Implications and Teaching Opportunities for Camera Use in Teaching and Learning

"I DON'T USE MY PHONE EVERY DAY." - People in DENIAL

 Dr. Strange gave us these astonishing facts:
"A recent study by Zogby Analytics reports several interesting findings regarding young people aged 18 - 24:

1. 87% say their smartphone never leaves their side.
2. 80% say the very first thing they do in the morning is reach for their smartphone.
3. 78% say they spend 2 or more hours per day using their smartphone.
4. 68% say they would prefer to use their smartphone instead of their laptop or personal computer for personal use.
5. 91% say that having a camera on their smartphone is important (61% very important)
6. 87% say they use their smartphone camera at least weekly. 59% use their smartphone camera at least every other day. 44% use their smartphone camera for still or motion picture taking every day."

With so many recent updates to the world of technology it is almost impossible to NOT own a smartphone. I got my first phone when I turned 13 and I was LUCKY to have a camera on it, AND IT HAD A FLASH! It was intense, feeling like I had won a million bucks. The truth of today though is that kids that are under the age of ten have smartphones, use them daily, and guess what.... theirs has a high speed camera in it already.....And it has a flash. Uncle Ben said it best: "..with great power comes great responsibility." (Spider-man... for all you non-nerds...) Children today hold a great power and with that must learn their responsibilities. Some of the issues with having smartphones in the classroom is that students do not have a very long attention span. Everyone wants to be updated on whats happening, even if its happening in the same room that you're in. Fighting the urge to not text your friend in class is like trying to fight off the urge to not blink.... its really hard to do but eventually you cave. I know that being a student in college, this is definitely hard so I cant imagine how it would be for students in an elementary school.

Knowing that my students will have always known cell phones with cameras can be entertaining. We could bring in old phones and ask them to figure them out and take a photo, only to show them what its like not having one. This presents an issue though, with every new technology, there are teachers that still have no idea about them. Many teachers want to keep technology out of the classroom and that, in my opinion, is a terrible idea. These students know so much about technology and smartphones that they are teaching the teachers how to use it. Teachers that embrace the technology revolution can do so much more in the classroom.

Examples:

• Using their cellphones on a "fieldtrip" around the school taking photos of certain plants, scavenger hunt style, to bring them back and upload them to a poplet for a science lesson.
• having them do a venn diagram about the differences and similarities of phones from the past and phones they have now
• creating an idea for a future phone by basing it off of the phones they have. What would they keep/change/add
• record the teacher's lecture/project instructions so they have them to take home and don't forget
• Using their tablets to search AVL and other virtual libraries for links and upload them to their blog
• Text-a-friend assignments: when your partner is absent from school you can text/skype them so they are not behind
• playing music that they don't know and having them use the listening features on the phone to identify it
• taking photos to add to iMovies
• creating poplets/iMovies
• having them look up individual answers to questions they don't know and see who can find the most answers
• taking photos of a page from a reference book that cannot leave the library, so they can have it with them later
• playing TELEPHONE while using an actual telephone, for famous quotes

There are so many different things that we can come up with. These are just a few ideas on how we could use each individual child's tablet/phone in the classroom. These could all be used in conjunction with other projects as well.  I really believe that technology is going to be in the classrooms a lot more from now on because of all the cool things we can learn to do with it! Hopefully one day we can create more signs like these:

Project #9

Teaching Digital Natives Video Commentary

Group #5 

Topic #1

Group: Jennifer Flowers, Callie Barton and Patrick Morrison

Blog Post #8

What Can We Learn About TEACHING and LEARNING From Randy Pausch? 

     "I mean I don't know how to not have fun. I'm dying and I'm having fun. And I'm going to keep having fun every day I have left. Because there's no other way to play it," he said in his Carnegie Mellon lecture. "You just have to decide if you're a Tigger or an Eeyore. I think I'm clear where I stand on the great Tigger/Eeyore debate. Never lose the childlike wonder. It's just too important. It's what drives us." -Randy Pausch, Last Lecture

     Let me start off by saying, WOW. What an emotionally-filled, fun, entertaining way to grab someones attention with a video like that. I've never felt more, like I am on the right path, than I do after this video. There are so many things to be said about learning and teaching from Randy's video and I don't believe we will all come up with the same thing, because there are so many different aspects to it. I'm going to attempt to cover a small fraction of what I have learned from this experience. Randy's Last Lecture.

LEARNING-
   Similar to what we covered, he mentions a few times about staying a learner. In the Pausch video Randy explains that throughout your time, stay curious, and learn always. One of the examples he gave of that was when he explained his first year of teaching Building Virtual Worlds. He was lost on what to do with students that had exceeded his expectations so he called his mentor for advice, and was told: "Tell them they can do better," and they did. For ten more years. Because he was constantly developing a way for his students to continually become better learners (and teachers) he himself was evolving and becoming a better learner. 
Another thing that I learned from watching this video is that PBL is not a new concept. Randy Pausch and his team were using PBL in their class in the 90's. Project Based learning WORKS and it is so effective that you can eventually make it the only way to get things done. 
RANDY NEVER STOPPED TAKING ADVICE FROM HIS COLLEAGUES AND PEERS. Did anyone else notice this? Any time he was presented with advice on how to change something or become better, he took it in stride. He worked collaboratively with people every day to become one of the best professors and he did so with the help of others. Learning is asking questions, finding the answers, and sharing those answers. One of the final thoughts he had was about sharing. People need to be able to share their work and show it off. In order to get to the best final product though, it takes a team of learners, not just one person.

TEACHING-
  Throughout his lecture Randy goes back to his theory of "enabling others' childhood dreams." As an educator he does not focus on just his own, but others around him. I think this is one of the most important lessons he can show about teaching. Teaching has its hardships and not everything will go as planned the first time around. You won't always get into the school of your dreams, but with determination, help from others and taking good advice, you will probably be there. As a teacher Randy never gave up and he kept things FUN. He wanted to make sure his courses were entertaining. I think that if a course is not challenging AND entertaining then you lose a lot of the student's attention. "Never stop pursuing your childhood dreams." I think this speaks volumes about everyone's determination. One last thing on teaching would be that sometimes you have to give the students a "head fake". Sometimes we are teaching our students to develop a particular skill by making them think it is something entirely different. I just think this is such a great idea.

     Most importantly though, I think the lesson I learned from this video is that sometimes two people can be saying the exact same thing, and yet be saying to very different things by HOW they respond.
If a student brings you a question and you do not know how to do it, its easy to push it away and say "I DON'T KNOW!" and brush it away. But a true learner will respond in such a way that they too want to learn about it.... "I DON'T KNOW, BUT NOW I'M INTERESTED BECAUSE YOU'RE INTERESTED...." This is definitely something I will keep in mind, and I hope everyone else does too.  

C4T #2

Summary of Comments for Teachers #2

My Teacher for the past couple of weeks has been Ms. Beth Knittle. Ms. Knittle is in Massachusetts and was a middle school science teacher and has recently left to become a K-12 "Technology Integration Specialist." This means that she is helping the teachers and students understand how to use technology in the classroom more and more. I am very interested in finding out more about her position because it sounds like a great job!

On her first post, Value Added Models: Where Are We Headed? she discusses how many states are adopting the value added models and bringing forth DDM's or District Determined Measures, to see how well each teacher does in the classroom. It gives the state a determinable amount of teachers that are doing exceptionally well and can show the top % of said teachers. 

In WEEK 6: I commented on her blog post: who I was, what my assignment required and how to contact me back. I explained that I didn't know much about Value Added Models or DDM's and that her blog was the first time I had heard of them. I explained that I was interested in looking into it more and that it was a very different subject. I am still a tad confused by them, but hopefully I will be able to find more information about them.



WEEK 8:
This week was a little different. Ms. Knittle's post this week actually coincides with something we recently went over in class. Her post was called The Power in Connections. She discussed how connections allow us to regain a lot of inspiration when we need it most. Being a teacher can sometimes be a bit of hardship but by keeping her PLN together, and checking in with other educators, this allows her to feel better and get more information, and ideas to revamp her lessons. The comment I left this week explained how we recently went over PLN's and how that was interesting because I am looking for ways to build my own. I told her I understand the sense of unity in using her PLN to her advantage and keeping in touch with people around the globe. She also gives a link at the end to Connected Educators. OCTOBER IS CONNECTED EDUCATORS MONTH. This truly is a great site and I am so happy to have been given Ms. Knittle's blog or I wouldn't have known about this great site. 

