Blog Post #10

Our first assignment for this week’s blog was to watch a video called “Do You Teach or Do You Educate?”.  It was created by a college student named Joshua Bloom.  You can access this video below:

http://youtu.be/W0fJKvdjQgs

  

For a three minute video, it really had so much to say!  He starts off the video with a shot of a classroom, then a desk, and then a fire extinguisher.  Joshua then gives the definition of teaching from the dictionary.  It seemed to be very simple and exact and it had a lot of limitations! 

Then, he went on to describe what it means to educate.  He used such words as illuminate, empower, enlighten, inspire, etc.  An educator gives intellectual, social, and moral instruction…he is an experienced and trusted advisor who shows the way.  He is truly a mentor and the goal of real education is to build intelligence and character in our students.  As the video ends, he takes you back to the classroom and the fire extinguisher and slowly fades away from the scene. 

I couldn’t help but feel that he was asking the viewer…

“Are you going to extinguish the flames of your students or are you going to ignite the fire?”

 It was truly a very deep video and really makes you think.  My biggest goal as a teacher is to encourage my students to be lifelong learners.  I want to educate and not just teach a bunch of facts.  I want to put a fire in the belly of my students, so they don’t ever want to quit learning!

“Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel”.

                                                                                  Socrates

  

Our second assignment was to read and comment on the article written by Tom Johnson called “Don’t Let Them Take Pencils Home”.   You can access the article below:

http://pencilintegration.blogspot.com/2010/07/dont-let-them-take-pencils-home.html

The article was written in conversation form and was about two teachers discussing about whether it was a good idea for students to take pencils and paper home.  One teacher was arguing that studies show that students who take home pencils are more likely to do poorly on standardized test.  Therefore, at all cost, students should not be allowed to take pencils home.

Tom Johnson was much more in favor of letting students take pencils home.  It was apparent that he felt that all learning is not always measurable.  Every time a student has a pencil in his hand, he has an opportunity to learn whether he is writing a paper or playing hangman.  We are all learning everyday with all of our five senses and we don’t need to be concerned about the latest study or the newest trend in education.  There is so much more to learning!

I couldn’t help but think that this article had a much bigger overall message. Teaching, in general, should not be limited or over scrutinized.  We can truly never really know how much each student is learning and, therefore, we need to just offer our students many unique and exciting ways to explore and learn.  Most importantly, as teachers, we need to make sure that we are engaging our students and that they are having fun as they learn! 

Blog Post #9

Mr. McClung reflects on teaching...

I just hate being a new born teacher!

I have just finished reading Mr. McClung’s reflection on his first year of teaching.  Nobody likes to be the “new kid” on the block and the first year of any job is always hard.  However, there is nothing like the first year of teaching!  You have to please yourself, maybe your family, your students, your student’s parents, your coworkers, and your bosses. 

Mr. McClung does a good job of blogging about all of his trials and errors from his first year of teaching and what he has learned.  He learned how to be flexible and reasonable, while keeping a positive attitude.  He also learned many communication skills like listening to your students and “reading the crowd”.  One of the most important things that he learned was to never be afraid to use technology in the classroom and never, never quit learning as a teacher!

I have already experience nine years of teaching and there is one thing I would add to the list:

Always be able to laugh at yourself!

The second year is double the fun!

I then had the pleasure of reading about his second year of teaching.  Of course, he started the year off teaching a new grade, in a larger school, and responsible for several new subjects!   He was basically back to square one! 

He did seem to be much more mature and he really dug in deeper on evaluating his second year of teaching.  He suggested finding another experienced teacher to help you and he labeled his “my school mom”.   He learned to check his ego at the door and not to be a control freak!  He also got his first taste of not always getting along with the administration!  Welcome to the real world!  As teachers just coming out of college we are given all of these wonderful, creative, inspiring ideas on how to be great teachers.  Then, when we go to apply them in our new classroom….we end up hitting a brick wall (called the principals and administration)!  Oh, well…He now knows that it’s not a good idea to sweat all the small stuff!  He has also learned to dole out more of the work to his students.  

Mr. McClung knows he still has a long way to go, but he realizes that his biggest goal from now on is to not become professionally stagnant.  Truly, that should be every teacher’s biggest goal!

C4T #3 Summary

I have been assigned to blog with Doug Peterson at his blog site:

doug, off the record

He is an instructor of faculty of education at the University of Windsor.  He also has a long list of other accomplishments and achievements throughout the years.  He is very proficient in computer technology and computer science.  He contributes often to many different educational organizations in Ontario.

I first commented with him about his blog "Websites that should make you go Hhmmmm....".  He had listed several Internet sites that sounded very questionable. He made fun of such sites as:  Buy Dehydrated Water; The Uncyclopedia; California Velcro Crop; Free Online Pregnancy Test; etc.  He is very clever and funny but he still makes a good point that we need to really make sure that we are going to reputable sites.

