Blog Post #7

Video Chat with Dr. Strange, Mrs. Elizabeth Davis, and Mrs. Michele Bennett   

    Becoming a teacher in the 21st century will require us to better familiarize ourselves with technology and learn to properly use and accommodate for Elementary students. I learned a lot from watching the provided videos of Mrs. Michele Bennett and Mrs. Elizabeth Davis. They informed us about a lot of helpful and useful tools and information.

Using iMovie and Alabama Virtual Library in Kindergarten (AVL).
    Mrs. Davis and Mrs. Bennett explained to us about the uses of iMovie and AVL. In Gulf Shores Elementary, their kindergarten classes are using iMovie to produce book trailers similar to the ones we had to create in EDM. Mrs. Bennett was very impressed with the younger students knowing how to use these apps effectively. That goes to show that in this day and time younger students are more technologically literate than high school or college students. I would have never imagine being in kindergarten and being able to produce such work that students, that young, do in today's society. Also students at Gulf Shores Elementary want their work to be outstanding so they review and edit their trailers many many times before they turn them in. Most of the time college students won't even read over their work and turn it in as is with all spelling and grammatical errors and hope their professor won't notice.

We All Become Learners!
    As Mrs. Bennett stated, "Teachers teach students, students teach students, and students teach teachers. Everybody becomes a learner and a teacher." This statement couldn't be more true. I love how teachers learn new things from their students on a daily basis. It amazes me what students already know before they even start school just from one little device. The two ladies explain the use of the website Padlet. Padlet is a website where you can add people to a group and post questions or statements that everyone in your group can see and respond to. This is a great website to use for open-ended questions and group projects. Dr. Strange made a great point in this video when he said, "Students are so eager to share their work with everyone and they sometimes get their feelings hurt when they don't get the chance to." It makes students feel so proud of themselves when they can show their work to their teacher and classmates and if they can teach their teacher how to do something she may not know.

iPads in the Classroom.
    Are they beneficial? In this video, we learned about many different uses of iPads in schools. One of the teachers in this video explains to us that it gives her more of a variety on how she teaches each subject. If there is museum or field trip that a teacher feels that is a great way of engaging students,  but visiting these places are just not physically possible, they could visit virtual labs or museums and get the same experience right from their classrooms. Going along with the virtual field trips or museums, they could also help schools save money. They mention in the video that they could now put more than one teacher in the classroom to assist the main teacher. I also loved the app that special education students could use that had pre-recorded statements or sayings that they could just tap and interact with people.

10 Reasons to Use Technology in Education.

1. Students love it--it has cool factors and engages students. 
2. Engages the four key components to learning: Active engagement, participation in groups, frequent interaction in feedback, connection to real world experts. 
3. Professional Development
4. Makes life easier for the teacher--They can have online test and quizes and students can get immediate feedback and teachers don't have stacks and stacks of papers to grade.
5. Improves test scores--Students can now go at their own pace and progress at their own speed. 
6. Helps students with low attention spans--It keeps them actively engaged and busy working instead of staring into space. 
7. Lean from experts.
8. Encourages completion of homework. 
9. Saves money--As I stated before, they now can have more than one teacher in the classrooms to assist the main teacher. 
10. Remove obstacles--If you have students hard of hearing you can invest in a voice amplifying device to project your voice louder when you teach. 

C4K Summary for February

Ben's Blog

C4K#1:   I had the pleasure of reading Ben's Blog about Nebraska's state senator, Mrs. Crawford, visiting their school. Ben shared with us, that he and his classmates concluded that being a state senator is a lot of work. Getting to meet the state senator of Nebraska was very inspiring to Ben's class because she is such big named figure for their state, but soon learned she is just like any of them when it comes to her life outside of being a state senator. He and his classmates also learned from Mrs. Crawford which laws actually made Nebraska its own unique state.

Brenna's Blog

C4K#2:   Brenna's blog post, She Doesn't Need A Glass Slipper, was very interesting to me. I loved how she first told the original story of Cinderella and then went in to telling a different version. The second version was Cinderella standing up to her step mother and two step sisters, instead of, them picking on her and her just sitting back and taking it. Brenna's version of Cinderella should be the one told to young kids instead of the traditional one.

