April 4th Assignment and Comments for Kids Week 12

Mr. Chamberlain's Post "Dear Kaia"

On Kaia's blog, the student's commenting were noticed by Kaia's, Jabiz Raisdana. He contacted Mr. Chamberlain and the students Skype her father. Then he suggested making a video or audio for Kaia since she couldn't read yet. They surprised her with a Voicethread. Mr C's Voicethread for Kaia.



My reaction to this is amazed. I can't believe we have access to so many means of communication and technology. It will be amazing when educators and students will communicate at this level. I love the fact that Kaia's father is including her with his blog and teaching her. He is teaching her things about blogging before she can read. What a great example to set for her!

Comments for Kids Week 12


Comments for Kids this week for was a post by a teacher from PT England. Her students are Year One students, about 5 years old. The post was the picture above by Aaron who colored himself eating lunch at the beach.

Google Form:




I decided to survey questions about Facebook, since it has become some a great social networking tool. However, there are some aspects of Facebook that aren't always good. I was curious to see other people's take on it. Out of all the survey requests--the entire EDM 310 class list, I got 14 responses.

My questions were:

How many times a day do you get on Facebook?
How long have you had Facebook?
Do you use Facebook as a way to contact others outside your circle of friends?
Do you often get tagged in pictures that you would prefer not to be tagged in?
Do your parents have Facebook?
What do you think about future employers viewing your college Facebook page?
How do you feel about children below the age of 15 having access to this social network?
Which best describes the privacy of your profile.

My questions were very different as far as how the responses went. The only one that came out even was if parents had Facebook. They feel even with neither, mother, or father or both.

Take a look at my questions and responses to my survey here!

Timetoast Timeline

Here's my Timetoast of my life:

Comments for Teachers Week 10-12

Hopefully, I will have better luck this time with Comments for Teachers.

The next few weeks I will be following:
"Do I Dare Disturb the Universe?" by Scott Elias

His first post was posted March 14. It was about what every teacher should know after leaving "teacher school" during their first year in the classroom. He suggested:
1. Stay interested. Having interest in your students, topics, and your job.
2. Be a learner.

The best way for teachers to learn is not necessarily through one-size-fits-all professional development sessions. Read a lot. Create an account on Google Reader or Netvibes and subscribe not only to education blogs, but blogs about what you’re passionate about (remember the first tip I gave you?). And also, keep it in balance and subscribe to blogs that you don’t necessarily agree with. Preaching to choir is always fun, but it can be a dangerous habit. Network with colleagues who have been doing it longer and who are doing it differently. Find an administrator you trust and see how he or she is willing to help support your professional growth.

3.Avoid like the plague negative people and their efforts to recruit you.
4. Have fun.
5. Just because you can do something with technology doesn’t mean you should do it with technology.

"Do you need a wiki intervention? You know who you are."

My comment on this post:

I’m in EDM 310 at the University of South Alabama and I was assigned to follow your blog for a few weeks. The class incorporates a lot of technology and its uses in the classroom as well as encouraging teachers to be learners.

I really enjoyed reading this post. I think keeping a good attitude throughout the first year as a teacher and staying interested is really great advice.

I agree with the part about slowing down with incorporating technology. Sometimes it seems like some teachers need an intervention.

Comments for Kids Week 9, 10

Week 9:
Kindergarten Kids Blog post 112 was about their day. They learned about the tornado safety position(squatting down like a turtle), writing sets of numbers, creating sentences, and using thermometers. They also read a book and made thermometers out of paper and string. It sounds like these kids are really smart and have great teachers!



Week 10:

The student's blog that I commented on this week was Carly. After the teacher picking a team country for field day, Carly did some research on the country. She posted on the basic facts of Djibouti, which is located in Africa. She even cited her references. I told her that she did a good job with this post and that I learned a lot from her sharing.

Who remembers this commercial?

Morgan Bayda

An Open Letter to Educators Video:


In the video above, Dan Brown confronts the issue of education. He talks about his thoughts and ultimately his decision to drop out of college because "his schooling was interfering with his education". Education has been grounded into the heads of every student that is an essential need, but what does it mean to receive an education exactly? Because education has become institutionalized, we follow a very structured system. Even down to how classrooms function, especially at the university level. The professor feeds the paying students information, they write down the facts, the memorize the notes to be tested on an exam. Receiving an education used to mean following this schooling plan that has been used for hundreds of years, but in the Information Age, the meaning of receiving an education will have to change.

Technology advancements are becoming more and more widespread and information is free. This liberation of information through the internet makes the concept of paying hundreds of dollars for textbook seem a bit senseless(especially when they are rarely used--ask any college student). This is why the exaggerated concept of "school is interfering with education" has emerged. Society has to change and accept that the same model of schooling that has been used for hundreds of years is not longer valid.

Sitting through hundreds of hours of lectures over the past 4 years of college, I understand why one would question what exactly we're gaining from this traditional model of "education" society has instilled on us. I always take notes in every class I attend, but half of the time I'm thinking about all the things I need to get done for the day. The rest of the time I'm contemplating what I'm going to eat for lunch. I don't have A.D.D. or A.D.H.D., I just get bored during lectures on Shakespeare, Med evil Literature, and my other upper level classes. It isn't that I don't gain anything from the material or that I am uninterested, but sometimes it's hard to have an active brain sitting through lecture after lecture.

