Blog Post #11

Picture
What can we learn about teaching and learning from these teachers?

This week I watched six different videos of teachers and their methods of teaching. Brian Crosby did a project where the students were able to send a ballon into space. They had multiple steps to complete throughout the project, but one of the most important parts in my opinion to this video was when the students had to post videos onto their blog about the project. The students would post the video, have multiple views, and become encouraged that other people were interested in what they were doing in the classroom. At the end of the video the students even skyped with a New Zealand class about the project they performed because another class wanted to do something similar but did not know how. This not only aloud the students to show something they were proud of, but also gave them exposure to another culture. The second video I watched was by Paul Anderson and his steps for the Blended Learning Cycle. The Blended Learning Cycle had six different steps: QUestion, Investigate, Video, Elaboration, Review, Summary quiz. One important things that he said was that there is "power in numbers", and this is very true with PBL. The students working together in small groups allows for the expansion of ideas being put forth towards a project. The third was a video based off of a book called Make Thinking Visible. This was giving an example of how learning can be brought to life in the classroom. How it worked was the students read a little bit about a book and then were formed into small groups to create a headline about this book. The headline was a short few words drawn onto a long piece of paper. The students then presented their headline to the class, and once everyone was finished presenting the headlines were displayed throughout the room. This gave the students the chance to display their creativity, and also learn about their classmates viewpoints about the book. The fourth video was from Sam Pane and his "building a comic" project. This project seemed very interesting to me, and is something that I could see potentially trying to incorporate in my classroom. The teacher opened the lesson with a quote from spiderman. They were learning about how to be a good citizen on the internet. What they meant by being a good citizen is someone who chooses to act safely and respectfully online. The students were each asked to create a superhero through this superhero builder website. Once the superhero was built then they were asked to make a storyline about how their superhero taught a citzen (themselves) to be safe on the internet. Once the project was completed they did a "gallery walk" inside the classroom and walked aroung the room looking at other students completed work. A project like this deals with real life lessons, as well as age appropriate material to keep them engaged. The fifth video was about a classroom which they started incorporating PBL by combining a History and English class. The class counted for 3 credit hours and aloud for a longer period of time to teach in the classroom. Combining classrooms like this is not only beneficial for the students, but the number of possibilities in the classroom also increases for the teacher. Teachers who are trying new learning styles like this and documenting them for others to see is really helpful to see what worked as well as what did not. Finally the sixth video was of Roosevelt Elementary and their incorporation of PBL. They have their students working in groups on a project for a longer amount of time. The benefits are greater in depth learning, the ability to make decisions are their own, learning real world skills, learning to work collaboratively, as well as positive student interaction. In this elementary school they are teaching the students to work and present these projects to the class at a young age. This was something that I thought was important personally. My biggest fear throughout school has been public speaking, and I think by exposing children to this life skill at a younger age will allow them to grow more comfortable with this task.

Project #12 Part A

C4K October

Link to picture

This month for my C4K I was assigned to 4 different students blogs from all over the world. These students names were Heaven, Sarah, Sami, and Amber. Each of these students had very different blogs. Heaven shared a blog that answered the question: "If you could change something, what would it be?". She replied by saying she would not change anything but her hair because she likes for it to be long. Sarah was expressing about how she felt that students who are behaving badly should be punished by losing their recess privledges. She stated that students enjoy recess and in order to learn from their bad behavior that they should be punished by having something they enjoy taken away from them. Sami wrote a very imaginative story. The story was about a little boy who went downstairs in the middle of the night because he was hungry. He smelled something awesome, but it turned out to be a brussel sprout. The imagination and creativity he involved in this post really shined through. Finally Amber, she was posting about how they learned how to use a compass in her class. She showed images of a map they were learning to read with the coordinates in the picture. All of these blogs had different topics, but it was interesting to see their creativity, imagination, and intelligence being applied in posting these. I replied with encouraging words to let them know I enjoyed reading their blog posts. I think it is important to give positive reinforcement to students posting on blogs. Posting blogs can be a scary thing for some students due to fear of rejection to their posts. Everyone likes to hear nice things about the work that they have put forth, and I hope to comment positively to help with that.

Blog Post #10

Link to Picture

Ms. Cassidy teaches in a way that uses technology often, and she believes strongly that the technology is not going away but will continue to grow. I agree with this statement. Technology has grown so much even over the last few years. In her classroom she has a class blog that she uses with her students, a webpage they can visit to find different educational links, they skype with other people from around the world, etc,. In my future classroom I think that an important tool for me to use as I have mentioned before will be my class blog. I think that a class blog is a good way to keep everyone linked together and be able to collaboratively learn from eachother. An interesting way that Ms. Cassidy uses technology is through a blogging buddy. Each student is assigned to another older student from a different school to comment on their blogs. The students get excited that someoone is comenting on their blogs, and it gives them an opportunity to build a relationship with students outside of their own school. I find this to be beneficial for many reasons but most importantly by hearing how the students get excited that someone viewed their post. If the students are excited about something then that makes the learning process better for everyone.

A big concern for using technology in the classroom is often "How do we keep our children safe". Ms. Cassidy tells her students not to ever post their nastname, only your first. She also tells the students that when they post pictures not to refer directly to who is in the picture. These are great ways of keeping the identity of the students safe. Another concern is keeping what they see monitored. The internet allows you to access anything you want, and this is a priveledge that students should learn not to abuse. In my old school at St. Pauls, we all started using our own laptops in the classroom starting in the 6th grade. It was required that we brought our laptops to class every day. The way that they monitored what sites we were visiting was by blocking innapropriate websites. When I was in school there was a game called "Bubble Trouble", and my friends and I loved to play this game. The administration heard of this game that we were all playing (that was not educational), and immediately blocked the website at school. Similar websites were blocked that were not considered to be educational at the time like Facebook and Twitter. I would be curious to know if they still have Facebook blocked for students. I think that Facebook could be beneficial if used correctly. One way of using Facebook could be to have a group page set up for the students in your class. This could be used for the teacher to post reminders, and for students to juist interact with one another outside of the classroom. There are going to be complications with any new technology being introduced, but I think that there are ways to fix everything.

Blog Post #9

PBL
What can Teachers and Students teach us about Project Based Learning?

Seven Essentials for Project Based Learning is describing a scenario in which a project is assigned to students by their teacher Mrs. McIntyre. To introduce the project she "plops down" a packet of information about the project onto the students desk detailing the requirements. This piece is written about how Mrs. McIntyre could have handled the project differently to influence a more positive effect on her students. It gives a list of seven tips on how to effectively use Project Based Learning in the classroom. It talks about a scenario that was based off of a real life project. What I found important in this article is the idea to make the projects more appealing to students. If it is something that students care about then they are going to want to try harder. At the end of the Project they present them to an audience outside of the classroom. This audience contained parents, teachers, govornment organizations, etc., and since the students knew they were presenting in front of a larger audience it inspired them to produce a higher quality of work. I think ultimately the goal for Project Based Learning is to have students more excited about the work, actually learning something from the project, and producing their best work. These tips can be helpful to accomplishing this goal.

Project Based Learning for Teachers by Tony Vincent gave an exciting overview of Project Based Learning. It showed what students will be doing in PBL like: addressing an audience, crafting a driving question, identifying learning standards, creating a rubric, brainstorming questions, meeting deadlines, etc. All of which are important for students to learn how to do not just for school but in the real world as well. Things like meeting deadlines and brainstorming questions are things that students will have to do throughout the rest of their schooling careers and well into their future. Teaching these types of skills to students at an early age will not only be beneficial to them in the classroom but outside of it as well. I think that something important to students is learning relevant things that they can use outside of the classroom, and skills such as these are all examples of that.

What Motivates Students Today? This video was interviews of students about what motivates them to do well in school. These students appeared to be different ages, but they all had something that motivated them whether it was food, stickers, pencils, brownie points, anything that shed a positive reflection on the work that they had submitted. Applying this to Project Based Learning is very important so that each student will work harder to put in their best efforts. It is not only beneficial for the students, but can also be benefical to the teacher. In giving rewards to students it allows you to give encouragement to your students and deciding which rewards to give them also will allow you to get to know your students better based on what they like and dislike. So I believe rewarding them will not only be beneficial for the students but for the teachers as well.

Project Based Learning in PE is an article written about a group of High School studetns who created a physical fitness program for Middle School students. This project was beneficial for the students of both age groups, and was something that many students could relate to. It allowed for collaboration, relevant material, and creativity among the students. It was exciting for the High School students to get to see their plans actually put into action which is a great way to engage them, but also exciting for the younger to students to get to interact with older kids. Having a role model in school can be very beneficial to younger students. I think this is a great way to engage students of all age levels, and actually learn something from this type of proect.

Students solve old problem with new ketchup cap is a video of high school students who were partnered up in their software design class. They both discovered their love for ketchup, and decided they were tired of having watery ketchup squirt out of the bottles. So they designed a piece to place inside the cap that will help block the water from coming out. This project was ocne again beneficial because it allowed these students to work on something that interested them and was useful in real life. They were proud of the work that they had completed, and were even able to discover a common interest with their partner. This possibly could have built a new friendship, or even discovered more similarities with an already established friendship. Either way this project allowed students to create something meaningful to them and take away much more than just a good grade from a project. I can only hope that the projects I assign in my future classroom will have impacts such as these on my students.

Watching or reading videos such as these can allow for different ideas on how to use Project Based Learning, and can show different ways that it has actually worked in classrooms. Using PBL is beneficial for the students and teachers because we are all constantly learning together.

