Blog Post #10

I'm a Papermate. I'm a Ticonderoga
The cartoon by John T. Spencer is basically saying that you get what you pay for. This does not only go for pens, but for things such as laptops, TV’s, or anything for that matter. Like the cartoon says, if you buy the cheap version of a product it will break faster because it is made of a cheaper material, and you will spend more money if you keep replacing the item. The comic reminded me of the Mac and PC commercials. Macs are more expensive, but you get what you pay for. The PC costs less and breaks more easily.


Why Were Your Kids Playing Games?
The post Why Were Your Kids Playing Games? by Mr. Spencer talks about how he got in trouble with his principal over laying games in the classroom. The principal wanted the teacher to focus on teaching his students memorization so that they would be able to pass tests. The teacher wanted his class to be engaged in the classroom instead of the routine of just memorizing and forgetting. I hoe when I become a teacher my boss doesn't force me to only focus on the kids memorizing the material for their tests.

Capturing Reality
Ok, I chose the post Capturing Reality because it seemed really cool to me. The man started out by having a conversation with his daughter about taking a picture. His daughter asks why her dad had to take a picture of them instead of just letting the memory run free. Her dad explained so that they can remember that moment forever. The post shifts with the father talking to another man about why we should or should not use cameras. The father explained he liked to capture moments so he could remember them forever, but the other man explained how if we take pictures then we are missing out on memories because we are behind the camera. I thought this post was just very interesting. I liked it a lot.

Don't Teach Your Kids This Stuff. Please?
I really enjoyed this post. At my school, all electronic devices were banned so I didn't have much practice with them. My parents believed that all the new technology would do is let me find new ways to sneak around and do things behind their back. It definitely affected me when it came to knowing how to do things in college. I wish I would have been more exposed to these things at a younger age.

Project #14 Smartboard Instruction Part 1

Project # 11 Short Green Screen Movie

Project #12

Snow White Movie Trailer

Blog post #9

Posts by Mr. McClung


In Mr. McClunghis Version 4 Post (2011-2012)he talks about how he only learned two things that year teaching. I believe that he learned two very important things that all teachers need to focus on. I have always thought that letting the students have fun was the most important thing while teaching, and of course it would challenge me to find new and interesting things to get the students to engage in class discussions and other activities. I want to be a fun teacher that all the students want to take. I want to be creative and affect my students in their educational journey. I believe that I will have o stay focused in giving the students what they need and deserve so I wont become one of the lazy teachers that stick to the ritual lesson plans that Mr. McClunghis talks about.

In the first year Mr. McClunghis sent teaching, he noticed that he was focusing to much on the content he was teaching and not spending enough time seeing if the students were actually comprehending what was being taught in the classroom. I think it is very imortant to make sure that the students are understanding the content I am reviewing because if they arent it doesnt matter if I teach all the necessary content or not because they will gain nothing from it.He also believes it is imortant to be flexible in the classroom. All lans you have for a lesson may not work out the way you want them to. You have to just go along with your mistakes, and try to fix the roblems as you go.I dont want to make my students feel stuid because I get mad at them for not being as advanced in a lesson as I think they should be. He talks about how we can discourage our students if we set a standard to high for them that they cant reach, and i definitely dont want to be that teacher. I want to be as reasonable as I can with my students. He also talks about not being afraid of technology. Technology is here to hel us, not harm us. I will admit that since Ive been in this class I have become a lot more comfortable with using technology.I can honestly say that I agree with him about the teacher listening to the student being imortant. I always feel more comfortable in a class when a teacher listens to my oinions and tries to get to know me. When a teacher acts like they are to imortant to have conversations with their students, it makes students hate that teacher and dread doing any work they assign(at least thats how I feel about it). He ends his blog ost by saying Never Stop Learning. As a teacher I believe that we can learn just as much from our students, if not more, as what we teach them. Why would our students want to hear what we have to say if we dont listen to them?

