Thursday, June 27, 2013

Blog Post 10

randypausch

I had never heard of Randy Pausch until we were assigned to listen to his Last Lecture. In Randy Pausch's Last Lecture I was amazed at his lecture ability, outlook on life and all of his accomplishments. If you're not familiar with Randy Pausch I suggest doing a little research. He was an incredible family man, teacher, mentor and member of society. He was diagnosed with cancer and was given three to six months to live. He found this out one month prior to his lecture, but it wasn't holding him back!

I learned many things from Pausch's lecture:

You must teach fundamentals- students have to know the basics for everything else to work

If someone stops being hard on you, they've given up on you- never stop being hard on your students

"Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted"- even if we don't get what we want, we are still learning something and there's a reason for it

Dreams DO come true- never tell your students that a dream is too big

The classroom is the best place to make others' childhood dreams come true- encourage your students to dream, and help them accomplish those dreams

Keep pushing your students, raise the bar- no matter how excellent their work is, keep pushing them to do bigger and better things

Technology can really help students enjoy learning- why not make learning fun for students?

HELP OTHERS!- karma will get you

Let your kids paint their bedroom :)- what's it going to hurt?

NEVER GIVE UP!

Brick walls will only stop the undetermined- those who are determined will find their way around

I was so impressed with Randy Pausch and his outlook on not only teaching, but life in general. I was sad to read on the internet that he passed away in 2008. But, I am happy that he clearly lived a life he loved!

Sunday, June 23, 2013

Blog Post 8

Paul Andersen, a science teacher in Montana, is incredibly smart and has great ideas to incorporate in his Blended Learning teaching style. He has been teaching science for nineteen years and just recently began teaching science online. His main idea is Blended Learning in the classroom. Blended Learning consists of online, classroom and mobile tools that incorporate engaging, exploring, explaining, expanding and evaluating (the five E's).

Andersen has six steps to his students' learning process. The first is the question. This starts the tone and is the "hook" of what they are learning. I realized that it is important for the question to be something interesting to the students so they are willing and encouraged to learn. The next step is investigation/inquiry. This is where the students should experiment and try various things with the proposed idea. Next is the video. This is more for the teacher. Andersen makes podcasts giving his students detailed instructions so he doesn't waste any class time. Instead, he has this time to review with his students. The fourth step is elaborating. This is where the students can read on the subject, or do some research. Also, this is where graphs and tables come in to play. Review comes next. Andersen meets individually with his students to evaluate them and see how well they know the material. He says in his video that if a student really knows material, then they should be able to explain it. He sits with his students and asks them questions. This is where he can tell if they know the material or not. Lastly is the summary quiz. If he doesn't feel like the students know the information, they will start over wit this learning process. If they do know the information, he will give them a timed, paper/pencil test.

I learned quite a few things from Paul Andersen. First of all, I was very impressed with his blog and the way he presented himself in his video. He sounds very intelligent, put together and like he really cares about his students. I have already learned from EDM310 that my classroom doesn't have to be the same, boring classroom atmosphere I had in grade school, but Andersen really reinforces this. He gave great examples in his step-by-step learning process on ways to ask questions, use time management and make sure your students really understand what they have been learning. I am excited to incorporate things such as group activities, podcasts and student-centered learning in my classroom!

blended learning

Maggie Adkisson

What can we learn about teaching and learning from these teachers?

Through the video Making Thinking Visible, we see Mark Church a sixth grade teacher in Amsterdam, use visible thinking in his classroom. The video starts with a topic they learned about the day before, early human beginnings and the origins of human society. He has his students create and write down a headline to summarize what the meaning of the search for human origins is all about. The students then start discussing in their groups how to summarize what they have learned into a small statement. Once they have decided on their headline and written it down, they share it aloud and tell why they chose that headline. Later on once they have completed the lesson they will go back and answer the same question, and then see how their answers changed over time. This is an example of visible thinking. The goal of visible thinking is to develop student thinkings patterns while expanding their understanding of a given topic. To do this visible thinking uses questions to get students talking and thinking about the possible answers, and documented answers to be able to go back and reflect to see how their understanding and thoughts have changed on a given subject.

Jamie Risner

Back To The Future

Back to the Future is a video by Brian Corsby who is a teacher at Agnes Risley Elementary school. Mr. Corsby teaches fourth graders who are second language learners. The first day of class he gives his 24 students a quiz. One question asked the students what city they lived in. Only 9 got the answer correct. Another question the quiz asked the students what country they live in. Only 3 got the answer correct. This video goes on to show the many projects and style of teaching Mr. Corsby uses in his class. My favorite project they did was sending a high altitude balloon up into the atmosphere with a camera. When the photos and video came back, the students wrote stories from the point of view of the balloon and took their story and the photos taken from the balloon to make an illustrated book. Mr. Corsby does not have tests in his class. Students post videos of themselves doing projects to their blog. Each student not only has a blog but also a laptop computer to use in class. Students also use their blog to post about what they learned and did in class that day. Mr. Crorsby used technology to help fourth grade students get excited about learning and connect with students all around the world. I thought this video was amazing and Mr. Corsby showed more passion for teaching and learning than any teacher I have ever seen. Keeping students engaged in learning and excited about going to school is the most important thing any teacher can do because if a student is excited about learning than the sky is the limit.

Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Project 9 Progress Report

My group and I met yesterday to discuss project 9. Each of us chose one "part" and are reading it and summarizing. We are going to meet again next Tuesday and discuss our findings. We will each describe what we read and ask each other questions in our podcast. I'm looking forward to coming together as a group and making this interesting for our class to watch!

C4T 2

Tropfest

Jonesy the Teacher is a PE teacher who is "having a crack at putting PE in the 21st Century." In the first blog I read, Road Safety Film Festival, he described a project his students were to complete based off Tropfest. Tropfest is the world's largest film festival. His students had to create a movie with road safety as their focus. Together, the class and teacher came up with six words. Each group had to choose one of these words, and use it as their film title and theme, thus basing their movie from this one word. The film had to include an ESI (Erina Signature Item), which was a traffic light. After the initial shock from the students, they were excited to see their end products. I had never heard of Tropfest before reading this blog post, nor an ESI. I thought this was a great project and it had to be rewarding for the teacher to see the end results his students produced.

In the second blog I read, No spoons, Jonesy discussed how he is trying to get away from "spoon-feeding" his students, or as Dr. Strange calls it "burp-back-education", and gear more towards project based learning. He uses Edmodo, where students can share documents, power points and assignments, and OneNote, which ended up not working like he planned. But, with technology, we have to expect that sometimes things will go wrong. When he first introduced this new type of learning/teaching to his students, he found that they wanted to just be spoon-fed. As I said in the comment I left on his blog, I was one of those students who wanted to be spoon-fed when I was in high school. I wanted my teacher to give me the answer, memorize it, and make a good grade on the test. But, I didn't know any different and now that I've been introduced to project based learning, I can't believe that teachers have taught this one specific way all of these years.

be taught

Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Blog Post 7

Text To Speech

With today's technology, there are so many available tools to help enhance teachers' classrooms. I watched the video Assistive Technologies for Vision and Hearing Impaired Children. In this video many tools are shown that can help increase the learning experience for impaired children. A few of these are sensory aids, flip cameras, text telephones and text to speech devices. Sensory aids, such as hearing aids, can allow students with hearing impairments to hear better in the classroom, thus automatically increasing the things they can learn. Flip cameras allow access to videos immediately. Text telephones are used for those who have speech impairments. The main tool that struck my attention most was the text to speech devices. These are frequently used for students who have ALS. There are apps you can download on the iPad such as EZSpeech Pro, Fat Cat Chat Repair and Verbally Premium. EZSpeech Pro is for literate users who have lost their speaking ability to ALS. Users can receive phrases from others and store them in their device. The Fat Cat Chat Repair is more "small talk" based. The student can push a symbol, then they are prompted to choose from fifteen different words choices that best fit the symbol. Verbally Premium seems like it would be extremely helpful for those who are speech impaired. With this app, students can save their favorite phrases or most commonly used phrases. The voice can be personalized. Students often use this for common places such as a doctor's office or the classroom. These apps, along with many others, can be found on a Special Apps, Special Kids blog.

The other video I watched was the Mountbatten video. The Mountbatten is a braille writing machine. You can connect it to a computer and save, transfer, and receive files. It helps recognize braille characters, allows play for young children who are not physically able to use traditional braille writers, provides basic level concepts of using braille and displays the children's work. This is a great way for impaired children to be included in classroom activities such as peer group projects.

It's hard to say which of these I will use in my classroom, but I think all are potential tools that could help me with any impaired students I may have. Hopefully I will have an iPad in my classroom, in which case I could download any of these apps to use in my classroom. I think it is so important that project based learning is including impaired children. All children deserve the opportunity to explore and learn at their full potential. They can't do this without teachers who are willing to let it happen!

hands

Jamie Risner

What Assistive Technologies Are Available To You As A Teacher ?

Teaching Math To The Blind

Before watching this video, I never gave much thought to how a blind student learns math. I had always assumed blind students learned math with braille. However, blind students are unable to learn math using braille because braille is only linear and cannot show two diminutions in math problems. Professor Art Karshmer at the University of San Francisco, designed a solution to this problem. Professor Karshmer put braille on small blocks that look like scrabble pieces and then designed a board that was made into a grid. The blind students scan a block and then put it on the board. The computer then tells them in what row and grid they placed the block in. This design makes it possible for blind students to work problems out in two diminutions, which helps give blind students a foundation of math. This design is one of the most important tools available to blind students and the teachers responsible for teaching them math. Without a foundation of math, the number of jobs for a blind person becomes more limited.

Ipad Usage For The Blind

This video was amazing! Wesley Majerus is blind, yet in this video he demonstrates how new software that is put into an iPad makes it possible for a blind person to use an iPad. The software has voice-over which allows the user to drag their finger over the screen while the iPad tells them which app their finger is on. Another great feature this iPad offers is a main stream e-reader. By having e-readers available, a blind person can buy a book they would like to read but which is too expensive or else not offered in braille. The e-reader on the iPad reads the books out loud and describes images in the book. The only problem with the e-reader that I noticed during the video was that the reading voice was fast and hard to understand at times. The best thing about this iPad is that it comes this way out of the box and already set up. This makes it more user friendly to its blind owner. With this new software, a blind person is now able to use the same type of technology that seeing people can.

New And Useful Technology For The Blind

I was amazed at all the different technology for the blind. I found two different ones on the website www.ehow.com click here ; that I thought would be very helpful. The first technology is called the smart cane. The smart cane is a new and better version of the walking stick. The smart cane can detect objects around the user up to a few meters away. This would be a great thing for a blind student to be able to have for crowed hallways or field trips. The most impressive technology for a blind person on this website was the Knfbreader mobile. The knfbreader mobile is a phone for a blind person; however it also has a camera that lets the owner take pictures of a text. The knfbreader mobile will then read that text back to them. This would be an amazing tool for a blind person in any situation in which braille text is not available. However, I was unhappy to find that I would not be able to use these tools in my classroom because they are hard to obtain and very expensive.

Maggie Adkisson

What assistive technologies are available to you as a teacher?

In Teaching Mom What Her Deaf/Blind Child Is Learning On the iPad, I was able to watch as a parent was given instructions to use an iPad, that her child uses in class. It was simply amazing to watch. Although, it was just an iPad that so many people use day to day, I have never seen it used in such a way, nor did I realize what an incredible tool it really is to have. The parent was able to slide her finger across the top of the screen while the iPad read aloud to her the apps available to select. When she found the app she was instructed to find, she was able to double click anywhere on the screen to bring it up. Even more amazing she was able to type any letter by using this speaking iPad to help select the proper letters.

After watching this video I wondered who was this Denise Robinson? I google searched "Denise Robinson special ed teacher" and the seventh listing was the article, A New Model of Education for Blind and Low Vision Students. As it turns out she has an amazing story of her own. It is not just Denise Robinson, but Dr. Denise Robinson. A woman who puts every waking minute into working with blind children. Her inspiration? She lost her vision due to diabetes when she was twenty-four. Fortunately, she gained her sight back years later due to several surgeries. Through her experience of being blind, she understood the improvements needed to help others be able to function and live a normal life. Her story is inspirational and reminds me of my math class last semester where I encountered a boy that was blind. I had never been around someone who was blind and for me it was fascinating. He was so smart and I could not understand how he was able to survive in college. I remember talking to my mom about him. Saying that, even though I did not know him very well I was so proud of him because if it was me, I don't think I would be able to go and do what he is accomplishing. Likewise in the article, she tells that there is a 74 percent unemployment rate among blind individuals because they are not being taught effectively. With her methods and use of technology she is working miracles in lives of so many students. She is someone that I inspire to be like. This video and research is useful to me because it made me realize how much I would enjoy making a difference like Dr. Robinson has working with blind children. After this assignment I will definitely be looking into specializing my education to help the blind.

The article, 50 Must-See Blogs For Special Education by Jeff Dunn, is a great resource for teachers. It has different blogs that cover anything and everything. From special education tips and strategies all the way to blogs for specific disorders. One particular blog that caught my attention was, ADDitude Blogs, a blog made to help those dealing with attention deficit. It is a brilliant website. Not only is it available to help those coping with the disorders, but the writings are all from those suffering from ADD, parents whose children have been diagnosed, as well as ADHD experts. For a teacher, this is a great because the writings are not giving a glossed over, dictionary version of a disorder. It is giving you personal accounts, findings, methods all from people who understand. When you have a child in your class that has a disorder such as ADD or ADHD, what would you rather read to be able to help them to the best of your ability, a research paper or a personal account?

Thursday, June 13, 2013

Blog Post 6

questions

"What do we need to know about asking questions to be an effective teacher?"

When I was in K-12 I hated when teachers would ask the class a question, wait until someone, well no one, answered the question, then call on a random student. It made me uncomfortable and scared I was going to be the one they called on. Maybe it was because I didn't know the material, some of the time, but many times I just didn't know if I had the right answer because of the way they worded the question. Now, especially while being in Dr. Strange's EDM310 class, I have realized that asking questions is very important!

If a teacher never asks his/her students questions, how do they know if the students understand? Also, why just give them the answers rather than letting them explore and figure it out themselves? In doing that, students are only being hurt in the long run.

I think Asking Questions to Improve Learning does a very good job at pointing out the important things about asking questions. Asking questions can help involve students in the classroom, understand how much they are learning and comprehending, learn to talk in front of peers and adults, and have confidence to answer a question they know. As a teacher, I will try to plan the questions I will ask my students while I'm planning my lessons. It is important to be specific in the questions you are asking students. It is also important to ask one question at a time so they aren't confused about which question they are supposed to be answering.

I agree with Dr. Strange in that "questions are more important than answers." Especially with the technology we have today, children have the resources to find out the answer to any question! One of my professors told us a story the other day about his eight year old daughter. She came to her dad and told him that she didn't know how to figure out the circumference of a circle. Instead of telling her the answer, he told her to go use her iPad, computer, or tablet and find the answer. About thirty minutes later his daughter came back to him with her iPad in one hand and a pen and paper in the other hand. She had searching online for "how to find the circumference of a circle", found a video that gave her instructions and practiced suggested problems. He was so impressed with how she was able to go and research and find the answer to her own question. That just confirms why we shouldn't just give children the answer!

Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Blog Post 5

podcast

Judy Scharf Podcast Collection

In her post, What Is A Podcast?, Scharf gives a definition of "podcast" and gives a little information on the subject. The thing in her post that helped me understand podcasts the most is the video on how to create and upload them. I have never created one before, so I'm a little nervous and didn't know where to start until I watched the video. How To Create a Podcast gives you many programs you can use to create a podcast. It shows specific ways to edit the podcast, such as normalizing it and removing background noise. The video also gives many different websites you can use to publish your podcast.

Langwitches- Podcasting with First Grade

In this blog post a first grade teacher has introduced podcasts to her students. She read one chapter of a book at a time and gathered their questions. Each student would read their question as part of a podcast; with a setting of interviewing the two main characters. The students loved hearing themselves on audio and correcting/re-recording their work. This seems like a very fun and exciting way of learning. Why wait until high school or college for students to get to experience such a positive type of learning? I think this is something that would definitely help students learn about the book they are reading.

Langwitches- Flat Stanley Podcast

A first grade class read the book Flat Stanley. Each student then recorded a segment of the podcast and were "flattened" and mailed around the world. That's not where the fun stops! Then, they read the book with their parents and wrote a script that included how they got to a particular city, how it felt to be mailed, what they did at the location, etc. WOW! I think this is an awesome post that really made me smile. I love hearing things like this that students get to do, not have to do! Allowing students to learn while using their imagination is so important and well performed in this situation.

worldwide podcasts

Sunday, June 9, 2013

C4T 1

For my C4T assignment, I was assigned to read 2 blog posts from The PE Geek's website. In the first bog post, Mr. Robbo posted about a 24 hour challenge. 24 Hours & a Mobile Device was a challenge from Jarrod Robinson to his PE class. They were to use their mobile device from the time they woke up until the time they went to bed, and no other use of technology. This was a great way to prove that the use of mobile devices can be useful in ways other than texting and making phone calls. Robinson was able to teach a full day of school to his students by using only his mobile device. I commented on his post and told him how great of an idea I thought it was. I think this would be something cool for Dr. Strange to require his EDM310 classes to do as an assignment. Surprisingly, Robinson responded to my comment and was grateful that I took time to read and comment on his post.

The second blog post I commented on was about the effect music has on exercise. Music, Spotify & Physical Education was about a six week training program that Robinson's students were completing. He allowed them to bring their mobile device,iPod,MP3 Player, etc. to listen to music on while completing their exercises. There are many different apps you can use to play music through. Also, you can create an interval playlist via the Music Workout App. This worked well for his students, but it does take time to get the desired songs set up. I think this was another great idea. Music helps me tremendously while I'm exercising. I can feel like quitting, and a certain song will come on and help finish me through my workout. Robinson also responded to the comment I left on this particular post. He was very encouraging and told me if I had any further questions or ideas to contact him.

Listening to Music While Exercising

Blog Post 4

There are so many technological tools to be used in the school systems. Many of those are used in my EDM 310 class such as a blog, twitter, google docs, skype, etc. However, I think there are certain technological tools that should be used with different age groups. For instance, Remind101. This is a tool that could be used for the age group I want to teach, which is sixth grade. Remind101 was created by two brothers who can see the obvious struggle of communication between parents, students and teachers.

How It Works

As a teacher, you create a login and are given a unique code for your class. Your students and their parents can also sign up, using your class code. The teacher can then send messages to those who are signed up. The best thing about it though, is that there are no cell phone numbers shown. The only thing that you can see when sending/receiving messages is the other's name, not phone number. This keeps a safe barrier with the communication, ensuring that the cell phone numbers of teachers, students and parents are being misused.

Examples

A teacher can send a reminder saying, "Science test tomorrow."

A teacher can send a message saying, "Homework due on 06/11/13. American History, page 220, questions 1-6."

With this tool, students are reminded of their work, and parents are either reminded, or told for the first time. Many times, students are lazy and don't turn in their homework. This is an easy way to stay on top of them and make sure they are performing their very best.

Remind101

Maggie Adkisson

Once I start teaching elementary education, more specifically second grade, I want to use tools that keep learning fun. That is why in my class room I would like to use SMART Response interactive response system to go along with my SMART board. The SMART Response interactive response system connects a small hand held devices directly to my SMART board. This allows me to post math problems, reading questions, and potentially many other daily questions such as attendance at the front of the room. All they have to do to respond to a question is simply click a button on their assigned device. The potential this tool has in a classroom is limitless. As a teacher, this benefits me in many ways, but most importantly it allows me to evaluate my entire class almost instantly. If I was to give the same problems on paper it would likely take me at least 30 minutes to go through all the papers and get back to my class to address frequent issues or see that they have comprehended the material. Not only does it speed up the time it takes to evaluate my students understanding, but it is a very helpful tool to eliminate unnecessary paper waste. Making my classroom more environmentally friendly.

