What I've Learned This Year" by Mr. McClung.

I think that the What I've Learned This Year post by Mr. McClung was a very good post for our class to read. It had a lot of things in it that most first year teachers will have to learn while teaching. He gave us students that have not started teaching a heads up about what we need to learn before we start teaching. I am pretty sure once I begin teaching I will have to learn how to read the crowd, be flexible, communicate, be reasonable, use technology, listen to my students and never stop learning. Doing all these things will help me become a better teacher and help my students achieve their dream. Mr. Mcclung just gave us some things to think about before we start teaching so we don't go into the classroom blinded.

Can You Trust Wikipedia

I think Wikipedia can be a trusted site for some information but not all. I think for something like a simple book report or the history of a person Wikipedia could be a very useful site. I would not trust Wikipedia with a big time project though. If I was using Wikipedia for a big project I would make sure I had other trusted sources backing it up. If I was assigning my students a project and they decided to use Wikipedia I would make sure to tell those students who are going to use Wikipedia to make sure they have another source.

Randy Pausch Last Lecture

Randy Pausch' last lecture started off with him telling the audience why it was going to be his last lecture, and it was because he has tumors in his liver. He didn't want to focus on his illness though and he didn't want anybody to fell sorry for him. He said you cannot help the cards you have been dealt but only play your hand. He then went to tell the audience the things he would not be talking about and the things he would be talking about.He had a great sense of humor throughout the video

The first thing he talked about was his childhood dreams. He talked about brick walls and brick walls make us prove how bad we want something. T he brick walls are not there to keep us out but to make us show how bad we want something. He then went on to talk fundamentals and hard work and how important they are. I love a quote that he had in his PowerPoint and it goes "experience is what you get when you didn't get what you want".

Next he talked about enabling the childhood dreams of others. He went on the CMU and created a course where you made your own VR world. His mentor gave him some great advice when he thought his students had did really well, and that was to tell them they did good but he know they can do better. He said he would be doing the students a disservice if he was to set the bar.

I really enjoyed watching the videos and the quotes he put at the end of the video. He talked about the lesson he has learned thought life. One of them were even you give someone long enough they will show you the good in them. Another one was don't complain work harder his example was when Jackie Robinson played baseball it was put in his contract that he couldn't complain even when people spit on him

Is It Okay to Be A Technologically Illiterate Teacher?

This post is about Karl Fisch, a teacher and technology education specialist at Arapahoe High School in Littleton, Colorado. He won an award form EduBlog Awards for his blog post "Is It Okay To Be A Technologically Illiterate Teacher ?" It was nominated as "The Most Influential Post of 2007". Fisch did not expect to win anything, he did not even expect to be nominated. He was just responding to a post written by someone else named Terry Freedman. Freedman wrote a post about 'is it acceptable for a teacher to be technology illiterate?'

Freedman also had proposed a set of standards for teacher which teachers need to follow. I liked reading the post it was very interesting. I also believe that teachers need to keep up with technology. Like he said "If a teacher today is not technologically literate - and is unwilling to make the effort to learn more - it's equivalent to a teacher 30 years ago who didn't know how to read and write." Teachers must know whats going on with technology just so they can relate to their students. I would think today that every 8 out of ten students today know about Myspace and Facebook and other cites like it. Teachers now can even use technology to communicate with their students outside of class.

Welcome To My World

It's Not About the Technology" by Kelly Hines

Its not about the technology says Kelly Hines and I agree with her. Even if we do get all this technology what is the point if the technology tools are not being used to their fullest cabilites. Every student has that computer that they want but what good is it if the are only using Microsoft word and PowerPoint in the classroom. Like Hines said the teacher needs innovative tools and innovative tools but into a innovative teachers was can be very powerful.

I totally agree with her and every point that she made. There is technology that is being created everyday so if we the schools get caught up with whats going on today they are still behind. So instead of focusing on the technology lets focus on innovative tools that can be used in the classroom. The teacher has to be willing to learn and not be so closed minded that they can only teach and there is no more learning for them to do.

My Reaction to Michael Wesch: A Vision of Students Today

After watching this video it does pretty much describe my college life in a nutshell. I enjoyed watching the video I found it very interesting. I found it interesting how they didn't say anything throughout the video and just used sheets of paper with words on them. I think that help keeps the attention of the watcher it made me wonder what are they going to hold up next. If they would have talked i could have simply opened up another web page and listened but they made you watch the video by not talking.

There are people entering college not knowing what they are in store for. They think it will be like what they see on television, hanging with their friends, going to parties, and not going to class, but then they get here and its totally different. I think watching a video like this will help capture a small part of college for students who have not entered yet. You do buy books that you don't use, you do sit in classroom and learn information that is totally useless, and you do have more stuff thrown at you than you can handle, but I guess thats just the way it goes.

The Benefits of Podcasting in the Classroom

After watching this video I seen that using podcast in the classroom can be very useful. I also seen that the students seem to enjoy listing to the podcast and making the podcast. Some of the students listen to the podcast inside and outside of the classroom. I think its hard getting students to want to learn and I think using podcast effectively will help with that.

I seen that if a student does miss class and you record whats going on in the classroom that day through a podcast the student will not have so much to catch up with the next day when they come back to school if they listen to the podcast. The podcast seem to be able to keep the attention of the student better than the teacher sitting in the classroom in a monotone voice teaching it. I think podcast can be a very useful tool inside classrooms if used correctly.

Students Podcast

I listened to a couple of the podcast from last semester and you could tell that some of the students were nervous because they have probably never done a podcast before and this was something new to them. In one of the podcast I listened to you could tell that they were reading about the subject word for word. They made good points but it just didn't sound natural. In other podcast it sounded as if they students were just having a casual conversation and you could not even tell it was for a class, and that how I want mines to sound.

I think some key thing I will have to do to get me and my group podcast to sound natural is to practice outside of the classroom. I don't want it to sound like we were forced against our will to do the podcast. Another i heard was the moving around of paper in some of the podcast to avoid this I think I will use index cards for my podcast. But, I think the most important thing to do is to practice and get familiar with the subject and the podcast will come out great.

Video Into The Classroom Introduction

I think that it is good that Mr.Needleman can get his students involved inside the classroom without using pen and paper. I think computers are becoming a very big part of education. Who knows maybe in about 5 years every student at every school will have access to their own computer.