Saturday, March 30, 2013

C4T#3 Summary

teacher talk

C4T3 Comment #1
Angela Maiers is an author, speaker, and teacher. Her post Three Ways to Avoid New Teacher Burnout is geared toward aspiring and new teachers. She mentions that the statistics for new teachers still teaching after the first five years is low. This is something education students hear often. She gives tips for first year teachers. She says:

1) Realize you can’t do it all.
2) Don’t sign up for everything.
3) Solicit the help of expert teachers.

I commented that professors are still warning students of the statistics today. And that I think her tips are definitely something teachers should keep in mind during the first few years. There is a lot of pressure on new year teachers to take on extra activities. It can become too much for teachers who are new to curriculum and instruction. New teachers need to realize they cannot do it all.

C4T3 Comment # 2
Angela’s post You Have to Show Kids that They Matter was written after Angela spoke with two teachers on a radio network. Angela states that students need to know they matter. She says it is an innate need for humans to know they matter. She reports that after asking kids, “What would you pledge yourself to?” The results boiled down to 12 things including: “I want to be noticed. I want you to smile at me. I want you to say my name.” Angela makes a good point when shes adds that “the need to hear one’s own name is why two hundred million people are sending Tweets everyday.” We like to be noticed. She concludes that she would love hear from other teachers on the following:

Pledges made in their classrooms.
Feelings on being a teacher and friend of students.
How do you make your students feel that they matter?
How do you make your students feel noticed?

I think Angela’s outlook on making students feel important and noticed should be highly valued. Some students spend more time with teachers than they do their own parents. Teachers can be a friend, authority figure, and educator all in one. And they should be. I believe if students feel important and valued they will be more interested in learning.

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Blog Post #10

Papermate verses Ticonderoga.

I believe this cartoon is symbolic of technological devices. It is hip and cool to have up-to-date devices and such. But our world did come a long way with the use of pencil and paper. It does not matter how new or advanced a device is. If the user cannot or isn't motivated to use it, the device is worthless. Though technology has opened up a whole new world for us, I won't criticize the pencil. A lot of inspirational ideas begin on paper.


Scott McLeod
Scott McLeod is an inspiring blogger, author, and professor. He is a leading academic expert on K-12 technology leadership issues. He is the founding director of the Center for the Advanced Study of Technology Leadership in Education (CASTLE).

I enjoy a good sense of sarcasm in writing. McLeod's poem in his post Don't Teach Your Kids this Stuff, Please? exhibits just that. At first, I thought it was composed by an instructor at South. I'm kidding. But seriously, I know several who are against any type of technological devices in the classroom. For the reasons listed in McLeod's post.

I side with Mcleod in his argument. I appreciate that education is changing and technology is beginning to shape the classroom. Ignoring technology and relying strictly on traditional books, pen, and paper simply won't cut it in today's world. Though I believe these items have their place, technology enhances the learning process and our way of living. Students need an audience when writing. Writing for a teacher and writing for the world require very different skills. Social networking and blogging allow students to learn to accommodate their audience and adjust their style accordingly. However, I also agree that today's technology has dumbed down some writing skills. The use of text speech and auto-correct has played a role in hindering spelling, grammatical, and mechanical skills. I can say that when I was in school, there were no computers in the classroom. My work was done on paper. Therefore, if I didn't know how to spell a word, I had to look it up. Through looking it up, I learned how to spell the word because I didn't want to have to thumb through the dictionary to look it up again.


John Spencer
John Spencer's blog Adventures in Pencil Integration is an enjoyable and entertaining blog. His post Why Were Your Kids Playing Games? is a dialogue between a teacher and a principal. The teacher played a game with his students that was engaging and exciting for the students, which resulted in fun learning time. The principal is set on following the rule of "no games." He focuses on drilling memorization rather than engagement. The principal cuts the teacher off several times when the teacher tried to explain the concept of the game and how it enhanced learning. Though rules are to be followed, the rules should be student centered and geared toward enrichment. This dialogue is the perfect example of the school hierarchy and how it limits teachers and students.

