Blog Post #10

As I began watching the first section of the interview with Ms. Cassidy, I was a little surprised when she said that she started having a web page about 10 years ago. I was in third grade then and we were only using laptops very rarely. I had an idea how to use it, but it wasn't a central part of the classroom. Her class room was and is very different, as mine will be from the classroom I was a part of in elementary school. I love that she uses her students' blogs as an online portfolio in a way. I think that it is a great idea so that the students can see how far they have improved over the year as well as allow the parents to see their child's work as well. By incorporating technology in the classroom, the teacher is just incorporating part of the child's world into the classroom. It is not strange or foreign to them; it just is. The teacher is just expanding the students' knowledge of how to use technology. I think it is interesting that she said that teachers are actually handicapping their students and themselves by not incorporating technology. I really like how she said that her students use Skype to talk to other students after they comment on each others' blog posts to talk about corrections they can make to make it better. I think it is a smart idea. I was thinking about her comment on how technological literacy has changed over the years. She said that 20 years ago it was word processing and using a data sheet. I was thinking that that is basically what we used in high school even, which was 3-7 years ago. We mostly used word processing, data sheets and presentations. Now that I am taking this class, I can see that being technologically literate is so much more. To start off with technology, use it in a way that interests them the most. If you enjoy photography, then use Flicker. If you enjoy writing then keep up a blog. Ms. Cassidy explained that having a PLN is a very important tool. This tool exposes us to resources that we would not normally discover. Collaborative learning has been, is, and will continue to be a very important way of learning for students. With access to the internet, it is easier to do and creates collaborative skill that they will need later in life.

My opinion has definitely been altered about technology in the classroom. I think it will be a valuable tool that will help my students in the future to succeed later in their lives.

If you would like to watch the whole interview, here are links to the three videos: Interview with Ms. Cassidy Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

C4K Summary for October

The first C4K I did for this month was for Chloe. I commented on a post in which Chloe was thanking Mikaila and Christopher for the drawings they sent here, which can be viewed here. She was very genuine and thankful. She also wrote that she loves the color pink, which was a very prominent color in both of the drawings. I commented that I loved the drawings and made a personal connection. I also helped her out with the word "because" because I saw that she had some difficulty spelling it in her post.

The second C4K I completed was for Bobby. I commented on a post that was his brief argument on voting on test dates, which can be viewed here. He argued that the students should be able to vote to determine when tests are so that they don't have multiple tests on the same day. I commented that I thought that that was a very good idea and I liked it a lot. I wish that we could do that in college. It would make life easier.

The third C4K I was assigned was for Brayden. I commented on his post about Minecraft, which can be viewed here. On this post was a few pictures from his Minecraft and some descriptions underneath. He seems to be pretty good at it from what I could tell, and I commented that I thought so. I also commented that I hoped that Minecraft was fixed soon because it was not working when he wrote it.

The fourth C4K I completed was for Mahana (or Maryann). I commented on her post on "How to Keep Safe in the Sun", which can be viewed here. It was a good post. It was also pretty thorough, although it was pretty repetitive. She did get her point across. It sounded like English was not her first language. She did a very good job overall. I commented on that and pointed out an error with a sentence that was a run on and did not start with a capital letter. I enjoyed reading her post.

Project 12A

Project 12A - Using the SMART board

Blog Post #9

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

I think both teachers and students teach us a lot project based learning. I think project based learning is a great tool for getting students to work out of the box. Below will summarize the resources I used and have my opinions as well.

The first required source was an article called Seven Essentials for Project-Based Learning. This source gives an example of each section of a class to explain each part of project-based learning. The project overviewed in this source is about ocean pollution and coming up with ideas to help fix it. I really liked this idea and it sounds like it would be a lot of fun to do. I wish I had done a project like this one in high school. This project would definitely be one that I would remember in a good way. It gets students very involved in a project that is collaborative, involves technology, gets them involved with the community, and asking more in depth questions to dive deeper into the driving question. I would like to do something very similar this with my students. I would somewhat edit it so as to do it on subject matter that is more prevalent. I would like to see how far the students would go with it.

The last required source was a video called Project-Based Learning for Teachers. This video defines what project-based learning provides in the classroom and what ways it helps students. This video does a great job in showing ways to use it and just how useful it is. If anyone has any questions about the general concept of project based learning, this is definitely the video I would show them. This video describes it in a way that is very basic and easy to understand. They are also a great way to teach 21st century skills. These kinds of projects will definitely be integrated into my classroom when I begin to teach.

This finishes up the required sources that I needed to incorporate into this blog post. I needed to include 3 more. I was given the option to use some from given sources, or I could find my own. I used one video from the list and I found 2 other videos that I enjoyed.

The one video that I am using from the list that Dr. Strange gave us was the Wing Project: Crafting a Driving Question. This video is a recording of a conversation about crafting a driving question. This project revolved around making a functional wing. This project incorporated math, physics, and engineering. This project gave a real world example that these students would probably be using later on in their careers. The driving question is probably the most important aspect of a project-based learning assignment. If the question isn't very clear to too narrow, then it can mess up the whole project.

One of the two videos I used in supplement for one from the list of sources was Project-Based Learning in an Elementary Science Classroom. I really liked this project idea. This project incorporated communication between other students in other countries. This project revolved around monarch butterflies and was an online project. They tracked monarch butterflies through their migration and grew milkweed plants, which the monarchs use to lay their eggs. I think I would like to do this project in my classroom in the future.

The other video I used was School District Uses Project Based Learning Over Testing. The Danville school district in Kentucky integrated project-based learning into the whole school and the result was really cool. The students were really into the projects and very interested in the information. It gives students a change of pace and gives value to the projects so it isn't just busy work. This way, I feel like students understand the information and processes more. The students can discuss it with their classmates and bounce ideas off of each other. It also creates an opportunity to get involved with their community, their country, or the world. With the projects the students need to be able to communicate, use their creativity, and cooperate in their team. This kind of learning demonstrates a deeper learning than the learning that is used for simple test taking. This kind of learning also helps increase test scores. The students are actually learning it, not just regurgitating it.

I think project-based learning is a great idea and I can't wait to learn how to integrate it.

Blog Post #8

I really enjoyed Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture on achieving childhood dreams, which he gave at Carnegie Mellon University. It was very inspiring to listen to his story and see his outlook on life, even when he knew he was dying. If you would like to read his story, you can read it here. I think we can learn a lot about teaching and learning from Randy Pausch. I will start at the beginning of his talk to address most of the points Pausch makes during his lecture that he used to achieve his dreams. At the end, I will address what we can learn about teaching and learning from the tools he used to achieve his own dreams.

Pausch outlined his talk before hand. Pausch had 6 childhood dreams: being in zero-gravity, playing in the NFL, authoring an article in the World Book Encyclopedia, being Captain Kirk, winning stuffed animals, and being a Disney Imagineer. He achieved most of these dreams; the dreams that he didn’t quite achieve, he learned a lot from the path he took.

His first dream was being in zero-gravity. He achieved this dream by riding the “vomit comet”. This was sponsored by NASA. This plane takes a path as shown below. At 20 to 45 seconds, there is zero-gravity in the plane. Some of his students won a contest to ride in the “vomit comet”. Pausch, however, could not join them because he was a professor. He learned that a journalist was allowed to go with the students. So, he resigned for a short time as a professor and applied to be a journalist. Lo and behold, he was able to go with his students to ride on the “vomit comet”. What we can take from this first dream, and from most of these dreams, is that persistence and creativity is key. Without these, he wouldn’t have been able to join his students in this once in a lifetime opportunity or achieving his first childhood dream.

The second dream Pausch had was to play in the NFL. This was one of the two dreams he did not achieve. However, he did learn a lot from this journey. He joined a football team when he was 9 and he was "the smallest person on the entire team". He learned two lessons from his time in football. The first was from his first day at practice. When he and his teammates came to practice, the coach didn't bring any footballs. They asked the coach why and the coach replied, “How many men are on a football field at one time?” The kids replied, “22.” The coach asked, “How many people are touching the football at any given time?” “1.” “Right, then we will be working on what the other 21 people will be doing.” The other thing he learned from football was from one of his assistant coaches. His coach was on his back all practice and his assistant coach mentioned it. Pausch agreed and his assistant coach replied that it was a good thing that he was on him. He told him "When you screw up and nobody's saying anything to you anymore, that means they gave up." Pausch expanded on that by saying, "Your critics are the ones telling you they still love you." Pausch got a lot out of the experience of playing football without playing in the NFL. He said that “experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted.”

