Blog Post 10

How Can We Learn From Mrs. Cassidy?
Mrs. Cassidy is a teacher that is very involved with using technology in her classroom such as video, blogging, and audio and she strongly believes that technology is here to stay and will continue to change and grow. In this case, she also believes that teachers should be very familiar with all of the technology so they can use it throughout their classroom. I happen to agree with this statement that she has made due to the fact that the world is as matter of fact changing and change is never going to stop and I think we have to adapt to the changes. Technology has done nothing but grow over the years and it is going to continue being like that. Mrs. Cassidy uses webpages for the students to search things and to help them learn on their own. She also uses a class blog to where the world can see it and she posts videos on the blog of students and what they learned that day. She also lets the students use Nintendo DS to teach them how to solve problems through fun games and to share with other students.
Mrs. Cassidy became involved with technology in her classroom around ten years ago when her technology coordinator of the school mentioned different things about class technology and she was one of the first teachers to reach out and try it. Five years ago was when she started blogging and two years ago was when she did the class videos. How she goes about protecting her students' identity is she only puts the first name of the students and she posts pictures but not to match the name and the picture. Mrs. Cassidy says that the good thing about blogging is the audience. When the students write on paper, they are just giving it to the teacher. When you blog, they are writing it for the whole world to see it through a tool that Cassidy uses Class Blog Meister. Through this tool they can get more advice and feedback about their work that they submit.
Mrs. Cassidy talks about in one of the interviews that teachers should start by using technology in whatever their more interested in to learn about using technology in your classroom. Throughout her time, she learned about Twitter and became more involved in it overtime. She saw it to be very useful because she got feedback and great advice from others. She found helpful links and tools from the people that she followed and that she uses to this day.
In one of the videos that was given to me to watch was students at South Alabama in my EDM310 class asking Mrs. Cassidy different questions and getting advice for their future in the classroom. One student asked how often she uses blogs in her classroom and she answered by saying that she gets her class to blog atleast once a week as a class. She informed the students that were interviewing her that she believes the internet is not a source to cheat, it is a source to collaborate and learn on your own and I completely agree with that statement. Overtime, I have learned a lot by using the internet and technology.
In my future classroom, I will definitely be using the class blog like Mrs. Cassidy did. I think it is a great way to involve the students and as well as keeping them updated on daily news, assignments, and tests. It has been a great experience with using blogs and posting them on my page with my EDM310 class.

Blog Post 9

Project Based Learning- What Can Teachers and Students Teach Us About PBL?

There are Seven Essentials for PBL(Project Based Learning) and what they do is describe a scenario in which a project is assigned to the students by their instructor, Mrs. McIntyre. How she goes about introducing the project is she "plops down" a packet provided with information about the assigned project onto the students' desks listing the requirements for the project. What every good project needs is one that is meaningful and it provides two criteria. First one is the students must take the work serious as it was personally meaningful as a task that matters and they want to do well. Second, is also fulfills an educational purpose as well. "Well-designed and well implemented project-based learning is meaningful in both ways," says McIntyre.

The 7 Essentials for PBL:

1. A Need To Know
2. A Driving Question
3. Student Voice and Choice
4. 21st Century Skills
5. Inquiry and Innovation
6. Feedback and Revision
7. A Publicly Presented Product

Project Based Learning for Teacher by Tony Vincent provided an interesting lesson about Project Based Learning. It featured what student will be doing in PBL and it includes: having a purpose, addressing an audience, creating a driving question, identifying learning standards, creating a rubric, grouping students, brainstorming, meeting deadlines, focusing on the process, and refining the end product. This is all while students have a voice and a choice in their learning. This is not only helpful in school but in the real world in the future as well because PBL is so hands on and the students learn things on their own. Teaching these techniques and skills at an early age will form very good habits in and outside the classroom!

What Motivates Students Today? This video interviews a few students about what motivates them to do well in school. These students talked about how school supplies, brownie points, pizza parties, stickers, and even compliments from the teachers on their work are all things that motivate them to do well. One of the students talked about how when his teacher gives him positive feedback on his work he feels like he accomplished something and gives him confidence, which leads him to continue to do those things every time. Some other students also talked about how they want to live a good life when they grow up, so they make good grades now to be successful later on in what they do in life. What I have learned from experience and this video is to reward students when they accomplish something or do well in something because that leads to them being motivated in school and to do well.

Two Students Solve the Problem of Watery Ketchup By Designing A New Cap is a video about two high school students from North Liberty High School who were partnered up in their software design class to research and develop a bottle cap that prevents the first squirt of ketchup from being a huge watery mess. The students used a 3-D printer to create a new cap to where you can eliminate the need of shaking the bottle. How they go upon by doing this is they use Project Lead the Way, which is a program that takes a hands-on and project-based approach to STEM education for not only high school but elementary and middle school and as well.

