Blog Post #16 Final Reflection

Blog Post #5 (Final PLN)

I started using my PLN at the beginning of the class, but I had never heard of the term before I began the summer semester. If you're not sure if you can start your own PLN, just simply try Twitter. It's not the only tool that you can use for a PLN, but it's very effective and it's my personal favorite. Twitter is such a great and powerful social media tool and it lets you communicate with people all over the world effortlessly. When I began my own PLN, I was unsure about it and I wasn't used to it, but it gradually grew on me and I started really enjoying the small amounts of information a couple times a day that came directly to my phone.

PLN's are so helpful when growing as a teacher and a learner. There are so many available information everyday so I can prepare for my own classroom one day. PLN's can also be helpful for teachers to exchange strategies and lesson plans! One of my personal favorite twitter accounts to follow is @edutopia. They post great tips and motivational quotes often. I'll definitely be using my PLN that I've created for this class further on as I finish college and start my career.

C4Ta #4

Summary:
My first summary is about the blog post Writing That Is WOW - Worth of the World by Angela Maiers. Ms. Maiers discusses how she likes to write and expresses her thoughts on a daily basis, even if it's working on a chapter of her book or using twitter. She decided to create a lesson called W.O.W. - Worthy of the World. The lesson taught that no matter what a student writes, they just need to find the courage and get it out there for others to see. The students learned that day that their all of their writing is worthy of the world! Ms. Maiers uploaded a great video of her teaching her W.O.W. lesson. It's very inspirational to hear and I really enjoyed reading this article.

Comment:
Hi, Ms. Maiers. I am a student in Dr. Strange's EDM 310 class at the University of South Alabama. I really enjoyed the video you shared and I find the W.O.W. concept to be very inspirational. Thank you for sharing your thoughts!

 

Summary:
In the second article Let's Close the Passion Gap by Angel Maiers, Ms. Maiers makes a very valid point about how our education system is loosing sight of having passion and that it has been replaced with words like "assessment", "common core", and "standardize". I agree that there is a problem that in today's world passing a test has become more important in the classroom than teaching skills and valuable knowledge. Those who are passionate are more creative and willing to take risks to improve the thing they are most passionate about. Someone who is passionate sticks it through till the end, no matter how hard the path is. That is what we should be teaching in schools.

Comment:
Hi, Ms. Maiers. I am a student in Dr. Strange's EDM 310 class at the University of South Alabama. I hadn't thought of the issue of passion in the education system for quite some time until you mentioned it! I completely agree that students are now way over their heads in tests and assessments. Thank you for sharing, this was a wonderful read!

Blog Post #14 Teaching Can Be a Profession by Joel Klein

"If you could wave a magic wand and change one thing, what would it be?"

Joel Klein, a former leader of New York City schools, gets asked this question a lot. In the article Teaching Can Be a Profession by Joel Klein, Mr. Klein discusses changes in school systems and professionalizing teaching.

1. Better academic training for prospective teachers.
• Teachers need to have stronger educational backgrounds. For example, there are many prospective educators out there who are avoiding jobs as science or math teachers because they don't have a strong background in either of those subjects. We have to make sure through schooling and evaluations that prospective teachers can pave the way for educators after them. 
2. Recruiting teachers.
• There has to be a new approach to recruiting teachers. When I first saw the statement in Joel Klein's article, "For decades, we've let virtually anyone with a college degree become a teacher," I had take a second and think about that. I have seen the Coach-and-History teacher combo first hand more than a few times in high school. I was once discouraged to become a history teacher because football coaches usually took those positions. How? I have to agree with Mr. Klein, this illogical situation has been around for years. One solution, according to Mr. Klein, is to pick from the top third of our graduates and to make the requirements much more difficult. 
3. Rewarding teachers.
• We have to change our we reward teachers. Seniority shouldn't dictate who loses their job. New teachers that have just entered a school system shouldn't be in danger of losing their job just because they were hired last. Whether you keep your job or not should be based on how you performed in that position. 

I agree with a lot of things Mr. Klein stated in this article. Many things in the educational field need to change, including professionalizing teachers. There are so many obstacles that have weighed down the teaching profession and it's unfortunate because most undergraduates say, "I don't want to become a teacher, because they don't get paid that well." We have to raise the bar for prospective teachers, so we can create a better learning environment.

Blog Post #13 What Did I Leave Out?