Spencer's post Capturing Reality is a real eye opener. Through dialogue, the post tells a story of a man that refuses to take pictures. He says to take a picture removes him from the moment he is trying to capture. This post made me think about how technology definitely has two sides. On one side, it helps us to produce more mementos and socialize. On the other, it takes us away from the moments the mementos are from and takes away from personable socialization. I often feel bad because my boys' scrapbooks are not up to date. Majority of the pictures I take of them are sent to Facebook in a mobile uploads album. While I was working on this post, my five year old came to me and asked me to play. I wonder how many smiles on our little ones' faces we miss due to staring at a screen. I know technology is a wonderful thing, but the time it takes out of our day adds up to be a lot. How many people do you see on vacation playing on their phones, neglecting the family and friends that are present with them? Technology is grand, but for every upside there is a downside.

Now, if you will excuse me, I am going to play a good old fashioned board game with my baby boys. And as much as I would love to share their wonderful smiles with the world, I'll be greedy and keep tonight's to myself. No devices allowed.
Family time is sacred time. Signed Boyd K. Packer

Project #14 Smartboard Instruction Part 1

Project # 11 Short Green Screen Movie


Firework show!

Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Blog Post #9

teachers who love teach children to love to learn.


Joe McClung's Reflections

Joe McClung's post What I've learned this Year is reflective of what he learned his first year of teaching. McClung notes that during his first year he often became so concerned with what his superiors thought of him that he lost touch with his students upon delivering a lesson. He says this cannot be the case. The students should drive instruction, and the lessons should be centered on the students. I agree with him, but I can certainly understand the role superiors can play in making such a goal difficult for a first year teacher to achieve.

McClung notes that being flexible and reasonable is imperative. This is true in life in general but especially true for a teacher who is required to meet certain objectives during a limited time under standardized goals. McClung also says teachers should communicate effectively and listen to their students. A student needs to know the teacher cares about him or her as a person. Listening is a way to show them they are valued and cared for. In addition to listening because it shows value and interest in students, teachers can learn from their students. Teachers should be aware of their students' needs and environment as it will help teachers interact with the students which will in turn promote an enjoyable learning experience for everyone.

McClung's post Version 4 Post (2011-2012) reflects on what he has learned in his 4th year of teaching. McClung notes this 4th year reflection is based on a time in his profession when change is welcomed.

He says "You Gotta Dance With Who You Come to Dance With." During his 4th year, McClung was stricken with a desire to please his peers. He mentions that it took him most of the school year to deal with the anxiety and to cope with the idea of pleasing his peers. Upon reflection, he says worrying about what his peers thought of him as an educator done nothing positive for him, and his main concern is "are the kids having fun?" While worrying about peer approval did not get him very far, taking care of his students and enjoying class has. His goal is to stick to that rule and not divert down the wrong path again.

I believe McClung is on the right track. As long as he is fulfilling the curriculum guidelines and his students are succeeding, peer approval is not needed. When others judge you chances are it is because you are different. Different is not necessarily a bad thing. It takes being different to make a difference, which is something teachers should strive for. It is natural to want to be accepted and approved of, but like McClung, I will place that in the hands of my superiors and my students.

McClung suggests challenging yourself. For three years, he has taught essentially the same course at the same school. After three years, it has become routine for him. He suggests mixing things up by possibly teaching a different course once the course you are teaching becomes too routine. He says teachers can become comfortable and lazy when repeatedly teaching the same course, resulting in lessons that "suck" and unenjoyable lessons for the students.

Teachers often reuse the same lesson plans, tests, and teaching techniques year after year when teaching the same course. Though the course material and objectives may be the same, every classroom full of students has a different set of dynamics. Teachers must adjust their teaching techniques in order to fit each particular class. Though the material covered may remain the same, classroom instruction and lesson plans need to change from class to class. This is not only to benefit the students but the teacher as well. A teacher can always better themselves, as you never stop learning. Learning new ways to present the material and new ways to test the material will help keep the teacher interested and make the class more enjoyable for students by preventing the teacher from becoming too routine as McClung mentions.

Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Blog Post #8

tools for multimedia writing.
A New Style of Rhetoric
Many Greek and Roman classical philosophers studied rhetoric. Several of them wrote instruction manuals for teaching students how to communicate effectively through discourse and dialect. I wonder what the most influential ones such as Aristotle, Plato, and Cicero would think of today’s rhetoric. A rhetoric which, as a result of technological changes and our dependency on the internet, has evolved from paper and books and now revolves around multimedia writing.