Blog post #8

This Is How We Dream Parts 1 and 2

Richard Miller's video This Is How We Dream Parts 1 and 2 was very interesting. Miller talks about how we can write via multimedia. I think it is a good idea to start teaching children how to do this at a young age. The younger they start learning, the easier it will be to do. Teaching kids to use technology to do their work is the future. As teachers, we have to make sure that our students know how to use the newest tools to help them with their work.

Using multimedia to write is something that I will have to enforce as an English and Literature teacher. The kids will have to write their papers and reports all through multimedia. I believe this will be more helpful than the regular handwritten assignments.

Grading papers through the use of multimedia will be so much easier. Kids can add pictures and links to their assignments. With the assignment being on an electronic device, I can quickly access any links the student has added into their assignment. I believe all schools will be using this method of teaching soon.

Carly's Post

I agree with many things in Blog Post #12 by Carly Pugh. She thinks students should be excited about learning. As teachers we should push students to be the best that they can possibly be. I want to make my students to think differently as well. I want to be the type of teacher that inspires students to do their work at the best of their ability. I want to be an effective teacher. I really want my students to leave my classroom feeling like I actually made a difference in their life.


Learn to Change, Change to Learn

The video Learn to Change, Change to Learn reminded me so much of Dr. Strange's approach to teaching. I do agree with the video. I believe that kids are bored in the classroom because they are not being challenged. I believe if more teachers taught like Dr. Strange, then students would actually learn useful tools that they can use in every day life. I know Dr. Strange has definitely pushed me to be a better student through his self teach method. At first I hated it, but now I understand this method. I think schools will soon change and be more like the schools explained in this video. Thank God! It is past time for our schools systems to change.




Scavenger Hunt 2.0
1. The tool I found for videos is called drop.io. It takes any pictures or media you want and puts them into a drop box. With this tool you can easily save anything that you might want to share with your class quickly and easily. It also saves voice recordings in case you need to make a memo that you may forget.
2. The second tool I found is www.jott.com. This allows you to convert voice into text. If you have a lot to tye or you are in a hurry to make a note of something, this site will quickly allow you to transfer your words into text.
3.

C4T#2

Post #1 Should “Education” be so Packaged?


The post Should “Education” be so Packaged? was about how some teachers are reluctant to try new things in the classroom. Teachers are afraid that students will take too long to learn new ways and technology to do things so they go ahead and decide not to teach them. Also, some teachers are reluctant about how long it will take them to learn new material and tools to teach their own students. I totally understand why a teacher would be reluctant to use Google docs to teach students. Teaching a child to use this tool to do a report or any other activity is time consuming, just as it would be to teach students who have never used a calculater before to learn all of its functions. Since I've been in EDM310, I have learned how benificial using Google docs can be; I believe it is well worth the time you would spend teaching students to use Google docs. Like Warlick said, "Our mission is to prepare our children for jobs, lifestyles, tools, processes, problems and goals that we can hardly imagine. We’re preparing them for the unimaginable." It may be hard for us as educators to learn and teach our students new and upcoming advancancements in technology, but technology is the future. We must strive to make our students the best they can be, and keep them up to date with what the world has to offer: it is our job whether we like it or not.


Post#2 A new way to visualize the Solar System.


Warlick's post,A new way to visualize the Solar System, was about how the earth and sun actually travel through the universe. It really took me out of my own little world that I tend to get caught up in and, it made me realize that there is so much more going on in this universe. I guess I never really thought about us all flying through the universe so fast while orbiting around the sun. My mind is actually blown right now. If we close our eyes and just visualize our solar system, most of us probably just see floating planets that are slowly spinning and orbiting the sun. Warlick points out that it is so much more intense than that. He says, "It’s pretty crazy to think that as still as the ground below us seems, we’re on a giant rock that is not only rotating and orbiting the sun, but also following the sun as it blazes through the universe." As you are reading this, just think that you are on a huge rock flying through space. This post was vey interesting to me!