Secondly, I went to his most current blog post in which he recommended an application called "Flipsnack".  You can download it for free and you can use it to make virtual books.  He had taken his blog post for the year 2011 and made it into a book.  You can literally see his whole year of post in "book form" and you can actually flip the pages.  It was so cool!  He sure does blog a lot because he had a really big book!

I told him that I am definitely downloading that application and that I would recommend it to my classmates on my blog.  I can see it being a great tool to use in the elementary classroom also!  You can access the application below:

Flipsnack

Happy Journaling!

Smart Board Presentation #1

View the Hangout Group hanging out on the Smart Board

Blog Post #8

Dream on....

This week we viewed a video on Youtube called "This is How We Dream" by Dr. Richard Miller. The video was about how writing has changed due to new technology. No longer is writing just something to be done in MicroSoft Word, but it can now be done digitally. Images, film, and sound can be weaved into any document written today. We can also research anything we would want to write about immediately from our computer, without ever having to go to the library! In fact, people are composing with the web itself!

I found it interesting that Dr. Miller mentioned that a written article or paper in the past took about two years for it to get out and circulate in his field. However, today a written article can reach millions of people in just a few days. It really is impossible to understand and get a grasp on how quickly the world is changing around us.

As teachers, we need to inspire our students and collaborate with them. We need to be more in tune to teaching creativity and curiosity. The future of teaching is all about ideas, and not about teaching facts. When we teach children ideas, then we can inspire dreams!

We also viewed Carly Pugh's Blog Post #12.

http://pughcarlyedm310.blogspot.com/2011/04/blog-post-12.html

She had her own idea for a new EDM310 assignment and shared it on her blog. I must say that I thought it was brilliant and it kind of brought all the ideas of the Edm310 class together in one nice little package. She suggested that our assignment would be for each of us to make our own "Youtube Playlist". We should have a minimum of ten videos that describe our teaching philosophy, ways to motivate our students, tips for classroom management, topics related to our particular field of study, current trends in education, etc.

She actually created the assignment in her blog because she had so many video sites for us to visit as she described the whole thing. We got to witness first hand her teaching philosophy as we clicked on each new link!

So.....I'm game! I'm ready!


We also got to view two more creations by former EDM310 students.
We watched "The Chipper Series"

http://gallery.me.com/jstrange#101120

and "EDM310 for Dummies"
both by Jamie Lynn Miller.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqhMRj-Ne38&feature=player_embedded

There was some wild and crazy acting going on as you watched a procrastinator at work in "The Chipper Series". There was also some wild frustration coming out in "EDM310 for Dummies". These were two cute videos making fun of keeping up with school work and being able to understand all this new technology. I will say...I would like to really, really buy that book called "EDM310 for Dummies"! I need all the help I can get!

Lastly, we viewed a video called "Learn to Change, Change to Learn"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHiby3m_RyM&feature=player_embedded%23!

This was a really good video about how learning needs to change in our school system.  In the video, they mentioned that the U.S. Department of Commerce did a study recently in the industry of IT intensiveness and measured 55 different industry sectors.  Sadly, education came in dead last.....they were even behind coal mining!  What a shame!  However, I am not surprised!  

The school systems don't have the money to have all the high tech equipment to compete with the private sector.....same old story!  Now that computers are more affordable, the schools are finally getting them and they are trying very hard to play catch up.  Most teachers are way behind also and they certainly don't know how to incorporate technology into the curriculum.  I feel it will take a good, long while for education to get back in the game.

The video also mentioned that all of these students today have very rich environments with social networking, media, electronics, gaming, etc.  However, when they come to school, they have a poor environment that has none of these things.  We really need to "have a death of education" for there to be a "dawn of learning".

Sad, but true..............

Project #11 Short Movie "The Very Busy Spider"

Book Trailer

The American Eagle/ Project #9b

My First PLN Report

I have downloaded Netvibes and have downloaded many other favorites.  I now have Safari, Facebook, Twitter, Tweet Deck, Utube, Picasa, Skype, Drop Box, Delicious, Google Earth, Audacity, FireFox, Timetoast, Blog sites, educational sites, etc.  I have also been saving a lot of my favorite places in my bookmarks and my reading list.  I plan on coming up to the lab this week to get help in gathering all of these different sites and favorites and placing them in Netvibes.  I do see this as a powerful tool and I am all about organization!  I do feel that I have learned a lot in this class and I have been to so many sites that I had never seen before.  I am also doing so many things I have never done before.  However, all of this is so jumbled up! I do need some way of organizing it and having it all make sense.   I think Netvibes (and my PLN) will help put all of this information I have been gathering all in one neat organized place.  I will also enjoy adding more sites to my PLN in the future.

I think once I really get a handle on my PLN.....everything else will just fall into place!