Enhanced technology has made many changes to the world of writing and reading. A major contribution is the wealth of knowledge available at our fingertips which can be used to explore our beliefs and ideas through creditable sources and data without leaving home. Another major contribution is the speed in which we receive new and updated information. Through our digital environment, we can gain information immediately as it changes, and we can view events live from across the globe. Equally as significant, it allows us to collaborate with others and to infinitely share our ideas. But internet users do not rely on text alone for communication. Today, there is a new genre in writing that combines auditory and visual literacy which results in multimedia writing.

We see multimedia writing all over the internet for the same reasons that classical philosophers viewed writing 1000’s of years ago to persuade or sway, to inform, and to please. Many of the classical concepts are still taught today, such as Aristotle’s cannon that rhetoric includes: invention, organization, style, memory, and delivery. These principles carry over to multimedia writing as well. But this type of writing calls for a different pedagogy, as Richard Miller points out in his videos This Is How We Dream Parts 1 and 2. In the video, Miller says that today’s writing has the workspace of a desktop. Pencil and paper are no longer the only tools used. With the workspace of a desktop, writing has come to include graphics, videos, and voiceovers. These components enhance the proofs of writing, logos, ethos, and pathos; I believe even the classic rhetoricians would agree.

Miller says the problem is that we do not have the proper pedagogy to teach such writing. He strives to inspire teachers to teach virtual literacy and enable students to write in today’s form without the need of contacting a videographer, graphics expert, and so on. Seems to me that Miller is striving to make writing students technologically well rounded, and in today’s world it has become a necessity to do so. The internet is prominent in all fields, and no website consists of merely just text.

I think Miller’s dream of teaching students to write using multimedia is inspiring. In addition to there being little to no pedagogy for teaching multimedia writing, there is little in the area of a list of concepts, rules, or regulations on such writing. Most styles of writing have a proper form or etiquette to follow, with the exception of text messaging and such, which seems to be blurring the rules for grammar, mechanics, and syntax across the board. Multimedia writing would fall under a combination of AP or MLA with a twist of visuals and auditory. Such writing calls for writing, auditory, and visual skills in addition to creativity. Developing pedagogy for such an assignment would certainly prepare today’s students for tomorrow’s world.

Again the question arises, "How do we teach students to do this?" We teach the basic steps in combining such components and to many the creativity will follow. But what about those students who struggle with creativity. We have to find a way to inspire them. Students can be provided with examples. For an introduction to such an assignment, students can be paired according to their strengths and weaknesses.


Carly Pugh's Post
I enjoyed reading Carly Pugh's blog post #12. Carly's assignment calls for communicating through text, auditory, and visual components which is exactly what Miller talked about in the videos I mentioned above. It would be really neat to put such a playlist together and make a video which shows my teaching philosophy, goals, and attributions, in order to add it to a portfolio for future review by a potential employers. With the world moving to multimedia writing, I believe portfolios should do the same. I also like the idea of having my students use this assignment to create an about me presentation.


Jamie Lynn Miller's Projects
The Chipper Series and EDM310 for Dummies videos are hilarious. Though it is sad, a lot of people think like Chipper did before her "cleansing." I have never been able to wrap my mind around such thinking. It would be nice sometimes to let go of the stress and pressure and procrastinate from time to time, but I am unable to bring myself to do it.

I think it would be interesting to make a video depicting the importance of a deadline, in particularly in group activities. When working on a group assignment, you have a final deadline. If each member agrees to complete a certain task before a deadline in order to complete the project on time, but the said deadline is missed, someone in the group is going to be inconvenienced. Students in college have families, jobs, church activities, and so on that they have to schedule around as well. When a student misses a group agreed deadline and then the group experiences a difficulty during the project, the project's final deadline is threatened.

For example, in my group's podcast assignment we set Tuesday as a deadline to have our parts done. There were some issues, and for one reason or another the work was not completed until Thursday. On Friday, I was told there were more issues with the podcast, and I needed to help another group member put everything together. I had purposely finished my week’s work ahead of time, in order to spend time with my son on his birthday. Because our deadlines was not met in the beginning, we were not aware of the issues at hand until later, which inconvenienced me. I respect that things come up. But for the most part deadlines are made for a reason, and even a “flexible” deadline should be respected. Though we may have days to complete a project, we never know when something will go wrong. Especially when working in a group, procrastination is inexcusable. Luckily, my group set the first deadline in advance enough to accommodate for difficulties along the way, and I did not have to take too much time from my little boy's birthday.

