Until We Meet Again

Goodbye for now until we meet again. I am sure I will cross paths with most of you next semester if you have a elementary education major like myself. I will continue to keep in contact with you, because now you are in my PLN, which I hope will keep expanding outside of this classroom. So this isn't really a goodbye its more like a see you later.

PLN

My personal learning network is not as big as I would like it to be and its partly my fault mostly because I haven't been putting toward the effort I should and could have. Right now at this moment I would probably say the only people in my PLN is my classmates, my professor Dr. Strange, and Mr. Chamberlain and a few others who have left comments on my blog. I think having a PLN is a great idea especially if you need new ideas for your class or maybe if you just need someone to bounce ideas off of. In the months to come I should have more time on my hand and I hope to expand my PLN then.

My podcast

If you want to listen to my podcast listen here. Its about useful internet sites for elementary teachers.

Comments for Kids Summary

Comments for kids was a fun project to do. I think the idea for comments for kids were excellent. I could see that the students really love getting there blogs commented on, and sometimes the kids teachers would return the favor and leave a comment on my blog. I know the kids were excited to get a comment on their blogs because even me a 22 year old in college still gets excited when I log in and see I have a new comment on my blog. Comments for kids is a great project and I am glad my class participated in it.

Things I Have Learned While In EDM 310

I have learned and explored so many new things while I have been in this class such as blogs, wikis, presentations, Google Docs,Google spreadsheets, Picasa, podcasts, videocasts, YouTube, PLNs, Twitter, other teachers and students outside of my region, comments4kids, iTunes, iTunesU, accessibility issues and the use of html tag modifiers, who I am as a professional, Google forms, data bases, Google Earth, Delicious, ACCESS, ALEX, Foliotek, the future of schools, and my "intellectual trail". A lot of these tools will be useful to me as a school teacher thing like blogs, twitter, Google Docs, and my PLN I could see me using on a daily basis. I think I learned more in this class than I ever could have imagined. I think everything I learned will be useful to me in someway whether realize I am using the technique or not. The thing that excited me in this class was using Skype. I found it exciting talking to a class all the way in New Zealand and getting to know people personally without ever actually meeting them in person. The only time I was bored in class was when sometimes you would over explain things and go over the same things we may have already discussed over and over sometimes. I wouldn't take away anything from the course. I still don't think I am technology literate, I think I still have a long way to go before I can call myself technology literate. Between now and the time I graduate I plan on keeping myself up to date with technology by to continuing to use it and trying to establish me a strong PLN.

7 Brilliant and Stupid Things Teachers Do with Technology & New Classroom Rules

The two most important things I seen in the article 7 Stupid Mistakes Teachers Make With Technology were not backing up data and thinking technology in schools will go away. Both of these are stupid mistakes teachers can make with technology. By not backing up your data in to separate places you are only making you job harder on yourself when the data is lost. The other mistake of thinking technology will not be with education for a while to come is a stupid mistake. Technology and education are both here to stay so for the educator who think that technology will not be with education for long I'm sorry to stay but you don't need to be a educator anymore.

The two most important things I seen in the article 7 Brilliant Things Teachers Do With Technology were use the kids’ own devices to teach them and empower kids with technology. Let kids use their own devices to teach them if they like listing to their Ipods and watching videos on their laptops, make podcast and classroom videos for them to listen to and watch on their Ipods and laptops. If they are going to be using technology they might as well be learning while using it. Empower kids with technology should become a objective in the classroom there are so many games and brilliant ideas yo can find on he web to empower your students so use them to yours and theirs benefit.


The two most important things I seen from the blog post of New Classroom Rules were, bring required materials, including your laptop and cell phone every day, and talk only when permitted, text at all other times. I think that maybe one that these will be real classroom rules. Now days everyone has access to a laptop or cell phone and sooner or later you may look into your classroom syllabus and this rule will be in there. Talk only when permitted, text at all other times would be a fun classroom rule but I think we would have a hard time monitoring it.

At the Teacher's Desk

At the teacher's desk is a great website for teachers. Visiting sites like this one can give you your own ideas of something you may want to start in your classroom. This site is about teachers from around the world sharing there ideas and projects going on in and outside their classroom with other teachers. I think a collaborative blog such as this one is a great idea, and if teachers have one i am pretty sure that student probably have one also. The blogs seem to b kept up to date with a new post about every two week sometimes more sometimes less. This is a important website because it is keeping you aware of whats going on in different regions of the world.

Michael Wesch : Toward a New Future of Whatever

This is another interesting video by Michael Wesch. The ideas presented in this video relate closely to my personal life because I feel like that is the generation I am growing up in or I grew up in. We surely but slowly living our lives in front on the television and web cams. While it is helping us connect to one another but at what cost. From my college experiences you can see that no one cares what the person next to them is dong with their life. People come into the classroom have a seat and wait for the professor to enter they take notes and they live there is little to no interaction between other students. The vibe in some of my classes are hey I don't know you, you don't know me and we don't know each other so let me just listen to my Ipod and don't say anything to me. Me as a future educator I feel like I will have to find a different way to connect with my students than the way my teachers connected with me. If I don't we may have another lost generation on our hands. Watch this video for yourself at http://is.gd/3WVVZ.

Posting Work on the Web

It is important for students to post their own work on blogs and also for teachers to post their own students work on blogs because, you never know who may run across your work. For example the choir from PS 22 had the song writer to run across their work on the Internet and they got to perform the song in Madison Square Garden. I'm sure without the work being posted on the net they may have never gotten that opportunity or at least would not have been recognized so quickly. Check out the video at http://is.gd/3WVnqb the children singing sound amazing and you can tell from watching they enjoy singing the song.

Another example of you never may know who will see your work is the Dear Kaia blog http://is.gd/3WSsn some students seen her blog and decided to read her stories on a web cam and communicate with her. I'm sure when they posted her on the net they probably had no intentions of someone contacting them back. Even myself left a comment to Kaia and her father.

Comments for kids is another great example of why you should post your work to your blog. Through comments for kids me and my classroom communicated with other student outside of America. It felt like we had the chance to visit a foreign country with out having to leave our seats. The students sung our class a song and or class sung one back to them even though we were a little shy about it. You can check out the school website here at http://www.ptengland.school.nz/.

Another great example of posting your blogs to the Internet is you get to share your own ideas with others and you may never know what others may think until they see your work. For example my co-workers say they were playing around on google and ran across my professional blog and they said from reading my professional blog if they were a principle they would hire me just from reading what they saw on the Internet. Just from reading my professional blog they seen how I really feel about teaching and thought that I would make a excellent teacher one day.

Check out my blog at http://rosecpb.blogspot.com/

Project 11 Presentation

E-Books or Paper Books

ACCESS

ACCESS stands for Alabama Connecting Classroom, Educators, and Students Statewide. This program started in 2006. It offers advance diploma course, dual enrollment courses, remediation courses, advanced placement courses, and other courses that the school may not offered. The program is distant learning and the teacher who is teaching the course specializes it that subject. I never heard of this program before this class even though I graduated in 05 but I ask my sister and they don't have it at our high school. I think it is a pretty good program overall.

ALEX

ALEX is a website that was built for students and teachers. When you first go to the web site it has eight different categories you can choose from. It has a course of study so you can know what your students need to be learning. You can choose from different lesson plans that may help you out. It has web links for students, teachers, and administrators. It has this link for Alabama Connecting Classroom, Educators and Students Statewide (ACCESS), which is distant learning for students in school. This is a really cool website which i think any teacher could find helpful.

I think when I finally begin teaching my own classroom that ALEX would be very helpful. Especially when it comes to lesson plans and things for the students to do on the computer. I can really see ALEX helping me plan out my next day no matter what grade level I am teaching.

Dear Kaia

I cant believe a child so young is already working on blogs, videos and taking pictures. That just really amazes me. I might have to take that quote from her dad when said "that sometimes if we look closely at things ,even if they are discarded and ugly, they can be beautiful. This is so true some people look at trash as trash and other people see art. I take it that Kaia and her dad spend a lot of time together.

If we get more students into the classrooms like Kaia i think the classroom would become very boring for them after a while. If they are learning by using computers at home then they get to the classroom and all we have is books i think this would be a very hard task for students to accomplish. As teachers we must show students how important education is and will be to them.

New Media Literacies

The new media skills coverd in the video I watch was judgement, negotiation, appropriation, play, transmedia navigation, simulation, collective intelligence, performance, distributed cognition, visualization, multitasking. I think these are most defintly some of the skills we will need in new media literacies. Yes, they are the skills atleast some of the skills we will need to be effective 21st century artist, citizens, and workers. I posses 8 of the 11 skills discussed in video which are judgement, negotiation, play, collective intelligence, performance, distributed cognition, visualization, multitasking.



Watch this video for yourself at http://www.youtube.com/user/NMLstaff08#p/a

The Networked Student

The networked student was a interesting video and I learned a new from it called connectivism. Connectivism was a very interesting concept that I have never really heard of. I think it would be great for a class like the one I am in. It is basically what my professor is trying to teach us. By expanding our personal learning network it will help us get closer to connectivism.

The teacher who is thinking about introducing this concept to her middle school classroom in the fall I think is on the right track. They may not be where she wants them to be when the class is over, but if done right they will have learned something from the class that will make them want to know more. The student has to be willing and ready to learn this new concept of connectivism for it to work because the student does most of the work with this concept.

When the question was asked why does the networked student even need a teacher I was thinking the same thing. To me it seemed like the only role the teacher could play was to guide the student but the teacher can be so much more than that. The teacher can be a learning architect, modeler, network sherpa, synthesizer and so much more. I don't think I am quite ready to be a teacher of a networked student but I most defiantly think that I am on my way.

Check out this video at http://is.gd/2cgBb

This is How We Dream

Dr. Miller who is very different from myself , when it comes to books, starts off by telling us about his love for books and how books were always available to him. While myself on the other hand hates to read and I don't do it very often, I think it is boring, but maybe I feel that way is because through out school I was made to read books that I didn't really want or enjoy reading. He shows how once a book is out of print it is no longer available to us anymore, through technology the book will always be available to anyone who wants to read it.

He shows us how so much information is available to us without having to step foot into a library. The best thing about it is that the information is sometimes available as it happens or soon after the event has passed. We are most defiantly moving from a reading, writing culture to a listing, watching culture. Everywhere you turn there is somebody with something stuck in there ears walking or jogging or riding looking like robots.

Multimedia is very important and everyday I am amazed by something new in technology. Now you can become best friends online without actually seeing that person in real life but via web cam. I think have to learn how to use multimedia to keep the interest of student now because it is such a big part of how students learn today. Students are always using different types of media at home so when they come to school they want to use different kinds of media, and I think if we cant provide it in the classroom we are going to have a hard time keeping students attention.
Check this video out for yourself at http://techliterateteacher.blogspot.com/2009/07/dr-richard-e-miller-discusses-writing.html

Ipods in Instruction

Duke university was one of the first universities to do an ipod experiment where they game the incoming freshman a 20GB ipod for there classes it also came with a program on the ipod so that the students could record lectures in the classroom which I am sure came be very useful dealing with all the different ways professors teach at universities.

One classroom I found that using the ipod in the classroom was Miss Kathryn Stanton classroom she used the ipod to let her students record their stories using the ipod and once recorded they were instantly able to here there stories. This helped they with their reading practice as well as learning more about technology. She also made a slide show of the their work to see it check it out at http://blog.discoveryeducation.com/katstaton/2008/01/

iTunes U

As a student iTunes U could be useful to me because with it I can see what is being taught in certain subjects at some of the major universities in the United States. I can see and hear the way other professors are teaching the information that I also might be learning at my very own school. And because it is on iTunes I can simply download it to my ipod and listen to it on my way to work or while I am exercising.

As a teacher I could use iTunes U as a learning device for myself. I could see how other teachers are teaching the same information that I might be teaching. By doing this I may notice thing i may need to change in my lesson to help my students grasp the information better. One of the best thing about iTunes U is that it is free to download the videocasts and podcasts.

Download itunes for yourself at www.apple.com/itunes

Dr. Christie’s site

A part of the site that I found that could be useful for teachers was the photography section this part included picture of things she had taken, mostly nature. I think a teacher could have a site like this as part of their classroom website but instead of picture that the teacher has took it can be pictures that students have took. You could give the students a assignment to only take picture of all the different animals or plants, or vegetables they see.

After the student have took the pictures and they are developed or saved on the computer then as a class everyone can learn more about the category they were assigned or they could learn more about some of the pictures they find interesting. Once they are put on the Internet the whole world can see what your classroom is learning about.

Visit this site at www.alicechristie.org

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.