Project Two

To begin my personal learning network, I chose Symbaloo! Symbaloo allows for easy access to webpages I find useful. To start off, I arranged and color coordinated them into sections: daily use, EDM 310 use, and classroom/educational use. In the daily use/pink section, you will find things such as gmail, twitter, and amazon. These are the sites I use on a daily basis, and I also find them to be assets in my learning network. Blogspot and Google Drive will both be found in the EDM310/teal section. Both of these site are a HUGE influence in EDM 310 and I also plan on using them after this class so I included them in my personal learning network. In classroom/yellow section, sites that I plan on using in my own classroom one day and sites that I find quiet interesting will be found. These sites include Education News, TeacherTube, and Discovery Education. As I progress through this semester in EDM, I will be adding to the previous tiles on my Symbaloo!

Project Eight

Blog Post Six

Asking Questions...

What do we need to know about asking questions to be an effective teacher?
1. Teachers are Allowed to Ask Questions!

A teacher asking students questions...? HOUSTON, WE HAVE A PROBLEM! It seem that we have this question asking thing backwards.. Shouldn't the students be the ones asking the questions!? Actually the answer to this question is yes AND no. Yes, the students should be asking questions, but no, they should not be the only ones asking them. I'm sure we all experienced "that teacher" who had the their mind set that they knew everything there is possible to know. WRONG! There isn't a single person in the world who knows all there is to know, and sometimes teachers portray that they do know everything. This is a very good reason in itself to ask questions because we DO NOT want our students feeling like we think we know everything. 2.Get Your Students Involved by Asking the Right Questions!

The main reason behind Project Based Learning is to get the students involved. Asking questions is a way to initiate this involvement. But, as a teacher you must know the right questions to ask in order to get what you are looking for when you ask them. Often in classrooms, the responses teachers get when asking questions are "Yes" or "I don't know". From Joanne Chesley's video, Asking Better Questions, we learn that there are two types of questions: opened ended questions and close ended questions. A close ended question allows students to give such feed backs as the "Yes" or the "I don't know" responses. When teachers ask these close ended questions, they are getting exactly what we asked for when we don't allow thoughtful kinds of responses, as Chesley states. In contrast, an open ended question gives the person answering the question scope to give the information that seems to them to be appropriate. These types of questions allow for students to be thoughtfully engaged in their responses.
3. Ways to Ask Better Questions! Now that we know what questions we want to ask, we need to learn how to ask these questions better. From Maryellen Weimer's blog post, Three Ways to Ask Better Questions in the Classroom, we learn the three ways to ask questions better. The first way to asking questions better that she talks about it "Preparing the Question". When teachers do not prepare their questions, they tend to get those confused looks from there students. Go figure, we ask something that just pops into our head, most of the time not making any sense. I would be just as confused as the students! But when we prepare, we are able to provide the students with clear, intriguing questions. The second way to ask better questions to "Play with the Questions. When we play with the question, leaving it unanswered, the students are then allowed to open their minds and think about the question. Usually after the question is answered, the students tend to let it slip from their minds. But when allowed to think about it without having it directly answered, we see more thoughtful responses. And the final way to ask better questions that Weimer talks about is "preserving the Question." When students ask good questions, share them with other students/classes! While we do not all think along the same lines, it is very interesting to see what others are thinking and it often opens our minds to more ways of thinking.


Now that I have read about the right questions to ask and better ways to ask them, I will be using these techniques in my own classroom! I want my students to be open minded, therefore I will ask open ended questions!

This is My Passion

This is My Sentence

Blog Post Five

Project # 3 Presentation

Blog Post Four

Why Podcasts?
Before this assignment, that was a question I would have asked as well. But when I sat down and begin to think about it I realized that we are in an "Information Age". An age where everything is driven by technology, including our education system. So really, why podcasting? To begin to understand the answer to that question, we must first understand what podcasts are. The term podcast is derived from two words: "broadcast" and "pod". Pod coming from iPod, because podcasts are often listened to on portable media players. Podcasting is a converged medium bringing together audio. People use podcasts in various ways, including the way Langwitches describes it being used. Podcasting with first graders? You have got to be kidding me!? That thought exactly is what was running though my head as I began to reading 1st-graders-create-their-own-read-along-audiobook . But when I read through to the end and saw how well the students responded to it, I was amazed! If you are still asking yourself "Why Podcasting", just explore the benefits Joe Dale describes in The benefits of podcasting in the classroom .
How Do We Do A Podcast?
Anyone with an Internet connection and some inexpensive audio equipment can produce a podcast and make it available online. First, you must decide your reasoning for podcasting. People use podcasting for numerous things. Some have something they want to express, others use podcasting as a way to draw attention and if you are like Langwithces, you use your podcasting for first graders. After making that decision, refure to iTunes Making a Podcats where you will find step by step instructions on creating your own podcast!

