Blog Post 7

   Technology now has a prominent place in the classroom. It enables teachers to reach students on an individual level and at times allows the students themselves to teach. Different technology and applications that are available for students give many opportunities to learn. There are many benefits that come along with having the technological resources available for every student, one of which is that it keeps the students engaged in the material they are learning. By having an Ipad available for each child, they can focus on their own task and move as fast or as slow as they need to. Additionally, the programs are set up so that they can give automatic feedback on assignments and tests. 

     Specifically, in the video 10 Reasons to Use Technology in Education, it is seen that along with just student engagement there are many great reasons to integrate technology into lesson plans. Students love using technology on a daily basis for games and for communicating, so by using it as a medium to learn in the classroom gives them an opportunity to be more interested in the work. Along with this resource being beneficial to students it also serves many useful purposes for teachers as well. In general, it makes life easier for teachers. It gives the teacher a chance to answer more questions effectively when they are needed instead of spending a whole class period lecturing. 

     With all this technology available there are also more resources available for students and teachers. Having access to professionals all over the world gives the opportunity to learn from many types of instruction. Teachers are also given more access to other professionals too. When there are obstacles in the classroom such as some students having different learning styles, when teachers reach out they are given the opportunity to modify their lessons in new ways. 

     Having the skills to use new technology is essential for the future educators. Initially, I was not for learning about all these new programs available, it just didn't seem necessary. However, when I watch more of these videos about how impactful the technology can be, I become more and more convinced of it's effectiveness. Just like people have to evolve in learning new ideas, the same goes with having to learn new ways of teaching. 

C4K Summary

     Throughout the past month I have had the opportunity to read and then subsequently post on four different students blog posts. The students that I received were Rylie, Ike, Kaitlyn, and Najelley. They ranged in age from third grade all the way up to high school. Additionally, they all live and go to school in different states.
     Rylie was the first student that I was given and he is in Mrs. Smedy's class. I had some problems trying to connect to his blog unfortunately. The link that I was given to his blog didn't connect me all the way and when I asked for ways to figure it out it just didn't work.
     Fortunately, when I received the link for my next student everything worked out successfully! Ike H. was the second blog that I visited. Ike is a student in Mr. Boylen's class and their assignment was to write about their day. Ike lives up north and wrote that they had gotten a snow storm. I told him that down here we hardly ever get snow and that this time last year we experienced an ice storm and we had to close down all our schools.
     Kaitlyn, in Mrs. Leatherwood's class, was my third student. Her blog assignment was for her students to write about the best day of their life. Kaitlyn wrote about how her family was planning on adopting a new puppy and she was so excited. She had a dog that was part of the family ever since she could remember but, sadly, the dog had passed away several months ago. After having some time pass they decided to go look for Lab breeders. They found one that bred silver lab puppies and they have been keeping up on the progress of the puppy's growth. I told her about how my family has had two labs and my first dog ever was a black lab named Maggie. When Maggie passes away many years ago my mother and I went and adopted a new puppy, a yellow lab, named Homer. Homer was a birthday gift to my dad and he is now 13 years old.
     The last student's blog that I read was Najelley's. She is a high school student in Mrs. Maslowski's class. Mrs. Maslowski gave them an assignment related to Black History Month. The option that Najelley picked was to discuss an African American inventor and their influence. She chose to write about George Washington Carver and his impact that he made on the agricultural world. Everyone associates Carver with his using peanuts in his inventions. The reason that this is what he used is because farmers had such a large amount of them in storage and they were just going bad. To keep this crop from going to waste, Carver invented peanut butter and other innovative ways to use peanuts. Additionally, he also used sweet potatoes to help farmers replenish the soil. Upon reading her post I didn't know that Carver had done so much and made such a large impact on the agricultural world.

http://mrsmaslowski.edublogs.org/

Blog Post 6

Conversing with Anthony Capps...
     While viewing the conversations that were had with Mr. Capps, I gained a lot of insight on how using project based learning can be really effective in the classroom. The projects that he had used in the classroom really covered a lot of topics and standards in one without being too overwhelming for him or his students. Also, I realized that a lot of thought and preparation has to be put in in developing his class projects. In contrast to traditional lesson planning, when developing the ideas to implement as a project you have to think of its purpose, its effectiveness, and is it going to be exciting and engaging for the students.
     In specific, in the video conversation "Don't teach the tech-use it", I thought it was really insightful. While doing all of our own projects in EDM 310 and branching out to use new technology it can get overwhelming. In fact, the most frequent thought that I have while facing some more of the challenging tasks is "How will I use this for my students?" or "Am I going to be able to clearly demonstrate how to use a program?". Upon watching this video though, I realize that it's not about teaching the technology its about incorporating it. The students in today's generation are so technologically advanced that teaching the technology would be a mundane task for them, so why waste the time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wB3uKpOKQwA

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs

My Passion

My Sentence

Project #3 Presentation

Four Movies Part 1

The links that are included in this blog are for project 7 and go to the video "My Sentence", and the video "My Passion".
My Sentence 
My Passion 
Enjoy!!

Blog Post 5

Personal Learning Networks...
     Personal learning networks, PLN's, are comprised of people, places, organizations, and activities that enable you to learn and expand your teaching resources. From looking at the resources given, I noticed that a lot of teachers get started making their PLN's by either blogging or using resources found on Twitter. So that's where I began my search to start building my own network. So far I have found sources that include The Teaching Channel, @teachingchannel, Edutopia, @edutopia, and Discovery Education, @DiscoveryEd. These are just a couple of sources that I have found so far but I am hoping to expand upon them soon!