Project Based Learning in PE is an article written by high school students to middle school students about a physical fitness program that the high schools had the opportunity to create. This project is very beneficial to both groups of students and it presents some great ideas to the PE participants. Some ways that it is beneficial are creating different programs to help the student focus on practicing physical fitness, also the ideas of collaboration, teamwork, and most of all role modeling. I think this is a great way to engage all students in fitness and actually learn something from the experience!

Using PBL is very beneficial for both students and teacher because everybody is learning in the process! All of these videos and articles have been very helpful for me towards my teaching career!

Blog Post 8

What can we learn about teaching and learning from Randy Pausch

I really enjoyed watching the video of Randy Pausch's last lecture. He came off to me as a very encouraging and uplifting person and I am inspired for all that he has achieved in his lifetime. The reason why this was his "last lecture" is because he is battling cancer. Even with going through this, he has a great outlook on life and you can see that throughout the video. Throughout the video, he tells us a list of his childhood dreams and tells us about how he wanted to accomplish them, which he did most of them. This video inspired me in many ways and taught me the kind of person that I need to be in my classroom as a teacher and outside of the classroom as a person. In the classroom I will push my students to be the best that they can be so when they start seeing outcomes that they never dreamed of, it will teach them a lot of life lessons. That is one of my goals as a teacher, is inspiring my students and being like Randy Pausch. To be a healthy teacher and learner you have to show dedication, cherish feedback, show gratitude, work hard, find the best in everyone, be prepared, and most importantly have fun while doing it!

Project 9: Video Book Conversations

Group 3:
Our group was assigned to topic 8: In "Teaching Digital Natives", Marc Prensky asks "How should we connect technology to the curriculum?..."How could we teach for the future?" Here is a podcast of a conversation of our group and our thoughts about answering these questions.

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Blog Post 7

Summary of videos
Video #1: How To Make An Audio QR Code
This video was of Michele Bennett showing us how to create an audio QR code. "It is kind of like making a recording of yourself on a tape recorder but it is on a computer but a lot faster", says Bennett. There are two different websites to use with this process and the first one is www.recordmp3.org. How it works is you go on to www.recordmp3.org and then record yourself maybe reading a book, giving instructions, or just simply teaching a lesson. From this step you go onto QRcode-monkey.com, this is basically the QR code generator. From this website you can go on to create a QR Code to send to students and as well as parents. It can also be used with URL, text, and even email to turn into a code! This allows a smartphone to scan the code to have forever by downloading free QR Code to scan. This process simply allows students to go back and listen to the lesson, book, instructions, etc. as many times as they want so they can comprehend everything smoothly without going through the trouble of asking a bunch of different questions in a classroom.

Video #2: iPad Centers
Mrs. Ginger Tuck, kindergarten teacher at Gulf Shores Elementary, introduces to us that you can simply have the student videotape themselves on the iPad of them reading. When they get done reading they can go back and watch and listen to their video and see what mistakes the students made and also to comprehend what they read! This is a great way to get your students learning on their own!

Video #3: Poplet
Poplet is a free app that you can download on your device! Mrs. Ginger Tuck shows us that poplets are essentially a web that you can create to outline your students reading. It simply keeps what all they learned in a book, etc. in their iPad on one page. The students create them by using pictures and texts to keep them organized on what they read and puts things into a better perspective to understanding everything they learned while reading the book. The students can go on to printing these out and using them for a studying tool, this is a great way to get your students learning in a fun way.

Video #4: Alabama Virtual Library (AVL)
Mrs. Ginger Tuck teaches us how her students use Alabama Virtual Library. First, the students learn how to log in and download AVL in the library then go from there in the classroom. AVL is a great search engine to use for research. The way Ginger Tuck uses it in her classroom is she gives the students certain topics and they research it and listen or watch a video or audio to learn about that topic, once they do that they draw a picture of it and write a sentence of something they learned about it. This is a tool that I used throughout high school and it became very influential and helpful for me to learn things a lot better. This is a great tool for younger students to become familiar with researching for projects and is very hands on.

Video #5: Discovery Education Board
This video was created by Mrs. Shirley in her first grade class at Gulf Shores Elementary School. Mrs. Shirley and one of her students show us how to use discovery education to create a discovery board. They search certain topics and create a board that helps keep them organized with things that they got to discover.

Here lately I have been thinking about how I can better myself into being a teacher who incorporates technology and Project Based Learning. Ways of how I think I can be successful at this is by using a lot of these hands on tools that I described and have previously described throughout my blog. I have learned a lot just from learning about all of these different things through technology. From what I have learned, I need to get in touch with Gulf Shores Elementary School and talk with them about their research tools and how they use technology throughout their classroom and their ways of teaching through technology. My greatest strength is learning about technology and the things that go along with it very quickly, but one of my weaknesses are not knowing how to incorporate these tools within my lesson effectively. Through my personal network, I will begin to add various teachers to use as a reference to help with new and creative ideas and a fun way for students to learn the material!