Blog Assignment 10

Do You Teach or Educate?

This video really made me think. I have always said "I want to be a teacher", but after watching this video, I want to be an educator. A teacher only passes along information or facts, which is great. We need people to pass along facts to our children. But an educator not only teaches, but is someone to look up to. They are mentors and good role models. They are friends to their students. I have had both teachers and educators throughout school, and I definitely learned more from my educators. I will strive to be the best educator I can be.

Don't Let Them Take the Pencils Home

You wouldn't think that anyone would see a problem with students taking pencils home. This one teacher says that there is a study that proves that students who take the pencils home make lower scores on the standardized tests. Tom questions this research and recognized it as a problem, but he actually did something about it. He came up with projects for the students to do at home. I think we should all be problem solvers like him. It is easy to say "hey, there's a problem" but we need to work hard to fix these problems. 

C4T Summary Post 3

I got assigned to Teacher Tom's blog for this month's assignment. He works with pre-school kids.  His first post that I read was titled "It's Not My School, It's Your School". This talks about his clean up method. He, like most teachers, gets his students to help him clean up after activities done in class, but he makes it fun. He sings a clean up song while beating a drum. He doesn't have to let the kids know that it is clean up time, they just go into action when he starts beating the drum. We all know that if you tell a child "Put the book on the shelf", you are more than likely going to have to repeat yourself several times to get the desired reaction. However, if you say something informal like "The books go on the shelf", you will get a better reaction. I love his clean up method and will use something similar in my classroom and at home when I have children.
His second post that I read was titled "The Trick to Being a Dog". This post was talking about imagination. Kids can crawl around and act like a dog, in their mind, they area dog, but all we adults can see is a child crawling around on their hands and knees. It is really a shame that we can't be who we truly are because we are afraid of what other people with think and other people judge so much. It would be nice if we could go back to the days that nobody judged you for what you did, and if they did, you didn't care what they thought.

Our Smart Board

Blog Assignment 9

At the Teacher's Desk (08-09)

This is a great blog post. It really helped me get a look at what to expect my first year of teaching on my own. Teachers definitely need to realize that the classroom is not centered around them. It is not about how they are doing as a teacher, but about how well the students are learning the material. If the students are not getting the material, then you as a teacher need to change your plans and style rather than trying to drive the information into the students using the same old method that obviously doesn't work for you class. Teachers also have to be lifetime learners. Technology and curriculum is always changing. A lot of teachers are teaching their students the wrong information because they are not up to date on the changes in new textbooks or curriculum.

At the Teacher's Desk (10-11)

There are some great tips in this blog post. Especially about standing out among your fellow teachers and staff. Instead of being the teacher that doesn't want to embrace new ideas, you need to be a teacher that will think about what is best for the student, not what you feel like doing or what will be easier for you to do. Teachers also need to stay focused on the students and what they need instead of trying to impress and "fit in" with other teachers and administration. Teaching is not about making friends, it is about helping students and giving them the education and attention that they deserve.

Blog Assignment 8

This is How We Dream

I have dreamed about many different things, but I can honestly say that I have never dreamed about the kinds of technology that we have today. Technology allows us to do many wonderful things. We can talk to someone half way around the world instantly. We can talk to anyone, anytime we want to, no matter where we are. We can research anything and everything at any time without having to open a book. It is really amazing what we can come up with when we dream.

Blog Post #12

I think Carly's post was excellent! You can tell she has a lot of creativity and she has a passion for literature. She will make a great teacher! I don't think she could have gotten any closer to what Dr. Miller hoped for writing with multi-media. It is obvious that she put a lot of time and effort into this post. I really enjoyed reading it and watching the videos.

EDM 310 is Different

I really enjoyed watching The Chipper Series. It was a great way to show people that you can't always have things your way, and you definitely can't be lazy in college or when you start your career. The Chipper series also makes a great point about procrastination. Procrastination gets you no where. If you procrastinate in school, you will make bad grades. If you procrastinate when you get a job, you will get fired for not meeting deadlines. The best thing to do is to go ahead and get started on it as soon as you get the assignment so it will be done to the best of your ability instead of being thrown together at the last minute. 

EDM 310 for dummies was a fun way to show how stressful this class can be if you don't know what you are doing, but there is help. if you are not technologically literate, there is a book to help complete this course that explains everything--Blogger, Twitter, class syllabus, YouTube, and anything else having to do with EDM310. It obviously helped the girls in the video, so it has to be worth a try. 

Learn to Change, Change to Learn

This video makes some great points. One woman pretty much asks why is it that e-mailing, instant messaging, and text messaging are banned from schools when they are the main ways people, especially teenagers, communicate. We have to change our classrooms in order for students to learn more efficiently. Now, students are learning more through technology. Students need to learn how to find information, validate it, synthesize it, and problem solve with it instead of memorizing facts. 

Project #9b

Blog Assignment 7

My first thought when I saw that I had to watch an hour long lecture was "This is going to be so boring". But I was very wrong. Randy Pausch's lecture was amazing--very inspiring. He talked about his childhood dreams and how important they are. As teachers, we have to encourage students to have childhood dreams and work hard to accomplish those dreams. He also points out that with every goal comes a challenge. But the challenges are not there to stop us from accomplishing our dreams, they are there to let us prove how badly we want our dreams to come true and work hard for what we want. So many kids now are just given everything they want without having to work for it, then when they get our in the real world, they don't know how to work for what they need or want and fail. We need to teach them at an early age to work for what they want.
It is very clear that Randy has a passion for teaching! He knows how to keep students motivated to learn. Learning is very important, but you also have to make it fun to get kids motivated to actually do it. I know I learn a lot more when the lesson is fun and interesting!

C4T 2

My teacher that I was assigned to was Travis Allen. The name of his blog is "The Life of a 21st Century". One of his posts was about the iSchool Initiative's "Donate to Educate" Program. This program allows people to donate their mobile devices or money and they will send it to a classroom in need. In his second post, he talks about Mark Zuckerburg possibly being being the new Bill Gates. He says that one day applications on mobile devices will not be needed. I personally agree with this. One day, all applications are going to be combined into one social networking system. Think about how popular MySpace and Yahoo Messenger was a few years ago. Then Facebook came along and offered much more than the two of them combined could. Now, Facebook is used for everything -- email, instant messaging, sharing pictures and music.

PLN Progress

I have created my PLN, but I am still getting the hand of everything and figuring out what I want on it and how it works. I think once I get it set up and figured out, I am going to love it! It makes things a lot easier having all of my bookmarks on that one page. I can't wait to learn more about it!