Blog Post #7 "Achieving Your Childhood Dreams"

Randy Pausch    1960-2008

This week for our blog assignment we viewed Randy Pausch's Last Lecture that was posted on Utube.  He was a professor at Carnegie Mellon who passed away from cancer in 2008.  This last lecture before he died was called "Achieving Your Childhood Dreams".  I really enjoyed his last lecture and I believe that all teachers would benefit from viewing it.  However, it was over an hour in length and I can't possibly mention everything that he covered.  I will try to hit upon a few key points and some of my favorites.

Randy's lecture was broken up into basically three topics:

He talked first about his childhood dreams. Some of his childhood dreams were to experience zero gravity, to play in the NFL, become Captain Kirk, be an author in World Book Encyclopedia, win lots of  big stuffed animals at the fair, and work as an imagineer at Disney World.  He surprisingly managed to do all of these things except play in the NFL and become Captain Kirk.  However, he did play high school football and he did get to meet and work with William Shatner.  He mentioned that his family made him into the man that he is today and everything he has achieved was accomplished by learning the fundamentals and working hard.  There will always be brick walls that come up and get in the way, but these walls can prove to us how badly we really want something.  So many things....we can learn indirectly.  In fact, he summed it up best when he said "Experience is what you get, when you didn't get what you wanted".

Randy then talked about enabling others to achieve their childhood dreams. We all need help in achieving our goals and we can learn so much from others, such as teachers, professors, parents, colleagues, friends and mentors.  We can even learn from students!  Randy gave so freely of his time as a professor and he really had fun and motivated his students.  Throughout his lecture, you could see that his style of teaching was more project based, with intense learning, fun experiences, and even field trips!  They did such fun projects such as working for Disney, creating virtual worlds, starting the Dream Fulfillment Factory curriculum, and developing Alice (a self taught computer programming course).  All of his students in his masters program were guaranteed employment upon graduation by several big companies from all over the world.  Randy and his students were learning and developing new technologies as they went and they were way ahead of their time.  So many of the programs he started are still going on today, but they are even better and more advanced!

Lastly, he talked about all the lessons that he had learned along the way. He reminded us to have fun learning and never lose our wonder.  We should be there to help others along the way and we should remain loyal.  Most importantly, we should work hard and never give up.  I certainly agree with his teaching philosophy...we need to focus on our students and teach them to be good at something because it makes them more valuable. We always need to find the best in our students and prepare them for the world by being earnest, telling them the truth, giving feedback, and listening.  We should never bail out on our students and we should never be afraid to apologize.  I think he summed it up best when he mentioned that the most important thing we can do for our students is to teach them to be Tiggers and not Eeyores.  Another words, if we are to be life long learners, then we shouldn't be complaining along the way!  We should just do better!

After listening to this lecture, I did come away with an overall philosophy about teaching in the 21st century.  I plan to provide a learning environment that is interesting and motivating to my students.  I plan to support my students in any way that I can.  I will always try to remember the huge impact I can have on their dreams and I will try to give them the tools they need....so they will never give up!

                          By the way....here's the twist!
                          Randy's lecture wasn't for you or for me....
                                       It was for his kids!

Summary of Teacher Blog Post #3 and #4

I had the pleasure of blogging with an eighth grade teacher from Liberty, Missouri named Eric Langhorst. He is a social studies teacher who had the privilege of visiting Japan this past summer on some sort of special fellowship program. He was voted Teacher of the Year in Missouri during the 2007-2008 school year.

He definitely is a great teacher because I learned so much about Japan from his blog. He did a great job of describing the cities, the transportation, and the cuisine. He even attended a baseball game. He took a lot of video of his trip and posted them on his blog. It was very interesting to get an outsider's (and a teacher's) view of Japan. He went into such detail about his trip that he even described how much better the vending machines were in Japan!

You can view Eric's trip at:

http://speakingofhistory.blogspot.com/

September CFK (Comments for Kids)

Our class has had the privilege of commenting with several different students and classrooms around the world on their classroom blogs.  I must say that our  CFK  #1 assignment was the first time that I have ever communicated with a classroom student over the Internet.

 I blogged with a student in Iowa and she had posted a beautiful wordle and written a poem all about herself.  Then, I went all the way to the United Kingdom and I blogged with a student about her  day trip to Alton Towers Theme Park.  I found out that Alton Towers is very similar to our "Disney World".  Next, I got to blog with a more "local" classroom.  I blogged with the St. Elmo Explorers about all the new ipads their classrooms had received from a special grant from Ms. Lucy Buffett.  You could see how excited all the students were with their new ipads and I was so surprised at how much they had already learned.  They had also done so much work with their classroom blog in such a short time!  Lastly, I blogged with Josh from New Zealand about places he would love to visit.  I also got to vote on a "new" flag for New Zealand.

All of the kids are really having fun and they are so creative with their blog sites.  You can really see learning taking place through this new technology.   It is very exciting that I get to be a part of this!

The Hang Out's Burp Back Education Podcast--Project #8

Should we teach students so they can perform well on test or is there something more to great teaching? Watch this and you decide: