Sunday, February 23, 2014

Project #8 Book Trailer

Blog Post 6

This weeks blog post is on PNL which stands for Personal Learning Network. It is basically a very effective tool teachers or students can use to organize their links for school, research, entertainment and whatever else they would like to add. The great thing about PNL is that you can quickly connect with many different professionals and researchers all from your personalized page. I decided to use Symbaloo for my PNL. It was easy to sign up and changing my tiles around. But I'm still trying to get the hang of all the details.

I have always had a twitter, but I never really used it that much. But I never thought I was use it the way I do now. I also have never used Pinterest, I always thought it was for girls and their arts and crafts. But now I realize how many ideas you can get from using Pinterest. I think PLN is a very useful tool that everyone should use because it is great to have all of your learning tools organized and displayed, ready to be accessed quickly from a click away. I will be using Symbaloo a lot more and hope I can use it more efficiently than I am now.

Sunday, February 16, 2014

Blog Post 5

Dr. Strange assigned us to watch 7 videos of him interviewing Anthony Capps, a former student of edm310 and now a 3rd grade teacher over at Gulf Shores Elementary. It was great to see what we are learning put into action, and especially hearing it from a former student of edm310.

In Project Based Learning Part 1 Andrew Capps talks about one of his projects he had his students do about when the law allowed woman to fight in combat a few years ago and the students had to write letters on why they agree or disagree with that law. Through this project the kids learned Social Studies, Reading comprehension, and Writing. They wrote letters to Congressman Jo Bonner on why or why they did not agree with the new law. I think this is a great way for kids to learn because they are learning about current events, as well as researching about historical women throughout history and their great achievements. It is really great to see what we are actually learning, being applied to in classrooms.

What I learned about iCurio is that it is an educational safe search engine for kids for all types of medias such as audio and videos, as well as texts. It also helps teach the kids to become organized and letting them save anything they find interesting on line and allows them to create folders and organize their research.

Another thing I've learned from Anthony in UseTech is that when it comes to technology, you don't teach it. You let the kids learn through experience as you guide them through a project. One thing I liked was "Don't expect perfection..." He then explains how at the start of a project he lets them learn by one tool at a time and he expects them to make mistakes, but then they can see what they did and apply that and learn from it. So by next week they wouldn't be making the same mistakes and move on to the next tool.

When Anthony is talking about in Additional Thoughts About Lessons, is that you have to focus on your daily plan. You want to grab your students attention, keep them engaged while you're delivering your content and then you measure what they learn. I agree with Anthony because it is very hard to teach students if they find themselves bored and not attentive, so as a teacher I think the best way for you to help your kids learn is to keep them busy and make it something the students can relate to, and find it interesting because if they are excited and are learning hands on, they will be more likely to retain that information.

My Sentence Videos

My sentence:

My passion:

Sunday, February 9, 2014

Blog Post 4

Questions are essential in the learning process and the problem is, is that many students are afraid to ask questions. As teachers we need to encourage students to keep asking questions so that they can fully understand what we are teaching. In the video Questioning Styles and Strategies the author gets all of the students involved into the discussion, asking them "open" questions. He is very encouraging towards the students and shows interests into what they have to say. I believe that is very important for teachers to do. He creates four different types of questions for the students to answer about the book making sure that they not only understand what the book is about but also about what they would like about living in Terabithia and how they pictured it. I think the way he approached this discussion was great because the students are understanding the text and they are also getting to be creative and use their imagination as well, to me I think the kids are more prone to discuss and answer questions if they can have a little fun doing so.

As Ben Johnson said in The Right Way to Ask Questionshe observed many of classrooms of different age levels and noticed that many kids would get by without answering a single question. I can relate to that, back in several of my high school classes there would be only a few students that were actually wanting to answer the questions, many students would try and hide and avoid getting called upon. It's very important to get the kids involved into the discussion and it is hard to keep the attention of every student. Mr. Johnson believes that when asking a question you should state the question, pause for a few seconds then call on a random student. I believe that strategy is one of the most effective ways because students will not know if they will be called on, so they should think of some type of answer. Another point Mr. Johnson touched on is that when you ask general questions to the class such as "Do you all understand?" the kids will either say nothing or just pretend that they do and say yes. As teachers we should avoid these types of questions, but ask them specific questions to see if they really understand and have other students expand on a fellow classmates response.

I also like what the article Three Ways to Ask Better Questions in the Classroom had to say about preparing your questions. It is a great habit to go through your lecture and think of questions the students may ask you and what questions you should ask them. Also I like what he touched on about "Playing with Questions." An example of that is writing a question on the board at the start of class or on a PowerPoint, leaving the students time to think about it.Mr.Weimer says we need to ask good questions and show the students the importance of asking questions, so that they learn to think critically.

Project 4, C4T #1

This weeks C4T I read What do you see? Is it the same as me? I assume it is by Ashley Casey. He talks about perspective and how in his class room he would be observed by the head of his department. The head of department would tell him that his kids weren't active enough or they were talking to each other too much. Where as in Casey's point of view he saw kids collaborating with one another. He gives us an example and it's about a class that breaks up to several groups, one group working on a task together being really loud, another group engaged in an activity, and a few other groups with animated conversations and wandering eyes but the teacher would go by each group and listen to what they had to say and ask them questions. Casey then gave his point of view on how he sees kids working together to achieve a goal and engaging into the five elements of Cooperative Learning(group processing, face-to-face interaction, individual accountability, positive interdependence, and small group and interpersonal skills). He then adds the point of view he assumed his head of department would have had by saying that they were maybe an undisciplined class, or maybe that the teacher was lazy and didn't want to join in. He closes his opinion by saying that we all see things differently depending on what we have gone through, so we shouldn't assume what we see is exactly what is true.

My Reply:

Hello Dr. Casey my name is Joshua Turnipseed and am a student at the University of South Alabama. I am enrolled in edm310 and am assigned to comment on your blog. But I like what you have to say about how we shouldn't assume that what we see is not exactly correct. You're right about how depending on what we go through during our life has an effect on how we perceive different things.

My first C4T was I already believe.. so good luck changing my mind. In this Dr. Casey talks about when he went through school he always had firm beliefs in what he thought Physical Education was to him. He realizes now how when he went through schooling all of the information he skipped over because he didn't think it pertained to him and his thoughts. He also talks about a study between three students who all went through their courses and one student didn't retain nearly any from the program and the other two adopted a couple things from the program but all together they stuck to their beliefs. Casey believes that as a community we must knock down our barriers and be open to new ideas and make sure our programs are challenging and robust

Project #3 Presentation

Sunday, February 2, 2014

Blog Post 3

Peer editing can be a very useful tool for both parties. It is a great way to practice your writing and help your fellow students with his/her writing too. When editing a students paper you should always be careful on your approach and how you word your criticism. Peer editing is not always about the mistakes the person made, you should compliment on their work as well and express what you may or may not have liked about their paper.

There are many rules to follow when it comes to peer editing. The main rule that each of the sources touched on was to stay positive when correcting another student's paper. You must think of how you would like for someone to correct you, not offend them or make them feel bad about themselves. Another important detail in peer reviewing is being specific. Sometimes I find myself being like "Jean the Generalizer." When correcting another student's paper they need to know details, they don't need you to just point out an obvious mistake. You need to point out the problem and offer different ideas that could help make their writing more clear. Lastly no one needs to be a speedy sandy, because if you don't take your time you are more than likely going to miss several errors in their paper. If you're not doing your job then you're only hurting the other students.