Bridget's Blog

C4K#3:   I was very impressed when reading Bridget's Blog; DC in December. It was about her and her family traveling to DC to visit some family members. I'm guessing there assignment to create a rhyming poem about a specific event. Bridget did an excellent job on structuring her poem and making the last word of every sentence rhyme.

Alexis' Blog

C4K#4:   This week I was required to read a high school students blog named Alexis. I choose to read her blog post, Valentine's Day. It was very interesting that she took the time to research what Valentine's day is really about. Most people don't know the real reason behind it and that it was named after a guy name Saint Valentine, who wrote a letter to his daughter right before he killed himself and signed the letter, "Your Valentine".

Project 7 Part B

To My Parents...

To My Students...

Project #8 Book Trailer

Fancy Nancy: Book Trailer

Blog Post #6

For blog post #6 we were given 6 different videos of interviews from a former South student named Anthony Capps. Anthony is now a 3rd grade teacher at Gulf Shores Elementary. In his interviews, Anthony gives very constructive information for future educators. I found all of his videos to be useful and informative, but the most useful to me were: ICurio, Discovery Education, and Anthony-Strange Tips for Teaching Part 1.

ICurio: ICurio is an online tool to allow students to safely search the internet to find useful information. I have never heard of ICurio before watching Anthony's videos. I think that this search engine is not only helpful for teachers but it also ensures parents that their kids are learning how to safely use the internet.

Discovery Education: "A picture is worth a thousand words"; Discovery Education is another useful online tool to help with listening-learning. Some students need visuals to help grasp certain concepts and material. This website lets you find pictures, videos, and audios about any particular subject or keywords. Anthony uses the example: If his students are learning about plants and they want to know what kind of plants kill things, they can type in "what kinds of plants kill things?" in to the search bar and it will give you all kinds of different visuals to teach them about different the plants.

Anthony-Strange Tips for Teaching: Dr. Strange and Anthony construct a list of tips that all new educators should take into consideration. I think the list that they create is a great start to any and all future educators. Here are the important things that they think we should prepare for as future teachers:

1. You really need to be interested in learning yourself. If you are not a learner then you will not be a successful educator. 
2. Teaching is hard work, but let your work become a fun and fascinating experience for you! 
3. Teachers should be flexible and creative.
4. Have your students engaged. 
5. Reflect on what your students do. 

Project #7 Part A

My Sentence...

My Passion... 

Blog Post #5 Part 1

Personal Learning Networks

What is a Personal Learning Network? A personal learning network is a way to describe the people or sometimes organization that you connect with in order to learn from their ideas, questions, reflections, and references. Its personal because you choose who you want to be in your group. Its also about learning you choose what subject or what content area you want to learn and choose people who have that same interest. Most people have a personal learning network and don't even know it. If you have accounts with Twitter, Facebook, Skype, A personal blog, ETC; then you have your own personal learning network. As a future educator, I would encourage young children to start creating their personal learning networks now and continue to add to it as they get older. Personal Learning Networks are very useful to classes that are project based. Students use online sources when creating different projects to help locate knowledge and skills.

Project #3 Presentation

Blog Post #4

What do we need to know about asking questions to be an effective teacher? 

   Asking effective question's is a important factor of being a teacher. I never was really the type of student to immediately raise my hand an answer questions, whether I knew the answer or not. I also never realized how the wording of questions can make a difference on what kind of answer you get from your students. As a future educator, I want every student to be engaged in answering questions and even asking questions of their own. In my future classroom, I want to generate a strategy to get my students actively answering questions without me forcing it out of them.

I found that all of the sources that were suggested were very helpful. Two sources that I found very helpful were: Three Ways to Ask Better Questions in the Classroom and Questioning Styles and Strategies.

