Blog Assignment #11

Little Kids, Big Potential
The students in the video Little kids, Big potential are from Moose Jaw, Canada. These students are first grader's in Ms.Cassidy's class who are able to blog, and search the internet on their own. The student's love their blogs because they get to read the comments that people from all over leave for them. In this video, the students show that they know the rules of blogging by saying them out loud to the camera. The student's explain how they know how to use their teacher's website, and that they are able to access their blogs outside of school.Ms. Cassidy's first grade class, is a great example of a project based learning environment. These students are able to read and write on blogs, use their nintendo DS, and create WIKI's.

Skype Interview with Ms. Casssidy
Ms. Cassidy began using computers 10 years ago when her class was given five computers. These computers were only allowed internet access, she could not download any programs to them. The computers started out as a simple center time, but Ms.Cassidy wanted to use them for more. She began to look into other ways to use the computers and found blogging and web pages. Ms. Cassidy starts her students out slow, she explains that it usually takes her six year olds the whole year to fully understand the computers. The administrator at Ms. Cassidy's school is not interested in the growing use of technology, but she is able to continue because of the technology coordinator who helps Ms. Cassidy incorporate more technology into her classroom. Before her student's are able to use the internet, Ms. Cassidy sends home a permission slip. Each parent must sign the slip stating that they are allowing their children to use the internet under supervision.

Ms. Cassidy explains how as teachers we need to change with the ever changing generations. This generation has never known anything but technology, so we must adapt and enhance their education with the tools they are familiar with. She also explains how the parents get involved with their students blogging because they can read about what their students are learning. The students in her class love writing their posts because they know somebody somewhere else is going to read them. Students in EDM310 are only some of the readers of these students blogs. They are able to see how many times their pages have been viewed and where in the world they were viewed from.

I found this video very educational, it was neat to see the different ways the students were using technology in their classroom. Ms. Cassidy is doing a great job enhancing her students learning with technology. I plan to use blogging when I become a teacher because it gives the students a chance to communicate with students from all over the world. I also really like the idea of having a class blog where the parents can go and see what their students are supposed to be doing and learning. I would love to ask Ms. Cassidy what she would do if she had a parent who did not want their student to participate in the online blogging. I feel they should still be given the chance to write and use the computers but instead keep the posts private or anonymous.

C4T #3

Post 1
The third Teacher I was assigned was David Truss. Mr.Truss is the Vice Principal for District #43 in Coquitlam, BC, Canada. Mr.Truss' blog is titled Pair-A-Dimes for Your Thoughts, in the post Shifting Learning Mr.Truss talks about the 2013 Reform Symposium Conference that he was asked to present at. In his presentation Mr.Truss explains the goals of the iHub program, and for his school. Their goal is to create "an inquiry-driven, collaborative, and engaging learning environment." Mr.Truss wants to succeed in this by giving the students the opportunity to choose their own topics with guidance from teachers. Mr.Truss wants his school to focus on inquiry, voice, audience, community, leadership, play and network. With these 7 components Mr.Truss feels he can encourage his students to be involved in each others learning and also involve the community in encouraging the students to continue to learn.

The 2013 RSCON features over 100 presentations from around the world, Mr.Truss writes about 3 other the presentations he has watched so far. He wrote about Jackie Gerstein, Ed.D, whose presentation was on using social media to engage in personalized and relevant professional development.Second, Mr.Truss writes about the presentation by Chris Wejr. Wejr's presentation is about giving the teachers time and resources they need to learn, explore and connect during the school day. The third presentation Mr.Truss wrote about was by Kelly Tenkely,Michelle Baldwin, and Nancy Babbitt. This presentation is about "cultivating curious learners" and inquiry-based learning.

Post 2
In this post Mr. Truss talks about his Personal Learning Network, and how he has not been connected for awhile. He explains how it did not have a huge impact on his life to not be connected, but he missed it. He explains how he misses his network when he is not connected because then he is not constantly learning and changing, he is simply standing still. In this post Mr. Truss gives a few snippets of some of his must read blogs and I found a few of them very interesting. He explains how he starts out with a need for a presentation and then goes to his PLN and comes up with ideas. The snippets he used from his must read blogs, were about disagreement and how it should be used to enhance learning and teaching.
This post really showed me that a good PLN is worth having, because it challenges the way you think and shows you information you may not normally think to use. Mr. Truss does a great job explaining how he uses his PLN and explaining why it is important to have a PLN. My comment to Mr. Truss was that, he showed me how too really use a PLN and that my PLN needs a lot of work if it is going to compare to his one day.