In both comments I left her with my name and my website and how she could contact me. :)

Project #13

 VOLCANOES

In this project, our group decided to come up with a project about VOLCANOES!
The project requires the student to find research on their ipads using AVL for the information about specific volcanoes and how they work. They are given specific vocabulary word to use during their presentation, and make a model of a volcano using clay. We used the ALEX system and the BIE.org website to make these plans.

These are the links where you can find our lesson plans:

Specific Lesson Plan

and

Link to the Student Rubric

Blog Post #7

How Do We All Become Learners?

Summarizing the different videos:

1) How to create a QR code:

     In this video we are shown two different websites that are combined in order to make a QR code. A QR code is also known as a Quick Response code. This code allows anyone with a QR reader to quickly scan it and be brought to the link or photo that the creator of the code has established. In this video we are shown first, how to make a voice recording by using Recordmp3.org. We are shown how to record the voices we would like to put on the code. Then we are shown QR-monkey.com. QR-monkey is how we actually create the code itself and then copy it to print. This can be very useful for classrooms because you can have the students use this as a project on technology and then bring it to an image of a famous painting where they could hear a voice recording on it, and then write a summary on how they got there, where it took them and what they learned from it.

2) iPad Reading Center
      This was a very cool little activity demonstrated at Gulf Shores Elem. The students are in kindergarten and are recording themselves reading their phonetics. This allows them to listen to themselves and play it back to see if they missed anything. The students video, watch and learn from their mistakes, and then reread and rerecord. What a great way to see to it that each student is taking in positive criticism and learning to be self helpers!

3) Poplet as a Center
   In this video, we are taught how to make a Poplet. A Poplet is a virtual web stemming from a center that the students are doing their projects on. The video itself is very informative about how to make one but is kind of short. The poplet is a great (FREE!) app on the app store that can be taught in the class about foodwebs, different careers, types of cars, etc! It is a great tool that also allows them to work together in groups and collaborate!
  
4)AVL
    In this video we are shown yet again that sometimes, the students will surpass the SOON TO BE teachers! AVL stands for Alabama Virtual Library, and it is a research tool used by students of all ages. In this center, the students are given a set of vocab words that they must search using AVL and then draw a picture of it. The following week they draw a picture and write a sentence about it. This shows the teacher they are paying attention and taking notes to keep learning, and not just goofing off.It holds the students accountable for their work and also incorporates art into the classroom.

5) How to Build a Board
   In How to Build a Board, we are taught how to make a board on DiscoveryEd. Making these boards can be a great way to show self teaching and learning. The students are given topics to cover and then use the DiscoveryEd search engine as they would the AVL and find videos and photos to add to their board. The board video reminding me of making a poster board project, without all the mess.  

6) Ms. Tassin's 2nd Grade Board Builders 
     So this video was actually a little different. In this video, the students were showing off their board and explaining all the work they came up with for Whales, after taking a "virtual field trip" to Glacier National Park in Alaska. The two students explained where they got their info and how to add it to the board.

7) Student's Sharing Their Board
     This video was adorable. It was a board builder about one of my favorite animal shelters, The Haven. These girls were raising money to donate to The Haven so that the animals there, would get more blankets, food, sheltering, pillows, toys, etc. The girls did a short presentation on why it is important to donate the loose change to the organization and all three seemed very excited about the project.

8) Using iMovie and the AVL
   This video is  conversation between Dr. Strange, Ms. Bennett, and Ms. Davis about AVL and using iMovie. Kindergarten students are using imovie to create book trailers exactly as we did not but three weeks ago. It seems a little intense to think that children that are under ten years old have better knowledge of the same project that we are doing and how to do it. As far as the AVL goes, most of us have been using this since high school. I love that students k-12 are using it all of the time now too so that they are used to it by the time they reach our grade levels.

9) We All Become Learners
   This video is probably the best of the nine. This video focuses on the fact that everyone becomes a learner.  We are learning that students and teachers are constantly learning. Many students know how to use a lot of technologies in the classroom and are proving that even the teachers need to be retaught sometimes. Ms. Bennett talks about using Padlet, in the classroom. We have recently used Padlet in our classes so that we are doing the same thing. Each of the students using Padlet becomes a learner by teaching one another something new each day. Technology is constantly evolving and now, learning is as well. As Ms. Bennett says, it changes the dynamic of the learning.

PROJECT #7 PART B

TWO MOVIES PART B

For the Parents:

For the Students: