Sunday, March 25, 2012

Blog Assignment #8

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

1. In the video This Is How We Dream, Part 1, Mr. Miller explains how he has seen incremental changes in how we view documents and find information. We can simply pull up Google and type what we want information on, and it appears within seconds. He explained that he was asked to write an article on the one-year anniversary of the killings at Virginia Tech, and he was able to do so without taking one step into a library. He was able to find all the information he needed on that day on the internet. He also described how we can go online and follow presidential elections, news broadcasts, and other live media forms on the internet.
In the video This Is How We Dream, Part 2, Mr. Miller says that he foresees that students will no longer compose just Word documents, but will also compose with digital processors. They will get in the multimedia part of composing and add to the vastly growing knowledge on the internet. This is part of the fundamental changes on how we find information.

2. In Carly Pugh's Blog Post #12, she created this assignment to create a playlist on YouTube that has videos describing what kind of teacher we would like to be, giving tips for managing the classroom, describing what a good teacher and a bad teacher does, shows tutorials on programs we would like to use in the classroom, and many other useful videos for our teaching career.
Here is my playlist. It includes the video Ordinary People Doing Extraordinary Things which shows how people who have changed our world weren't always the smartest in their class, so to speak. They weren't handed fame or fortune, they had to work hard and earn it. This is a message I will be teaching my students every day in my classroom. I want them to work hard and reach their full potential.
Another few videos in my playlist are Smart Board - Elementary Education, Whole Group Kindergarten Reading Lesson Smartboard, and Top 10 Reasons to Use Technology in Education. These videos use technology in the classroom and show how they can be useful. The smartboard is something I hope to have in my classroom. I will make great use out of it.
One of my favorite videos in this playlist is How To Maintain Classroom Discipline - Good And Bad Methods Training Educational Video. This video was made in 1947, yet everything they say still holds in the classroom today. Although there are more problems teachers have to deal with now, these behavior problems are something every teacher everywhere has to know how to handle. If I teach the older elementary grades, I might show this video in class and have the class reflect on it. I would ask them to tell me what they thought about how the teacher handled the disciplinary problems in the first half of the video, then the same about the second half. This might give me some insight on how the students feel they should be treated.
This was a fun activity. It got me thinking more about what I want for my future classroom and what kind of teacher I would like to be.

3. The primary message in The Chipper Series is to be on time with your assignments. I’ve had to deal with this struggle personally. My name is Carly, and I AM A PROCRASTINATOR! This video tells how procrastinating won’t get you a good grade in this class. Chipper is a student who constantly puts off doing her work. She even says that she can see the future, and she has already done her work. Therefore, the future is the present, so the work is already done, which really makes no sense at all. If I were to participate in a video, I could easily be in this video. Like I said, I am a procrastinator.
In the video EDM 310 for Dummies, two students get so frustrated because they don’t understand how to use some of the medias in the class. I haven’t had to deal with this because Dr. Strange’s instructions have been very clear to me. However, I have a friend in the class who doesn’t understand them as easily as I do. She will ask me to explain it to her, and if she still doesn’t understand, she will go to the lab and ask the lab assistants for help.

Project #11

Saturday, March 24, 2012

C4T #2

Galston Gorge

Comment 1


This week I have been assigned to Henrietta Miller's blog Classroom Chronicles. Mrs. Miller is a 5th grade teacher at a private girls school in Sydney, Australia. I commented on her blog Comunicating from Camp. In this blog she tells about her recent camping trip with her school's 5th and 6th grade students. They take this trip to Galston Gorge every year. She says, "It is an opportunity for students to leave home comforts behind and try new things. To get out of their comfort zone and make new friends. To learn to work together as a team, to trust each other when trying new activities and to have fun testing themselves physically within a safe environment." They kept contact with the parents through technology by Tweeting and sending pictures when they had the opportunity.
My comment:
"Hello Mrs. Miller. I am a student in EDM 310 at the University of South Alabama. I will be summarizing your post on my blog. I have been camping quite a few times in my life. Once a year from 7th grade to 12th grade with my church youth group, and several times with my family. My step-dad grew up camping, so naturally he took us. About 4 years ago my parents and I went to Tennessee and I was only allowed to use my phone to say good morning and goodnight to my boyfriend. I was so mad at them for not letting me use it on this trip, but I understand now why they did it. I am constantly on my phone, and they didn't want me to miss out on visiting places. I looked at the pictures on the class blog, and this looked like a very fun trip! I know not many girls like to go outdoors and camp, but it gives them a different scenery and atmosphere. Keeping the parents updated via pictures was a great way to have them involved in the trip and technologically. Thank you for sharing this experience with me! I enjoyed reading about it and seeing the pictures."

