Final Reflection for EDM 310

Wow, I probably could have reflected for more than 15 minutes on everything I learned in EDM 310. I decided to focus on the 2 most significant things to me that I learned in this class. From this class I have learned the art of blogging. When I first heard this was a paperless class and that most of my work would be presented on my very blog, I became very nervous. But now seeing that I could teach myself, with the proper guidance, how to blog and how easy it is, I probably will never stop. I believe blogs to be the future of classrooms everywhere. I do realize I am behind in this realization, but I do plan on having a class blog for my first classroom and for most of my teaching career, well until the next best thing comes around. With my blog, I have not only learned how to write and post blogs, but how to comment on other people's blogs, embed videos, and audio onto my blog. Another significant thing that I have learned in this class is the use of Google. When I originally thought of Google, I thought of it as strictly a search engine. Google has so much more to offer. We learned this semester how to make a Google presentations, how to use Google forms, and I got to use Gmail for the first time as well. I have already used my new knowledge of Google Surveys in my sorority to get feedback. I will continue to use Google forms in the future. I believe in a technological sense, I am no longer narrow minded about what technology has to offer me. Facebook is no longer a place where I just look at people's photos and write silly comments on other people's walls, but Facebook is now a social network that I need to make better use of. I will definitely approach teaching differently because of EDM 310. Kids today are growing up in the classroom with nothing but technology. So why would I try to revert the students back to pen and paper? Teachers need to be constant learners. Meaning when teaching styles change, the teachers should change their styles. When technology changes, the teachers should learn and progress forward. We no longer need to be afraid of technology. The things I need to work on to be an incredible teacher in the 21st century is time management, staying focused, and using my PLN to my benefit. Through the past eight weeks of this class my time management was not the best. I started out strong, but then was easily distracted. I strayed away from my plan. I cannot be easily distracted when I am a teacher, because if I stray off topic so will my students. Staying focused and having great time management skills I believe go hand in hand in my opinion. So ifIi am focused then my time management skills should follow. My PLN has been very useful to me over the past couple of weeks. I have everything I need on it. I made my PLN my home screen when I get on the internet, so that way I have everything I need at my fingertips. I have already set my mom up on symbaloo and helped her create her very own PLN. One thing I did not know was that my mother has actually been blogging for over a year now! So she helped me blog and I helped her with her social network.

The second reflection was just as overwhelming as the first. So much information flooded my brain on what I would share with someone who is taking this class in the fall. So I decided to make a list of 10 things I find to be the most important. They are in no particular order.

1. Be prepared to spend a lot of additional time outside of EDM 310.

2. Familiarize yourself with Facebook, Twitter, and Google.

3. Learn how to PROOFREAD yourself!

4. Come to class with an open mind.

5. Go to the lab time, even though it is not required.

6. Make sure Dr. Strange and his lab assistants know you by name and face.

7. Exercise great time management skills.

8. Make friends with people in your class.

9. Check the EDM 310 Blog daily.

10. Even though it is a lot of hard work be sure to have fun!

I have enjoyed this class over the summer and look forward to participating in the alumni blog!

Summative Project

Blog Post 12

M-Cubed ISTE Video

This was very interesting watching the children use the computer to design and create a small box. They were engaged, active, and excited. Multiple skills were learned and their creativity was expressed in color, form, and design. The main little boy was enthralled with the laminating process and the cutting process of the machines. He also enjoyed folding and showing the audience his creation, his box. He exhibited pride in his work.

M-Cubed1

This one showed more of the computer part of the design, choosing color and shape. I saw different logos being used that are familiar to children like Coca-Cola. One boy was excited about the print out and pretty excited when the cutting program worked on his picture. He formed a nice red and white box and displayed it proudly.

M-Cubed2

The children were very interested in the computer program. They could rotate, enlarge and shrink their design to suit their needs. Once it was printed they could put different tops on their design. The main boy seemed a bit skeptical of his success, but I was impressed with the trial and error shown through the other prints laying around. Also I was impressed with the different colors and shapes and sizes being printed, cut, and folded.

Digital Fabrication: Through the Eyes of a Five Year Old Boy

This was so precious. He was completely tuned in to the whole process of creating, designing and printing his flat box. Then he was learning and doing the programming to cut the piece out. He had a house created with a similar program in his hand, while he bounced up and down waiting for his cut out to emerge. Then he folded it and taped it together. He was quite happy.