• In the blog, Three Ways to Ask Better Questions, the author makes wonderful suggestions to take into consideration when asking questions. Her first tip to asking good questions is preparing your question. I never knew asking questions could required prep time before asking, but when dealing with students you never know what kind of answers you will get so you need to be prepared for any type that is thrown your way. The second tip she suggest is, play with your question. Playing with questions means, asking it but leaving it unanswered and come back to it once your students have had time to think in depth about the answer. You can also play with a question when you are preparing them. Make sure you ask your questions in the best possible way that students understand. Finally, her third tip is preserving good questions. You want to preserve the good questions for possible test questions, pop quiz's questions, and even bonus questions on test.
• My most favored source was the Question Style and Strategies video. I love how the teacher in the video uses a variety of different techniques and styles in his teaching. A few techniques that were used in this video were: provisional writing and cueing, think pair and share, random calling, surveying, student calling, and value feedback. Having students answer a question in a journal and then compare their answers with another classmate may help students feel less nervous about answering questions, especially if they are questions that can have a variety of answers. Randomly calling on a student makes sure that all of your students are thinking about the questions asked, because no one wants to get called on and not have some kind of answer ready. I also like how he had a student call on another student to share, it makes students aware that their teacher is not just "picking on" them. Giving students valuable and positive feedback is a MUST! Boost their self confidence! When they answer correctly or if they give elaboration to an question without it being forced, repeat that adverb or descriptive word and show them that you acknowledged and appreciated their effort and it will make them want to answer more frequently.

Project #15 Search Engines

Eight Different Search Engines-What does each do specifically?

1) Wolfram Alpha

• Wolfram Alpha is a "computational knowledge engine". 
• This search engine is useful for comparison's, mathematical problem solving, locating where you are or locating a specific place, and can also generate unique passwords for you. 
• Is said to be the most useful site on the internet. 

2) Bing

• Bing was created and released by Microsoft. It is the second most popular search engine. Before Bing it was named Live Search, Windows Live Search, and MSN Search. 
• You can search keywords or phrases and it will direct you to articles containing those key words.

3) Dog Pile

• Dog Pile is known as a meta search engine which means that it gets its results from multiple search engines and combines them to give you the best information. 

4) DuckDuckGo

• DuckDuckGo searches social media bio's without you having to leave the search engine. 
• It can also check and see if certain websites are down or not.

5) Yahoo

• Yahoo is the second largest search engine on the web.  
• According to, The New York Times, "Yahoo has said to collect more data about users than its competitors".

6) AOL

• AOL is mostly used for AOL instant messaging.
• People also use AOL for email purposes.

7) Lycos

• Its initial focus was broadband entertainment content. 
• Most popular in the 90's.
• One of the earliest crawler-based search engines

8) HotBot  

• Considered to be a meta-like search engine, which means it searched its results from four different search engines and compiled them into one.
• HotBot's wild colors, great results and impressive features drew everyone in. 

 

C4T#1: Elizabeth Moore

   Conferring and Student Goals

      As I read Mrs. Moore's Blog on conferring and student goals, I didn't realize how important such small acts of acknowledgements meant to students. In her blog she gives a few ideas of how you can personalize each students goals/tasks and make it "theirs". The one that stood out to me the most was printing each student their own individual picture, goal or task on a mailing label and sticking it in the back of their notebook. She explains to us, that students love to show off their unique "stickers" to their classmates. It's such a great way to show your student's that you are taking the initiative to give them something that they can call their own and also it can get them motivated to learn tasks and accomplish new goals.

My Comment:                                                                                                                                        Hi! My name is Alison Earley and I am a student at the University of South Alabama studying elementary education. I have about 2 years left in my college career and I am stoked about becoming an elementary school teacher. I loved reading your blog, though I am not big on writing, I loved the clip art “sticker” idea. It seems like a great way to get students encouraged to accomplish whatever goal that their teacher has given them, because face it who doesn’t love stickers!
Thank you so much for sharing this information.
Alison!
Twitter: @alieliz_beth
Student Blog: http://earleyalisonedm310.blogspot.com/

Slice of Life Story Challenge

       The second post that I read from Mrs. Moore's Blog was very new and interesting to me. She explains to us what the Slice of Life Story Challenge was and how it can be useful to teachers and students around the world. The Slice of Life Story Challenge is basically a big composite blog that students all around the world share their stories. I hope to get more educated with this tool as I further my education career and hope to use it in my future classroom.   

My Comment:
Hi! My name is Alison Earley, I recently commented on your blog “Conferring and Student Goals”. I have found the Slice of Life Story Challenge to be very interesting. I think it will be a great tool for students to use in classroom to connect with students around the world. I also admire that you took the time to post a section about internet safety. Most students don’t realize what they post on the internet is public and anyone anywhere can see what they post. I hope to accept this challenge in my future classroom!
Thanks so much for sharing.
Alison!
Twitter: @alieliz_beth
Student Blog: http://earleyalisonedm310.blogspot.com/