Comment 2


Question Mark
Henrietta Miller's latest blog post Questions? is about ... you guessed it, questions! Specifically when teachers ask questions in the classroom. She tells that she read an article last year about a teacher who used a pack of cards with the student's names on them to call out who will answer a question. She admits she has used this and many other forms of randomly choosing students. What this activity does however, is put students in the spotlight and might embarrass them if they don't know how to answer the question or how to put their thoughts into words. She found a new questioning strategy. This strategy involves asking the question, counting to 10, then having the students turn to a partner and have them discuss their answers to each other. The teacher then calls on a student to give their partner's answer.
My Comment:
"I never thought about the fact that students stop thinking about the answer once other students raise their hands first to answer. I suppose this makes them feel defeated, like they don't have a chance to answer because they couldn't think of the answer as fast as the other students. This isn't a good feeling for students to have. I think that the wait time questioning strategy would help eliminate this problem with the students. I will definitely keep this in mind when I get my own classroom. Maybe you could make a weekly question and have the students write down their answer and put them in a bowl or box, and each day you choose a few, read them, and have the students discuss how they agree or disagree with those answers. Then there would be no chance of the student being embarrassed because no one knows who wrote the answers."

Sunday, March 18, 2012

Project #10

My PLN through Symbaloo.com

I have started my PLN by using Symbaloo.com and putting my social networks and other personal websites on the top row. I put the class blog, gmail, and my blog on the row beneath the Google search box. I also added my C4T blogs and some of my classmate's blogs.
I believe this site could really help my stay organized and have all of the helpful websites be at my finger tips. I hope to fill up every square with something helpful very soon.

Blog Assignment #7

The teacher drawing from the video

1. The video Networked Studnet reminds me a lot of what I've done in almost all of my classes. We have to use the internet to research topics and get information. Whether it's to write a paper, make a report, make a project, or just to study, these sources on the internet help us to learn more about our topic. In the video, his topic was American Psychology. He was able to find resources of information and people to interview.
The question was asked, "why does the networked student even need a teacher?" Well this is because the teacher "teaches him to build his network and take advantage of learning opportunities. She offers guidance when he gets stuck, shows him how to communicate properly, and asks respectfully for help from experts. She shows him how to differentiate between good information and propaganda, how to vet a recourse, how to turn a web search into a scavenger hunt, and get excited when he finds that pearl of content. She helps him organize those mountains of information." She is a TEACHER, so she teaches the networked student how to be an independent learner.

2. The 7th grader's video Welcome to my PLE! is showing us her personal learning environment. This is a page where she keeps all the links she can use to help her in her science class. She has her class blog, informational websites, and social networks on there. It is very similar to our PLN (personal learning network). The only difference is that hers is used for class assignments, and ours is used to help aid us in our teaching career.

Sunday, March 4, 2012

Blog Assignment #6

Randy Pausch in his last lecture with a big smile on his face

I thought this was a great picture to use for this blog because in his lecture he said he is a "tigger". He always has fun, and this is how I will think of him. He made a lot of jokes and has a great outlook on life.

Randy Pausch's Last Lecture was very inspiring and taught a lot of good life lessons. He talked about his childhood dreams, enabling the dreams of others, and how to achieve your childhood dreams. A lot of the things he talked about had some good teaching techniques.
The first teaching technique I got out of this lecture was, "brick walls are there to let us prove how badly we want things." He mentioned this line several times trough-out this lecture. I have never thought about this before, but now that I have, I think it is so true! He goes on to say that brick walls are there to stop the "other" people. It only allows the ones who are willing to take the time and effort to climb over it to achieve that goal.
Another teaching technique I learned in this lecture is to have fun! As a student, I know how important it is to have fun while learning. Let's face it, if we don't have fun or at least enjoy what we are learning, do we really learn it? Now as a teacher, I will have to figure out how to make my classroom have fun. Whether it's incorporating a game in history, or a craft in math. I need to get some creative ideas so I become a teacher like him and teach students that learning can be fun.
An underlined technique I caught was that failure is okay. No one likes to fail, but it will happen at some point in time to everyone. So embrace it and move on, or try harder and get more experience. Mr. Pausch didn't get into the college he applied to for a graduate program, but he didn't give up. He got a mentor of his to talk to the admissions and got a second chance.
He had a technique called "head fake" where he made the students think they were learning one thing, but in fact were learning something different. This is a technique I will possibly use in my classroom.
I really liked this lecture. It wasn't boring, and it was very easy to watch. He had interesting things to talk about that didn't stray from the topics he had outlined. This man really knew how to give a lecture. He also knew how to incorporate hands on learning for students. His building virtual worlds assignment was astonishing. I could never in a million years imagine being able to come up with some of the things his students did. He must have been a great teacher. I hope one day I will be as great as he was.

Saturday, March 3, 2012

C4K Summary for February

C4K #1



Map showing where Tonga is

Sosaia is a fifth grade student at Point England School in New Zealand. His most recent blog was posted on February 7th. It was about his trip to Tonga. I looked on Google Maps to see where Tonga was, and as you can see in my picture, it's a very tiny island just north of New Zealand. I gathered in his post that he went to see family because when him and his family landed, he saw is auntie and uncle. He said at the beginning of his post that he was cold on the way to the airport, but in Tonga he got in the ocean. He did say it was a "bit cold" when he went swimming, but it sounds like it was a nice vacation.
My comment:
"Hi Sosaia! I am a student at the University of South Alabama in the United States. I am doing a blog post on comments for kids around the world. I was lucky enough to be assigned to your blog this week! Your trip to Tonga sounds like it was fun. I have never been on an airplane before. Was it scary? I looked up Tonga on a map to find out where it was because I have never heard of it. Traveling to see family is always a fun thing to do. Did you go on this trip for Christmas? It was nice visiting your blog. You are doing a better job at blogging than I am! You can view my summary of this on my blog at http://willoughbycarlyedm310.blogspot.com/ It will be posted by March 4th. Enjoy blogging and good luck in school!!"

C4K #2



Edublog Logo

Hannah is a fourth grade student at Leopold Primary in Victoria, Australia. I commented on her blog 2011 Edublog Awards. She gave a link to the Edublog Awards website, and it "is a community based incentive started in 2004 in response to community concerns relating to how schools, districts and educational institutions were blocking access of learner and teacher blog sites for educational purposes. The purpose of the Edublog awards is promote and demonstrate the educational values of these social media." This was quoted from Edublog's Website. Hannah's post is her nominations for the Edublog Awards.
My comment:
"Hello Hannah! I am a student at the University of South Alabama in the United States. I have been assigned to comment on your blog for this week. I will be publishing a summary of your post on my blog in the first week of March. My blog is Carly Willoughby's EDM310 Blog. I have never heard of the Edublog Awards before, so I used your link to visit their website. It sounds like a very good way to inspire students to do a good job on their blogs. Does it motivate you to make a good blog so you will be nominated? I might have my future students use this website to nominate their fellow classmates. Your blog is very organized and all of your links look really good. You use color and size to show your headings. Keep up the good blogging and good luck in school!!"

C4K #3



This week I commented on Royce's blog Amazing Things You Find in Nature. This blog was very well written. There were tons of pictures with illustrations. He had taken pictures of quail and deer in his back yard! I couldn't imagine seeing either of those animals near my dorm room or my house back home. He also posted pictures of a "math leaf". This was interesting because I have never seen that before either. It was a leaf with different colors as it's "numerator and denominator". This blog was very interesting to read and I enjoyed commenting on it.
My comment:
"Hello Royce! I am a student at the University of South Alabama. I will be summarizing your post on my EDM 310 class blog. I enjoyed seeing pictures of animals other than cats and dogs I have as pets. I am from the city so I never see animals. I will occasionally see a ground squirrel when I go visit my grandparents' house. I bet you enjoy being able to learn about those different creatures as they appear in your back yard. That leaf is pretty cool. I've never heard of a fraction leaf before so you have taught me something new! I hope I will be able to use things like that in my future classroom to get my students excited about learning in an outside environment. Check out My Blog and comment anytime! Keep working hard and enjoy school! Sincerely, Carly Willoughby"

C4K #4



Cartoon Cell Phone

"Cookie" is a fifth grade student in Iowa, and their blog post Why kids should get cell phones is exactly what it says it is about. They bring up some excellent points. They did their research and said, "According to www.missingindiakids.com, 2,185 kids get lost a day." This is a substantial amount, and they said if kids who got lost have a cell phone, they could call for help. They also say that a child could call 911 if they see an accident or a robbery and could save lives. This is a very valid point. Their final point was that it could be used to keep in contact with friends, family, and emergency services.
My comment:
"Hello! I am Carly Willoughby, and I'm a student at the University of South Alabama. I will be summarizing this blog post on my blog tonight. You did a great job giving points for why you think kids should have cell phones. They would be able to call 911, get help if they get lost, or connect with friends. These are great points! I personally don't think kids should have a cell phone unless they have to go somewhere by themselves. However, if kids do get cell phones, I believe there should be some limits. Like it should cut off at a certain time at night so the kid doesn't get woken up by it and not get sleep. If it has internet access there should be a parental guide so they could not access something he/she doesn't need to be looking at. I think the parents/guardians should closely monitor the cell phone to make sure the kid isn't doing anything they shouldn't be or talking to people they don't know. All of these things could lead to dangerous results. I believe that is why many kids do not have cell phones. Your post has got me thinking more about allowing my future children to have a limited cell phone in case of emergencies. Thank you for bringing up these good points. Keep up the good work on your blog, and good luck in school!"