Blog Assignment #9: Video Responses

     In Mr.McClung's blog post What I've Learned This Year, he makes many vital lessons clear. He starts off by telling about his first year in the educational field. He calls himself "young and inexperienced." But as the year progresses, he learns and grows in so many ways. This blog tells of the growth. He makes many points that, if read, will make you a better teacher. Those points are:

• Read the Crowd
• Be Flexible
• Communicate
• Be Reasonable
• Don't Be Afraid of Technology
• Listen to Your Students
• Never Stop Learning

I think that these are very important lessons that are valuable to teachers everywhere. As teachers, our purpose is to mold the student mind the best way that we can -and that comes with the student comprehending the lesson. We have to know that we are teaching the students; we are not trying to impress other staff members or superiors. Our lesson plans should be flexible in a way that allows us to fully teach our topics and make sure they are comprehended -even if that means deterring away from our initial plan of attack. We must communicate and be reasonable with not only students, but faculty as well. We have to understand that technology is already a vital part of our modern era, so we have to embrace that for what it is.  We should always listen to what our students have to say. It will help build a relationship beyond comparison. And lastly, we should never stop learning, because no one knows absolutely everything. There is always something to be learned by everyone. 

     I believe that I really got a lot out of this post. I am nervous about my first years entering the educational world, but if I keep these points in mind, I think that the first years will run a little smoother. Mr.McClung was very good with his words and with each topic, he related it to a situation that is seemingly common. I hope that I am able to learn and mold as much from my first years of teaching like he has. 

Blog Assignment #8: Video Responses

This is How We Dream: Part 1
This is How We Dream: Part 2
     In a video from December 2008, Robert E. Miller of Rutgers University presents viewers with insight of how to write using multimedia. Miller grew up loving everything about books and eventually went into a profession that is surrounded by books. But with all of the new technology, does the book have a place in today's classroom? In today's learning era, we rely on laptops and the internet and Microsoft Word. Our books lay inside our desktop. But not only can we read the text within our virtual books, but we can also collaborate through them and create our own documents for them that will live forever on the internet, if chosen to do so.
     I think this is very important for teachers in the future eras. With technology and the proper knowledge of how to use tools, we can create documents that include pictures, text, sound documents, charts, and infinitely so on. As teachers, we need to embrace our "digital environment" and learn all that we can in order to utilize it to the best of our ability. We must also be able to share our creations with the internet world so that others can also utilize them, because sharing is the basis for the internet world. By doing this, we are able to teach our students new ways to write -not with pen and paper, but rather with digital tools available to them. And I also think, along with Miller, that this will be the student's future of writing.

The Chipper Series & EDM310 for Dummies
     I actually liked the Chipper Series. Chipper wasn't exactly the most ideal student with her procrastination and tardy work (which is ironic considering that this post is also late). She made mention to the fact that she didn't want to learn how to do these things, but rather she wanted to be taught. But my feeling are that we are going to be teachers, so we have to be able to teach. And in order to teach, we must learn. Chipper went on to drop out of school and try her hand at various other jobs -all of which failed. With her newly found "mind cleansing" Chipper decides to return to school and do things differently. I believe that this video shows the importance of doing things how they are to be done and when they are to be done (again, ironic on my part). I think that this video project was very well put together and it relayed the information nicely.
     The EDM310 for Dummies video has more of a "what you're going to get out of the class" message. In the beginning, the students were frustrated with the fact that they had no idea as to what they were supposed to be doing in the class. But after reading the fictional book that was created, they had a better understanding of what it is that they are learning and creating. They realize that these tools being taught will be able to help them  in their future of teaching.
     If I were to be in a video for a project, I would be more apt into being in the first video, The Chipper Series. I like the way that the video was made better than I did the latter. Not to mention the fact, that I would probably be very knowledgeable about the aspects presented in the first video.

Smartboard Argument
     I believe that Smartboards are very beneficial in today's educational world. My roommate has personal experience using a Smartboard in a first grade classroom and she found it very beneficial to the student's willingness to learn. She said that it seemed like the students were more apt to learning if it were done on the Smartboard, because they liked the idea of going to the board and participating. I also found a website, Teachers Love Smartboards, where many interactive educational games are shown. This shows that the Smartboard can be useful in the classroom setting and personally, I think they will be the future of our classrooms all together.