His third dream was to publish an article in the World Book Encyclopedia. Once he had gotten to a good standing because of his virtual reality projects, they called him and asked him to do an article on it to be published in it. If you go look up "virtual reality" in the World Book Encyclopedia, then you will find his article in it.

His fourth dream was to be Captain Kirk. This of course is not really possible. But he could do the next best thing: meet Captain Kirk. He did how ever get to meet William Shatner who played Captain Kirk. Pausch taught classes on creating virtual realities. He ended up making a virtual reality of the cabin of the U.S.S. Enterprise, and William Shatner was able to experience it. It was a really cool experience for him that Schatner sought him out. What I really liked that Pausch said was that Captain Kirk wasn’t the smartest person on the ship, but he had the leadership qualities that the rest of the crew on the Enterprise did not have. This made him an important asset on the Enterprise.

Pausch’s fifth dream was to win stuffed animals. This was a very interesting, maybe a little mundane, dream. He did, however, achieve this dream as well. He wanted to be one of those guys that you see with those really big stuffed animals. Well, he became like one of those guys and he won A LOT of animals. Below are two pictures of the stuffed animals he brought with him to the lecture to give away so a few people could have part of him.

His sixth dream was to become a Disney Imagineer. This dream was a very hard dream to achieve. Pausch made a reference to the brick walls in life at this point. The brick walls in life “are there to “let us prove how badly we want things.” He applied to become an Imagineer after he graduated from getting his PhD at Carnegie Mellon. Disney rejected him with the nicest rejection letter he had ever received. A few years later, Disney was in the process of making a virtual attraction for Aladdin. At the same time, Pausch was asked to brief the U.S. Secretary of Defense on virtual reality. He contacted Disney because he knew that they had one of the best systems in the world. They eventually agreed. He was linked through to Jon Snoddy, who was in charge of the Imagineers at Disney. He went and met with him for lunch. He asked about coming to work with him and Snoddy’s reply was “…you’re in the business of telling stuff and we’re in the business of keeping secrets.” He also taught Pausch, “Wait, and people will surprise you.” They eventually signed a legal contract and, to make a long story short, he was able to work with the Imagineers. He was offered a position at the end of the project, which he declined. He continued to work a little bit with the Imagineers, but he continued to teach.

There is a lot we can learn about teaching and learning from Randy Pausch. Fundamentals are the not so fun things to learn anything. Fundamentals are the support system for the hard stuff later on. If you don't learn how to add, how are you going to do any sort of calculus problem? Without learning words, how are you going to write a 1,500 word essay in English? No, they are not fun, but they are VERY important. All that is needed is some persistence. Persistence is very important. Never give up and keep up the dedication. Dedication is very important for teaching and learning. Dedication is needed to continue on when you are faced with a difficult situation. When school gets hard, dedication is needed to continue to study and do work for school. Something that helps your dedication is your outlook. Pausch compares it to either being a Tigger or an Eeyore. It is your decision on your outlook is and it can be changed. He also talks about how support from others helps a lot. If a teacher encourages a struggling student, it tells the student that their teacher cares about that student and how they do in their school work. If the teacher stops doing that, then the teacher has given up on the student. When you are working in a team setting, which takes place as a student and a teacher, support is needed throughout the group. He also gives great advice: there is a good way and a bad way to say “I don't know.” It is more helpful to say “I don’t know” in a good way. Both teachers and students need to be able to say “I don’t know" if they don’t know something. He mentions that “as a teacher, you are enabling childhood dreams.” What a statement. What an inspiration. “The feeling that you have done something to make other people happy is priceless.” I believe every word of that. I know that it is true. We also need to help others. That “is what everyone should be doing.” People that help us are teachers, mentors, friends, and colleagues. His advice to get people to help you succeed is to “tell the truth, be earnest, apologize when you mess up, and focus on others, not yourself.” Doing this will help you build connections and make friends, which helps in the teaching and learning process by having some resources and a system of people to depend on. The brick walls in our lives show us how badly we want something. Being able to teach their students valuable information as well as learning from their students is valuable for teachers. Teachers will overcome whatever obstacle to achieve that dream. Students have many dreams. It is a teacher’s job to help achieve their dreams by helping students figure out who they are. Students learn a lot from teachers, but they can also teach their teachers. They can teach and remind them why they do what they do. Overcoming whatever brick walls they have is part of life. It is our job to use that perseverance, that determination, that helpfulness, that gratitude and that drive that helps us become who we are meant to be. If the outcome didn't turn out the way you thought it would, that's ok. "Experience is what you get when you didn't quite et what you wanted." That is most of what I learned from Randy Pausch.