C4K Summary for October

Mara
My first student for October's name is Mara. Mara is in Ms.Eppele's 6th grade class. In her blog post title The Book is Awesome!!!, Mara gives her opinion on Melody's new sister. It was really great to read Mara's post because she was so excited about the book and the information she was learning while reading. In my comment to Mara I told her how happy it makes me to see a student who is so excited about reading, and that she has very good writing skills.

Lizzie
My second student for October's name is Lizzie.She is in Mrs.Mclean's class. Lizzie's assignment was to choose a prompt from a list on her teacher's blog and write a post. Lizzie's post was titled What I like in a friend and it was a list of things she looks for in a friend. In my comment to Lizzie I told her that her list of things she looks for in a friend is a very strong list. Her list included someone who could be funny but also serious when necessary, someone who doesn't lie, and someone who likes her for who she is. I also encouraged Lizzie to never be ashamed of who she is because I feel that is one of the most important things a child should learn. Lizzie's writing skills were very nice. She used full sentences in her post and did not have any spelling errors.

Ben
My third student for October's name is Ben. He is in Mr. Warren Grieve's 5th grade class at Medbury School for Boys in ChristChurch, New Zealand. Ben is an excellent writer, he has very good grammar and writing skills for only being in 5th grade. His post was about their speech which is called Kiwi. Ben included very interesting facts on his post, and seemed to understand what he was saying in his post. The comment I left for Ben told him how excellent his writing skills were and that he should keep up the good work.

Mishaal
My fourth student for October was Mishaal. Mishaal is in Ms.Horst's 7th grade Language arts class in Oakland Ontario, Canada. Mishaal's post was about the book his class is reading titled Out of Mind, this is also the title of his post. Mishaal does a great job explaining what he has learned from the book, and how you should not judge people based on appearance or how they speak. Mishaal uses some details from the book to explain why you shouldn't judge someone. I told Mishaal that I agree with not judging people, I also agreed with the comment that Ms.Hurst posted saying that it was a great post but could use more specific details.

Project #14-Lesson Plan #2

For my lesson plan assignment, I created a Language Arts lesson plan. The lesson plan is for students in the fifth grade. The students will read the novel Sarah, Plain and Tall by Patricia MacLachlan. The lesson starts with an introduction about the 1900s and how people would communicate and travel. There are a few assignments for this lesson plan, but the main assignment is a group project. The students will create a Prezi after using iCurio to research the Northeast states and their flowers, animals and weather. The timeline for this project is approximately sixty minutes a day for two weeks. On Thursday, students will be given a 20-25 question test on the novel. The lesson plan ends on the second Friday when the students present their assignments to the class, and their parents. The students will also watch the movie Sarah, Plain and Tall.

Here is my website for my individual lesson plan assignments.

Blog assignment #10

I really enjoyed Randy Pausch’s lecture. I loved his attitude and how positive he was even though he was battling cancer. Randy’s lecture did a very good job engaging the audience with questions and jokes. I really liked the quote Randy said about dealing with a situation.

"We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand"

This goes right along with his positive outlook on life and his situation. This lecture is centered on following your childhood dreams, and how it is possible to achieve if you truly want them. Dr. Paush says “Brick walls are there to show us how badly we want something.” This is a great quote that says if you really want something do not let the obstacles stop you.

In this lecture Dr.Paush talks about how you should always act like Tigger in life. With this, he means that we should never let go of our wonder and dreaming that we all have as children.

In the beginning of the lecture we learn that Dr. Randy Paush has cancer and has been given only a few months to live.This, however, does not stop him from living life to the fullest and achieving everything he planned to when he was a child. As a future teacher, this taught me that we should encourage children to set their goals as high as they can imagine. Letting students dream big encourages them to learn as much as possible to achieve their goals.

In his lecture, Dr.Paush explains his dreams he had as a child. These dreams were to be in zero gravity, playing in the NFL, writing an article for the World Book Encyclopedia, being Captain Kirk, winning a giant stuffed animal, and Being a Disney Imagineer. Dr. Paush then goes on to tell about how he achieved his dreams to the best of his ability. He explains how important it is to have specific dreams. As a teacher, I know I will come across the most creative dreams. It is important that I remember to always encourage students to never stop chasing their dreams no matter how crazy they appear to me.

Randy taught me a lot in this lecture. As a professor he let his students learn in a way they would enjoy, by giving them projects they were in total control of. This helped his students be more willing to learn. I also learned that you should always want criticism, because as Dr. Pausch said “when you are doing something badly, and no one is correcting you, then they have given up.” To be an affective teacher like Dr. Pausch, it is important to know how to encourage students through positive criticism. Dr. Randy Pausch was a very inspirational man who, with one lecture taught me many things about being an affective and powerful teacher.

Blog Assignment #9

Brian Crosby
Brian Crosby’s video TEDxDenver Ed is a really great video. I loved his presentation on the students. Seeing how excited the students were with the balloon experiment and watching them continue to grow in excitement as the project grew. The students began with a small synthetic audience, and then as there blogs gained notice their audience grew and grew. I loved how Mr.Crosby allowed his student to grow as self-learners and encouraged them to want to learn on their own. Mr.Crosby also provided his students with the chance to talk to students around the world. The balloon project became so widespread that the students’ blogs were being viewed by hundreds of students, teachers, and even some scientists who were amazed by the work these young students were doing.

One class in New Zealand wanted to do the balloon experiment but their teacher did not know how to do it. So the students in Mr.Crosby’s class studied the language and skyped the students in New Zealand and presented the experiment to them. This gave the students the chance to learn and to shine because these other students were looking up to them and their work. Mr. Crosby included a student name Celeste. She was undergoing chemo. Mr. Crosby used Skype. So, Celeste is now included into everyday learning. Brian Crosby is a great example of a 21st century teacher. He uses every kind of technology available to him and his students to enhance their learning. Mr. Crosby showed how encouraging the students to want to learn can promote higher level learning and provide students who have been labeled because of their home life the chance to succeed.

Paul Andersen
In the Blended Learning Cycle video, Paul Andersen explains his methods on blended learning. He breaks it down into 6 parts: Question, Investigation, Video, Elaboration, Review, and Summary Quiz. In Question, Mr. Andersen poses a question to interest the students. He uses Euler's Disk as an example for his class. When the disk is spun on a mirror, it continues to spin until stopped. This grabs the students’ attention and they want to know why it does that. In Investigation, you experiment and see what happens. Mr. Andersen gives his students the Euler's disk and tells them to spin it on other surfaces to see what happens. In Video, Mr. Andersen has podcasted the instructions so that the students can do it independently instead of in a whole group lecture. Elaboration is where the students get into explaining why the disk spins the way it does. It involves the physics, making graphs, etc. In review, Mr. Andersen meets with small groups to ask questions and answer questions to make sure they understand the material. The last step is the Summary Quiz. Each student takes the quiz to see how much they learned. If they don’t understand then they go back and go through all the parts again.

Mark Church
In the video, Making Thinking Visible, it features sixth- grade teacher Mark Church. He teaches at the International School Amsterdam. He had his students work in groups, to discuss a video, from the previous day. The topic was The Early Human Beginnings the Origins of Human Society. The students work in groups and come up with a headline, from what they had been learning about. The students headlines were then hung on the bulletin board. Later on, when the students are doing their final project. After finishing their final project, students were told to think about what their headline is now. The students are to decide whether their thinking has changed. I like students working in small groups because I feel it helps keep students engaged. Personally, I like working in groups, because you can hear the thoughts of someone else. They can maybe better verbalize what you are trying to say.

Furthermore, working in groups can help give you a better understanding of a topic. I like being able to reflect on my work, which I did not have in school. I feel that encouraging students to reflect is great thing to teach to your students. Visible Thinking is a research-based approach to teaching thinking; it develops students’ thinking and communicates the idea more effectively. Also, at the same time deepens their understanding of the topics they are studying. Visible Thinking is based on different practices such as thinking routines, small sets of questions, students sharing their ideas, having a discussion and reflecting. After watching this video,we agree with Mr. Church’s approach to teaching and learning. Watching this video encourages us as future teachers to experiment with other types of learning.

Written By: Jacquelyne Mckiernan, Shernaye James, Savanah Moore

Blog Assignment #8

My group and I found many different educational tools that could be very useful. Some of the resources we found are Learnzillion, neok12, WatchKnowLearn, teacherTube, and Diigo. These are only a few of the many reasources available to teachers in the 21st century.

Diigo
Diigo is a site that I found through one of my C4T assignments. I had never heard of it before but after it was mentioned in the post I decided to look into it. Diigo is a site that allows you to save information and share articles. With Diigo you and those you shared the article with are able to highlight and put notes on articles, allowing communication right there on the article. This site also allows you to create groups. The groups could be organized by grade level, subject or certain staff members. When you share an article with the group only they are able to view and comment on the article. The articles are saved and stored until they are needed. Diigo is great for when you find teaching resources and would like to share them, and with it being free it could be possible to create a class account that the students are able to use for group projects.
written by: Jacquelyne Mckiernan

LearnZillion
Learnzillion is a website that provides high-quality instructional videos for grades 3-9. The lessons centered around Common Core standards in Math. LearnZillion provides assessment and progress reporting. Teachers can select a lesson for students to review and track their student’s progress, on the topic. LearnZillion is a free site. Teachers need to sign up first. You can search by grade level, topic, or standard. The way LearnZillion will be used, is by assigning videos for students to watch. After watching the assigned video, students will complete practice activities and quizzes. The benefits are: students can practice and review videos to help them understand the content which they are learning. LearnZillion is great because it helps in providing high-quality instructional content, for each individual student’s needs.
Written By: Shernaye James

The Learning Tube
Teachertube is a great website I use at work. At most schools, youtube is blocked when using the internet, so when teachers wanted to show their class a video about what they were learning they couldn’t! Teachertube was created so that teachers could enhance their students learning by showing them videos about the things they are learning on a safe website. It contains tons of educational videos that are appropriate for the classroom. At work, I use Teachertube when tutoring kids. Sometimes hearing the information another way in a video, helps the student understand better. Teachertube is also useful for me! The way kids are taught to do math is completely different from the way I was taught so it is useful for me to go on there and learn the new methods of learning!
Written By Savanah Moore

Podcast Project #9

Here is the podcast Shernaye James, Savanah Moore, and I recorded. Our quote by Mark Prensky that we discussed is "The students in our classrooms are changing-largely as a result of their outside-of-school experiences with technology-and are no longer satisfied with an education that doesn't immediately address the real world in which they live." We all agreed that out-of-school experiences are a result of the ever changing classroom. In this podcast we discuss the quote and how we feel about incorporating the students’ passions and after school knowledge into their everyday classroom learning. I hope you enjoy!

C4K Summary for September

Michelle
My first C4K student's name was Michelle. She wrote her This I Believe essay on Softball being a team sport. Michelle gave excellent examples on how softball is a team sport, including cheering on your teammates, encouraging them when they miss a ball or simply passing the ball as quickly as possible. Michelle's essay was very well written she used proper grammar and did not have any major spelling mistakes. Michelle enhanced her essay even further by including a sound recording of her essay.

Himanshi
My Second C4K student's name was Himanshi. She is in fifth grade and lives in Guatemala City. In the post I read which was titled Writing A Song!, Himanshi writes about her experience when she wrote a song. She goes from the start to finish of writing the song. Himanshi shows very good writing skills and moderate grammar and spelling. Himanshi also shows excitement towards her blog which is wonderful to see. I enjoyed reading her post and seeing how excited she was about her song writing.

Jabez
My third C4k student's name was Jabez. He is from the PT England school and in his 7th year of school in Auckland, NZ. His blog post was titled Rainbow Warrior Bombing. His post was about witnessing a bombing. He described how he witnessed how the bombs were placed and how the bombers were eventually caught. I commented on Jabez's post telling him that he did a very good job describing the scene he saw before him.

Emmy
My fourth C4K student's name was Emmy. She is in Mrs.Ripp's 4th grade class. Emmy was assigned to be completely silent for 20 minutes while trying to solve brain teaser's with a partner. They did this activity in response to reading "Out of Mind", a story about a girl name Melody who suffers from Cerebral Palsy.In her post titled Silence! Emmy did a very good job writing about her experience. She explained how difficult it was to communicate without talking or writing. Emmy also wrote how she understands how difficult communicating must be for Melody. I responded to Emmy's post telling her that she did a very good job describing the activity and that she was very understanding of the difficulties Melody goes through.

Blog Assignment #7

What can you learn from Anthony Capps conversations?

Project Based Learning Part 1
In the video Project Based Learning Part 1 Anthony Capps discusses his use of Project based learning in his 3rd grade class. Anthony gives a really good point when he says that the projects should not be just in class. He explains that they should involve a real audience and include the community; this encourages the students to do better work and to really care about their project. Anthony also talks about using project based learning as a teaching tool rather than just an accessory to your lesson. He gives an example of having his students write letters to the governor Jo Bonner about women fighting in combat. This project was content driven and met reading, writing and social studies standards. The project also was community driven and the students were able to learn information from their community. I really enjoyed listening to Anthony Capps talk about his experiences in a classroom, and it is really neat to see what we learn in EDM310 in a classroom.