C4T

Information is Beautiful: Jenny Luca

In her "School's out Friday: Information is Beautiful" post, Jenny Luca explains David McCandless's website "Information is Beautiful." She talks about how she shared this video with her class and how they were blown away with what they saw. The way the information is presented grabbed her students attention, in the same way the website grabs your attention. She is going to allow her students to use this same visual in a presentation they will be doing on their own.

My Response
I explained how this post blew my mind! I literally had to watch it three different times to get a complete intake on it! To see what the U.S spends money on is actually quite interesting, but it is even more interesting to see find important to spend money one, such a video games. The fact that the actual cost of the war in Iraq was that much more is astonishing! I agree with your students, using the visuals to explain the text helped me understand what I was looking at so much more. As I was navigating through the shared website, “Information is Beautiful, I found myself clicking on the links just to read about them. A round of applause to David McCandless for such an awesome page!! Twenty minutes later, I was still looking around the website!!

"The Type" and "The Crickets Have Arthritis": Jenny Luca

In this post, Jenny Luca talks about how she shared these videos with her students, along with other spoken word poetry performances. She says that she hopes the video "The Type" will plant a seed in her student's lives and one day they will return to it. During the video "The Crickets have Arthritis" there was no sound other than Shane's voice as her students watched.

My Response Wow! As I search for words to say, I wipe the tears from my eyes. Both videos were AMAZING! I am utterly speechless at the moment. Sarah Kay’s video is definitely a video every girl, including myself, needs to hear. What an awesome message! I am so very glad you share this with your students, I wish I had a teacher share this with me when I was younger! Shane Koyczan‘s video brought tears to my eyes! Just like you said, for the six minutes and forty six seconds he spoke, there was not a sound! I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen! You know its sad, like Shane brought to our attention, how often we take this life given to us for granted. But when we come across people like Lewis, fighting for each breath he takes, we begin to become a little more thankful. Why does it take people like this to open our minds? Why does it take life bringing you to your knees before you look up and realize you have been life like you are promised tomorrow. Why does it take people like Lewis to make us realize we ALL have a purpose in this life, and we don’t have forever to find it?Thank you, so much, for sharing this!

Blog Post Three

Peer Editing? Now that is something that will get any student a little anxious! Of course my stomach turned up-side down when I found out we would be "Peer Editing", but that is because I didn't completely understand the right way to correct my peers. Often, when students are faced with this, they tend to forget some very important aspects of "Peer Editing." Just like the video, Writing Peer Review Top 10 Mistakes states, you don't want to be a Mean Margret or a Defensive Dave. And most of the time, whether we realize it or not, the personalities of these two characters is what we portray.

The most important thing students forget, when being a Mean Margret, is compliments. If a student approaches another student and has nothing but negative things to say, the student being approached is going to take it as if this student is being mean. Whether the student was intending to be mean or not, his/her fellow peer sees it that way. If the student would have started with a compliment, telling the fellow peer something good about what they did, the Mean Margret personality could have been avoided.

Another way of avoiding the Mean Margret situation would be to ALWAYS STAY POSITIVE! No matter what situation you are faced with in peer editing, always keep a positive attitude. If you are the student giving the correction or the student taking the correcctions, STAY POSITIVE!



Being a Defensive Dave is something everyone can relate to. I mean who likes to be told they are wrong? But what if we didn't look at it this way, as being told you were wrong? When most students are being corrected by another student or peer, they seems to take everything personal. Instead of getting defensive, like Dave does in the video, what if we tried to be more opened minded about being corrected. Like Dr. Strange always says "There is no one in this world that knows everything." Which is true, so maybe what the student/peer is trying to say helps out a lot? If students were more opened to listening to other students, there would be a lot more learning going on.

It takes a lot of practice, just like with anything, to get the hang of editing your peers the correct way. If students knew the correct way, I don't believe "Peer Editing" would have such a negative connotation. I know that I feel much more comfortable and a little less nervous about it now!

Blog Post Two

Hilary Thames, Haley Smith and Brantley Spillman: Dr. Dancealot

Hands-on learning is the key to success. Dr. Dancealot’s strategy for teaching dance was lecture- and textbook-based alone. In order for a student to learn the skills needed to become a better dancer, he or she must dance. Without hands-on learning, students will never achieve perfection in his or her subject. It occurs to me that dance uses muscle memory for repeated steps or moves. No instruction that exclusively uses words can communicate balance or rhythm. A student needs to attempt these steps to train their muscles for learning to be achieved. We must make mistakes in order to gain knowledge in the classroom. Dr. Dancealot needs to regroup and attack his dance sessions from a different angle. By using modern day technology, these students could research different dance styles and then put their findings to work on the actual dance floor.
I believe hands-on learning is the best way for two reasons: students gain both experience and focus. First, students get experience doing a task that reinforces a lesson taught. If you were trying to teach someone how to ride a bike, you would not lecture, but place him or her on a bike to learn. Second, by doing a task, a student’s full attention is required. Many students that only listen and/or watch a task have wandering minds that hinder the learning process. When someone’s full attention is focused on a task, they will get more from the lesson.