R.I.P. Randy Pausch. He is one of my role models in my life now. I hope this gives a peak at who he is. If you have not seen his lecture, it can be found here. It is one of those life changing moments, like those moments he had in his life that changed his life for the rest of his life.

Implications and Teaching Opportunities for Camera Use in Teaching and Learning

For this post that we were assigned, Dr. Strange gave us this data from Zogby Analytics to use.

1. 87% say their smartphone never leaves their side.
2. 80% say the very first thing they do in the morning is reach for their smartphone.
3. 78% say they spend 2 or more hours per day using their smartphone.
4. 68% say they would prefer to use their smartphone instead of their laptop or personal computer for personal use.
5. 91% say that having a camera on their smartphone is important (61% very important)
6. 87% say they use their smartphone camera at least weekly. 59% use their smartphone camera at least every other day. 44% use their smartphone camera for still or motion picture taking every day.

In addition, Dr. Strange gave us this information as well:
"Cameras were added to smartphones starting in 2002. The first iPhone also had a camera. It became available in June 2007. Seven years later there are over 1.75 billion smartphones worldwide. (Source: emarketing) This means that 24.1% of the entire world population (7.263 billion as of 3:32 CDT 9/27/2014 - Source: World Population Clock) now has a smartphone. Your students will have lived all their life in a world with smartphones containing cameras."

From this data, I can conclude that people are pretty attached to their smartphones, if they have them. These devices are used to use social media, text, call, play games on, take pictures and videos on, and much more. This data also shows that pretty much all smartphones have cameras. I think this because I don't think that many people have smartphones from before 2002.

Technology is a huge part of the world that we live in. This means that technology has to flow into the classroom, and it has. Most classes in the area that I live in use computers/tablets in their classes. Smartphones could be implemented into classrooms, but a little more creatively. This would be more difficult to do with an elementary class setting, but tablets could be used instead. In a high school or middle school setting, this would be more feasible. Pretty much all of the parents of these children have smartphones these days. This can be used as a quick and easy communication tool between the parent and the teacher. Also, having a Twitter feed that the parents can subscribe to so they know what the plan is for the week ahead.

There are many ways that a smartphone or a tablet can be used so that it helps cover the requirements for Alabama College and Career Ready Standards. One way I could incorporate one into the classroom is having the students use to use it to record a choreographed routine for the dance requirement. It could also be incorporated by creating a station where students record themselves reading so they can go back and hear their errors and correct them, just as in iPad Reading Center. The students can also take pictures of different plants and leaves for science to compare and contrast the different plants. This also helps create a diversity in plants throughout the class.

Video Book Commentary - Project #9

My group (Group 6) was assigned Topic #1 for the Video Book Commentary Project. Here is our video.

Video Book Commentary - Group #6

C4T #2 - Summary of Posts and Comments

My C4T teacher was Ms. Cassidy who teaches Kindergarden in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, Canada. She keeps her students very busy and it looks like they have a bunch of fun.

The first blog post that I commented on was Whisper Phones. This post showed a student using a whisper phone. A whisper phone is made out of PVC pipe and made to look like a phone. It allows students to hear their voices, which helps loud readers by helping them become more aware that they are loud when they read. It also allows students to hear what they are saying and help them recognize what they are saying if they are not pronouncing something correctly.
I began my comment on her post by introducing myself and I also said that I really liked the idea of using it. I also said that I should remember to use one when I teach. I came into possession of a whisper phone recently and was very intrigued about it. I think it is really cool that I came across the two right around the same time.