Project #13 PBL Plans (Collaborative)

Project Based Learning
Lesson Plan
PBL Calendar
PBL Checklist
PBL Rubric

Project #9

Implications and Teaching Opportunities for Camera Use in Teaching and Learning

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

Part A

This information was shown to us on our EdM Classblog and was a recent study done by Zogby Analytics. I myself have recently upgraded to an Iphone 5c, and since then I have started using my cell phone in more ways than I ever thought I would need to use my phone. I spend most of my day with my cell phone no more than 5 feet away from me, and I use it for almost everything. In my use as far as education goes I use my phone in one way or another for every class. Whether I am googling how to do something for a math problem, or looking for a quote in my English paper I am always using my phone. I think the worry for some teachers is that cell phones may be a distraction, and for some students this can be the case. However, with students growing up around new smart phones and different technologies I believe that they will develop the maturity and restraint to use their cell phones during school in a purposeful manner.

We all have to be open and willing to learn new things at all times. The technology is changing, and it is changing rapidly. We as future educators needs to be up to date on the technology in order to keep up with students and keep them interested in our teaching. I think that everyone needs to stay open minded about technology, and work to keep up with the changes.

Part B

The use of the camera on smart phones has opened up a whole new experience to technology and learning. I use the camera on my phone right now at a minimum of once a day. That might be a little excessive, but it is enjoyable for me! Different ways to incorporate the use of cameras in a kindergarten class could be through just taking pictures of different scenery, classmates, etc., in the class. This can help to grow bonds between students, but also enhance their picture taking and editing skills. You can assign different projects such as reading aloud, and having them record themselves while doing so. This can show them what they need to work on in their reading abilities. A fun way to use cameras could be to do a class scavenger hunt. This scavenger hunt could be identifying different objects around the school by taking a picture of it and having the students go find it...while being supervised of course. This will allow them to learn what these objects are by seeing them once they find them, but also is fun to get outside of the room and search for different things. We can all work together to create book trailers so they can be excited about the book and excited about reading! There are endless ways to incorporate smartphones and other technologies into teaching you just have to get creative!



Smartphones

Blog Post #8

What can we learn about teaching and learning?
The video was of Randy Pausch's last lecture. It is called his last lecture because Randy is battling cancer. He has a great outlook on life and you can see this show throughout the video. He proves that you should not feel sorry for him by doing physical activity in front of everyone, and just wants to tell his story. Throughout the video he gives us a list of his childhood dreams. Some of which were more realistic than others, but they were his dreams. Each of these dreams he made strong attempts to accomplish throughout his life, and even did accomplish many of them. He talks about how they were not all easily attainable dreams, and he hit many brick walls in the process of accomplishing them. He says that "brick walls are there to show how bad we want something." I think this was an important thing to mention because in learning we are going to face brick walls where we think we cannot succeed, but for those of us who want it bad enough we will find a way to succeed. He says that Jon Shoddy once said to him that "if you wait long enough then people will impress you". What is important about this as it applies to learning I think is that everyone has something to offer, and not everyone is always bad. If we wait for someone to impress you than we can learn something from them, and even learn patience for ourselves. We as teachers need to be constantly learning as well as students, and I think that keeping patience in mind it will be to our advantage of learning from those around us. In teaching Randy gave an example of one of his classes. He set the class up to have 50 students, paired them into groups of 4, and gave them a project to work on for 2 weeks to present. The students worked and completed the project, and when they were finished Randy was blown away by the work they had done. Something I found to be very intelligent and a great teaching style is that he did not tell the students right away how great they had done on the project, but he told them they could do better. Telling these students that they could do better kept pushing them, and they were able to create even better work. This is an important teaching skill to really push students to their greatest potential. Randy said that someothing that has helped him teach students new software is by making them think that they are learning something else. He does this by making the projects entertaining for the students, but also using the software so the students are actually being taught new technology without realizing how hard the technology is. Randy says that everyone is either a "Tigger" or an "Eeyore", and I think this can apply to being a teacher and a learner. To be a teacher and a learner you want to be more of a "Tigger" because the important part is to keep having fun. To be a healthy teacher and learner you have to show dedication, cherish feedback, show gratitude, work hard, be good at something, find the best in everyone, be prepared, and most importantly HAVE FUN.

Be a Tigger

C4T Summary

The first Teachers blog in this series that I left a comment for was for a teacher who was expressing his feelings about being judged. He said that in his school, church, etc.., he is often referred to as the "tech-guy". He expresses how being the technology guy is not a bad thing, but he wants for those around him to realize that there is much more to him than just technology. He has different interests and is capable of a lot more than just helping with technology. I see this everyday in the real world, and I found it very bold and applaud him for having the bravery to express how he feels about this issue. The next comment I left was for a teacher who had just been involved with the Oklahoma Technology Assosciation/Encyclomedia Conference. This conference was held in Oklahoma and was a Media Camp. This camp taught different skills like how to use Ipads, and how other teachers are incorporating technology into their classrooms. I found this to be very interesting because I had never heard of a Media Camp like this. Something that was exciting for me to hear in the video on his blog was from a teacher who said that she was able to network a lot during the camp. She said that she normally only has comments on Twitter from teachers outside of the country, but not usually people shese actually met before. At this conference she was able to build her PLN, learn new ways to incorporate technology, and learn how to use the new technology at a more in depth level.

Create, Teach, Share

Project #7 Part B

To Parents


To Students