I chose a couple of fun reading instruction activities that I found to be very helpful in the classroom. Second and third grade is a very crucial time in a student's education when they begin to learn sentence structure and read fluently. A lot of work with reading instruction is very repetitive because students have to memorize the sounds of letters and how those sounds create a word. As a teacher, it's not hard to be creative when it comes to reading instruction. You may think, "How? The student just needs to repeat the words over and over again and read a lot of books!" Reading is a creative process on its own. Children will read books and stories all day long because they have to for school. The key to helping your students WANT to read is finding what reading material may interest them. Now, back to the creative part!

In high school, my eleventh grade English teacher had us do a very surprising and fun activity that seemed a little out of the ordinary at the time. Little did I know, I would remember this activity six years later! She asked us all to take out our journals and write one sentence to begin an epic story. It could be about anything (appropriate) our minds could quickly dream up! After we wrote exactly one sentence, we had to pass our journals to the classmate behind us. Soon we were all having a blast while we added pages upon pages of our work onto our friend's stories. The lesson was for all of us to notice our creative ability.

This lesson can easily translate into an activity for a second or third grade classroom. I found a good example from Education.com Story Jar Activity, although the concept is basic, I thought I could add onto the activity. The teacher could form the class into groups of four and each group would take a piece of paper with a single sentence on it from a jar. As a group, the students would have to write one more sentence and then the pieces of paper would rotate around the room so everyone could add onto each story. This helps with sequencing skills, so each group understands that the sentence they add on will have to make sense with the previous one.

These lessons can be incorporated into a blog assignment where the students need to find well thought-out, creative, and skill-promoting activities on Education.com Activities that go with the grade level they wish to teach.

Project #12B

Blog Post #12

C4T #3

Summary:
My first post is on Mr. Will Richardson's blog Read.Write.Connect.Learn. He wrote about how our generation's experience with blogging is so different from today's generation outlook on how they share their everyday thoughts. They have the popular website Facebook. Over the past decade, literally everyone I know and speak to on a regular basis has a Facebook. Some pour their thoughts out on status' or notes and it has become yesterday's typical blog. Here's my comment on Mr. Richardson's blog post.

Comment:
Hi Mr. Richardson, I'm in Dr. Strange's EDM 310 class at the University of South Alabama. I find it very true that the generation after us is being shaped by a very different social standard, such as Facebook. It's very fascinating to watch it happen over the past decade along with the ever evolving technology out there. Thank you for sharing.

Summary:
In the second post, Mr. Richardson is writing about how PBL needs to have real-world applications because studies show that many employers require their employees to work together for a short period of time on projects and then stop, before bring them back together for another project. Also, that a project needs to feel meaningful to the students so it promotes more deeper thinking toward the topic.

Comment:
Hi Mr. Richardson, I'm in Dr. Strange's EDM 310 class at the University of South Alabama. Kids do need to know what work will look like when they leave school and I'm very interested in how PBL is helping by using real-world applications in its lesson plans. Thanks for sharing!

Blog Post #11 What Can We Learn About Teaching and Learning From These Teachers?

In the first video, Back To the Future, Brian Cosby gave a presentation about a group of students he's been teaching. He incorporated technology in his classroom by helping his students create a successful blog so they can communicate with other people about their projects and what they've learned. Mr. Cosby seemed very involved in his classroom and making sure his students understood the subject material. The students were very excited about the "High Hopes Project" that they helped create and were all very motivated to learn new things.

Mr. Paul Andersen's Blended Learning Cycle was a very interesting and fresh approach at helping make sure students have learned a certain lesson. In his projects, that he sets up for his students, he makes up his steps into one word QUIVERS.

• QU - Question
• I - Investigation/Inquiry
• V - Video
• E - Elaboration
• R - Review
• S - Summary Quiz

Each step is for the student to complete for the project and at the end, Mr. Andersen would give them a short summary quiz to make sure that the student understood what they just did their project on. This is a GREAT project plan that I would definitely use in my classroom.

Making Thinking Visible is a very helpful book for educators and all learners that helps deepen thinking on the subject that a student studies. They have to ask more meaningful questions so they'll become better learners when they search for the answers. I could not find the short video in the website that I was asked to watch, but this book provides great classroom strategies on how to promote critical thinking in students.

In the fourth video, Sam Pane 4th Grade is about Mr. Pane's fourth grade class learning about internet safety and incorporating it into a lesson. The students create a super hero on a fun and safe website while also learning about safety on the internet. This is extremely important because children have to learn at a young age now that internet is not always a very safe harm-free place. They do need to know what to post and what not to post on websites. Because technology has evolved so much, children are having to learn these rules at a younger age. When students are learning how to use a blog in the third grade, for example, the first thing they are taught is internet safety.

In Project Based Learning, three teachers brought together their skills and knowledge so they could create projects together using two subjects at one time. Students are more motivated by project based learning when they feel like they are really learning and understanding the material. The students in this classroom are so proud of their work because their peers had several opinions and they saw more meaning in their assignment.

