Blog Post #10

What can we learn from Mrs. Cassidy?

Mrs. Cassidy is a first grade teacher in Canada. She has been encouraging teachers around the world with her use of 21st century technology. In Little Kids...Big Potential, she shows us the use of technology her students do throughout the school year. The students enjoy learning these things in class. Technology they're using in class are blogs, webpage, wikis, video, Skype, and Nintendo DS.

In the first interview video, Cassidy 13 Part 1, Mrs. Cassidy talks about the five special computers students used. These computers did not have any programs that could be downloaded on to it. She also stated that she teaches her students what's appropriate to click on and what is not appropriate. With blogging, parents are very skeptical about the privacy controls on the schools computers. Parents think that its a good idea to see their child's progress throughout the year. The student's blog is used as a online portfolio. For teachers, she recommends they should make their own Personal Network Learning. Change will happen and technology is here to stay. Which means, they will have to keep up with what's happening in technology today.

In the second interview video, Cassidy 13 Part 2, talks about the use of technology in the classroom. The best way to use technology is something that you're most comfortable with. Mrs. Cassidy does not use any social media in her free time. She mentions about that social media is a great tool to use in the classroom. With social media, the best thing for elementary schools to use is Facebook. Teachers can use this to communicate and post homework assignments to remind their students on what's due.

In the final video, Cassidy 13 Part 3, talks about how fast the class will learn how to use the technology given in the classroom. It depends on the pace of how the class is progressing. She mentions thats blogs are not the problem with cheating, its a good way to collaborate by sharing with one another.

I love how Mrs. Cassidy approaches technology to elementary students. I see she's preparing them for the future ahead of time. By the time I teach, I know my students will have some of the basics of technology down packed. It will be a good way to start them up on technology on a intermediate stage.

Project #12 Smartboard Instructions Part A

C4K Summary March

This week I had to comment on Cristal's Blog Post. She is a student in Mrs. Maslowski's class at Joliet West High School in Illinois. This week the class had to write about their experience when they attended Job Shadowing. Job Shadowing is actually similar to Career Day. Cristal describes that she wants to do cosmetology, but it doesn't make as much money as she thought.

http://per4cristal.edublogs.org/2015/03/06/job-shadowing/#comment-4
Leslie Evans on March 12, 2015 at 12:54 amsaid:

Your comment is awaiting moderation. 

Hi Cristal,

I never heard of Job Shadowing before. I actually wanted to do cosmetology before as well, but going into teaching has defined me. I agree with you that you need a good career that has good pay. Just keep finding something that interests you!

http://per8andrew.edublogs.org/2015/02/08/should-religion-be-forced-by-parents/#comments

This week I had to comment on Andrew's Blog Post. He is a student in Mrs. Maslowski's class at Joliet West High School in Illinois. This week Andrew wrote about should religion be forced or picked by the children today. He thinks that the children should have a right to pick their religion instead of being forced by the parents.

Leslie Evans on March 20, 2015 at 7:09 pmsaid:

Your comment is awaiting moderation. 

Hi Andrew,
Your point of view on religion is really good. Great way to question about being forced or taught about the religion you’re suppose to grow up in. For resources, do a survey and go around and ask to see other people’s opinion about it.

http://kidblog.org/MrsLsAwesome7thgradeclass2014-2014/45c026bc-6971-49d7-bf5c-18db3f45f60e/book-project-2/#comments

This week I had to comment on Boston's Blog Post. He is a student in Mrs. Lombard's class in Oklahoma. This week Boston talked about a book he read called The Unwanteds. He went into great detail about the book, and recommends us to read it.

Leslie Evans (Guest)

Your comment is awaiting moderation. 

March 25, 2015 at 8:19 PM

Hi Bosten, 
This book sounds interesting to read. You did a great job describing what the book is about. Keep up the good work!

Blog Post #9

When I first started taking this class, I had no clue what Project Based Learning was. Going through this week's assignment I have a full understanding of how much students learn from using it. What can teachers and students teach us about project based learning? Project Based Learning is a great way to have students interact and gain knowledge throughout their learning process.

Reading the Seven Essentials for Project Based Learning had a lot of great information I didn't know about PBL. Here are the seven essentials: Need to Know. This is the entry level of any PBL. What information do I actually need before I begin? Driving Question. Its suppose to give the student a sense of purpose and challenge. Student Voice and Choice. Letting students make their project that fits their personality. 21st century skill. Using technology, communicate, and have their own collaboration. Inquiry and Innovation. Using their own questions and using their research that leads to variety of answers. Feedback and Revision. Use rubrics to critique others work. Publicly presented product. The quality of the project that the students worry about and get to present it in front of an audience.

In the video Project Based Learning For Teachers, goes in great detail about about the standards. PBL has students working long extended hours to answer the driven questions that is given. We should think of PBL as Questioning, Investigating, Sharing, and Reflecting. The two main questions are:

-Common Core Standard is What?
-Project Based Learning is How?