The second blog post was about Fishtail Bracelets. This post documented what the students did in class and how much fun they had working on a project that they loved to do. She used this project to reinforce patterns in math.
My comment on her post was that I thought that this would be a fun project to do with my future students to reinforce patterns. It would also help improve the students' fine motor skills and help them in their creativity.

I really enjoyed seeing this teacher's blog and getting ideas from her. I might continue to follow her blog after this week.

Project #13

Group #6 did our Project Based Lesson Plan on the Seven Continents. Take a look at the plan we compiled and the rubrics the students will be graded on!

Lesson Plan
Project Rubric
Individual Rubric
Week Plan for Project

Project #7 Part B

Student Video



Parent Video

Blog Post #7

I think it's hard to pinpoint what my strengths and weaknesses, so I may miss a few. I think my strengths are that I'm a pretty fast learner once everything clicks, I have a pretty open mind, and I am open to approaching a problem or a way of doing a task from a different angle. I think some of my weaknesses are that I could want to help my students too much and want to be a little to overbearing and controlling. I am not a teacher yet and haven't observed in a classroom yet, so I do not know what kind of teacher I would be. I think once I start going to classrooms, I will be able to more accurately pinpoint what my strengths and weaknesses are. I think I will also learn a lot from the classes I will be taking in the next two years. I will have to learn how to apply what I will be learning in classes in the classrooms I will be observing and teaching in.

The first video on the list was How to make an Audio QR Code. This video was very informative for me. I had no idea how to create a QR Code. Ms. Bennett's video was very easy to follow and understand, so that helped a lot.

The second video was iPad Reading Center. This video was informative because it taught me a different way of teaching reading. This way allows students to help teach themselves and help them become more observant. There are a couple different techniques that can be used to help students hear their errors when they are reading. There is this way, but I saw one on my second teacher's blog for my C4T. This tool is called a whisper phone. A whisper phone has the same look as a phone, however, it is made of PVC pipe pieces. This tool doesn't record like the iPad, although the two could be paired. Having them paired would allow a student to hear themselves more immediately with the help of the whisper phone, and after he or she is done reading, the student can listen to the recording of his or her reading. This way, the student can listen to the recording and further assess their mistakes.

The third video on the list was Poplet with Ginger Tuck. This video was very informative for me because I have never heard of Poplet before. It looks like a very useful tool and quite easy to use, and it is. I downloaded it on my iPhone and it is versatile, and it is pretty cool.

The fourth video was AVL and Kindergarten Students. This video covered the ways Alabama Virtual Library can be used for Kindergarteners. I have used AVL in the past and have found it to be very useful. I find it very interesting that kindergarteners are doing research at the age that they are at, but I think is is beneficial for them. AVL has pictures, a read aloud feature, and a definition or explanation of what that child is looking up. I had no idea AVL had a read a loud feature, and I imagine that helps the younger grades a lot. If they come across a word they do not know, they can listen to it so they know how to pronounce it, and look it up.

The fifth video was Tammy Shirley Discovery Education Board Builder Moon Project. I found it to be very informative. I have never heard of Discovery Education before, and appears to be very easy to use. It also looks like information is easy to access through it. The Moon Project was done well and informative about the Moon. I also enjoyed the student's story.

The sixth and seventh videos on the list were Mrs. Tassin 2nd Grade students share Board Builder Project and Mrs. Tassin students share Board Builder Project. These two videos are about the same kind of project, but by two different groups of students. The sixth video, Mrs. Tassin 2nd Grade students share Board Builder Project, talks about whales. They researched the internet to find all of the information the students needed and found pictures as well. They also uploaded the pictures they found into the project. Both projects were very well done and it shows me what 1st graders are capable of.

The eighth video on the list was Using iMovie and the Alabama Virtual Library in Kindergarten. I think it's amazing that kindergarten students can research and make iMovie Book Trailers. I had no idea that they could do that. The ability of students continue to amaze me.

The ninth and final video was We All Become Learners. This video covers that teachers teach their students, students teach other students, and students teach their teachers. Also, because many schools in today's day in age have iPads or laptops, everyone can teach each other which makes technology a great tool to utilize in classrooms.