Project 8 Podcast

Project #9-Personal Learning Network

I started using Symbaloo as soon as I goy done watching A 7th Grader's Personal Learning Environment. Symbaloo was the perfect thing to get me started on my PLN. I now have easy access to go from one website to another. All my work is so much more organized now. Now I can put up links of other teachers' blogs with ease. I can do so many things at once now. I can use Google or Twitter to search for other ways to expand my PLN.Steven Anderson explained in his video Building Your PLN-A Primer for Anyone, that you don't have to know everything. Other educators are working along with you, and they are answering your questions as well. By using a PLN you are able to obtain information quickly and easily.

Blog Post #7

Randy Pausch's Last Lecture

Randy Pausch's video was actually a lot more interesting than what I imagined it would be like. I thought that since this video was over an hour long that I was going to be bored out of my mind, and I thought that this assignment was going to drag out and seem like it took hours. Randy Pausch is a person that we can all look up to and admire, not only as far as being an educator goes, but also as being an amazing person. I have never met somebody that had such a positive outlook on life and be in the same position he is in. I hope that as a teacher, I can aquire some of the many good qualities Randy Pausch aquires. I think we should all strive to be like him; it would make our jobs a lot easier if we stayed as positive as him.

The teaching methods that Randy Pausch advocated at Carnegie-Mellon led to the students creating their own virtual worlds. I am completely mind blown about the whole class. Pausch assigned five projects for each semester; there were fifty students in each group from art, design, drama, and CS. The teams were randomly chosen (four students per team), and they changed each project; they only had two weeks to design, implement, and test. The first year he gave them the option on making their world however they wanted with the exception of no porn or violence. The results blew him away.He had his whole room where they presented the room completely filled and over flowing.

As a teacher I would like to give my students the freedom that Pausch gave his students. He allowed them to pick the content of their experiment; he said that they could make their virtual worlds on whatever they wanted, within the two conditions of not using violence or porn. I like how he placed them in random groups of four to work on an expirement, but switched the groups each time.I would like to use this method of placing students in random groups for projects so they will learn to work with each other. Working in a group like this would also create a sense of community in the classroom. I would have to give my students certain guidlines to follow, just as Pausch did. I would have to give deadlines for their work and some guidlines so they wouldn't spend to long on one project. I think it would be cool, since I am teaching English/Literature, to allow the students to pick a book (that I approved of) to write their own report on. I could even let them do a multi-genre report on a book that their group agrees on. Each student could contribute their own skills to the project.

When I was watching Randy Pausch's Last Lecture my mind began to wonder a little. I know technology is growing faster and faster every day, and I know most small kids today know more about technology than their own parents. I started to wonder what my students would actually be capable of doing in my own classroom. I thought the fact that Pausch taught a class on how to develop your own virtual world was AMAZING! I know I would have loved to learn something like that when I was in highschool as an elective. If all kids can create their own video games and virtual worlds soon, wouldn't it be awesome to involve that in the classroom? If my teacher said, "Class for homework tonight go home and play your video games to get ideas on how to improve your virtual world" I know there would not have been a single head on a desk, and the teacher would immediately have every child's attention. In the future, if it's possible, I would like to assign my class a book to read. When they got through with the novel instead of making my students take a basic test or book report most teachers assign, I would put them in groups and tell them to create their own virtual world of how they pictured the setting of the novel they read. This would be without a doubt one of the most interesting assignments ever. Of course, things may not go as planned, but I believe it would be an assignment worth trying. I believe this assignment would push my students learning ability as well as have them engage in the classroom. Isn't that what being a teacher is all about?

C4K Summary For February

POST 2 Can You Guess What My Book is Called? LaDarrius's Blog


The student I had to comment on was named LaDarrius. His Blog was about a summary of Turtle’s Race with Beaver. I told him that I thought that it was great how he was blog posting on the books he was assigned.I told him he did a great job on his post, and I told him goodluck on his accelerated reading.





POST 3 Elizabeth


The student I had to comment on was named Elizabeth. Elizabeth talked about how much she loved music. She said that she loves music because of her older brother; she believes he is a great singer. I told her that I also enjoyed singing, and I told her that I also liked to sing even though I wasn't good at it.