Mr. McClung His Second Year

I enjoyed reading this blog. Mr McClung expressed his challenges and his tactics in addressing and handling those trials. Having his students participate in helping him hand out papers and having them guest post on the class blog show his adaptability in dealing with time constraints and stress.

I like that he admitted having issues with the administration yet chose to rise above and still keep doing his best for the students. Despite the challenges from his boss or co-workers, he put the students first. I like he felt humble after a hard year, yet still was passionate about his chosen profession. I also liked how he kept trying to change his teaching style in dealing with teaching Social Studies/History; a subject he had never taught before. He wanted to keep the lessons from being boring.

He is a young teacher and I will be a young teacher soon. I can take his lessons learned and his advice forward into my teaching experiences, and blend and mold them into my own teaching style. His best advice was to be open to new ideas and keep from becoming stagnant. Adaptability and flexibility and passion are key.

First PLN Post

I started a couple of weeks ago on my PLN. I am still figuring out how to work it. I decided to use symbaloo since I watched the video with the girl explaining how she used hers and it seemed the easiest way to create my PLN. So far on my PLN I have Facebook (duh), my new twitter account (still trying to figure out how that can benefit me), my Google e-mail, my Jag e-mail, my blog url, and a couple of teacher blogs I am following. Hopefully in the next couple of weeks their will be more to come!

Blog Post 11

First graders in Ms. Cassidy's Class

I am so behind on technology. I thought I was doing pretty good then I watched this video where first graders are blogging, meaning 6 year olds are BLOGGING! Not only are they blogging, they are doing it with ease. I watched in amazement as the first graders of Ms. Cassidy's class talked about how they used blogging to help with their writing. When I heard this I thought back to my first grade classroom and how I learned to write. We learned how to write on those big legal pads. My teacher, Mrs. Evans, would stand at the front of the room with a huge legal pad and then in front of each individual student we had our own legal to copy everything that Mrs. Evans did. I find now that blogging would have been a much better way to learn to write, rather than copying exactly what the teacher did. Great job to Ms. Cassidy's first grade class on being technologically friendly!

Teach Someone

I tried to teach Sarah Johnson how to make a paper snowflake, she did not succeed the first time. But we tired again after the video and she did succeed!

Google Forms Complete

Interview with Sarah Johnson

Comments 4 Kids Assignment 4

This week for Comments 4 kids I got the chance to watch a video on Halogens of the periodic table. I know just saying the words periodic table makes me become instantly bored. Instead this video about halogens used sock puppets and interesting accents to grab and keep my attention. I actually learned some things about halogens. Such as, that halogens can be produced in all 3 states of matter and that they are highly reactive. Making education fun, entertaining, and technologically friendly will grab the students attention and essentially make them learn. You too can learn more about halogens at this website, http://blog.benwildeboer.com/2010/take-2-student-produced-video-projects/ .

Blog Post 10

A 7th Grader's Personal Learning Environment

This 7th grader has a lot more going on on her PLE than i do on my PLN. And she is only in 7th Grade! I like the way she had everything organized on her PLE, she kept her school work and personal stuff separate. She used her PLN to look up what her class would be doing for that day for her science lesson. I thought that was very interesting for a 7th grade class to be doing at a very young age. I started checking what I would be covering in class when I got to college not grade school. I guess the only setback for that would be what if all the 7th grade students did not have computers? How would you handle that?

Two Questions That Can Change Your Life

Talk about a video to make you sit and think for a while. The two questions mentioned in this video is "What is your sentence?" and "Was I better than I was yesterday?" These are two very powerful questions. So I sat and pondered for a while to what MY sentence would be. I believe my sentence would be, "I will strive to always try harder the next time." This class has taught me a lot about trial and error.

Blog Post 9

Morgan Bayda and Video by Dan Brown

After reading the post made by Morgan and the video she shared with us by Dan Brown, I had to sit and think for a while. What am i doing in college? Am I sitting in a classroom being lectured for hours at a time? Yes. Are some of my teachers reading facts from the book to me? Yes. Am I making flashcards for some of my classes so I can repeat facts on a test then receive a grade? Yes. After thinking about these facts that are very true about my education, I became sad and angry. I cannot exactly drop out of school tomorrow because I need a degree to teach, but when I graduate I can make a difference in the classroom. When I graduate I want to be able to remember a lot of the things I learned in this class. This class is the future of education.

