Dr. Seuss Hooray for Diffendoofer Day!
Sunday, February 23, 2014
Blog Post #6
This week's blog post is all about setting up your PLN (personal learning network). When I first starting reading exactly what PLN meant, my first impression was that it was like a list of people that you personally knew that could help you get what you needed in your career. After reading and watching the first video A "7th Grader's Personal Learning Environment" I learned that a PLN is a website used to help keep your sources in order. The site used in the video Symbaloo, looks like the home icon's on an Ipad or tablet. The 7th grader in the video taught me how to use this site. She showed us all the different apps she used to contribute to her learning process in the science class.
When I first created my profile for Symbaloo it was a tad bit confusing. After playing around with you I kind of got the hang of it. I like the overall look of it. Some of the tabs I deleted, like the booking websites and some of the social sites. For the most part I kept the majority of the tabs that came with the sign up. I used the 7th grader's idea and put most of my school resources on the bottom. I'm still trying to get the hang of it. One of the apps I've played with the most is the Symbaloo education app. It allows you to share the best of the internet with you students. It has a place for science, chemistry, and writing. Once you click on the subject you want, it takes you to a list of topics to choose from. I chose biology, and then my plantID, it took me to a website where I could make my own site for my students to keep up with the class plant or different projects that involved the plant.
The more and more I played around with Symbaloo, the more I fell in love with it. I think every teacher should know about this site. I believe I will be using this more often. I think it will become very helpful in the future when using it in the classroom.
When I first created my profile for Symbaloo it was a tad bit confusing. After playing around with you I kind of got the hang of it. I like the overall look of it. Some of the tabs I deleted, like the booking websites and some of the social sites. For the most part I kept the majority of the tabs that came with the sign up. I used the 7th grader's idea and put most of my school resources on the bottom. I'm still trying to get the hang of it. One of the apps I've played with the most is the Symbaloo education app. It allows you to share the best of the internet with you students. It has a place for science, chemistry, and writing. Once you click on the subject you want, it takes you to a list of topics to choose from. I chose biology, and then my plantID, it took me to a website where I could make my own site for my students to keep up with the class plant or different projects that involved the plant.
The more and more I played around with Symbaloo, the more I fell in love with it. I think every teacher should know about this site. I believe I will be using this more often. I think it will become very helpful in the future when using it in the classroom.
Sunday, February 16, 2014
Blog Post #5
In the video's Project Based Learning Part 1 & 2, I learned quite a lot. I loved the project in the first video about writing to the city councilman about women serving in open combat. I liked that he made the kids look for women that they knew nothing about. This drove home his comment about project based learning being the key to helping the kids learn more, and helping the teacher know that what was taught, was comprehended. The comment Anthony Capps made in the second video about never limiting your students to what they research. I agree with him completely, no teacher should ever stop a child from learning. In the process of children learning we as teacher learn more. His point about involving the community to allow them to see that this way of learning is meaningful and helpful to the students stood out to me as well. When the community sees that kids are learning and that this way of teaching is helping the students be successful, it allows the community to get involved and this also pushes students more. I know as a child I loved when we had open house and I got to show all my family and my community what I learned and what I created. The passion and the drive Anthony has when he talks about his students and the projects is amazing. I want to one day be that teacher that my students can't wait to come to class and learn. I love that after every lesson, even if he just gives a worksheet his students know that its important and its a reason behind it. He is truly motivating, this makes me want to hurry and finish school so I too can see the passion and the light in students eyes when they learn something new.
I enjoyed the video The Anthony-Strange Tips for Teachers Part 1, mainly because all the tips made were great points. I think the first one, "being open to learning" is the most important one. How can I as a educator expect my students to be excited and willing to learn something everyday when I myself am not open to someone teaching me something. Anthony made the statement that teaching is hard, but its something that is constant. Even when your off work, your constantly trying to find a better way to teach, or talking about your job. I find that very easy to believe, I have the pleasure of sitting in a 3rd grade class and observing the teacher and the students, the first thing I do when I leave the class is call my mother to tell her what I observed and how I am going to use that idea or improve that idea in my classroom.
I enjoyed the video The Anthony-Strange Tips for Teachers Part 1, mainly because all the tips made were great points. I think the first one, "being open to learning" is the most important one. How can I as a educator expect my students to be excited and willing to learn something everyday when I myself am not open to someone teaching me something. Anthony made the statement that teaching is hard, but its something that is constant. Even when your off work, your constantly trying to find a better way to teach, or talking about your job. I find that very easy to believe, I have the pleasure of sitting in a 3rd grade class and observing the teacher and the students, the first thing I do when I leave the class is call my mother to tell her what I observed and how I am going to use that idea or improve that idea in my classroom.
Sunday, February 9, 2014
Friday, February 7, 2014
C4T Assignment #1 Comment and Summary
This is an excellent way to get students involved in classroom discussion. This tool alone is stetting highschool students up for college. I am a student at the University of South Alabama. Most of our classes are web blended and most professors require you to participate in the online discussion forum. Not only will you have to create your own place in the forum, but most of the time you have to comment on a classmates, maybe 3 discussion forum. Teaching students early on how to work these forums and how to use them in ways to expand their knowledge, will get them one step closer to being better college students.
I enjoyed reading this blog post, simply because I felt it related to the kids so much. As an future educator I believe that if we make learning fun for the students then they will want to continue to come back more and more excited everyday. I think my favorite game and one I'm willing to try is the stop disasters. I would have never guess to put it with teaching weather. This game will help students to learn what they need when a natural disaster comes our way. Exciting things!
My Teacher's blog is focused on the new technologies that students are using. After the first week has passed and I went back to view what had been updated, and realized that the teacher hasn't posted anything since January 18th. In my personal opinion the blog is an okay blog, nothing really exciting going on. It had vital information about what students could use to better their education experience, but if I was a child I don't think I would be all that interested in the blog. I did like the post about the classroom discussion, especially because we use the discussion forums here at South and we have to comment on atleast 3 sometimes of our peers post. I think that is a perfect way to get the child started and open a child up to interacting with other classmates. I chose to comment on the post about the games because it truly caught my attention. The Natural Disaster game was on of my favorites that was discussed, in this game you had to provide all the necessary things need if a disaster game through your town. The teacher used this game to teach 5th grade weather, that was an interesting way to get and keep the kids involved and entertained. This was one of the many was the elementary schools are moving up with the technology.
I enjoyed reading this blog post, simply because I felt it related to the kids so much. As an future educator I believe that if we make learning fun for the students then they will want to continue to come back more and more excited everyday. I think my favorite game and one I'm willing to try is the stop disasters. I would have never guess to put it with teaching weather. This game will help students to learn what they need when a natural disaster comes our way. Exciting things!
My Teacher's blog is focused on the new technologies that students are using. After the first week has passed and I went back to view what had been updated, and realized that the teacher hasn't posted anything since January 18th. In my personal opinion the blog is an okay blog, nothing really exciting going on. It had vital information about what students could use to better their education experience, but if I was a child I don't think I would be all that interested in the blog. I did like the post about the classroom discussion, especially because we use the discussion forums here at South and we have to comment on atleast 3 sometimes of our peers post. I think that is a perfect way to get the child started and open a child up to interacting with other classmates. I chose to comment on the post about the games because it truly caught my attention. The Natural Disaster game was on of my favorites that was discussed, in this game you had to provide all the necessary things need if a disaster game through your town. The teacher used this game to teach 5th grade weather, that was an interesting way to get and keep the kids involved and entertained. This was one of the many was the elementary schools are moving up with the technology.
Thursday, February 6, 2014
Blog Post #4
After reading the postThe Right Way to Ask Questions in the Classroom I took a step back and realized that I am one of those students who sits back and lets someone else answer the questions, just because I know they will. I know the feeling of being one of the "not so smart" students. I like the point the author made that we as teachers get up in front of students and pretend as if we know everything, when we are the one asking all the questions. The question Ben Johnson asked at the beginning of the post was " What does a teacher asking questions of a class expect the class to learn from the questioning process?." What he means is what do we as teachers asking students who already don't know much about the subject expect the students to get from us just asking does everyone understand. This question is a question that many teachers ask all day everyday. What exactly do we want our students to understand, instead of just being so simple and asking if they do understand, we as teachers should know what it is we want them to get. I got some creative ideas to do in my future classroom from this post. Instead of asking the question to the entire class, pause to give students time to start thinking then randomly call a student to answer it. Even though some students may be happy you didn't call on them, at least they participated in the thinking process of the question
This post not only made me open my eyes, to become a better teacher, but to also become a better student. How can I expect my students to want to ask questions and want to learn, if I as a student right now can't do the same. One thing I have taken from the post Three Ways to Ask Better Questions in the Classroom is that instead of letting a question be as simple as do you understand?, instead prepare the questions you want to ask our students, this will help them know and learn the important things to take from that lesson. I like the idea of playing with a questions, instead of letting your students know right off hand that they are right, make them think more about the question. This process allows every student even the ones who don't like to participate the opportunity to maybe want to join in on the class discussion. Being able to ask the type of questions to get our students involved should be a very big goal as a teacher. No teacher wants a boring class who only answers yes and no to the questions, but we as educators cannot blame the kids, we too must take responsibility.
In the video Asking Better Questions in the Classroom Part 1 Joanne Chesley teaches us that we need to be more open ended with our questions, what is an open ended questions, a question that needs more than a yes or no answer. If we ask more of these questions students will learn more, and think harder about the answer needed for the question. The first thing I took for the video Question Style and Strategies was to ask questions that students want to answer, he started off by asking the students how they envisioned what they say as they read the book. These students got the chance to use their imagination, all while doing classwork. Afterwards the students got to compare with their classmates their answers, which what better way to learn than to get students involved with one another.
In all we as future educators have to do better when trying to ensure that our students know and understand what we need them to know. Instead of using closed ended questions, and not involving every student we have to be just as open as we would want them to be.
This post not only made me open my eyes, to become a better teacher, but to also become a better student. How can I expect my students to want to ask questions and want to learn, if I as a student right now can't do the same. One thing I have taken from the post Three Ways to Ask Better Questions in the Classroom is that instead of letting a question be as simple as do you understand?, instead prepare the questions you want to ask our students, this will help them know and learn the important things to take from that lesson. I like the idea of playing with a questions, instead of letting your students know right off hand that they are right, make them think more about the question. This process allows every student even the ones who don't like to participate the opportunity to maybe want to join in on the class discussion. Being able to ask the type of questions to get our students involved should be a very big goal as a teacher. No teacher wants a boring class who only answers yes and no to the questions, but we as educators cannot blame the kids, we too must take responsibility.
In the video Asking Better Questions in the Classroom Part 1 Joanne Chesley teaches us that we need to be more open ended with our questions, what is an open ended questions, a question that needs more than a yes or no answer. If we ask more of these questions students will learn more, and think harder about the answer needed for the question. The first thing I took for the video Question Style and Strategies was to ask questions that students want to answer, he started off by asking the students how they envisioned what they say as they read the book. These students got the chance to use their imagination, all while doing classwork. Afterwards the students got to compare with their classmates their answers, which what better way to learn than to get students involved with one another.
In all we as future educators have to do better when trying to ensure that our students know and understand what we need them to know. Instead of using closed ended questions, and not involving every student we have to be just as open as we would want them to be.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)