Sunday, September 25, 2011

Project #9a

Blog Assignment 5

Scott McLeod - Don't Teach Your Kids This Stuff, Please?
In this post he tells all about how horrible the technology we use in schools are and asks that we not use them and then at the end he says that he himself is using it and to see which children have a leg up in the future. I think that he had a very interesting yet sarcastic way of going about telling parents and educators that there are ways for technology to be in schools without the students using them wrongly as long as they learn from an early age how to properly surf the web and use their other digital resources. I also think that there would be no comparison when it came to which children have a leg up in the future as this is the digital age.
It turns out that Scott McLeod is an Associate Professor at UK (University of Kentucky) and has received many awards for his work. He blogs regularly, is an idea generator and a CASTLE director. I find the quote on his home page to be quite interesting and very true to him: "If the leaders don't get it, it's not going to happen." So the leaders of our school need to get it so that his ideas can continue to happen.
iSchool


The iSchool Initiative
     Travis Allen's argument is for making school completely green by getting rid of paper, pens/pencils, textbooks, and printers & ink. To do this it would replace all of those things with and iSchool on the iPod Touch. He tells about all the learning capable features that are already on the iPod and of how much money it will save everyone if they switch. Plus it will lower our Carbon Footprint and raise how green our society is.
     My reaction was one of wonder and surprise and fear all at the same time. The wonder is that schools really could go to be completely online and over iPods and the like without teachers and students ever meeting face to face. The surprise comes from how eager this young man sounds for it to be true. Though the fear comes from both of these things and the fact that if school goes this way then libraries are sure to be next, and since I am an avid reader I would hate for this to happen. I can't stand looking at my computer screen long enough to finish writing a paper so there is no way I would be able to stare at it to finish a book.

Jennifer Chambers & Erica Whitacre
Erica Whitacre's Virtual Choir


Ms. Chambers found an amazing video of 185 voices all over the country singing one song together. It was a truly unforgettable sound that double in cool points once I found out that the people that made that soothing song had never once met in person! I think this is one of the best ways I have seen the internet used so far. I wish that those people would make more videos like that so that others would get inspired to do the same and then it would pretty much be perfect!

Teaching in the 21st Century
To Roberts teaching ultimately comes down to asking the question "what does it mean?". To him it doesn't matter the content, skills, or subject. You could be using Google, textbooks, or even just brainstorming ideas with a group or partner but Roberts will want to know what it means. What the meaning of a color is, what the meaning of being president is, or what the meaning of literature is. Like it says, no matter the content. And I think that is absolutely fabulous. I know that things will change for me as a future educator because it will no longer be knowledge getting crammed in one ear and spilling right back out of the other. The students will actually have to put in efforts on projects and assignments instead of throwing things together at the last minute since I will be using this way of always wanting to know what things mean.

Blog Assignment 4

The Benefits of Podcasting in the Classroom by Joe Dale was a very interesting read. All the reasons for podcasting that I read were very true and show how it makes sense for us to have them in classes now. Some of the reasons included:
- Effective communication
- Allows for project based learning
- The parents can see and hear what their child is learning/doing at school
This showed me that I can do this even with my group not meeting regularly, which takes in the reason of "distance learning" listed on the post.


Langwitches
This was a blog post from someone that had done a project with a class of first graders in which they did their very own read along audiobook with podcasts. The children were excited to do this type of new project and were just as excited when they got to read along to the very one they had just finished. I think that this shows that if first graders can do it on the spur of the moment than with us having time to prepare that our individual groups should have no trouble doing a podcast.

Judy Scharf
She tells what a podcast is and gives you tips and suggestions for a successful podcast. This site will help me in doing my own podcast because I can just go back and look at her tips when I am unsure of what to do next.