     Building personal learning networks are now almost essential to stay on the next level in education. By communicating with other professionals and using additional resources such as twitter you can be exposed to so many ideas. Also, by using an extended network can help you discover ways to reach all students on many levels. Teaching is no longer a linear concept, it ranges in so many dimensions and using your own learning network can expand your knowledge in every direction.

Search Engines - Project 15

     It's amazing how many other search engines are available other than the ever popular Google. I went on a search just to see how many are out there and the number was may more than any I had ever expected. The engines consisted of many categories too, including but not limited to music, photo streaming, general searches, colleges, and medical. I was asked to narrow down to 8 search engines to further elaborate on and the list goes as follows: 

1. WolframAlpha- This search engine is absolutely amazing! It offers an abundance of resources available to all and is mainly directed toward educators. The site also refers to itself as a "computational knowledge engine". I played around on this site and found that you can ask it for help in almost any subject area and it will give you examples, suggestions and an abundance of resources relating to what you have searched for. You can ask WolframAlpha for help in just about everything including math, science, educational tools, astronomy, history, health, and geography just to name a few but their list goes on and on. 

2. Vimeo- This site is similar to the popular YouTube. The engine is used to post and stream videos on your computer. The site makes it to where there are no ads before or after your videos and you can stream it to friends and family members to that they can all share in on your memories. 

3. Icerocket- Meltwater Icerocket allows you the opportunity to search, submit your blogs, and to read top posts for the day. What is unique about this engine is that when you search it is also linked to Twitter and Facebook so that you can pull up trending results as well. 

4. Flickr- This is an online photo streaming connection. Once signed in you have the opportunity to view pictures from anywhere in the world and to upload your own pictures as well. Additionally, the site allows you to search specifically for subjects as well. 

5. Healia- Healia is a medical search engine that specializes in finding high quality and personalized health information. This site is more sophisticated than a WebMd and provides a better quality explanation to health related questions. 

6. Freebooksearch- As the name of this engine explains, this site allows you to search for free books using a simple and advanced search through the search engine. Along with ebooks available for search there are also audiobooks available. 

7. The college search engine- As the title states in this search engine, it is used by prospective college students to search for potential schools. The site shows and lists out all colleges available and what requirements are needed if one was wanting to attend. 

8. Sphere- This is an additional search engine that allows one to search through blogs and post your own blogs. This site works alongside Google Chrome and allows you to have a narrowed search through the general Google website. 

C4T Summary #1 - Science Fix

 
     Mr. Darren Fix was the first teacher's blog that I visited and left comments on. He is a middle school science teacher and his website "ScienceFix" was not only very informative but also very entertaining. His posts were videos in which he explained how using the experiments that he had designed helped to get kids thinking before he presented a new concept. In the first video post that I saw he was explaining the objective of heat energy to his students. I thought that it was very well set up and it was a great introduction to use to explain how heat energy works in different mediums.
     The second post that was most recent on his page was explaining the idea of how the scientific method can be used. It was an abstract project that required his students to have to do a little thinking in order to formulate a hypothesis about what the plausible answers could be. To explain a little more, Mr. Fix presented his students with a six sided cube he had put together. On each side was a color, a name, and two numbers. By using the info that they gained from viewing five out of the six sides they then formulated a hypothesis about what could be on the last side.
     Both of his posts that I viewed and commented on were very interesting and I myself was entertained at how he could make learning new concepts fun and engaging for his students.

http://www.sciencefix.com/

Blog Post 4

What do we need to know about asking questions to become an effective teacher?
     This discussion topic struck me as very interesting when I first read the overview on what this blog would focus on. I had never put much thought into what kind of questions I would ask my students or in the manner that I would ask them. I never thought of it as important until now. The sources that were given to help figure out the answer to this questions gave a lot of insight on how questions should be asked and the appropriate way that they are developed. In "The Right Way to Ask Questions in the Classroom", it is noted that just asking a class if they understand a topic that you may have just covered is not enough. To really get students engaged in what you're talking about you have to ask specific questions. When asking specific questions it is not always necessary for them to be directed at one person right away. The goal of any teacher is to get your students thinking, so by asking a question to the whole class they all have a chance to formulate answers in their own head. Once the whole class has been given a chance to think of an answer, then you can move on and begin to select students at random to give their ideas. By selecting students at random you make it clear that not just one person will be called on all the time and not just the "smart kids" will be asked to answer. This was another common trend seen Mr. Johnson's post.
     The design of the question is also particularly important. We are informed while reading "Asking Questions to Improve Learning" that there are three main types of questions. All three types are useful and can be used for specific situations to elicit the type of response that you want. Closed questions are useful when you are looking for only one specific answer and can be used when preparing for an exam or reviewing over previously covered concepts, managerial questions are used when you want to make sure that your students understand assignments given, and closed questions are used to elicit multiple responses from the students. As mentioned previously, it is the main goal to keep the students engaged in what is being presented to them, to keep the wheel turning.

     Sometimes we can come up with questions on the spot while we're in the midst of covering a lecture, but sometimes they take a little more preparation than that. While you are preparing your lesson plans for the day it is helpful to include places in which you could stop to ask a question to make sure everyone is on the same page. By adding in these predetermined questions it gives us a way to stay on track and make sure that we don't just spend a whole hour of discussion without adding in any reinforcement. Once you have decided on the questions you are wanting to ask, think about ways in which you could modify them to get students more actively involved in answering them. By going through these processes you find out which questions work best for you and you can preserve good questions, i.e. questions that had a good response level and were thought provoking amongst students.
     By using all the afore mentioned techniques we have many ways to develop questions to ask our students. We always want our questions to relate to the subject being taught and to, at times, challenge our students by broadening their thinking.