Blog Assignment #7: Video Responses

Randy Paush's Last Lecture
     "If you had one last lecture to give before you died, what would it be?" This was quoted by Randy Paush at the very beginning of his lecture. What did he decide would be his last lecture at Carnegie Mellon University on September 18, 2007? He chose to lecture on truly achieving childhood dreams. This may seem like an odd topic to present at someone's final hoo-rah, but if you know the back story behind Professor Paush's lecture, then it doesn't seem so odd. Professor Paush has approximately ten tumors in his liver and was given about six months to live.
     Before Professor Pauch goes into his own dreams as a child, he shows pictures of his childhood and he made mention to the fact that there wasn't a single picture in which he wasn't smiling. Paush says that enjoying childhood and dreaming was easy for him. He says for children, "the inspiration and permission to dream is huge." He then goes into his personal childhood dreams. These included being in zero gravity, being Captain Kirk, authoring an article in the World Book encyclopedia, winning stuffed animals, and so on. Professor Paugh goes into detail with each one of his dreams, and I thought that his dream on playing in the NFL was especially important, because it was the dream that he never achieved, but got the most out of. He told a story of one day at practice where the coach was riding him pretty hard, saying that he was doing everything wrong. After practice, one of his teammates told him that it was a good thing, because it means that he hasn't given up on you yet. I can relate to this personally, because I was very athletic in high school and I experienced this first hand from my own coaches. I also thing that is good to keep in mind as a teacher, because as long as we have faith in our students that they CAN and are willing to learn, we will never give up on them.
     Later in his teaching career, he gave his students in a high technology class a two week assignment similar to what he did on the Imagineer VR Project that he did for Disney's Aladin. He wasn't sure as to what the results would be, because his students were undergrads and their technology was a weaker version of what he had for his VR project. But his mind was blown when his students came back with some of the most amazing pieces of work. He didn't know what to tell his students about their works, so after advice from his mentor, he told his students "you can do better." His class did exactly that -they improved and did better on every other assignment that was given to them. I think that this is amazing to think about --having a teacher have that much influence on a child's life that they WANT to do better for him or her. Each student put all of what they had into their projects and it came out amazingly. By the end of the semester, roommates, other students, and even parents were showing up on presentation day. I think this is something to strive for when you become a teacher. When you have parents and other students not even in your class showing up on presentation day, it shows that you had an impact on that class in some way or another.
     The last portion of Randy Pauch's lecture includes the lessons learned. He tells of things that he has learned within his years of experience, and why they're important. He says that you can learn from many people -you can learn from your parents, teachers, colleagues, friends, and even students. This was true when one of his students questioned his Alice Project, which in turn, made him question it. Another lesson learned came from advice that was given to him by a colleague. The colleague said, "teach the importance of having fun." With this, Randy asks,

"Are you a Tigger or are you an Eeyore?"

 I think this is a very important concept to keep in mind. Randy Pauch has terminally ill cancer, but he is still staying positive and having fun doing what he does. To me, that is inspiring. Randy also tells his audience to never lose the child-like wonder within and you can't get anywhere alone. An earnest quality is long term and a hip quality is short term, so keep with the earnest and good karma will come your way. This is true when he told of his non-acceptance into Carnegie Mellon University. He had to rely on his mentor to get him a meeting with Nico of Carnegie Mellon, which turned out in his favor, because he was then accepted into graduate school there and became what he is today. Finally, Randy Pauch threw in his twist. He said that this last lecture was not about how to achieve your childhood dreams, but it was about how to live your life. And it also was not for you, but it was for his kids. I think this was one of the most inspirational lectures ever to be given by any professor at any college.

Blog Assignment #6: Video Responses

Networked Student
I think that this was a very well put together video. It was a great visual on the concept of networked learning and it shows that students can learn much more from just a simple textbook. With networked learning, they, themselves, can learn how to interact and find information and tools that are constantly at their expense. I especially liked the comment regarding downloading podcast to an Ipod or other MP3 device. I liked this, because an Ipod is practically universal -as in almost everyone has one in this day and age. At first, I didn't realize how easy it was to find these kind of tools, but this video provides an excellent insight as to how simple it really is to find learning tools that are available for use. I also like how the video kept my attention. The way that the information was presented to the viewer was very interesting -just drawing on pieces of paper and used accordingly. I really like this video concept.