Sunday, September 11, 2011

Live The Conversation Summary



"Working on the Chain Gang" was about an activity Mrs. Goerend did with her 5th grade students. In this activity they all got 5 strips of paper and wrote their strengths on them. Then Mrs. Goerend had them all staple these strips as the links on a chain by making circles with two of them intwined. She is all about building community in her class room and has many great ideas to help her. My comment on this post was just letting her know I love the idea of building community in the class room and that her activities seem like something I am going to one day want to do.
"Building Community" was the post before "Working on the Chain Gang" and was again about an activity that Mrs. Goerend did with her 5th graders. This one was a bag that they brought in filled wtih things they love. My comment for this one was telling her about my 8th grade French teacher having us do a similar activity and that again I will be doing something like this with my students whenever I get into a classroom.

Blog Assignment 3

C4C Portion
      This week the video on peer editing helped me figure out how to write a proper comment on my classmates blog posts. It talked of the compliments, suggestions and corrections we should include in each of these comments.

Kelly Hines

edurati review


Ms. Hines discusses four very important things that teachers must recognize in order to be better educators. Included is teachers as learners, that learning and teaching are not the same thing, technology being useless without good teaching and finally to be a part of 21st century teaching without the technology. She reminds teachers that they are also learners and that if your student is not learning the material no natter how many times you "teach" it than maybe you should rethink your idea of teaching.

I agree with Ms. Hines that teachers now days do need to re evaluate the way they are "teaching" because as we all see the students are simply regurgitating what the teacher says and the minute they are done with a subject every thing they have "learned" about it gets removed from their brains. I also agree that teachers using technology is useless if the students are still unsure of what concepts they are supposed to be grasping.

Karl Fisch: Is It Okay to Be A Technologically Illiterate Teacher?

In Mr. Fisch's blog he first shows the opinion of Terry Freedman from the Technology Learning Blog, who is of a technological literate persuasion. He believes that all educators should be technologically literate and if they aren't they should be fired. Fisch then goes on to post a blog he wrote in February of 2006 but never published because he didn't think it was the right time. In that post he also talks about he need for educators to have a technological background. He compares today's teachers being technologically illiterate to teachers 30 years ago being unable to read and write.

I partially agree with Mr. Fisch's post because I do think that teachers need to have some understanding of technology in today's computer savvy world. It is outdated to believe that everything can be taught and learned with a chalk/whiteboard, pencil and paper. True, some students still learn this way and many teachers would prefer it stay like this but that is not possible with the way the majority of students learn today!

Gary Hines Social Media Counter




This thing is super freaky. It is the kind of thing that gives Terry Freedman and Karl Fisch's arguments a back bone. I say this because they are all for technological literacy from teachers today and this counter shows how technical our society is. I mean most of those numbers are above 10,000 and that is a lot!

These changes for my career mean that I need to update my use of the computer, internet and social networks. To me, all of those things are going to be popular in the classroom by the time I get there so I want to go ahead and prepare myself for the future. I would think that since I want to start off all the way down in kindergarten that it would no be so mandatory but then I look at my old neighbors 5 year old daughter and remember that I sat there with her on the computer while she played educational games during the summer to keep her mind sharp for the upcoming school year. I know that this means I will be doing many things with my students both on and off the computer, becuase after all you can't get a complete learning experience on the computer.

Michael Wesch: A Vision of Students Today

This video was much like Did You Know? 3.0 as it gave fact after fact of useful and insightful information. As a student, I look at this and think about how many of the things that were said that I also do or used to do. The number is quite big as I also will sit in class on FaceBook, goofing off, or reading my e-mail, anything but pay attention to the teacher and lecture being given. I also am amazed by the number of students that actually helped with the information in the video as so many of my classmates here will complain about just wanting to get class over with, and it makes me wonder if KSU would be a better place for me as the students there seem to like to help out with projects and don't mind being in class.

As a future educator however, I look at this video and think of how much different it is going to be when I am in the classroom. There will be no sitting in circles and talking about ourselves or even just telling stories, instead the students are going to want to be on the computer and may have a technological way of thinking. This means that they will want to be online and have me on the board in the front of the room walking them through the steps of a program, not doing a powerpoint which will be outdated by this time.

Project #5 - Life and Motivations

Blog Assignment 2

Did You Know? 3.0
     So many facts! That was my first thought when I finished watching the video. It told all about populations in terms of babies being born within the time of the presentation as well as the number of honor students in the US and China. There were facts about the years it took for radios, iPods, the internet and television to reach a market audience of 50 million people, for some of those, I would never have guessed it took so little time. It also had facts about some discoveries that are to be made within the next three years, including a super computer.
     I would never have thought that for some of this information, like the time for the market audience, that it would take so little time. I say little because not everyone can afford things like televisions, iPods, or even internet connection, and yet it took less than 5 years for the iPods and internet and 13 years for television. The most believable out of the group was 38 years for radio. The scariest part was the super computer since it will exceed the human brain, I mean, who wouldn't be scared by something being smarter than them?

Mr. Winkle Wakes
     Mr. Winkle Wakes shows that technology has come a long way in 100 years. It is present everywhere now, including hospitals, offices, libraries, and school. In the video it says that school is just the way he remembered it with students sitting there taking notes while the teacher lectured on and on. But, to me that is just not the case anymore. While teachers do still make you take notes while they lecture they have also begun to make the classroom and interactive place.
     The teachers in my high school were learning about the SMARTboard by my first semester of Junior year (2007) and by the second semester there were already SMARTboards being brought into our school for teachers to start using. And yes, while there were still some teachers that opposed it and thought that things should stay the same as they have always been, those same teachers were loving the ease at which they could lecture by the time my graduation rolled around in the spring of 2009. I think that this is the way schools should be now simply because they should stay with the times.

 The Importance of Creativity
Sir Ken Robinson

     Sir Robinson wants everyone to know that the schools now a days are killing student creativity. All schools worry about are the "fundamentals" of Math, Science, Language Arts, and Social Studies. Everything outside of this, like dance and art, are pushed to the back and made to seem unimportant. He tells stories of his son and friends doing things that would be considered creative and how people are too scared to be creative in today's society since to be creative a lot of the times you have to be wrong.
     I believe every word of what Sir Ken Robinson said about the schools pushing creavitity out and society being afraid to be wrong simply because I am the same way. I grew up as the quiet child that did nothing but study what the teachers told her to. I never played make believe games with my friends for real and always had a book in my hand. I see now that it was wrong for me to be like that and it killed the creative side of my childhood, but luckily I am making up for it in my life now.

Cecelia Gault
     This video was just brilliant. The fact that Cecelia knows there should be a balance and that it is lacking in many schools amazed me. Her and Robinson discussed students in today's classrooms needing to be able to make better connections between the sciences and art curriculum. This is important because it will spark more creative ideas in our younger citizens. In the second half of her article she interveiwed Mr. Livermore, a senior research consultant at the Cultural Intelligence Center, and he said that for cultural intelligence to be increased that students should travel. This is a great idea since then the students would get first hand knowledge of how other cultures learn.
     I think that Cecelia did a wonderful job overall and asked Robinson some amazing questions. To think that someone as young as her sees that things have to change for the better in the US is just mind boggling. That is because even some people in my generation and the generations above me refuse to see that anything is amiss with our education system.

Vicki Davis: Harness Your Students' Digital Smarts   
     Ms. Davis' class reminds me a lot of this class. The students are teaching her at the same time that they are teaching themselves and their class mates and it is all on the computer. They reach out to students all around the world, and if you remember, Dr. Strange showed us on the first day of class that people from all around the world have looked at our class blog and student blogs. 
     I think that Ms. Davis' idea of having everything online is a good thing and that it is teaching the students how to learn things on their own, and that it will be their responsibility and their mistake if the work isn't done on time or correctly, although she does still offer them some help and advice.