Roosevelt Elementary's PBL Program is about using project based learning in a first grade classroom and how it is a positive tool in education. When the students have to use critical thinking, they know when to ask questions and soon become better learners. When students are allowed to work together for a common goal, they are learning valuable teamwork and communication skills that will help them in years to come. I would definitely use these strategies in my classroom so that my students could comprehend the subject material.

Project #10

Special Blog Post Assignment

Dr. Heidi Hayes Jacobs runs a very resourceful and educational website called Curriculum21 and it offers so many helpful websites for educators where they can pick out ideas for lesson plans or for just anyone who wants to learn something new! It was difficult picking six out of the 68 resources I was offered, but I decided on the ones that really stuck out to me. 

Storybird is a website that allows writers and artists to design their own story-rich books with an easy and kid-friendly design. The website itself has such a pretty and creative layout that I might sign up for an account myself. I could see how Storybird would be a great tool in the classroom so students could use the artwork that's already in the website and create a story from their own imagination. 

Google Art Project is so far one of my favorites from this list. I am a huge fan of art and I already knew I would be picking this website from the first glance of the homepage. There are giant collections of classic, famous art that anyone can look up and zoom in on so they can see the tiniest detail. Educators can use this site to easily show students pieces of art. They can search by artist, collections, or even mediums. I find it very convient that all of it was put together in one place for an educator who wants to talk about art history to their students. 

Flickr and Vimeo are great tools to use in the classroom. Flickr is a photo management and sharing website that can also store your photos on an account so a student can come back to them later. It's very easy to use and there is also a creation and editing tool that a teacher can use in the classroom for a project. Vimeo is a wonderful alternative to YouTube. If there is conflict that arises with YouTube (such as privacy) and you want to use a different website, Vimeo is a great solution. Vimeo is also home to a very creative community and students can also store videos on their account. 

Solar System Scope is a great interactive website that lets students look at the solar system throughout time and where each planet was and is at presently. This would be an amazing interactive tool to use on a SMARTboard so the teacher could show how planets revolve around the sun and how long it takes for the outer planets to make a full circle around the sun. I would definitely use this a science class! 

More people use Pinterest as a website to look up cake decorating ideas (I'm guilty of this) than they use it for educational purposes. But it is such a great tool for collaborating on ideas with students and teachers that it needs to be used more often in the classroom. On Pinterest, someone can "pin" an idea on a board on the website and others can see what you've put there. They can also add to the board with their own ideas. This is a great way for teachers across the world to share their thoughts and ideas in one location so we can learn from each other. It's also an excellent place to get ideas for lesson plans from.  

Blog Post #10 What Can We Learn From Mrs. Cassidy?

In Little Kids...Big Potential, Mrs. Cassidy's first grade students learn how to properly post on a blog through pictures and videos. They also learn about wiki's and safely navigating the internet. It's so interesting how these first graders are able to use that level of technology and are narrating their own pictures of what they are doing in the classroom. The video also allows parents of the students see the kind of progress their children are making.

There are three video clips from Dr. Strange's interview with Mrs. Kathy Cassidy. The first video Interview with Kathy Cassidy Part 1, Mrs. Cassidy and Dr. Strange discuss the student's privacy when Mrs. Cassidy mentions them in a class picture or a photo of them on her blog. She never puts their last name or links their first name to their picture. She also talks about starting her own webpage ten years ago and a blog five years ago and how she incorporates technology in the classroom.

In Part 2 of the three part interview, Mrs. Cassidy speaks about how much twitter has changed her habits on social media, especially towards education. Twitter is a great tool for a personal learning network and Mrs. Cassidy mentions how she was unsure about using it at first but grew to really like it when she followed more people and they posted links to technology tips and websites she could visit.

In Part 3, Dr. Strange let's some of his EDM 310 students ask Mrs. Cassidy questions about teaching students about blogging and technology. She discusses plagiarism and that teachers in her school show students how to cite their sources correctly so they know not to copy other people's work or ideas. Mrs. Cassidy answers a question about internet safety and how she teaches her students about websites they are not allowed to visit that aren't educational.

Dr. Strange and Mrs. Cassidy's interview was very interesting and I was able to see her perspective on technology in the classroom. It's fascinating to me that children nowadays are using technology like blogging and recording their audio and video to make videos for class and it makes me wonder what the average classroom will be like ten years from now. Technology is constantly evolving and like Mrs. Cassidy said part one of her interview with Dr. Strange, it's here to stay and educators have to adapt to it.