Blog Post #5 Part 2

Summary of my PLN

My PLN was twitter. I used it every week. I followed everyone that was required of me and a few classmates. No one ever posted anything that was really helpful towards the learning process. I really should of followed more established accounts on twitter to get the full benefit of having a twitter account. Also, I needed to be more active on twitter. I did not really search for professionals in my future field. Blogging and commenting was better than twitter for me. I loved getting to read fellow students and other teachers thoughts. I really enjoyed connecting with my classmates the most because we are all on the same road at the same time so they know what we are thinking at this stage on this journey. I hope to try and find blogs out side of this class and have my own.

C4T Post 4

Post 1
Summary:
The latest blog post on her blog was how crazy her week was on Halloween week. It was also red ribbon week and fall festible at her church. She also said she had numerous meeting that week and got to school extra early and stayed extra late the whole week.
What I posted:
Hi Lana
I am also a student at the University of South Alabama, go Jags. I love how your blog is set up and is very inviting. It sounds like you had a crazy and hectic week Halloween week. I hope that your weeks to come will calm down more.


4theloveofteaching.blogspot.com

Post 2
Summary:
His last blog post was today and he was saying why he does the things with his pre schoolers the way he does. He had someone comment on how he would not let a student play with something although he has often said that children need to explore their environment. He was just explaining that children need to be led in the direction that we want them to go.

What I posted:
Hi Tom, I am a student in EDM310 at the University of South Alabama. I really enjoyed this blog post. I connected with it I think because I am also a parent constontalinty going back and forth on what is the right way to parent my son. Everyone is an expert and everyone has an opinion and they all contradict each other. Your post explained very well that you need a little bit from each side to have a child that self disciplines and that learns freely. Thank you for posting!

teachertomsblog.blogspot.com

Blog Post 14

In the article Teaching our Children can become a Prefession Joel Klein stated his opnion on how he wish schools would be run. He said that he would change more school choices, using technology to improve teaching and learning, adopting a knowledge based curriculum and starting school before five years old.

His solutions to the problems:

1. Pick from the best
He says that future teachers getting their degrees are not being properly trained. He said that he would choose the top third of the graduates to actually become teachers. He would also change how teachers are rewarded.

2. Seniority Distraction
He says that it is not right that bad teachers and good teachers are paid the same. He does not like that teachers are paid the same no matter their performance. To fix this he says that we need national teacher examination and supervised internship.

3. Radical Change
He says that there are teachers that need to be removed from the schools but its hard to fire teachers. The solution he gave us is to establish standards to have incompetent teachers removed.

My opinion:

1. Pick form the best

I agree to a point with Mr. Klein. I totally agree that schools need to hire the best teachers for our schools. The top third graduating class does not always mean that they are the best teachers. Personality does not show threw grades. Someone can be a complete handful but have amazing grades. Where as a kind loving warm hearted person just does not have the best grades but would actually be a greater teacher. You need to go by the person not the grade.

2. Seniority Distraction

This is an issue for me as well. I do not think it is fair that just because you have been there for a long time does not mean you should be exepent from being fired. If a good teacher is kept from being highered just because they could not get rid of a bad teacher is crazy. This needs to be fixed.

3. Radical Change

There are standards for students to pass each year there should also be standards for teachers to pass the year too. This way it is eaiser to weed out the bad seeds.

C4K for November

Post 8

Summary:
Student was assighned the blog topic to right a 100 word blog post. She wrote about how she was suprised at school on her birthday and how se got the frozen cake that she had been wanting.

What I wrote:
How awsome that you have such great friends to suprise you! I am a college student in Mobile, Alabama. We are learning how to blog. Your blog post is very good. Keep up the great blogging!

Post 9

Summary:
The student's title of the post was compare and contrast. He wrote about his sister. He said that he is much different than his sister because all she does is lay around and goes to her room.

What I wrote:
Hi Elijah I am a student at South Alabama in Mobile, Alabama. It sounds like you and your sister are pretty different. It is always a good thing to hang out with your family and not laying around all the time. You are setting a very good example for your sister. Keep up the good blogging.

Post 10

Summary:
Elijah's post was about this story of Banana man. What I got from the story was that he was the hero of the story. The story also had zombies involved.

What I wrote:
Hey Elijah
You are an awesome story teller. You are so creative. I look forward to reading the next parts of your series Banana man!

Blog Post 13

What did I leave out?

My major is elementary education. I live in Baldwin County and I do all of my obervations and tutoring here. I love how they have all the technology resources that they do. It is truley amazing the skills that the students possess at such a young age. But what about Mobile County? Most of the schools in Mobile do not have the laptops and the iPads. Most every classroom does have a SMARTBoard. The assignment I would have created would be to find 3 interactive educational websites or programs that elementary teachers can do with their students on the SMARTBoard.