A video depicting how such neglect can interfere with other members' lives would be informative especially with such an emphasis on deadlines in EDM310 and group work.


Learn to Change, Change to Learn
Just as schooling underwent reformations in the eighteen and nineteen hundreds, I believe it is time for one now. The world was experiencing changes and growing just as it is today. We have to change with it. Technology is a way of life, and we have to teach students how to make use of it. It is sad that education is below coal mining on the list of technology inclined. But I suppose coal miners appreciate the safety advantages technology provides. As the video points out, students are actively using messaging and networking for communicating, but the schools do not allow for it. I’ve mentioned before that my English professors have not allowed electronic devices such as ereaders. I learn more from an ereader simple because of the define-a-word option. I am not likely to ask what a word means in class, but on an ereader, I am constantly checking the definition of a word. A lot of instructors say the urge to check your messages on a device is too strong. Do they not remember the days when students pretended to take notes while they were actually writing letters? It is definitely time for a change. It may happen slowly and evolve from one region to the next, but I believe the traditional classroom style will soon expire.


Justin Cometti's Scavenger Hunt

1. Poll

Create a poll anywhere at Polleverywhere.com. Take my poll here.

2. Comic Strip

View my comic strip here. Make your own at Make Beliefs Comix!

3. Video Tool

Animoto provides users with a variety of tools for creating videos. Its focus is for videos in the classroom and enhancing the digital classroom. Animoto offers a free unlimited video account for educators. Some of the features included are:

Cinematic A.I.
Animoto basically analyzes media for the user, so that the user is free to focus on content and narration of the video.

Spotlight
This allows users to highlight a specific image and give it prominence during the video.

Text and Images
Users can incorporate text, quotes, stats, images, and more in videos.

Sharing and Downloading
Animoto makes emailing, sharing, exporting, and downloading videos easy.

Tuesday, March 5, 2013

C4T#2 Post and Comment Summary

progress in action caution sign
C4T#2 Comment#1
In her blog post 2013 Photo365 Project, Beth Still writes about how life gets in the way of her sticking to a Photo365 project. This year, she has decided to put her Photo365 project to good use by taking pictures of stuff she wants to clean out of the house. She has decided to remove one item a day and to take a photo of it. I commented on her post that life does seem to get in the way of being able to clean out the overstuffed closets and drawers. I also told her that one of my biggest issues is when I do clean out the stuff, it normally just takes up a new place and sits for a while before it actually finds its way out of the house. I asked how she manages to avoid this and how her project is going.

Beth replied and said she is managing to keep up with her project, but it isn't easy because there is so much to do. She mentions that a lot of what she wants to get rid of belongs to her family members, so she has to be "sneaky." She also mentions that she gives toys to her students for their children. I found that to be really thoughtful of her.


C4T#2 Comment#2
There was no new post by Beth since my first comment. I have looked back through some of her older posts and found some posts she wrote as a result of the Sandy Hook shooting. An interesting read is "Preparing for the Worst Case Scenario." But I was searching for a post that related to technology in the classroom to comment on and to use in this summary. And I found the perfect one titled "I Quit."

Beth teaches Social Studies at an alternative high school. She says her students are failing “because they can’t/don’t/won’t do their work.” She has decided to make the classroom student centered as opposed to teacher centered. In December, she stated that beginning in January, she will have her students make up individualized learning plans. She will provide a list of topics that students will select based on the focus of the class. She says the list of topics will be based on her state’s Social Studies standards. Beth will have students select a topic and formulate questions to help guide their research. She says this will also teach them to do informative and effective research. Beth will incorporate technology and have her students decide on a final project such as a video, slideshow, Wikipedia entry, and so on. Grading can be difficult for such projects, and she states she will work with students on a rubric.

Beth notes that all of her students need to work on their verbal and written skills. She hopes to get them in contact with experts that can provide insight to their chosen topic, much like a networked student plan.

I found this post to be interesting because it goes along with what we have been learning in EDM310, which is a networked, technology based, student centered classroom. I commented and told Beth that this concept is a focus in some of my classes and that lately I have heard and read a lot about the same type of techniques mentioned in her post. I am eager to hear about the progress. I asked her how it was working out for her students, and if she is enjoying the changes.