Jamie Risner

When I graduate I will be teaching High School history, with that in minde I believe the most important learning and communication tool I will be using in my classroom will be e-books. There is new technology being brought into classrooms every day, however I think the most important, and overlooked technology is e-books. One reason I think e-books will be the best learning tool for my classroom is, because they are small, weigh a lot less than a traditional textbook, but can store all the students needed information for all of their classes. Not having to have many different textbooks is not just good for the students, but also great for the enviornment because e-books do not use any paper. E-books are not only good for the students but also great for the shcool as well, because books would be much cheaper downloaded on e-books. On the web site www.dbreaders.com it says that 1,500 books on an e-book will cost about 15,000$, however to buy 1,500 hard copy books would cost about 39,000$. By simpley using e-books schools could save a lot of money that they could put towards other improvements in the school.

The third, and most important reason that e-books would be the best learning tool in my classroom is, because they offer many options that pen, paper, and text books do not. The website www.dbreaders.com says "e-readers offer online dictionary, unlimited notes, saved highlights, simple and convenient search, and the ability to share quotes on popular social resources like twitter and facebook". With these types of options right at my students finger tips the sky would be the limit to their learning. With so many benefits it is hard to understand why schools have not already gone to using e-books. E-books range in price from around fifty dollars to hundreds of dollars, and are avalibale at most electronic stores and even online. I believe it is only a matter of time before schools start doing away with textbooks, and replace them with e-books. My question is, with all the benefits e-books offer to classrooms, why wait to make the swich ?

Wednesday, June 5, 2013

Blog Post 3

Peer Editing

Both of my peers have had great posts thus far. They both touched on the appropriate material, included the links in their posts, and followed the instructions. Both of my group members’ blogs flow and are easy to read and understand. I did see a few grammatical/spelling errors in the posts, but they seemed to just be simple typos. I commented on both peers’ posts where the public can see. I didn’t go into specifics on their blog because I don’t think that’s appropriate. I think if you can give constructive criticism, in a positive way, then it is acceptable to post on the person’s blog where everyone can see. However, if there are many grammatical errors and corrections to be pointed out, I think it is safe to send it to the person privately to avoid any embarrassment or hard feelings. Even though we all know that by reviewing each others’ work we are just trying to help, it can sometimes still be a little awkward. You never know when someone might take your advice in a negative way. I agree that by making decisions such as this one, we are preparing ourselves for the teaching world. Each situation is going to be different and require an assessment on how it should be handled.

Paige Ellis, a previous EDM310 student, seems to have the same thoughts that I have on editing your peers’ work. She approached her classmate in both a public and private matter. She left the more vague opinions on the student’s blog, and sent the more specific critique via email. I think this is a great way to give constructive criticism without offending your peer.

I think it is great that the peer editing video, What Is Peer Editing, starts off with the definition of “peer editing”. It is important that we know exactly it is we are supposed to be doing, before attempting to do so. Peer editing is looking at someone’s work who is your own age, and making any suggestions, comments, changes, etc. The three steps to peer editing are compliments, making suggestions and corrections. It is important to start of your editing with something positive, to make that person know that you aren’t just trying to pick out the bad things in their writing. If you give your peer a suggestion, you may be bringing an idea to them that they never even thought about, and wouldn’t write about had you not brought it up to them. Sharing ideas, or suggestions, is very important in editing and also in any other class! When making corrections, it is important to look for punctuation errors, grammatical errors and sentence structure. Many people struggle with spelling, and it is important for you as an editor, to pick up on these things in their writing.

I love how the Peer Edit With Perfection Slideshow says that editing is fun. In grade school and even high school, I absolutely loved getting to edit peoples’ papers. Maybe it was because I like to spell and I’m pretty good at it, or that I was able to help someone who wasn’t so good at it. Either way, it is important that other students like doing things like this and helping their peers.

In Writing Peer Review Top 10 Mistakes, they touch on almost every bad way of editing I can think of! It seems a little dramatic in the video, but that’s how kids are! It’s important that they understand not to come off as “Negative Nancy” or “Mean Margaret”. There is a way of critiquing peers without being demeaning or insulting them. As teachers, it is important that we teach our students to stay away from those attitudes, and be positive toward themselves and their peers.

