneath their code.

iPad Centers
  The ipad videos the students while they are reading and once they finish they can go back and listen to their video. Being able to go back and listen to these videos helps the students see if they made any mistakes and if so they can go back and reread and correct their mistakes.

Poplet as a Center
 Poplet is a free app that one can download onto an ipad. In the center of the poplet, the student puts the title of the book and then the students take a picture of the book. The students then type text about the picture and this creates a book web.

Alabama Virtual Library as a Kindergarten Center
    The students download an app and create a login for the Alabama Virtual Library. The students go to the elementary school section and go to a search engine. The teacher gives the students many different words and they choose what to use and type it into the search engine. It has a picture come up and an introduction. After they watch the information given to them, they have to fill out a worksheet about what they learned.

Mrs. Shirley's 1st Grade Class: How to use and build a Board in DE for a Project Based Lesson
  The students login by using a username and a password to get access to Discovery Education. Once logged in the students go to the board builder and will choose a background and make a title. Once this is done they will add a new board. When they click on the top of the board, a  keyboard will come up and the students will type in the title of their board. Then the students can add texts, videos, and photos about the title of the board.

1.Students Sharing Board Builders
  This board builder being shared is from Joey and Cayden. Their board is about whales. They give many facts and photos. They used Safari to get their photos.

2. Students Sharing Board Builder
  This clip of board builder is from Mary E, Haven, and Rachel. Their board builder is about "The Haven". "The Haven" is a shelter for dogs and cats. They provide many facts and photos about "The Haven". They used resources like wordhippo and safari to help them.

Using imovie and Alabama Virtual Library in Kindergarten
 This video is between Dr. Strange, Mrs. Davis, and Mrs. Bennett. Kindergarten students use imovie to create their own book trailers about different books that they read. The students make these book trailers on their own without the teachers help. Using Alabama Virtual Library is free for anyone in Alabama. Alabama Virtual Library is perfect for elementary students and the teachers give the students lists of words and the students choose what they want to research from the list given to them.

We All Become Learners
 This video is between Dr. Strange, Mrs. Davis, and Mrs. Bennett. In using devices, everyone becomes learners. The students use Padlet as one of the many tools to help them with the learning process. Students contribute to the teacher's Personal Learning Network because the teacher is learning from the students.