Blog Post 6

Project Based Learning Videos
Anthony Capps is a third grade teacher at a school in Baldwin County called Gulf Shores Elementary. Schools now, especially in that area, are becoming more and more involved in advanced technology and combining it with teaching with the incorporation of new computers like Mac Books. Anthony discusses how he catches his students' attention by creating fun projects for them to do and create. The goal for him with this process is for the students to meet all the context that they need to know with the lesson, it is relevant to the kids' lives, it involves the community, and as well as having them driven by contact standards to what they are suppose to know. One of the examples he gave of what he did with the students was that they wrote a letter to congressman Jo Bonner about a real life situation. Applying Project Based Learning to your classroom is a great way to get your students involved and interested.

iCurio and Discovery Education
The video that was shown was a discussion on the program called iCurio, it is a program that Baldwin County is involved in. iCurio is a search engine that is a hands on program that the students can use themselves. It allows a safe search of all kinds of online programs that blocks pages that are not appropriate for students and are filtered for education program standards. It has a storage capacity for students that is really helpful by showing students how to organize and to practice early on by using folders, etc. It is a great use for students by using iCurio. Discovery Education is another website that Anthony uses frequently in his classroom. The way it works is you can type in what you want to research and the website will link you to a video to watch and learn more about the specified subject.

Blog Post 5

PLNs- What are they?

A personal learning network is an informal learning network that consists of people a learner interacts with and derives knowledge from a personal learning environment. In a PLN, A person makes a connection with another person with a specific intent that some type of learning will occur because of that connection. One of the most important parts of this concept is the theory of Connectivism. Learners create connections and develop a network that contributes to their professional development and knowledge, the learner doesn't have to ever have to meet the person or even know the person personally. Personal learning networks share a close association with the concept of personal learning environments. A personal learning network can be a collaboration of tools for helping you in your future teaching career. These tools consist of a list of people whom you can call upon for assistance. Now a days, there are so many ways to obtain this list and one could be through social media. How I would create my own PLN (Personal Learning Network) is most likely through twitter, it is a great source of social media to use for this type of situation. I will plan to use twitter by starting out with a small number of teachers to follow through the EDM program and then eventually expanding based off their tweets and followers. I think it is important for you to follow people that you do know, as well as people that you do not know. Following people you do know will most likely have the same interests and views on things as you, and following people that you do not know can lead to you thinking in a different way that you never thought you could and can open your mind to different opinions on certain things, and as well as helping me with tools that can be effective for research!

Blog Post #4

What do we need to know about asking questions to be an effective teacher?
From my experience, a lot of teachers start the lesson by asking the class an open ended question thinking that it will get the students to start thinking when most of the time, realistically, it's a question that confuses the class like it confused me majority of the time. Sometimes it is good to start out with a question like that but I feel like that teachers need to ask a lot more simpler, understanding questions. Coming from me, if I get asked a question that I don't know the answer to, my confidence shoots down and I start to get a little angry with myself. I personally think that asking more simple questions will get the mind thinking a lot smoother and it keeps the class' attention. After watching the YouTube video, "Questioning Styles and Strategies", I realized better techniques to asking the class questions to get the students more engaged in the lesson. For an example, in the video he asked a question and told the students to discuss the answer with the person next to them. I think this was a really great idea because sometimes what the teacher says doesn't always allow the students to understand it the way that they should. Discussing it with another student will open up doors so the student can understand it on their level. And they're also a lot more comfortable talking about it to another student rather than to the teacher in front of the whole class because students do tend to get embarrassed easily especially at a younger age. That is what leads me to what I disagreed with in the video. That was the technique of the random name calling, again, students will get embarrassed very easily with this because they have so much pressure on them about the question that is being asked. Yes calling them out helps the teacher to understand if that student is comprehending the material being taught, but I feel as if there are other more effective strategies to this.
I feel like as a teacher you need to be very organized with the plan of the lesson and be prepared for everything word for word and whatever questions or answers may be thrown your way. One really good strategy is planning every question you want to ask them ahead of time instead of doing everything on the top of your head. The more prepared we are as teachers, it will influence our students to be the same way.

Blog Post 3

In the "What Is Peer Editing" video, I learned that there are three important steps about peer editing. Always start your peer editing with compliments, that's the first step. It is important to stay positive to the other person so they feel confident about their work!  The second step to peer editing is giving suggestions, believe it or not, it will really help out that other person to get advice on how to make things better. For an example, helping with word suggestions, using details, organization, letting them know if they have run-ons or fragments, and as well as making sure they stick to the same topic. The last step of the process is making corrections. While checking for corrections, you need to check for punctuation, grammar, sentences and spelling.
To me I feel like making suggestions would be the most important step out of the three because it makes you feel better about it when you will know that somebody else likes your work!