Sunday, November 23, 2014

Blog Post #14

Joel Klein

never stop learning

Problems listed
  • the problem with choosing our teachers
  • seniority

Solutions listed:
  • recruiting teachers from the top of class
  • eliminating the least effective teachers rather than the new hires



   In this article Joel Klein is discussing some of the issues with our education system, but this time it is more focused on the teachers rather than the students. He lists problems that the schools are seeing and uses a reference to Albert Shanker to conclude his argument with solutions. Some of the solutions don't seem that bad of an idea.

PROBLEM LISTED: Hiring teachers and choosing more effective ones. So with this argument I somewhat agree and somewhat disagree with it. I understand where he is coming from because his argument is stating that teachers are being chosen solely because they have a degree, and not for their actual teaching abilities or knowledge. I think that we should be looking more into depth at the college career of teachers and look at their standards and teaching certification classes. If the grades are poor but they passed, I think we could go more into testing like Klein suggests and make sure that they are highly qualified. I definitely think that that would help with this issue. I know it would make me feel better knowing that everyone becoming a teacher was going to be held at the highest of standards.

PROBLEM LISTED: Seniority. I 100% agree with this one. I think the issue of seniority in schools is outrageous and has gotten entirely out of hand. Even in my own high school, I had seen some of the best teachers that had only recently been added, get cut because they had been hired within the last two years, while teachers that had tenure and weren't effectively teaching anymore, got to sit and continue to do their jobs in a less than enthusiastic way. I'm not saying every school has this problem, but many do. Teachers that are no longer effective in their positions should not be granted leniency due to seniority. I think that again, re-testing teachers to make sure that all teachers are very familiar with the information that is being taught, is a great idea. If they can practice all of the necessary skills, then they should be kept, in my opinion.

Of the other problems listed, "giving far more school choices to families, using technology to improve teaching and learning, adopting a knowledge-based curriculum and starting education before a child is 5 years old" , I do not waiver from those beliefs at all. I would have to agree. More so than any, the technology portion, and adding more choices in schools. I think these are problems that we are slowly beginning to see being rectified. Maybe in a few more years we can see all of these changes come to life.

Tuesday, November 18, 2014

C4K's for November

 Final Comments for Kids (C4k's)
October/November


Raised hands holding technology

 10/31- William:
William's blog
    William wrote about Halloween for his blog. He discussed his favorite monster, and explained why people used to dress up for the holiday. He definitely did his research because he knew that they used to wear masks to scare away "the dead" from coming back. William asked if anyone knew why we get candy on Halloween now. I told him where I was from and how I got to his blog. I also corrected some of his capitalization errors. After that I told him why we get candy, and wished him a HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!


11/6- Anna:
Anna's Blog
    Anna is 13 and in an art class where they blog about the different things that they do. Some of the different projects Anna worked on were a product design project, and a collage project. The project I left my comment on was for her collage. She talked about how long it took and exactly how she came to it. Her art even got displayed at the local hospital, and that gave her some great feedback. You can really tell Anna enjoys her art and definitely knows her way around a blog. She has photos and slideshows on each of her posts. I told her who I was and commented how great her photo looked and that I too, enjoy crafting and doing pinterest projects. I really enjoyed her blog.


11/18- Alexis:
Alexis's blog

   Alexis is in the 7th grade in Minnesota. On her blog she wrote about how fast the second quarter of her school was going by. She talked about how she hopes to not be slothful because she wants to do well, and also wants to keep herself active in class. I commented on her blog where I was from and wished her a happy quarter ending and hoped that the second quarter went by just as fast. I also told her to keep up her good work and keep pushing forward.

Sunday, November 16, 2014

Blog Post #13

What Did I Leave Out?

Available on the Appstore

    If I was in charge of EDM310, I don't know how many changes I would make. But this post was interesting to me. This week we were asked to create an assignment that we would add to the EDM310 class list of blog posts if we could. Interestingly enough, I thought our workload was intense in the beginning, but now I see its not all that bad. I came up with this idea after one of my C4T teachers used it on her blog and showed how important it is and how useful it can be. 
   
 If I could add to the EDM class, I would assign them a blog post that calls for them to find an app in the app store (because everyone in the class has access to an apple product one way or another) and use it in a lesson. I would want them to do research and find a new app or any app that teachers are using today in the class and show how to use it. Explain why you chose that app and what the benefits of it are. There are so many great apps that teachers use daily and many of them are free. This blog post would give them a lot of freedom to do their own selecting but still has them blogging about technology in the class. I would try to have each student share a 2-3 minute imovie video about the app and how they think it will benefit them.