1. Classroom Feud

This came can be coustimized for any subject and any grade. It works like Family Feud. There is two teams and one player from each team comes up and they have to tap the bord and who ever is the first to tap after the question is read gets to answer get the point but if they get it wrong the other team gets to answer.

2. Fractions

This is a step by step lesson plan. It takes students step by step learning all about fractions. It is for 2nd and 3ed grade. This program has links and interactive activities.

3. Measurement

This program is also a math lesson. This lesson is all about measurement. It even goes into the history of measurement. It also goes over the measurement systems and measuremetn conversions. This program is best suited for 3-5 graders. This program has links and shades to revel information to the students. It also has interactive assignments for the students.

I really enjoyed looking up theses programs and honestly think that the students could get a lot out of them. SMARTBoards can be used so much more than just to show video clips and writing and circling web text. I learnd a lot from this assignment and I learned that the SMARTBoard company has all these programs ready to download right off of there website. It is a easy website to use. You can search it just like ALEX. You search by grade, file type, or subject area. Exchange.smarttech.com is the web address.

Project #12 Part B

Project #10

Blog Post 12

C4T Post #3

Post 1

Summary:
She was just talking about how different teaching methods are hard but we should not give up on something just because it is hard and that teaching is not an easy profession to be in.

What I wrote:
Loving the quote. I have heard it many times and if you are trying to become anything in life that quote is a big motivator. I agree 100% that just because a teaching method is hard does not mean that it is not working or you should try something different. Most things about being a teacher is hard. We should not skimp out on our students just because the job is hard. It is not fair to the students. Thank you for this post.

Post 2

Summary:
The blog post I was assigned was the same as last time so I just commented on her most recent post.
The post was about how the teacher can not stand the word bulling and she wants to get to the deeper issue. She feels like it has gotten so stereotypical that teachers do not even know how to deal with it anymore.

What I wrote:
I agree completely. Bullying has gotten so bad but most people only are called out when it is a major issue. Like you said bullying is when students make rude remarks to another or being mean just to be mean. A teacher should nip these seemingly small actions in the bud before they get worse. Kids are mean and it is our jobs as teachers and future teachers to be role models and handle the situations honestly. Students need to be able to speak to an adult about problems they are having with out them being labeled as a tattle tale. Looking forward to the second post about bullying.

Blog Post 11

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

In Back to the Future Brian Crosby had some good techniques that we could use in our future classroom. For one, I really like that he had his second graders blogging in his classroom. I really do think that students enjoy blogging and sharing their thoughts for the world to see. The other thing that I saw that I liked was that he had to students so a science project but after the science project was over he had them get creative and had them write. I love when teachers show how everything is connected in some way.

In Blended Learning Cycle Paul explained blended learning. He had his students working online in the classroom, mobile and online. The five E's of the learning process are engage, explore, experiment, explain and evaluate.

In Making Thinking Visible the teacher had the students go into small groups and discuss about a video they watched. He had his students kinda make predictions about the up coming project. They did this with a video too. The made headlines for several videos and in the end they can see if they were right about their beginning perception about the project.

In the video Sam Pane 4th Grade it told students how to be safe while online. Then the students made comic books with superheros fighting internet crime. They presented their comics to other students. I really like how they did this project. With all the online assignments being done now it is very important to tell the students that we need to be careful when working online. This is a very good way to get students involved and take safety seriously and have a little fun in the learning process.

In the video Project Based Learning it show us that every subject can be incorporated into one project. This is one of my favorite things. I think that it is very important showing that all subjects are intertwined in some way. If students are not interested in science but we have them write a blog about a experiment they might enjoy and still learn from the experiment.

In Roosevelt Elementary PBL Program it just reiterated the necessity of having a PBL curriculum. Students love doing projects and they learn better by doing them. To me it is a win win. I like how in the video the teacher had the students working on real life problems. I feel like when they are working on real live issues they feel like they are learning things that are actually important. Talking together in groups gives students confidence. One teacher took it a step further and had her kindergarteners work on public speaking. Learning public speaking at a young age is helpful in that they have so much time to perfect it in the up coming years. The first time I had a public speaking class was in collage. I think if I would have had public speaking from the very beginning of my schooling I think it would have made me a more out spoken and confident individual.

Project 14

Lesson Plan
Calendar
Rubric
PBL Checklist

This is a second grade project on the founding fathers. The students will be doing group work and using technology in this project. At the end of the project they will present their project in costume, if they choose, to the class and another grade level or class. This project will take a week to complete.