Project Based Learning Part 2
In the second half of Project Based Learning Anthony discussed how not all projects have a great outcome. Anthony gives an example of how his class was studying Afghanistan and learning about the culture. Anthony explains how one of his parents who had served in Afghanistan did not want their child to do the project, and they wanted to keep their child sheltered from that culture. This example is really important because it shows how that not all projects are going to be an absolute success, Anthony's students learned a lot from this project and they had excellent reviews. I really loved when Anthony said "create an opportunity for your students to go beyond what you expect." I think this is a great quote to live by when it comes to creating activities for your students, allowing them to learn and go above and beyond is a great way to motivate them for higher learning.

iCurio
In this video title iCurio Anthony Capps moves on from his discussion of Project Based Learning to iCurio. Anthony explains how he uses iCurio to help his students become organized and teach them virtual organization, and to keep track of all of their notes and information. I really enjoyed learning more about iCurio, Anthony explains how iCurio is very kid friendly and blocks out sites that are inappropriate for kids. I found the historical figures feature to be very interesting, and how you can search with categories. I feel this could be very useful in my future classroom, when my students need to do a research project or assignment.

Discovery Education
In the video Discovery Education we learn about the site Discovery Education. In this video Anthony uses the quote "If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a video must be worth a million" I agree with this quote, and also in the use of Discovery Ed. I really liked Anthony's example with studying plants and using Discovery Ed to enhance the study and viewing pictures and videos about the plants.

Use tech Don't Teach It
I really agree with everything Anthony said in the video Use Tech Don't Teach It. Gradually adding in the technology and focusing on one specific tool at a time is a great way to help the students understand how to use them. Anthony uses the term scaffolding as a way to describe how he uses technology and introduces it into his classroom. This means that he adds on each week, he uses the example of starting with a research tools, and then having them use the video tool and by week three his students were able to do research video's where they are recording the information that they researched. I really enjoyed watching this video and learning from Anthony about different ways to use technology.
Written by: Jacquelyne Mckiernan

Tips for Teachers
In the video, The Anthony - Strange Tips for Teachers Part 1, Dr. Strange and Anthony Capps give tips to future educators. These tips covered key topics that any new teacher should think about. The first thing that Dr. Strange and Anthony suggested is to really be interested, in learning yourself. Anthony says that work is not separate from play, in teaching. He says teachers learn the craft of teaching, in their free time. Another tip that was suggested is to be flexible. Anthony emphasizes the importance of keeping students engaged. He encourages the listener to have a goal of 100 percent engagement. Anthony also says that it is important, to include information the students care about. Lastly, Anthony discusses the importance of reflection, revising and sharing. As a future educator, these are great tips to use and remember.
Written by: Shernaye James

Additional Thoughts
In the video Additional Thoughts About Lessons Anthony made some very good points on how there are four tiers in lesson planning; the school year, the unit, weekly, and daily. You start with everything you need to cover in the whole school year. Then you break it down into units, which would be about 6 weeks long. By the end of the unit the students should be able to do X in that subject. When looking at your unit, you should divide the lessons into weeks. For example if our unit is plants, week one may be all about what is in the dirt and what needs to be in the dirt for something to grow, week two could be focusing on the roots, week three could focus on the stem and leaves, and so on.

At the end of the unit the students should know more about how plants work, what they need to survive, etc. Your weeks then need to be divided into days.The days to week act just like the weeks to unit. On Friday, your students should know X about that subject. If we continue with the plant unit, in week three the students should know all about stems and leaves and their functions. So Monday the students should learn where the stem and leaves are on the plant, Tuesday they can learn why the stem is important, etc. On Friday, the students should know all about stems and leaves. My biggest fear about teaching is not having enough time to cover all of the material well enough that the kids understand it, but I think that this tier lesson plan idea will help.
Written by: Savanah Moore

Project # 13 Lesson Plan 1

for the collaborative Lesson Plan assignment Shernaye James, Savanah Moore and I created a lesson plan intended for students in grade 2. Our Lesson Plan is title Hurricane Charting , This is the calendar of events for our week long lesson plan. Here is an Overview of our lesson plan. we start off with an introduction to the topic with a video about Hurricanes. Our main assignment for this lesson plan is a group assignment where the students create a Hurricane Tracking chart. The time line for this project is about 30-60 minutes a day for one week. The assignment will end on Friday after the presentations of the students tracking charts with a test on the material and fun weather related movie.
We also created a site dedicated to our lesson plan,Check it out here