Hilary Thames: "Harness Your Student’s Digital Smarts"

I think that it is wonderful that Mrs. Davis is teaching her students ways to maneuver through the technology of today! By allowing her students to learn how to use wikis, blogs, podcasts, and virtual worlds, she is teaching them things that will help in succeeding in the real world. In today’s times, also known as the information age, everything revolves around technology. We, as a generation, desire instant access to limitless information such as GPS, internet, apps, and social networking . From something as simple as applying for a job, to the more extreme mapping the entire world by satellites in outer space, we find ourselves faced with it.

There is no way around it. Everything that is happening today, has something to do with technology. I mean, the cell phones we carry around with us daily provides us with access to anything we want within a split second. If our students are not being taught technology somehow in the classrooms, they are going to be so far behind when they graduate and begin searching for careers. Mrs. Davis is providing her students with numerous ways to expand their potential for success. No one can begin to manage in the career world, in whatever field they are in, without having basic knowledge of technology. I also agree with the approach she takes with teaching the class. You won’t find her in the front of the classroom lecturing to her students on how to post a blog or how to access wikis. Instead, she allows her students to work and practice on their own. This allows the students to become familiar with what they are working on. Students are encountering problems and figuring out solutions themselves.


Haley Smith: The Networked Student
After watching the video, I realized how important technology has become in the school system. Many schools incorporate connectivism concepts without realizing it. Connectivism is going to resources other than a textbook to find information. Learning occurs as a part of social networking using many diverse connections. Understanding these resources is a vital part of being in a classroom, because it gives more information than a textbook or teacher. An illustration of connectivism is the recent commercial showing a child who has to give a speech and asks Siri on his cell phone, “What is glossophobia?” Siri then demonstrates the multiple resources on the Internet for speeches. The student is able to deliver his speech without fear.
The Networked Student goes through many different resources that can be used for many purposes. The Personal Learning Network gives students a place to put valid websites to use while doing research. Google Scholar provides accurate journal entries. The school resource library is a great source for entries such as those provided by Google Scholar. Whereas, social media offers resources such as Skype, blogs, and various types of wikis. Students can now connect to people worldwide! Two other types of resources that were mentioned in this video were mP3 and iTunes downloads for lectures from students and/or professors around the world. Additionally, these sources offer documentaries on many topics. All of these resources for connectivism are great tools. I really enjoyed the statement it “never hurts to ask.” With all of these resources, help is at your fingertips. You just have to look for it.
The final question posed by this video was, “if a student has all of these resources, why is a teacher needed?” The answer is a very important part of connectivism. In the different examples below is an explanation of why a teacher is important in the idea of connectivism. The Networked Student details the role of a teacher. First, he or she teaches the student how to build a network to find different opportunities. Second, teachers are used as a guide when a student requires help. Third, teachers instruct students on how to communicate properly. Without teachers, students would be lost. It would be difficult for a student to learn if there was no guidance, dedication, or organization of ideas that a teacher provides.


Brantley Spillman: What Does it Mean to Teach in the 21st Century?
Imagine Stars Wars. Imagine words and thoughts approaching you from the screen. This was my impression of K. Roberts’ video. His opinion of information: “virtually limitless information.” His opinion of teachers: “not the main source of knowledge.” His new role for a teacher: “validate information, synthesize information, leverage information, communicate information, collaborate information with others.”
Roberts’ idea of teaching in the 21st century puts a new emphasis on the teacher’s role in the classroom. Teachers will no longer be the only source of knowledge for his or her students. However, teachers will remain necessary in the classroom. Teachers, in the past, have lectured and had reading assignments for students to memorize in order to recite back on a test. Alternatively, teaching in the 21st century will evolve into a structure in which students have tools to gather information on their own by doing research. (e.g. google, blogs, and podcasting).The teacher will now serve as a guide to interpret and apply this newly found information.
I responded very strongly to the positions expressed in this video. Many educators have feared technology and all the internet has to offer. Their fear is that a “teacher” will become obsolete if information is freely available on the Internet for a student to gather himself or herself. However, I feel it is time for our educational programs to accept the new tools technology has to offer and redefine our role as an educator. I look forward to embracing all new methods of teaching. Nothing lasts forever, our old school techniques are outdated and it is now time for change.