In Wing Project: Crafting a Driving Question, teachers are trying to find a good way to do Project Based Learning with the students. They stated that a good driving sets up a question that students will be interested in. Teachers want to see how the project is going to work with the driven question that will need to produce the answers. Crafting the driving question, teachers will have to come up with difficult ideas, see what materials they will need, how it will act putting it together, and to modify it.

In Ten Sites Supporting Digital Classroom Collaboration in Project Based Learning, there are a lot of amazing websites for PBL that can help with classroom collaboration. These sites provided will help student to student, student to teacher, and student to expert from communicating to collaborating with each other. This can help students gain more responsibility using these online tools. I've only used 2 out of 10 websites, which are, Google Docs and Microsoft Live. Using these tools, I find more ways to communicate more with my group and end up learning new things as well.

After watching What motivates students today, I love to see students that are encouraged and influenced by teachers. The way we have to motivate them is to always tell them how well they're doing in class, improve on grades, or to just do well in life. It looks like the students like to be rewarded more on their accomplishments. A good way to reward them is with snacks, brownie points, go outside to play for a little, and have a clip chart of improvements of behavior in the classroom. Those are the only way that we can actually motivate the students and have their undivided attention in the classroom.

Project #9 Video Book Commentary

Activity #4 C4T2 Mrs. Goerend

http://mrsbmg.blogspot.com/2014/05/reflections-on-my-first-year-as.html?showComment=1423683341121#c5326549447527208840

Summary of this blog post is about Mrs. Goerend switching up from an elementary teacher to a elective teacher. She provides more interest in the students in her classroom so she can have a special connection with all of them. She has a passion for teaching and enjoys it so much by impacting students in a positive way.

Leslie EvansFebruary 11, 2015 at 11:35 AM

Hi Mrs. Goerend,
My name is Leslie Evans. I am a student at University of South Alabama taking EDM310. From reading your blog post, I can tell teaching has to be the most wonderful experience. Being able to build up interest with your students in a short timely manner, proves you love teaching these wonderful students. I love when the student brought you flowers to thank you for all the hard work you've done to teach her. A lot of teachers end up leaving a positive impact on a student. Also, I thought that it was a great idea to switch up from being a elementary teacher to an elective teacher. It's a good way to explore something different outside the elementary classroom.




http://mrsbmg.blogspot.com/2014/04/thoughts-on-wikipedia.html#comment-form

She gave each student in the communication class a social media website and told them to use Wikipedia as a source. In the past, teachers always tell us not to use Wikipedia because its a bad source. She encouraged her students to use the information provided by Wikipedia. She said if you're not sure about it look it up on another website. Wikipedia is the source of information even though different people can edit it anytime.

Leslie EvansFebruary 17, 2015 at 3:32 PM

Mrs Goerend,
I enjoyed reading this blog post so much. Throughout the years being in public school, teachers always tell me never use Wikipedia because its a bad source. I disagree on that, but still continued use it anyways with researching. Yes it does get changed a lot, but I think it provides more information on the site than any other. I love the idea you gave to the students by letting them research a social media for the communication class. I will definitely use this example in the future whenever I have my own classroom. Thank you for share this post with us!

Blog Post #8

I really enjoyed watching Randy Pausch's Last Lecture. His lecture had great amount of detail and inspirational messages. He was a Computer Science professor at the Carnegie University. Randy mentions that he has pancreatic cancer, which is why he decides to do the last lecture. He is also the co-founder of the Entertainment Technology Center and one of the developers of Alice. Alice is a novel way of teaching Computer Programming, and helping kids have fun learning something hard. With Computer Programming, I see he uses Project Based Learning for his students. He lets his students to do any idea with no guidelines whatsoever. Randy mentions how creative the students were when it was time to showcase their projects. He ask the audience "How can you achieve your dreams or enable the dreams of others?" He talks about his childhood dreams, enabling dreams of others, and lesson learned. What makes it interesting is that he elaborated more about his dreams than just having that one particular dream. These dreams are similar to a wish list that he would like to accomplish within his lifetime here on earth. Throughout his lecture, he gives us amazing advice on the trials and tribulations that we go through everyday.
-Never give up
-Help others
-Loyalty is a two way street
-Get feedback loop and listen to it
-Focus on others, not yourself
-Be good at something
-Show gratitude
-Find the best in everybody
-Be prepared: "luck" preparation needs opportunity
-Don't complain, just work harder

What I've learned from Randy was to never give up on your dreams. If something doesn't go your way, push harder to achieve. My most favorite line in the video, "Its about how you live your life, lead life the right way or karma will come. Let the dream come to you." By letting the dream come to you, it will push you harder to make more accomplishments that will satisfy you in the future. Through the obstacles, the brick walls will let us show our dedication.