Wednesday, July 16, 2014

Blog Assignment #14 and #15

Throughout this course, our class has learned a lot about Project Based Learning, and I have made the decision to use it frequently in my future classroom. I believe incorporating projects into my lessons will keep my students engaged in what I'm teaching and they will comprehend it better if they are enjoying themselves.

My Strengths:                                                        My Weaknesses:
Passion for helping children grow                         Keeping my plans organized
Patient and always willing to go the extra            No experience in assessing students individual needs
     mile for a student in need
Outgoing and active with children                        I need to learn when to be serious with my students


How To Make An Audio QR Code
This video discusses how to create and audio QR code. I have worked with creating QR codes before for my job, and they have been very useful for us when customers have smartphones because the QR code can be linked to pretty much anything on the web, an app, etc. QR codes could be useful in a classroom to direct students to certain websites, games, projects, and more.

iPad In The Reading Center
In this video Mrs. Tuck assigns her students to record themselves reading
 a story on their iPad, then replay the recording to her a read-aloud of the story. I love this technique because it will help the students to self-correct any issues they had in their reading, and it is always good to have a model reading of a story to listen to over and over again to further comprehend the story.

Popplet as a Center
This is another video of Mrs. Tuck, but in this video is teaching her students to use Popplet which is a tool used to create graphic organizers and timelines.

How To Make An iMovie Trailer
Again, in this video Mrs. Tuck is teaching her students to use iMovie. It was so surprising to see how quickly kindergarteners catch on to this program compared to my lack thereof when it came to learning how to use it for this class!

Mrs. Shirley’s 1st Grade Class: How to use and build a Board in DE for a Project Based Lesson
This video shows how Mrs. Shirley used Discover Education in one of her lessons. The impressive thing about this video is that a student is telling what the teacher is doing and explaining everything.

Twitter For Educators
Twitter LogoThis video is an interview with Mrs. Davis, Mrs. Bennett, and Dr. Strange, discussing how Twitter has changed teaching and learning in the 21st century. I had not used Twitter until this course, but I have come to understand how Twitter can not only be used for students to communicate with their peers and teachers, but also for teachers to communicate with other teachers.
We All Become Learners
This video is all about how everyone is constantly learning, especially when teachers learn from their students. For instance, Mrs. Bennett discusses how a student taught her how to take a picture on an iPad. Students teach their teachers all of the time about what is new in their little world and how to work those things.

C4Ta#4

Dr. Will Dayamport has many blog posts that include videos called "The Dr. Will Show" and have an episode number. I watched and commented on two of his episodes. The first was a discussion with Walter Duncan, co-founder of the QuickKey App. This app turns your phone into a scanner that allows you to grade multiple choice questions. This app sounds like it would be so useful to teachers in middle and high school grades!

The second video I watched was an episode with Sabba Quidwai, who is a Social Science teacher and Educational Technology Coordinator. She helped launch the iPad program at the school in which she teaches. One thing that stuck out to me in this video is when she said she always has a class website for her students to have an outlet for finding missed assignments, and how she says technology has always brought her curriculum to life. I think that using technology in the classroom makes boring subjects more interesting and keeps students more involved in their work than during a regular lesson.

Quick Key App

C4Tp#4

In Mrs. Tolisano's blog post, Documenting FOR Learning, she discusses how she keeps track of everything going on in her classroom by documenting. I never realized how much documenting things would benefit me as a teacher, and my students as well. I typically will document important dates and times for appointments and such, but I also think that documenting in my lesson plans would be a great way to keep track of what is going on in my classroom.

In her blog post Building Good C.U.L.T.U.R.E., she discusses an acronym that was shared by one of her colleagues, and also created an image of the acronym. The acronym is the word "culture" and it stands for: collaborate, understand, love, trust, unite, respect, empower. I think this acronym is brilliant and is exactly what every classroom needs. I will definitely have something like this displayed in my classroom somewhere near my desk to remind me of those things each day.
 http://langwitches.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/building-good-culture.png

Sunday, July 13, 2014

Blog Assignment #5 Part 2: Final summary of PLN

Earlier in this course, our class set up individual PLN's, or Personal Learning Networks. I chose Symbaloo to use for mine, and I actually use it a good bit. I have set it as my homepage, because it has pretty much every website I use linked to it. I have all of my social networking accounts, my school accounts, class blog, and much more all on one page. All I have to do is click on what I want and it already has me signed in to whatever it is. Thank you for introducing me to Symbaloo!
Symbaloo logo

Blog Assignment #13: What did I leave out?

I have learned a lot throughout the course of this class, but one assignment I would like to have seen introduced would be setting up an interview with a teacher in your subject area to learn about the do's and don'ts, what to expect, etc. I participated in this in my high school senior portfolio, and benefited a lot from it. The instructions were as follows:

-Schedule an interview with someone who currently works in the field of your choice. (In our case, a teacher in our subject area.
-You must be dressed in appropriate attire: dress like you were being interviewed to receive this job.
-Have a list of questions to ask your interviewee. Example: What do you enjoy most about this job? Do you receive benefits? What are some difficulties you have run into throughout this job that I should look out for?
-Write a two paragraph essay in response to what you learned in the interview. (In our case, possibly a blog post about it.) Within the blog post, discuss the required attire for the job, and a short description of what is expected of someone in that certain profession.

I benefited from this project because it gave me a taste of what it would be like in the field I wanted to study, and it gave me the chance to make sure that was what I wanted to do in life. Also, being interviewed with someone in that field, dressed appropriately like I was ready for the job, has helped me land several potential jobs after I graduate. 


Teacher