ALEX
Alabama's Learning Exchange

I have actually been on the ALEX website before for a previous class. I really like this website and I have bookmarked on my delicious account. One of the perks of the ALEX website is the lesson plan tool. You can look up lesson plans on this website for your classroom. After clicking on the lesson plan tool you can then select what subject you are teaching and what grade level you are teaching. I decided to play around on it and chose mathematics and grade level 3. After clicking search it came up with a lesson plan for rounding numbers. I clicked on that lesson plan, and listed on the lesson plan was a list of materials, preparation work that the teacher would have to do, the standards of teaching it covered, and a step-by-step instruction. This would be a great tool for my first couple of years for teaching until I got comfortable in making lesson plans.

C4K 3

Mr McClung's May 13th Post Lessons Learned

Mr. McClung in this particular post talked about at the end of each week he comes up 3 lessons learned in great education to talk about at the end of each week. He said that it is sometimes to hard to come up with three ideas, so sometimes he lets his students come up with some topics to talk about. Some ideas that were submitted, that were my personal favorites, were Nurtisystem+lunchables for grown-ups, two for flinching, if your bored do handstands, and don't try to slide down a dry slip n slide. I thought his students were very creative in choosing these ideas.

You can visit this blog at http://mcclungsworld.com/2010/05/13/lessons-learned-30/

Blog Post 8

What I've Learned This Year" by Mr. McClung

I found this blog post to be extremely insightful. I constantly think to myself, what kind of teacher will I be? I think my classroom will have an atmosphere with a combination of structure and "go with the flow". So when I read his tip on you need to be flexible to be a teacher, that meant a lot to me. This summer I also took classroom management. I learned that we may have this homerun lesson planned for the next day and get to class and nothing works. Teachers need to know how to regroup and figure out a different way to get the information across if the class is not willing to corporate.

Another great tip, don't be afraid of technology. I have learned that tip from this class. This generation has grown up on computers and the internet. They do not know how to do research anymore in a library, but they can tell you how to use a search engine. Teachers need to equip themselves with the right tools to teach this generation of students in the classroom. So that means we need to be technology friendly.

Mr. McClung ended it with the best tip, never stop learning. I believe people think when they graduate college or high school, they will just stop learning. They will not have to put forth any effort into anything else ever again. WRONG! I learn things everyday, and to be a teacher I will be open to learning from my students everyday.

C4K 2

This week I got to read about a student from New Zealand. Room 11 of the PT England Scribes was learning about how to write book reports. This report was about mice. They talked about how mice were animals, lived in warm places, humans did not like mice, and that mice have four legs and a tail. They ended the report with that people do not like mice and that we use mouse traps to catch them to get rid of them. I thought the report was good and included facts and opinions. You can visit their blog at this site, http://pesscribes.blogspot.com/2010/06/mice.html.

Comment 4 Teachers 4, 5, and 6

Comments 4 Teacher Assignment 4

For the next couple of weeks I get to follow Steve Anderson's blog. In his June 27 2010 post he is talking about social medias and relationships. He attended a conference where he had not met most of the people face to face. He had built a relationship with them through his social medias and his personal learning network. His wife was a bit hesitant about attending th conference with him because she thought it would awkward because her husband had never met these people face to face. He explained to her that it would not be uncomfortable these people were like old friends. So when they attended the conference it was just like he said, being with a group of old friends.

Comments 4 Teacher Assignment 5

In Steve Anderson's July 3rd post he talks about his final thoughts from the conference he attended in Denver, iste 2010. He talked about many aspects of the conference that he enjoyed. The places at the conference he mentioned that appealed the most to me was Bloggers Cafe, and the Social Butterfly Lounge. At the Bloggers Lounge he said no much blogging happened, but connections were made between technologically savvy people around the world. He also said the Cafe was very centrally located so you could not help but stop by the Bloggers Cafe. The Social Butterfly Lounge was new to the conference this year. This lounge was used to give mini sessions on social networks, like twitter, Facebook, and ipod apps. I feel like these mini sessions would interest me because I like to use these social networks, but I probably use them in the most basic way. I would like to learn more.