Welcome to my PLE
This student has her stuff together. I think that the way she has her PLE set up is very simple. She can easily find what she it looking for when she needs it. I like how she has everything related to school on one line, while keeping Facebook and Last.fm separate. I also like how having things set up this way gives you freedom to your assignments (i.e. her Box Jellyfish presentation.) I believe that she really understands the concept of networked learning and is able to use it to her advantage.

The Machine is (Changing) Us
     I liked this presentation very much. The presenter, Mike, discussed the degeneration of our generation. The quote, "We are, indeed, amusing ourselves to death" is a very important concept within this video. Mike goes on to explain how our society now is being run by what we see on our televisions and what we find on our internet and what we hear in our music. Our society is being influenced primarily be technology. New media that is arising is changing how we relate to others and how we come to know who we are ourselves. The technological world is expanding in mass methods and it's affecting our society in many ways.
     I very much liked the way the comparison was made between a standard classroom and the American Idol auditions. It shows that students are engaging in things that are entertaining to them. So, unless they get into a frenzy about learning the basics of Algebra or learning the rules of punctuation, students are more apt to not be active in their learning. It is our jobs as teachers to make learning appealing to our students. I also like how Mike found these quotes and applied a project to them. He quoted,

"in the midst of a fabulous array of historically unprecedented and utterly mind-boggling stimuli...whatever."

With this quote, he and his students turned it into a research project of the word "whatever." It seems to me that this kind of project would be very appealing to students, because that is a word that is very common to our culture today. I know that if I were a student, I would be more inclined to research something that was more common to my time. But with this sort of 'whatever, I can do what I want' attitude that is taking over our era comes disengagement and fragmentation. People become disengaged from other because they are busy with self-fulfillment. We, as teachers, should be able to overcome the self-fulfillment and be more engaged into the student's learning so that we can help them to overcome the "whatever generation" that we are setting up for ourselves today.
     Mike also explored the world of YouTube and how there are over 1,000,000 videos added each day. In retrospect, that is a HUGE amount of videos that are being available to the public via technology. But how many of these videos are educational and how many are for entertainment?

Blog Project #3: C4T, 2

First C4T Post:
WM Chamberlain's most recent blog post is a reflection blog. It was posted by Chamberlain to show his thoughts on his teaching in the previous week, as well as set a goal for the upcoming weeks. Aside from listing a few things that he feels he could improve upon with his teaching styles, he also mentioned that he will be teaching math next week with another teacher. His goal for this upcoming lesson was to find "real world situations where using angles is important." I think this is an excellent idea, because it seems to me that the younger students tend to be more visual learners. So, I think that by giving the students real world examples, this would better help their understanding of the subject matter.

Second C4T Post:
When I went back to make a second comment on Mr.C's blog, no new updates had been added. I was kind of disappointed, because I wanted to see how the lesson on angles went with the students. So, instead, I commented on a different post called Around the World Multiplication. This post showed a video of Mr.C's students playing the game with multiplication cards. I'm sure that most people have heard of this game, but for those who don't, here's the rules from Mr.C's blog:

This is a flash card drill game where students compete to travel around the circle. To start the game two students race to answer the multiplication (or any other kind of flash card) problem. The winner moves to the next student around the circle and race them. When the winner loses they sit in the new winner's seat. The game continues going around the circle until one student ends up at the seat they started at.

I think that this is a very good interactive game for students of any age. It provides a little bit of friendly competition, while still maintaining a learning objective. I think all teachers should incorporate more games, especially Around the World, into their learning.

Blog Project #7: C4K, Daniel.L

As my C4K assignment, I was given Daniel.L as my kid to comment on. The comments that I posted on were his 'About Me' post and his 'Manifesto' post. After reading Daniel's About Me post, I realized that the two of us have a lot in common. Daniel, as well as myself, loves soccer. As a former high school soccer player, I can relate to Daniel's love for the game & often wanting to go outside and do tricks with the soccer ball. He also wrote that one of his challenges in school is getting along with the other students. This was so sad to me, because he seems like such an amazing kid. I know that he can be friends with his classmates if he could just overcome his (what he wrote off as) quietness.

I was quite impressed with Daniel's Manifesto. The first of his goals were going to bed on time. I think this is extremely important for young students. If a child doesn't get enough sleep, they are less able to focus the following day -which takes away from their learning. Daniel also said that he wants to study for at least 20 minutes a day. I really hope that he sticks to this goal, because if he does, he will do very well in his school career. Even in college, it is important to study almost every day. So, I am very proud of Daniel for this one. I think that Daniel is a smart kid & he will go far.