    There are not many things that this class doesn't cover but I think that something along these lines would be fun and an easy opening blog post assignment for the students to come.

What I'd Use
     If I were the one writing an answer to this blog, I would use the app Paper by FiftyThree. Paper is a great app and is free to use. The only thing you pay for are the extra brushes and tools you wish to use. Paper is a collaborative workspace where anyone from anywhere can draw or sketch notes and put it out for the world to see. It gives the student (and teachers!) the opportunity to break the barrier of "sharing is bragging" or "sharing is cheating" and rather brings the idea "sharing is collaborating". Silvia Tolisano, author of the Langwitches blog, started using sketchnoting and crowdsourcing on her blog to ask why students and teachers were afraid to share. After seeing her sketchnotes and watching Sunni Brown's TEDtalk on doodling, I HAD to find this app, PAPER. It truly is fun. Its like painting and creating without the mess. Once you send it out to the internet it is free to be "remixed" by anyone. Not to go about changing it in a bad way but to see different answers or see different choices of words, colors, etc. Different minds come up with different things. This app would be a great way for teachers to have students create art for an iMovie project, allow for different answers to be shared, come up with notes to add to slides.. the possibilities are endless. Unfortunately, my ipad is dead and the cord to charge it MIA, otherwise I would have an iMovie on here about it. LOOK UP PAPER, by FIFTYTHREE. It is really fun, and can be used anytime. You may even find some of my remixes on there! (;

Wednesday, November 12, 2014

Project #12 Part B

Delivering a Smartboard Lesson


     In this lesson, Callie and I decided to do a lesson plan we found on the Alabama Learning Exchange. The one we based our lesson plan off of one called Sense Suspense, but after editing it a little more we found a new lesson to deal with similar tasks, listed on the SmartBoard Exchange. We decided we were going to deliver a smartboard lesson plan to a kindergarten class about using the five senses and how we use each one daily. Callie did most of the video speaking, and I worked mostly on the technical side, editing the slides. We worked collaboratively on this project and think we came out with a really great, easy lesson plan on the five senses. 



Sunday, November 9, 2014

Project #10 Interview Movie


Interview Movie



    My interview was with Ms. Casey Silvers. She is currently a high school teacher in Clarksville, Tennessee.  I chose to interview her for a few different reasons. One being, she is not in Alabama, which I thought would be interesting because it can show how different our school systems are and how much we have changed. We are also related....She's my cousin. Casey recently graduated from Austin Peay University in Tennessee and was hired on less than a year later to her current position. When I asked her how she was enjoying her first year of teaching I asked, "Do you love it??" to which she replied, "Love is such a strong word... Each day comes with new and unique struggles and rewards. It's been a journey!" Casey is currently a History and ACT prep teacher at her school.


Blog Post #12

Assistive Technologies in the Class


     This week's blog post was a little different. Blog post #12 was a collaborative group post. Fortunately for us, our group consists of two people: Myself, and Callie Barton. In this post we decided to create a slideshow showing off the new technologies we learned about this week and how we can use them in the classroom to assist with hearing and visually impaired students. By using different research engines we were both able to come up with similar ideas and tools after watching the videos assigned. I worked on the general tools that most students would encounter on a day to day basis in a technologically advanced class, along with finding different statistics about visually and hearing impaired students. Callie worked to go into depth about the many ways we can use our apple products for these students. I can honestly say I never knew my ipad could be used in such a way. We both found videos that we found very useful for this project and decided to add them in. By using Google Slides and Skype we were able to collaborate on this project and get it done in no time. The outcome was this great slideshow... enjoy!

Thursday, November 6, 2014

C4T Summary (#3)


Summaries of C4T #3
Silvia Tolisano

    On 10/26- 
My teacher for the past couple of weeks has been Ms. Silvia Tolisano. To say that I learned a lot from her blog in just two short weeks, would be an understatement. Ms. Tolisano is an avid blogger and uses technology every way possible in the class. Ms. Tolisano is now in Brazil and focuses on "globally connected learning" and coaching teachers and anyone who wants to know, how to use technology effectively. Collaboration and sketchnoting were two of the biggest things in her recent posts. 

On her first post I commented on, "Crowdsourcing Answers To: What is Your Reason for Not Sharing as an Educator?", I learned what Paper, Mix, and sketchnoting meant. Paper is an app available in the app store (AND ITS AMAZING!) that allows you to free flow ideas and drawings in a web based journal that anyone can edit or change. It is known as mixing or re-mixing. These two tools allow the user to slowly ease into peer editing. Just because someone edits something doesn't mean it is bad or that your original was not worthy, they just wanted to mix it up a bit. Its about sharing and getting your ideas out there to the world and collaborating. There are so many different ways to use Paper in the classroom that I will definitely be using it in my class. For instance, Silvia put out a simple question to the Paper world... "What is your reason for not sharing as an educator?" and the results were drastically different, and yet interesting because you see a side of reflection coming from them.
"As an Educator, what is your reason for not sharing?"Answers to "What is your reason for not sharing"

   You can see that this student chose to fill in some of the bubbles and say "handwriting, fear, spelling errors", etc. That is just one of the many responses received. The problem is SHARING is not a bad thing any more. Many of us are too afraid to share because we have always been taught not to share as it is seen as cheating or bragging and that's not the case any more!




Tonight (11/6)-
 The blog post I read today was more about sketchnoting. In the previous photos you can see how Ms. Tolisano used the app Paper to sketchnote and crowdource a question. But this post is more about the actual usefulness of sketchnoting in the classroom. The article is Sketchnoting FOR Learning. This post is really more of an introduction to her sketchnoting 101 seminar that is coming up but she does give a great slide show on all the ways that sketchnoting can be used in the classroom.  For those of you that don't know, to "sketchnote" means to doodle your notes or to add little pictures drawn to help remember things and use them again. It is a tool used to train your brain to remember more easily. I know for a fact this works because I have been doing that in my science classes since I was younger, except back then it was frowned upon because it was "doodling". This is the actual slide show below, and it really does have some great work in it. The biggest idea that I understood from the doodling was that sketching brings animation to an otherwise boring lesson. You can liven up your lessons and you can have students enjoy interacting with them. It brings the material to life. You can view Ms. Tolisano's slideshow HERE. And I HIGHLY recommend watching the five minute video on doodling and its perks by Sunni Brown, HERE.

In both comments I explained what I learned, I thanked her for the information and gave her ways to contact me.
Ms. Tolisano, My name is Jennifer Flowers. I am currently a student in EDM310 at the University of South Alabama. Part of our classwork is to comment on other teacher’s blogs to educate ourselves better on not only blogging with others, but how collaboration and blogging has changed the education program. I LOVE this blog post. I have never heard of Paper, or Mix. I’m Very interested in learning about both of these! I have never heard of sketchnoting, but we can just add that to the list of things I will have to familiarize myself with. Your blog has shown me so many different things in just one post, that I know for sure I am going to spend a lot of time looking over the others. I know for me sharing and collaboration is becoming more of a slow process for me to dabble in. When I was in school we were all taught “sharing work means cheating….” or “…you can work in groups, but everyone has to write their own papers otherwise I don’t know what you did..” Sharing has become a new part of education that needs to be elaborated on more so that we don’t have students so scared to share! (Teachers too!) Sharing work

Read more at: http://langwitches.org/blog/2014/10/14/crowdsourcing-answers-to-what-is-your-reason-for-not-sharing-as-an-educator/comment-page-1/#comment-309760 | Langwitches Blog
Hi Ms. Tolisano, My name is Jennifer Flowers. I am currently a student in EDM310 at the University of South Alabama. Part of our classwork is to comment on other teacher’s blogs to educate ourselves better on not only blogging with others, but how collaboration and blogging has changed the education program. I LOVE this blog post. I have never heard of Paper, or Mix. I’m Very interested in learning about both of these! I have never heard of sketchnoting, but we can just add that to the list of things I will have to familiarize myself with. Your blog has shown me so many different things in just one post, that I know for sure I am going to spend a lot of time looking over the others. I know for me sharing and collaboration is becoming more of a slow process for me to dabble in. When I was in school we were all taught “sharing work means cheating….” or “…you can work in groups, but everyone has to write their own papers otherwise I don’t know what you did..” Sharing has become a new part of education that needs to be elaborated on more so that we don’t have students so scared to share! (Teachers too!) Sharing work can only go up from here because we can use past shared experiences for better future experiences!! Absolutely thrilled to have you as my assigned teacher this week. Thank you, Jennifer Flowers

Read more at: http://langwitches.org/blog/2014/10/14/crowdsourcing-answers-to-what-is-your-reason-for-not-sharing-as-an-educator/comment-page-1/#comment-309760 | Langwitches Blog
Hi Ms. Tolisano, My name is Jennifer Flowers. I am currently a student in EDM310 at the University of South Alabama. Part of our classwork is to comment on other teacher’s blogs to educate ourselves better on not only blogging with others, but how collaboration and blogging has changed the education program. I LOVE this blog post. I have never heard of Paper, or Mix. I’m Very interested in learning about both of these! I have never heard of sketchnoting, but we can just add that to the list of things I will have to familiarize myself with. Your blog has shown me so many different things in just one post, that I know for sure I am going to spend a lot of time looking over the others. I know for me sharing and collaboration is becoming more of a slow process for me to dabble in. When I was in school we were all taught “sharing work means cheating….” or “…you can work in groups, but everyone has to write their own papers otherwise I don’t know what you did..” Sharing has become a new part of education that needs to be elaborated on more so that we don’t have students so scared to share! (Teachers too!) Sharing work can only go up from here because we can use past shared experiences for better future experiences!! Absolutely thrilled to have you as my assigned teacher this week. Thank you, Jennifer Flowers

Read more at: http://langwitches.org/blog/2014/10/14/crowdsourcing-answers-to-what-is-your-reason-for-not-sharing-as-an-educator/comment-page-1/#comment-309760 | Langwitches Blog
Hi Ms. Tolisano, My name is Jennifer Flowers. I am currently a student in EDM310 at the University of South Alabama. Part of our classwork is to comment on other teacher’s blogs to educate ourselves better on not only blogging with others, but how collaboration and blogging has changed the education program. I LOVE this blog post. I have never heard of Paper, or Mix. I’m Very interested in learning about both of these! I have never heard of sketchnoting, but we can just add that to the list of things I will have to familiarize myself with. Your blog has shown me so many different things in just one post, that I know for sure I am going to spend a lot of time looking over the others. I know for me sharing and collaboration is becoming more of a slow process for me to dabble in. When I was in school we were all taught “sharing work means cheating….” or “…you can work in groups, but everyone has to write their own papers otherwise I don’t know what you did..” Sharing has become a new part of education that needs to be elaborated on more so that we don’t have students so scared to share! (Teachers too!) Sharing work can only go up from here because we can use past shared experiences for better future experiences!! Absolutely thrilled to have you as my assigned teacher this week. Thank you, Jennifer Flowers

Read more at: http://langwitches.org/blog/2014/10/14/crowdsourcing-answers-to-what-is-your-reason-for-not-sharing-as-an-educator/comment-page-1/#comment-309760 | Langwitches Blog

Sunday, November 2, 2014

Blog Post #11

What Can We Learn From These Teachers?


     More often than not, we can learn something even if it has been taught to us before. Each day we learn something different about Project Based Learning and its abilities to go above and beyond the original learning cycle. By offering a blended learning cycle we can see children have more fun with their education and become excited to be learning. After watching Roosevelt Elementary's PBL Program I think that I really understand the underlying message from each video. ENGAGE. ENGAGE. ENGAGE!!!! Engaging the students is one of the most important things you have to be able to do. Any teacher can stand at the front of the room and lecture on the fact that it is raining and that helps the grass grow, but a PBL teacher allows the students to come up with reasoning behind that statement and APPLY it. Students could work on building a rain gauge and adding that data into a chart on their blogs, amongst many other ideas. PBL is all about engaging the student and making them want to be active learners and having them grow as individuals. 
      I think my favorite video was the Building Comics one. I LOVE the idea behind that project and the fact that is teaching them to be super cyber-citizens. It allows them to have fun and express their creative side while also teaching them how to be safe on the web and not allow anything to happen to them via malicious links/sites or just hackers as one child stated.
      With the Andersen video I found it very interesting that the "learning cycle" was actually different from the "blended cycle". For some time, I've thought that they were generally the same thing. The 5 E's of the learning cycle are very easily overlapped into the blended learning. ENGAGE, Explore, Explain, Expand and Evaluate. By using these to be applied in PBL we can come up with projects or entry questions that engage the students and capture their attention. With the blended class we see the students using classroom techniques, mobile, and online. Students easily weave in and out of these three realms because they have all of these at their fingertips. I agree with Andersen that we should push forward with the blended and true learning cycle together because they make for a more exciting and interesting classroom experience for the students. 
     I think we can learn from all of these videos that students need to be able to reach all levels of their potential, and by keeping them in a traditional classroom we are hindering that from taking place. Students should be able to have fun while learning and develop their skills more each day. Without the exciting work that PBL brings to the class, students would be bored using just a pencil and paper all day. These teachers bring a new light to PBL and allow for the students to gain from the experience in so many different ways, be it: 21st century tech skills, highly developed classroom work ethic, public speaking skills or even collaboration, none of these would be possible in a traditional classroom alone.