Comments 4 Teachers Assignment 6

In Steve Anderson' s July 5th post he talks about again things he learned at iste 2010. The title of the post is, What makes a personal learning network valuable to you? He says that he gets this question all the time. The thing about PLNs, is that they are personal, Anderson states. I agree with this statement. What makes my PLN so great is that it is catered to me and no one else. I decide what I see and do not see. He interviewed several people at the conference about PLNs and social networking. They were all for it. One of people mentioned that having a PLN and twitter account accessible to you is like having the smart kid in class always sitting next to you. I believe that to be completely correct. I am still learning about my PLN and twitter, but I will continue learning about them after this class to help with my future at a teacher.

Blog Post 7

Randy Pausch's Last Lecture

I immediately wanted to tear up when he introduced himself and what he was going to be speaking about at Carnegie Mellon. Randy Pausch is dying of cancer. He let the audience know that he was not going to talk about cancer, he was not gong to talk about his family, he was not going to talk about religion and what he was going to talk about was his childhood dreams. I was immediately taken in by his introduction and his outlook on his situation. He did not want to be pitied, he wanted to be heard.

My favorite childhood dream he talked about was wanting to play in the NFL. Pausch did not get to actually play in the NFL, but he shared an inspirational story about his coach. Pausch said he was probably one of the smallest people on his team. Him and his team came to their first practice and their coach did not have any footballs. A teammate asked his coach where the footballs were? He simply asked them a couple of questions in response; How many players on the field at once? 22. How many people touch the ball at once? 1. So the coach told his team they were doing to learn what the other 21 players were doing without the football on the field. I think this "strategy" would be helpful in the classroom. Teachers do not need to cater to 1 or 2 students, teachers need to cater to all the students in the classroom. Teachers need to know how each student learns and then teach them.

The second part of the story was that his coach rode him hard during practices. Then the assistant coach took Pausch aside and said that it was good that the coach rode him during practice because that means his coach had not given up on him yet. Randy's coach thought he was better than what he was giving, so he pushed him to do better. Teachers often give up on some of the students in their classroom. Teachers will lower their standards of their students and then the students will start to notice that they are useless in the classroom, because their teachers think they are useless. Teachers need patience in their classroom, so they do not give up on their students.

All through the video Pausch talks about a theory the "head fake". The head fake is when you learn something that you did not think you were going to learn. When he talked about his Virtual Reality course he taught at Carnegie Mellon he again talked about the head fake. He wanted his students to come up with a virtual reality world. The students were not only learning how to use the computer program but also, how to work with a team of students, how to write computer software, and how to have fun.

He closed his video with how we need to have fun with everything we do. He said to never "lose your childhood wonder". When we are children everything is possible. I believe we should keep our child like mindset in teaching, so we as educators can make teaching fun.

Smartboard Project

TimeToast Instructional Timeline

Blog Post 6

This Is How We Dream Parts 1 and 2:
Richard Miller makes great points within his two videos. When I think of learning and finding research I instantly think of a library. When I was in high school four years ago and we had to do research papers we always had to have some ungodly amount of sources both from the internet and books, but mostly books. Teachers need to get with the program that anything we can find in the library can now be found on the internet as well. In fact you can find more resources online and not just written information. Richard Miller also stated that the type of creation and way of presenting information has not been invented yet , but someone needs to invent it. Teachers need to let the books go and get online. Get rid of the paper and get on word processors.

The Networked Student by Wendy Drexler
Is this the future of teachers? I believe it is. We as teachers need to more guide our students through learning rather than hand feed them the information then wait for them to regurgitate the information back to us. That method of teaching does not help anyone. Connectivism is the future. PLNs are the future. I am still trying to figure out how my PLN will work and benefit me. But this class will be my GUIDE and help me establish a PLN that will help me for years to come.

Micheal Wesch Video
This was not my favorite video to watch because I found it rather boring actually. What he highlighted in the video that I found to be remotely interesting was his take on social networking. We put things on the internet that we would probably would not talk about with our actual friends. Yet we post it on the internet for the whole world to see. Dr. Strange said in class that once we put it on the internet it is their forever. When I think of this I think of the website post secret. People post their deepest darkest secrets online. They are looking for responses or maybe even help. Internet and social networking is a way for people to connect in ways that you could sometimes not connect with people face to face.

C4K 1

The blog I was assigned was a girl named Bree who lives in New Zealand. The post I commented was about how she competed in a competition called Mastermind. The competition consists of having to read 15 books and reread them. After rereading these books you have to be able to respond to questions about the books setting, author and illustrations, characters, and ISPBN (International Standard Public Book Number).I asked her how time consuming it was to read and reread all 15 books. I also encouraged her to read just for fun as well.