Education has not been re-invented yet, at least not in my experience either, but I do think we are beginning to make strides in the right direction.Education during the Information Age will become more individualized I think. Information through the internet will be utilized as well as student networking too. By utilizing blogging, and networking with other students, this information being thrown at us seems more relevant way to learn.

Society HAS lost site of what education is. It is supposed to provoke creativity in order for us to change the world, not make us contemplate our insanity every time we enter a lecture hall. Educators need to keep in mind that how we gain information is changing, thus there needs to be a change in the way we teach. I guess Einstein said it best:

"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."-Albert Einstein

ALEX

The Alabama Learning Exchange is a great resource for educators, administrators and students. It is a project of the Alabama Department of Education and is designed to index and share many types of educational materials and information. ALEX provides many resources for every subject area from Driver's Ed to Mathematics. It also provides lesson plans for teachers to use as a resource. The website also provides featured podcasts available to download. There are even external links for Special Education and Technology Education. Both great resources for any teacher.

This website seems like it would be a great resource for me as a future teacher. ALEX provides a wide array of information. Because I am going into secondary English, this seems like a great resource if I needed a fresh approach to teaching a new subject. With the sites access to Special Education website this seems like a good source for helping students with special needs. This site also has a way to join and share information with others. It would be a great addition to any teacher's PLN.



ACCESS

Our Vision: The State of Alabama will provide equal access to high quality instruction to improve student achievement through distance learning.

ACCESS stands for Alabama Connecting Classrooms, Educators, and Students Statewide. This site provides a network in which students, teachers, and administrators can connect. ACCESS is available to Alabama public high schools. The site provides courses online, as well as resources for administrators to expand their course offerings. For students, there are Advanced Placement test prep courses in which students can utilize to reach their potential. Parents are also included in this network as they can read about upcoming events.

This site seems like a great way for teachers and administrator to expand the curriculum. Because Alabama is a rural area, most public high schools aren't as privileged to have the opportunity to teach an expanded curriculum. This also could be a great resource for teen moms, home-schooled students, and students that have special needs. By providing other means to which students can learn in high school, more opportunities are offered to the disadvantaged.

Kindergarten Kids

I received a very nice response from the blog I commented on from week 8. After commenting on their most recent post, they let me know what they liked most about the spring(the season, not me).

Here's their responses:

"What we like about Spring....
James likes flowers and playing outside.
Sara likes swimming.
Shamara likes that it is pretty.
Jatameyah likes to play outside.
Randy A. likes the sun.
Luis likes to go to the beach.
Tyrone likes picking up flowers.
Randy G. likes the sun.
Keyli likes to plant flowers.
Tytiana likes to go to the park.
Cornella likes to play outside with her sister.
Daylin likes to go to Mexico.
David likes to go to the beach.
Mrs. Farrington likes the birds, the bees, the flowers and the trees.
Mrs. Voigt likes to go for walks and fly kites."

We have so much in common! I love the going to the beach, being outside, seeing the beautiful flowers, and enjoying what nature has to offer.

Comments for Kids Week 8

Comments for Kids:
This week I got to comment on an Kindergarten Class Blog. The teacher posted every day about what she was doing in the class. On my particular day, the students were learning about patterns and Wilma Rudolph. They read a book about Wilma together, watched a video, and drew picture about her life. These pictures were drawn on fabric and the students, with lots of assistance made a quilt. All of which was posted to the blog. During the day they also did some math, art, and would have went to the park if it wasn't raining. I told them that the quilt was beautiful and that I didn't know anything about Wilma Rudolph until I read their blog.

What would you say in your last lecture?

Randy Pausch begins he lecture with the fact that he was estimated to have 5 months to live. He was diagnosed with liver cancer. This doesn't bring him down, he actually says that he is not depressed. He's happy and in the best shape of his life. His frame of mind is that we cannot change the cards we are dealt. In his last lecture he talks about achieve your dreams and enabling the dreams of others.

He starts his talk about his happy childhood. As a child we think anything is possible. Pausch said this was easy for him because he grew up during the 1960s, when Man first walked on the moon. He encourages us to chase specific dreams while bringing something to the table. "Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted." Sometimes you learn from not reaching your childhood goals. We learn most of what we learn indirectly, or from experience. Something else he said,that stood out in his lecture is,

"Brick walls are there for a reason:they let us prove how badly we want things."

They are there to motivate those who want it bad enough, and to hinder those that will let it.

How do you enable the childhood of others? As a computer science professor at the University of Virgina, he helped others build their childhood dreams by creating a virtual world class in cross subject areas. He was blown away by there work after 2 weeks and told them that they could do better work. He says child-like wonder is what drives us, and never to loose it. Having fun is the best way to achieve your dreams.

I like his refreshing outlook on life. Encouraging others to reach their goals, and help others as well. I like also that he said that if someone makes you mad, you just haven't given them enough time to impress you. One of his professor/bosses told him that he was such a good salesman that he should be a professor, selling education.

Apparently, Randy Pausch has written a book, does anyone know the name of it?

Comments for Kids Week 7

This week I commented on a blog post about childhood obesity in Australia(it's not just in the U.S.). The post was about how little information children receive about fresh food. The teacher is starting a Fresh Fruit Friday in which students will try new friends and learn about the preparation of how to serve food and having a new healthy snack weekly. I said that this is a great idea to encourage students to make healthy decisions in their diets. I was never exposed to this at a young age. This blog was a blog of Mr. Lamshed's class. There are year 6 and 7 boys in his classroom.

On the post was this video:


Take a look!