Sunday, June 2, 2013

Blog Post 2

Teaching With Technology

1. Mr. Dancealot

The Mr. Dancealot video was a great example of how not to teach. His teaching style, or lack thereof, was almost impossible for the students to learn anything. How are students supposed to learn by listening to a teacher read straight from a power point? It’s not so obvious in many other classes, such as history, english or psychology as it is in this specific dance class; but it still pertains to all subjects. For as long as I can remember, my teachers have read from a power point or a book, I re-read the information, and forgot the information right after the test. The open style learning that is being used in Dr. Strange’s class is moving us as far away from Burp-Back Education as possible. All students may not be kinesthetic learners, having to have hands on experiences in order to remember information. However, with the open style learning, all types of learners are at an advantage. Mr. Dancealot held his students back from learning in his class, all because he didn’t let them learn. He put his students at a disadvantage like many of my previous professors have done, but I am just now realizing it.

2. Teaching in the 21st Century

Roberts makes it very obvious that teaching in the 21st century is very different from what we are used to. When I think of my K-12 education, the memories consist of chalkboards, memorization, copying from a friend and cramming for tests at the last minute. My entire college career consists of those same characteristics. With the change we have witnessed in technology over the past ten years, I think it is obvious to say that in the future, teaching and learning will both be dramatically different. As Dr. Strange said today in class, electronics (the things that are enhancing our education now), were not allowed in school. We were sent to the office if we brought cell phones to school. We were forbidden to use the computers in the library unless we were being closely supervised. I completely agree with the ideas shown in the video. The amazing technology, that is becoming more advanced every year, should be used as a helpful tool for our education, not a punishment. The “Educational Exchange” says that as teachers we are expected to give students all of the information possible in order to enhance their education. Why wouldn’t we let them share ideas through blogs, tweets and Facebook? Why shouldn’t they be able to post a video on “how to make a paper airplane?” By taking this new route of teaching, we are helping students, not hurting them! By the time I am an educator myself, I will have ipads and/or computers in my classroom. I will be writing on a smart board, instead of a chalkboard or dry erase board. Hopefully, my students will be sharing their ideas and teaching each other things. I also hope that I can be the “filter” in the student-learning relationship, rather than just the teacher.

Maggie Adkisson:

The video The Networked Student describes a modern day student that is encouraged to use technology. Instead of the standard textbook and class lectures, this modern student has both classes and personal online learning. Through his online learning connections, who are possible other students, teachers, and college professors, he is able to read and understand a given topic more in depth than your average textbook allows. With the extended amount of knowledge he is able to gain using the internet, the teachers primary job is to reinforce the information.

I love the fact that this 21st century student was in control of his learning. Through technology and this idea of connectivism he is able to create and control what he learns. By using blogs, scholarly articles, Itunes U, and other resources he is able to read and listen to some of the most educated people that specialize on his given topic. Not only is he able to read and listen to others knowledge, but he can exchange ideas with numerous individuals to further his understanding and knowledge. This is a great modern day idea that is not being used by a majority of students. It baffles me why it is not the most popular way of teaching in our schools. Every answer a student could want is right here, on the internet, but instead we are relying on sometimes outdated textbooks that may only partially cover an issue.

Another aspect of this video that I admire is that the teacher has taken a step back. She may have all the answers and knowledge to a topic, but she is encouraging students to learn for themselves using their resources. She is not dictating what they learn and simply encouraging them to learn.

Jamie Risner:

Harness your students Digital Smarts

In the vedeo Harness Your Students Digital Smarts Vicki Davis teaches students how to use the most important resource that they have avalibale to them, which is technology. By showing her students how to use technology Vicki Davis is able to break down walls, and help connect her students to students all around the world. In the video one of her main goals a a teacher is to get her students comfortable with useing technology. Getting students comfortable with technology is very important for students, becasue the world is changing, and technology is no longer a luxury to have its a requirement. It is easy to see from this video how the use of technology lets the students open their minds and creat and learn in ways never thought possible before.