Blog Post # 14-Final Reflection Video

Project 13 & 15 collaboration

For projects 13 and 15, we basically used Skype. We used email and texting to discuss when we would meet to record and we used skype to discuss all of our lesson that we were going to do on the smartboard. The biggest issue that we had was figuring out our meeting times. That's always an issue, especially when you have 4 college students working on a project, two of which are Mom's. We figured it out though and we got our project done. We all worked around each others schedule. Skype was easier than using chat or something like that because we could see each other's faces and let's face it, sometimes talking is better than chatting!Skype was a lifesaver!

Final Project 16

Project 15: Smartboard Presentation Part II

PLN update

During the course of this semester I have learned many things that have to do with technology. I never knew that there were so many websites that I could visit that would allow me to retrieve information. Google has become my new best friend. On some of my projects that I worked on during the semester required group work. Skype was a big help for this because we could meet online without actually having to go to class. I have heard that google hangout was pretty cool, but I never tried using it. I guess I will have to do that soon. I used symbaloo to create my own PLN, which is a personal learning network. The one I posted above is what I have so far. I am sure that I will add to it over the years. I use all of these things to help me learn in some way or another. Of course I mentioned skype, but twitter has helped a lot as well and so has facebook. These are both easy ways to communicate with other students or teachers and get advice from them. I hope to be able to update it every year as I learn more about things. 

Blog Post 13

When I first read this assignment, I was not happy at all. I didn't think that there was any way that I could get by without using my cell phone, watching television, or using my computer or iPod(especially for facebook) for 24 hours. I didn't like the fact that this was an assignment. I didn't know how long I would make it either. I have a boyfriend who I don't get to communicate much with except by text messaging throughout the day because he has a full time job as well as children that he has with him every day. I also have a 3 year old that my mother keeps for me while I am at school. I didn't like the fact that I wouldn't be able to stay in touch with her throughout the day to see how their day was going. On the first day I made it a few hours before I gave in and returned a text. There is just no way that I could look at my phone and see that I had a text message and not return it. It was hard for me. So I started over. On the second day I did make it a little farther because I was home all day that day, but my son likes to watch television at night, so I gave in and watched a little bit of tv with him before he went to bed. My third and final day was so hard. I had made it so far the second day so I had to struggle through this last day. It really made me realize how dependent I am on technology. I am sad to say that I didn't make it through my final day either. I had to use my computer to check to see if some emails had come through because I had recently filled out some job applications. I was ashamed to find that I was so dependent on technology to get me through my day. I don't know what I would do if something happened to where we didn't have this readily available to us every day. I guess I would find other things to take time off of my hands. I think that when students arrive in my classroom they will sneak to use their cell phones(just like I have done numerous times). I think they will feel like I did these past three days. It's hard to not have the freedom that you want. I was used to using my phone, computer, and iPod on almost an hourly basis, and for me not to be able to do it felt awful. I think that I will be able to identify with my students more so now that I have done this exercise than I would have before.

C4T for 4/29

Ugly Learning by Brian Bennett
This post was about how Mr. Bennett was speaking on behalf of new teachers. He stated that we did not need to judge our teaching on our students grades. He says that we are stuck in a day in age where students want to be "pretty". Messy is bad in other words. Mistakes aren't good. He said that we needed to embrace the fact that learning is caused by mistakes. I agreed with him. We learn by trial and error. If we never make mistakes then we can never learn anything and we need to apply this with our students as well as our teaching. Making mistakes in our teaching can only make us more experienced teachers in the long run. 






How to Create an Effective Study Guide by Brian Bennett
This post was about how Mr. Bennet believes that to create an effective study guide we should allow for room for error. He gives a few steps to creating an effective study guide. He doesn't think that a teacher should give a grade for the study guide, but that it should be praised for being completed. He also thought that students shouldn't be given study guides to memorize that had facts, but one that encouraged analytical and critical thinking skills. I agreed with this because there have been numerous times when I have had a test and was given a study guide and I just memorized the whole thing. I never had to actually think about what I was writing, so once I got into college I was blown away at the fact that I wasn't going to be spoon fed anymore. I also love how he encourages mistakes. Mistakes are what help children learn, and when they make mistakes and they aren't totally blasted for it, then it teaches them to learn from their mistakes instead of thinking that the world over because they messed up one time. 

Blog Post #12

One of the assignments that I think we should have been assigned to do this semester is to
 1) watch the video "The Importance of Writing Skills: Online Tools to Encourage Success",
2)give your opinion of the video, as well as what you learned about the video.
3)to explain the purpose of this video
4)do you think that this video will be useful to you as a teacher.
The purpose in watching this video is to show students how blogging can increase your writing skills as well as show students how much they actually need to know how to write. As a future English teacher, I think that writing is very important for someone to know how to do. I have proofread numerous papers on college levels for my fellow classmates and I have been surprised at their quality, or lack thereof, of writing. It is sad to me that grown adults don't know how to write. I am in no way trying to sound arrogant, but it is easy for me to write papers, but I try to find sympathy for students who can't write as easily as I can.
In this video he states that blogging can greatly improve your writing skills. Using it in the classroom is a great way to do that. He encourages teachers to give it a try. He also talked about something called student interactives, which is a website(read, write, think) where students can go and it gives them things to use to help them work on their writing skills. One of the examples he used was the bubble tool for writing. This is where you group ideas that are similar in bubbles and this helps you construct each paragraph. He also talked about a note taking skills tutorial.

This helps students take good notes so that they can organize them into a paper at a later date if needed to. It shows them how to outline things, which is helpful while writing a paper. There are many tools that are available on this link. His last example was a "model bank", which was a website with interactive versions of of successful writing in common High School and Middle School formats. I think this is an excellent source of help for students. It gives an example of the paper, and then off to the side it gives examples of what is going on in different areas of the paragraph or essay. This is great, because many students don't know how to put a just a paragraph in chronological order, much less a whole essay.
This video was great. I was very interested in it, of course, because I am a writer. I enjoy writing down information for others to read. Writing papers isn't a big deal to me. I thought that this was a very informative video to show students what the benefits are of blogging, as well as what it means to write well and it gave some successful tools to use for students who aren't good at writing papers.

Creativity and Curiosity: My Thoughts-special post 12A

I am a firm believer that schools in the United States do destroy(or inhibit) the development of curiosity and/or creativity in students. Students are taught to learn things by memorizing them and normally when they are taught this way, they usually don't remember the things they are taught. Many students are taught that mistakes are bad. Some mistakes can be bad, but only if you don't learn from them. Schools destroy the development of curiosity by not having teachers that are interested in actually teaching the children. Many students have questions for the teachers, but don't ask because they know that the teacher won't answer them. This mindset is what destroys the curiosity and creativity of many students. I think that a curriculum can be developed that will increase the curiosity of students. One of the things that I would suggest doing is having each student in the class to write down a list of things that interest them at the beginning of the year. Divide students that have things in common up into groups and allow them to work on a project together. I would also try to set the lesson plan up around one item of interest per week at least. That way students would think for themselves and be creative in their projects. They could pretty much do their own things without having much guidance besides their own brains. The curiosity and creativity would both be triggered with this type of lesson plan. A teacher's actions can definitely determine the creativity and curiosity of students. If a teacher doesn't encourage curiosity, then the students won't be creative. It's as simple as that. Students need to be molded, and many teachers aren't interested in that. I think that how a teacher responds to the student will determine how creative/curious students are. If they have a negative reaction, then chances are, that student won't ask anymore questions for fear of looking like an idiot when the teacher isn't encouraging or enthusiastic about their question. So if teachers are more active in the students learning skills, active in their questions, and resilient in answering them, then the students will more than likely have an increase in creativity and curiosity. What would help me be more creative or curious really just depends on the subject. If I am interested in something, then I look up facts and read as many articles on that subject as I can. It's borderline obsessive. So it really has to be something that interests me. Teachers and schools have a major role in this because if they don't encourage my creativity or give me something to be curious about, then I will never learn anything.

Progress Report on Final Project

Our group has skyped and discussed about our final project once already and we are planning on meeting to discuss the rest of it this next week after we record our project #15. We have had great teamwork and once we got everyone's schedule worked out, it seemed like everyone pretty much wanted to work together to make sure that this is a good project. Our group members are well coordinated and we seem to have a good bit of communication. We either email one another or text each other a few times a week just to touch base and see where we stand. We have had 3 or 4 group meetings so far.

C4K for April

Natalie's Blog-Global Connections
Natalie's blog post was about how she is trying to get people to translate the Bible into 223 languages that are spoken in The Dominican Republic of the Congo. She seemed very passionate about this and even posted a video that explained what was going on there. There were many women who were raped and their husbands had to leave them because the situation was too dangerous for them to stay with their wives and children. She stated that the Bible can bring healing to so many people, especially those that have experienced warfare. I then told her that I attend a church here in Grand Bay and we take part in mission trips to Guatemala and El Salvador and I had been on 5 mission trips myself. I told her that I understood her passion to bring God's word to people around the world. In the video it stated that the church was being blamed for some of the problems there in the Congo and for some reason someone had said that Christians were killing people there. I asked her if she knew any more details about that part of the video and why they were being blamed.

White Tail Buck
This post was mainly about a white tail buck. He just said that he hunted white tail buck with his family and friends and that it was native to Vermont and New England. I told him that I was a hunter myself and that I had killed a few deer in my lifetime. I asked him how many deer he had ever killed as well as if he had ever killed  buck and how big it was if so. I also encouraged him to keep blogging. I told him that this was a great way to learn things about people.

Atown Hard
This post was about a boy named Joe who liked to wakeboard, ride motorcycles and go to a town called Atiamuri. He is from New Zealand. He described this as his favorite place in the world to go. I told him that i had ridden motorcycles before and that it seems like I would really like this place called Atiamuri. He also said that he plays rugby and I asked him if he was interested in any other sports. I told him that we had a group here at our university who played rugby and I would like to watch the sport, but I had never found the time to do it.

Playing with Mom and Dad
This blog post was by a little boy named Tucker. He described in a sentence how he liked playing with his Mom and Dad. They like to play the games Checkers and Connect 4. I told him how when I was little I loved to play those games and that playing games with my parents was a lot of fun for me. I told him that our favorite games were Trouble and Chutes and Ladders. I then asked him if he had ever played those games before and if he hadn't then he should try them because they are a lot of fun. I also encouraged him about his blogging. I told him that it was great that as a first grader that he was already interested in blogging online and told him to keep up the good work. This was a sweet blog post for me. I enjoyed reading it I think because he is so young and there is an innocence about his writing because of that.

Blog Post #11

Little Kids....Big Potential
This video is amazing. I am having a difficult enough time learning to do blog posts as a 24 year old and these 1st graders are doing it with ease. This video was about how Ms. Cassidy is teaching her students how to skype, blog, use wikis, and using Nintendo DS for learning purposes(just for the record, I thought that DS's were only used for fun!) They all know how to get on their class website and pull up useful information that can help them learn new things. They also skype with other classes as well as experts. The video showed them skyping with a Geologist and she was teaching them about rocks. Who better to teach your children about a certain subject than an expert in that field of study? I think this is great, because there are many students who won't have the means necessary to buy computers or DS's, so they will be able to learn how to use them properly at school. I wish I would have had a teacher to teach me these things when I was in Elementary or High School. 

Kathy Cassidy Skype Interview

Ms. Cassidy seems like the teacher that I should model my classroom and teaching methods after. She is so refreshing. She uses many different methods to teach her students and they are all something that I would be fond of using in my own classroom. Her students will be very well prepared for the future and will definitely know how to use technology at a young age. She uses technology to help her students learn and to problem solve, but she also does it in a fun way. This is what makes a good teacher. It was great that she took advantage of the fact that her school allowed computers to be installed there. She really dug in and taught her students how to blog. This shows that anything is possible. Nobody ever thought that 1st graders could blog, but they are doing it. 
One of the things that I would like to use in my classroom is skype. I am planning on being a High School English teacher and I think that this would be a wonderful tool to help them learn. Especially with summer reading lists, or reading that we do throughout the year. I would like to try to set up a question and answer session with the author of the book. This would inspire the students to read so they would know what questions to ask the author during the skype interview. It would also be fun to set up a type of game of some sort with spelling words. Using skype to connect with another classroom that is using the same words and compete with them, almost like a spelling bee.  I also like how they use the wiki's. I thought this was very interesting. I have never heard of anyone doing this. I know that there are such things as online forums where people can post their own opinion, but this is different. In the video above it showed them learning what a "tradition" was by reading the posts of others about traditions in their own families. What a great way for students to learn about something! Some of the benefits that I would earn would be to allow my students to learn about different people from different areas of the world. It also would make learning fun for the students and this would make my job much easier than just standing up there giving them lesson after lesson(that they will forget by tomorrow). This video excites me and gives me courage to do what I want to do, and that is to educate. 

Blog Post #10

Do You Teach or Do You Educate?
To Teach(v): (1)To show or explain how to do something. (2) Encourage someone to accept a fact or principle. (3) To give information about or instruction in. (4) Cause someone to learn or understand something. (5) Induce by example or punishment to do or not to do something. These are all definitions of a teacher in this video. It doesn't seem so bad to be a teacher when you look at these different definitions, until you read what it means to educate someone.
To Educate: illuminate, enlighten, inspire, empower. One who gives intellectual, moral and social instruction. A mentor is an experienced and trusted adviser. A guide is a person who advises and shows. These are all things that an educator would do. If I had to choose, I would much rather be an educator. To teach is to pour information into someone. To educate is to give them the power learn something themselves by encouragement. Children need educators not teachers. They have enough people in their lives that tell them what to do and order them around. It is time that we have become educators and give them the power to do it themselves. Guide them through their schooling. Show them what they should do and let them step out on their own and do it themselves. Inspire them to get out of their comfort zone and reach into places that they wouldn't normally go. These are things that an educator should do. I for one would much rather be an educator than a teacher. The video ends with this quote, "Education is the kindling of a flame, not the killing of a vessel." -Socrates. We should kindle their flames, killing the vessel(the student) will bring nothing but crushed self esteem in the end, and failure as far as academics go. 
I intend to show my students how to do things, but let them make their own decisions about how to do it. There are so many teachers out there, and we need more educators. Children need examples because many don't have an example at home to watch. I want to be more than just an ordinary teacher. An ordinary teacher pours facts into a child's brain, expects them to remember it for a test, and then never remember it again. Once that student is out of their classroom, it isn't their problem anymore.  I want to make learning fun, create a fun environment for my students and empower them to learn things for themselves. I want to be the educator that is remembered for making an impact and for showing them that they can do anything that they put their mind to, if they just try. 


Tom Johnson's Don't Let Them Take The Pencils Home
In this blog post, Mr. Johnson wrote about a confrontation that he had with his supervisor. He wanted to allow his students to take home pencils and paper. She was not for this idea at all. He had all of his parents sign waivers to allow the children to bring the pencils home with them, and she still was not allowing it. She had come up with so many different reasons as to why they couldn't bring the pencils home, until finally the real reason came out and that was because she was worried about low test scores. Apparently, students who use pencils at home have lower standardized testing scores. She was extremely rude about the subject matter at hand and would not listen to his side of the story. She made the point about how the students would just use the pencils to play hangman, which she referred to as a "sick and twisted game". 

My first point is that the students were given "a drill-and-kill bubble test" as Mr. Johnson put it. I took drill-and-kill to mean the students had facts drilled into their heads and then they had to take a standardized bubble-in-the-answer test. Not all students are good at taking standardized tests, and most students who memorize facts forget them by the time the test rolls around. So who is really being short handed here? The students are. The research that she was speaking about was obviously not a relevant point to bring up to support her argument. 
The second issue I had with this was something that was brought up in a comment. The commenter said "why not keep them from bringing books home because they could be used as a stopper to fix a wobbly table". I agree with this 100%. If you are worried about hangman being played, then just leave books out totally, because they could be  used for something other than reading. For Gertrude, the supervisor, to  use the argument that the pencils could be used to play hangman is absurd. Even if they are using them to play hangman, they are using their brains in a creative way. This leads me to my third point.
Is this post really about keeping children from taking pencils home, or is it representative of the fact that so many "educators" tend to worry more about testing scores than the students actually learning something because they want to learn. I can recall countless times of memorizing facts in High School that I couldn't remember today, even if my life was in jeopardy. There is a difference in learning something and memorizing something. This supervisor was more worried about testing scores than actually worrying about whether the students were learning or not. This is the problem with the education system today. Who cares about testing scores? If they are learning new things, then that is great, but a test doesn't prove if they have learned something or not. A test proves if they have memorized something, and most of the time when they have something memorized, it is forgotten about a week later. 
My favorite line was "Okay, you keep telling yourself that, but don't blame me when your test scores are lower." I love the use of "your" right here, as if I am the one taking the drill-and-kill tests."' This was so funny to me. This is another main problem that our educational system has. How is it the teachers fault, if the student refuses to learn. Many students expect the teacher to "teach" them the material, but then decides that they will put no effort into it. "Educators"(and I use the term educators very loosely in this sentence) need to stop thinking inside their box and start thinking about their students in a more positive way. Negativity leads to failure. The attitude of this supervisor could have ruined a classroom full of students had not Mr. Johnson stayed strong in his argument.

Blog Post #9

At The Teacher's Desk: What I've Learned So Far (2008-2009)
This blog post was really great. I enjoyed reading it. It was about how much he has learned so far as a teacher. He names a few different things that he has learned such as; how to read the crowd, be flexible, communicate, be reasonable, don't be afraid of technology listen to your students and never stop learning. Reading the crowd was about how he was so concerned of what his superiors thought of him that he lost touch with his crowd that he was teaching, which were his students. He noted that we as teachers need to start making our lesson plans more student oriented instead of making it more about something that will make us look good to our superiors.

He stated in the Be Flexible portion that "No lesson is ever perfect, the one you teach and the one you plan are always different". I loved this quote. I am the world's worst at wanting to have something planned out. When things don't go the way that I want it to then I get aggravated really quickly. I have taken a speech class before and I always practice really hard, but my speech never turns out exactly how I want it to. I can only imagine that this is the same way in a classroom. Students have questions, situations arise, and things will happen that will delay your lesson or cause it to go off on rabbit trails. Being flexible is all part of being a teacher.

Communication was the next portion of the blog post. He put this portion in the blog because he said that  he knows drama does happen in the work place. The best way to get rid of this drama is to talk it out. Communicating with your colleagues also helps you form  relationships with them and you never know when you can seek out some advice from an older more seasoned teacher.

The next part was about being reasonable. As a teacher we set high expectations for our students. He said that sometimes we set them too high and then get upset when they can't reach the goals we set for them. It is hard being a student. We need to think back to when we were in school and remember how big of a deal it was to do homework or complete our classwork on time. When teachers set goals that aren't reasonable, then it makes it tougher on the child.

Don't be afraid of technology was a good part of this blog. I was glad that he added it in there. Technology should be our friend and we can't expect to just understand it the first time we try it. We learn by  making mistakes. He also mentioned that we should listen to our students. He quoted one of his students who said "I know my teacher cares about me when he listens to me". This is sad because so many students don't have teachers who care to listen to them or their problems. Some of them don't have anyone at home that can listen to them either so it helps to have a teacher who can listen.

The last thing he said was to never stop learning. This is self explanatory! You are never to old to learn something!

At The Teacher's Desk: What I've Learned This Year (2010-2011)
The first portion of this reflection for the school year was about how you should know who your boss is. He states how easy it is to lose track of who you are supposed to be pleasing. It is good to try to please your boss, but your students should be a top priority as well. "Our decision making process should always be student centered and not centered around pleasing adults" was a quote that he used in his post. The students should be our primary focus. The next segment was entitled, Don't expect others to be as excited about change as you are. This was mainly about how he is very optimistic about new ideas, but other people aren't. They don't seem encouraged by new ideas and often try to ruin his excitement about them. He just sends out a word of caution and states that we don't need to let negative people ruin the newness of an idea for us.

Don't be afraid to be an outsider. This was an eye opening paragraph. The main point was don't focus on seeking approval from other teachers. Be there for your students. He stated that he ate lunch with his students and goofed off with them. He isn't afraid of being immature or an outsider. I have always wondered where that line is that you have to keep from crossing, you know, the friend or teacher line. It's' very thin. If you become too much like their friend, then you have to worry about them running all over you, but he seems to have found a happy medium and has learned a lot from his students. He doesn't care about what the other teachers think of him. In his eyes, a good teacher is one who can spend time with his students without teaching.

Don't touch the keyboard!!! This is one of my BIGGEST problems. This philosophy was taught to him by one of the other teachers in the building. When she used to work at another job and was training someone this was the phrase they used. In other words, don't take the project out of their hands and begin to do it on your own. When you are teaching someone something, and take it over, then they aren't learning anything because they are just watching you do it instead of doing it themselves and learning from their mistakes. I tend to get impatient and frustrated and  have the mentality of "I can do it better". It is hard for me to take a step back and watch someone else do it.

Don't get comfortable was great to read as well. It's easy to get comfortable in day to day activities. Even in your profession. As a teacher he felt that he was getting comfortable and settling into a routine, which in his words, is not necessarily a good thing. When you settle into a routine, things can quickly becoming boring. So he started doing other activities to keep his daily routine different than the day before.

After reading these posts it has really encouraged me. I have always looked forward to being a teacher, but I always think about what will happen if I don't do a good job or if I mess up. I now know that I can learn from my mistakes. I also don't want to get caught up in trying to please people. I want to do what is right and what is expected of me as a teacher, but I want to be more concerned about teaching my students and being there for them. I don't want to be the average teacher that goes in a classroom and teaches a boring lesson, I want to be the one who makes learning fun and brings creative ideas into the classroom. I learned a lot from reading his blog posts!

Project # 14(part 1)

C4T 3/25

Building A Classroom Library
This post was about how Mr. John Mikulski filled out a survey about his classroom library. He wrote about how he had a classroom library of about 150 books. He teaches Middle School Language Arts and he seemed to think that most of his students were interested in the trilogy books that were popular right now. He named "The Hunger Games" as one of the more popular ones that his students gravitated towards. He finds most of his books at yard sales. I thought this was a great way to save money. Having books in your classroom that are used is a great idea. I know that none of my English teachers had books that we could take out of the classroom and read when I was in school. I guess they didn't care enough about the reading. I think some teacher are there just to teach and they don't care about getting students interested in learning. I hope to be the kind of teacher that encourages my students to enjoy reading and to use it as a way to escape every day stresses. To read more about his Classroom Library visit the link above. It is very informative!

Anti-Bullying Campaign
"If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem". This blog post was amazing. It talked about how students in his school wore blue clothing to support the victims of bullying. They made the local news and each signed an anti-bullying petition that was inspired by Dr. Phil. They then showed a video that they had made where students talked about how they had seen the bullying going on, but did nothing about it. Each student was videoed standing there with blue tape on their mouth while a voice in the background stated how another student was bullied and how they did nothing about it. For such a short film, it was moving. Bullying is a major problem in our schools today and its getting worse. The video ended by quoting "If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem". That statement says it all. There was another video where different students stated different parts of an Anti-Bullying Pledge. I wrote in my comment that I was extremely proud of these students and that they never know how many lives they are saving by taking this pledge and signing this petition. Bullying is a problem and I am so glad that they removed themselves from the problem and became part of the solution!

C4K for March

What are the Names for by April
This post was a bit confusing. I can only guess that the girl who wrote the post was a bit young or from somewhere where her primary language was not English. Her teacher had posted something about the Titanic and the class was supposed to figure out the names of what the teacher posted. Amber figured them out and asked if they would be learning about the names. I asked her if she liked the story of the Titanic and told her it was very interesting to learn about and that I hoped she had a great time with this assignment.

Blog Post #8

Richard Miller This is How We Dream Parts 1 and 2
This video was about using multimedia to write. I had a hard time following him at first because it seemed like he wasn't clear on some of what he was trying to point out. He mentioned that we are now confronting a new type of material. We used to not have so much technology at our fingertips, but now we do and it is always changing. We can see so many things on the internet and see how much energy is put into it. He mentioned that there are people out there that know that our ideas don't belong to us individually but belong to us as a culture and that we as educators need to be in the business of sharing ideas freely.

We can produce alternative versions and distribute that information globally in different ways that may be able to be understood by others in an easier way. We need to get behind the ideas and look at them alternatively. We place limits and restrictions on ourselves. Society doesn't do this, we do it to ourselves. He is describing and educational system that he knows is hard to put together, but he thinks that one day students will be able to write using this type of educational system. Students will compose with digital composing material one day without the use of books. He and his colleague are learning how to use these things.

He thinks that we need to start producing compositions that are beautiful, compelling and pay attention to the auditory detail of the experience. This is something that he says is necessary if we are to argue for the humanities. Within 3 months this publication on youtube got 9,000 views. This is a way to push ideas into our culture. We need this type of composition. He can't imagine doing it himself, but there are people composing with the web itself. They don't use images or the alphabet. Teachers are needed to teach this visual literacy and many teachers aren't ready for this yet. This technology allows us to articulate our dreams and to share them with others. The problem with the humanities is that we can't make our work physical. This technology will change that.

This is something that I am definitely interested in with me being a teacher. I am also an English major so I am excited that someone has taken an interest in writing and taken an interest in making it concrete. This is something that can take off and make learning so much easier for students. Many students aren't gifted in the area of writing and I think that this would make it much easier for them. It puts it in a way that makes it easier for them to understand and easier for them to gather their thoughts.

Blog Post 12 By Carly Pugh
Carly's blog post was about writing while using multimedia. I thought it was genius actually. This is definitely a way for a person to write using their talents in a different way other than just putting words on a page. Carly made a playlist of things that interest her using youtube videos. It was a great way for her to use her mind in a creative way. We need more teachers like this who will allow students to search out their creativity and use it in ways that interest them. I would much rather sit down and write words on a page, but some students aren't able to write as easily as that. I would much rather sit down and read a book, but for others, reading doesn't come as easily as it does for me. This is something that I am looking forward to being able to do with my students one day hopefully.

The Chipper Series 
The Chipper Series was about procrastination. Something that I am really bad about doing. I have had to make myself complete one assignment a day in this class just so that I won't let it add up the last day of the week. Chipper also wanted to be taught so she didn't have to learn. She thought that just because she was paying for her education that he was supposed to just be taught things and not have to do things herself. Next, Chipper drops out of school. She has this great idea that she can't tell Dr. Strange. Her secret is that she opens a timeline pilot school. Students determine how long they want to stay in school. This may sound like a good idea to some students, but in the end I think that it would be a disaster. She then brings in one of her students and they won't give her student a pilot license because she hasn't spent enough time in the classroom. She only spent about a month in the simulator and they said that she needed to spend actual time flying a plane. Then the FAA shuts the timeline down. She has now gotten a degree online and is planning on being a teacher. She asks Dr. Strange if he knows of anywhere that she can apply. He gives her the name of a principal and the principal fires Chipper. Chipper then tells Dr. Strange that she was fired and is now a waitress. Chipper has had another job change. She was fired once again and says she's not too discouraged, she just doesn't understand why she got fired. Now she is a nanny. Next Chipper is a garbage collector, but then has a change of heart. She decides that she has a whole new perspective on life and she has decided she is going to go back to school. This video was a good way to show how many students, including myself, procrastinate with their education. I have done so myself and am now having to go back to school as a 24 year old single mother. Things like this are hard to swallow, but sometimes you have to go through the bad things to get to the good things in life.

EDM 310 for Dummies 
This video was about how EDM310 can drive you crazy, but it also shows us how different things can make EDM310 so much easier. The ladies in the video then go on to talk about how they are learning so much in the classroom and following different English teachers. The blog posts are getting easier for them and they are learning how to do things. They were so happy to get their hands on the "book" EDM310 for Dummies. All of these things that they have learned have helped them in their academic journey here at South. I would like to create some videos about how much my computer skills have improved since I started taking this class. I was really stressed out at the beginning of the class, but once things got going, I decided that I liked the class. It is just very demanding as far as time.


Learning to Change, Changing to Learn
This video started out by saying that education was ranked so low in the IQ intensity list. It was below coal mining. Kids are stimulated more outside of school than they are inside of school. Email, instant messaging, social networking and text messaging are banned from schools, when technology is what is stimulates the brains of these children. It is about relationship, community, and how the children are living in a different community. An online social networking community.

The very things that our students need are banned from their schools. Students learn at home, at libraries, at home, at museums and it is our responsibility to provide them with the best teachers for them. We have a "classroom system" when we need a "community system". Education doesn't have what it needs these days. They aren't interested in what they are learning because the teachers are banning them from being creative. Standardized testing doesn't make things better because economically speaking, these students will be doing work that calls on their artistic ability, understanding concepts, multilingual and multicultural abilities. Not on something that they should give a right or wrong answer to. I love this video. It was very inspiring. It made me think about what kind of teacher I want to be one day when I finally graduate.

Scavenger Hunt 2.0
Web 2.0 is interactive, there is something there that you can do or create. It is collaborative. Other people can contribute to the things that you create. This is a very significant and positive factor for education. it leads to higher education, critical thinking skills, new capabilities, alternative learning environments, extending learning beyond a school room, and finally it creates lifelong learning skills for students.

On the website I thought that the tool that created this presentation wast the Animoto. This was a tool that can be used to animate yourself into a video. It is a nice price because you can choose to pay 30.00 a year or 5.00 a month. That way if you don't want to pay for an extra month because you don't feel that you need it anymore,  you can just not spend the money. Paying monthly to me seems a little more ideal.

The tool that I had never used before was the slide share tool. I thought this was neat because it is something you can use to share presentation, slide shows and professional videos. There is even a way that you can share them privately so that you don't have to publish something that you don't want others seeing. I thought this was great.

This was a poll that I created using polleverywhere.com

Create interactive meetings at Poll Everywhere

Project #11 Short Movie

project #12 Book Trailer

Project 10 Progress report on PLN

I have many different resources that I use to organize my PLN. I like symbaloo a lot, and I am planning on doing more research. I use Facebook and Twitter to communicate and I plan on building my PLN with people off of there. Those will be good sites to help me with issues that I may have, as well as give me good teaching skills and ideas that I can use in the classroom.

Blog post 7

The Networked Student by Wendy Drexler

The Networked Student by Wendy Drexler was a very neat video to watch. It was about a student who has to attend an American Psychology class 3 days a week and attend online 2 days a week. Throughout the video it speaks about what he does online and how he learns. He actually looks up other scholarly articles about psychology and writes his own opinions on it on the internet. He understands that what he reads on the internet is mainly the opinion of others. He also is able to get in touch with some of the top university professors in the world from Cambridge, Berkley and other colleges and get their opinion on American Psychology.
I think that this is such a good thing for a college student to be able to do. It is similar to EDM310 in many ways. Dr. Strange is here to guide us, show us how to use the internet properly, help us if we have any problems, give us his opinion on certain issues, and teach us how to do things such as; write a quality blog post, post pictures on our blog, as well as many other things. This is why the networked student needs a teacher. We cannot do it on our own. We need someone that is here to help us and guide us throughout the process or we will never get through classes like this.

C4T post 2

Think Thank Thunk: Standardized Testing Doodles

Shawn Comelly wrote about how his students had been tested this past week so he hand drew some pictures of a cell. At first he was just doodling, but once he began to draw, it became more and he eventually used it to become a full fledged lesson. I informed him that I was studying to be a high school English teacher and that I didn't think that I would ever be able to turn something like this into a lesson, but I would have appreciated a teacher that did this for me when I was in High School.

Think Thank Thunk: Dealing with the Fear of being a Boring Teacher

In this post Shawn wrote about how he believes that students are graded on what they don't know not what they do know. He believes this isn't the right way to grade students and that they should be graded on things they have been taught. "I have to get schools to stop grading what kids don’t have, and start recording what they do have." This was his quote. He also wrote that he believed in project based learning. I responded by telling him that I agree with this 100%. Students learn by helping each other. I am learning this as an adult in college because I didn't have much project based learning in High School."

Blog Post 6

Randy Pausch Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams

Randy Pausch begins his video by telling the audience that he had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He had many childhood dreams he wanted to achieve, I'm sure, but he mentioned a few which were; being in zero gravity, playing in the National Football League, authoring an article in the World Book Dictionary, being Captain Kirk, being a guy that won big stuffed animals in the amusement park, and being an imagineer with Disney. We learn throughout the video that he accomplishes almost all of these goals! He met Captain Kirk and became a Virtual Reality Specialist and helped design rides like Aladdin and Pirates of the Caribbean.

Randy Pausch not only wanted to help himself achieve his goals, he wanted to help others achieve their goals as well. He helped many students achieve goals in life. He even helped one student who wanted to be a part of writing the next script for the Star Wars movie. Even though he had to reduce some of his goals to something easier or more fallible to achieve, he never gave up. This is something that we as future educators can learn from him.

We should never give up! There will be times when we have students who find it difficult to learn. We will have days where we don't want to come back and teach the same group of students day after day because they don't want to learn, but it is our job as educators, to make it a fun environment for them. Dr. Pausch did this. He created a class called building virtual worlds for a class of about 50 students. The class completed certain projects and it helped many of them learn how to do things while they were having fun. It is hard to be a teacher and teach students who don't seem to want to learn. I want to strive to be more like Dr. Pausch and actually look for ways of not only achieving my own childhood dreams, but allowing my students to look back and search out their dreams and help them accomplish them.

Randy Pausch never gave up. He knew he only had 3-6 months to live. This inspired me so much. There is a country song that came out when I was in High School entitled "Live Like You Were Dying" by Tim McGraw, it is very similar to what Dr. Pausch did. The song is about the Dad, who is dying, telling his son to live each day as if it were his last and to accomplish his dreams . Dr. Pausch had to live like he was dying because he was. Why should we wait until we are dying though, to actually live? It is okay to let loose and still be a child sometimes. It's okay to still dream big and want big things for your life. We have been taught from a young age that we have to do certain things or be certain things when we get older or we will never be anyone or make any money. I want to be the type of teacher that can encourage my students to live their life as if each day may be their last. I don't want to squash their dreams, I just want to take them and mold them into something better! I want to be an encouragement and Dr. Pausch's video truly showed me that it is important to be this type of educator.

C4K Summary for February

Jordan's Holiday Here I Come
Jordan wrote about how he just got a new teacher in his class, but the teacher has to meet with them on skype because she is in Canada. She gave them a blog challenge, which was to write about where is somewhere that they would really like to go. Jordan wrote that he would like to go to Hawaii and visit all of the islands with his family, that way once he got older he could know which island he would rather visit if he ever returned. He wanted to know if it was always warm in Hawaii or cold there sometimes too. I wrote back and encouraged him about his blog post challenge and said that it was great. I also told him I would like to go to the mountains when it snowed because it rarely snowed here in Alabama and I asked him if it snowed a lot where he was from.

Ethans Facts about Columbus

Ethan wrote about Christopher Columbus's trip to the new world. He provided many facts for the reader and I found them very interesting. He wrote about how Christopher Columbus didn't kill the Native Americans, but many diseases did. He also wrote about how Isabella knew that he was a good explorer so she allowed him to search out the New World. I commented back and told him that I was actually learning about this in my History class that I was taking this semester. I told him that I found it interesting that they were in the New World but didn't know that they were there already. I also asked him what his favorite part of the story of Columbus's trip to the New World was.

Our Science Adventure by Mr. Avery's class

Mr. Avery wrote about how his class visited The Boston Museum of Science to learn about volcanoes and earthquakes. They watched a movie in the Imax theater about the Ring of Fire which is a ring of underwater volcanoes in the Pacific. He posted numerous pictures and some videos of the children in the museum. I wrote on his blog and told him that we have a similar museum here in Mobile called the Exploreum and that I have visited it on numerous occasions. I liked this post because I got to actually see pictures of what the children were doing.

Project number 8-Podcast

Time Toast Individual Project 9(a)

Time Toast Project (b) The First Ten Disney Movies That Were Released

Blog Post 5

Don't Teach Your Kids This Stuff Please by Scott McLeod

I loved this post. Mr. McLeod really brought to my attention the fact that so many students don't have parents or teachers who educate them as far as technology goes. The whole story was written in a satirical way. He talked about how he didn't want parents to teach their kids how to do things with computers, social networking, scan, as well as many other things that computers are used for. The way he did it was very sarcastic and it caught my attention. Then he decided at the end to say that he was doing all of these things with his kids so we will see who has the leg up in a decade or two. We all know that computers are definitely something that our kids should know how to use, but there are some people who don't want to accept this. I don't think that pencils and paper are out of date, and I still think that they should be used in schools, but computers should be used as well.

The High School Initiative
Travis Allen's ZeitgeistYoungMinds Entry iSchool Initiative 

These are both good videos because this is something that we as teachers will face one day, the dreaded budget cuts, which means a cut in employees. These videos were about how Travis Allen thinks that we will eventually go to an iSchool type of classroom. This is something like an iPhone that you use in the classroom. It keeps students from having to use paper, pens and pencils. It also will save paper because teachers won't have to make copies for students. Everything that a student will need is in their iSchool device. Including an app for emailing as well as other important apps such as recorder that allows students to record lectures and the iCalculator that students will need for their daily math classes. There are many apps that come on the iSchool that students will need.
My favorite app was the iHomework which allows students to communicate with teachers about homework and assignments. This will make it easier for students to keep track of their classwork. I also like how internet access would be limited to just websites that are related to schoolwork. The iSchool costs 150.00 and saves schools about 600.00 per student. I am not sure what position I take on this idea. I can't decide if it is a good thing or a bad thing. I do know that it would save schools money, but is it necessarily always a good thing to only use technology? You then come into the problem of teachers who don't know how to use this technology. They have to be taught what to do and that costs money as well as then the teachers have to take the time to teach the students how to use it. There are always problems that can happen when using technology. I am not sure if I agree with this idea, but I do know that we need to educate our students more in the technological area.

Eric Whitacre's Virtual Choir
I loved this video. I am a big fan of this type of music and was actually in several choirs and ensembles in High School as well as participated in the state of Alabama's Honor Choir and All State Choirs for several years. I have actually sang this song before and it is very difficult to sing with people that you have met before and in a setting where your choir is together. I cannot imagine how difficult it must have been for them to all sing this and then put this together. I think that this is an amazing use of the internet and it just shows what the internet is capable of doing, IF we are teaching students how to use it. Some people are naturally gifted as far as technology goes, I am not. I have to have someone teach me how to do these things. I am all for this type of technology being taught in schools.

Teaching in the 21st Century
According to this video, teachers are the filter of knowledge but they must show students how to validate information, synthesize information, leverage information, communicate information, collaborate with information and problem solve with information. Should teachers teach fact or skills? I think they should teach both. Students have to know about things in our society. We have to teach the basics as far as English, Mathematics, Sciences and Social Sciences, but I also think we should teach them skills as well. How are we to prepare them for life if they aren't taught some type of skills. I felt that I was totally unprepared for a job and for the real world after I graduated High School.
I was taught some of these things in High School as far as not using Wikipedia as a source, and I had one really good teacher who taught us how to invest our money and not to use credit cards and that we needed to save and use cash more than a debit card. I just think that we need to teach students these things. Some of them don't have parents to teach them these things and most won't listen to their parents anyways. Even if they don't listen then, they will remember it one day because I remember things. I had to learn most things by trial and error though. This will effect me as an educator because I need to be like the teacher that I had in High School that taught me things about life. I feel that he prepared me, as best as one teacher could, for what life was going to be like after I graduated.

Reading Rockets Website
This website is one that gives future teachers as well as parents information on how to make learning fun for their kids and students. One of the apps that I liked most was the comprehension apps. There re so many students who don't like reading. I am an English/Education major and I believe that this is because so many students couldn't comprehend what they were reading as a child, so they just gave up on reading and now as adults they hate reading. I think reading comprehension is something that all teachers should focus on. I also liked the ABC's of teaching reading that I read about. It teaches teachers which students are at risk for not learning to read, a glossary of basic terms in reading instructions, as well as Reading 101 and the top 10 things a teacher should know about reading.

This website also offers information for first year and new teachers. I like that a lot because I know that as a new teacher I will be stressed out enough and it will help to have a website like this that can give me some tips to help me with my classes and students. They also offer a self study online class. There was a whole section on building strong teacher/parent relationships. This is important to me because I know that there are going to be parents who don't care anything about their child or what their child does, there will also be parents who think that their child is perfect and that they deserve an A even if they didn't do the work and then there will be the parents who actually want to work with me as their child's teacher. I think it is important to have good relationships with the parents if they allow it and this is an excellent source of information about how to make that happen.

Blog Post 4

The Benefits of Podcasting in the Classroom

I really enjoyed watching this video. I think that it really showed how beneficial podcasting can be in a classroom. It is a good thing to use for students to have more project based learning. It can develop social skills and give students the responsibility and the chance to work as a group, which they may have to do eventually in their careers later on in life. I thought that it was a good idea for teachers to use podcasting to record their lectures. I think that it probably creates less stress on the teacher because they don't have to worry about giving makeup work or notes to students who miss. It then makes it the students responsibility to get their work offline. It does create more work for the teacher, but it creates less stress because they aren't giving different students makeup work each day. I also liked what the Principal said when she mentioned that it gives the parents a link into the classroom. I am a firm believer in parents being involved in their child's education, but with many parents having careers, this is a hard thing to do. With podcasting, parents automatically know what is going on in the classroom and what their child is responsible for.
I didn't really get any tips for my podcast out of this video, but it really showed me how it can be used in a positive way to further the education of our students.

1st Graders Create Their Own Read Along Audio Book

I loved this post! This was one of my favorites by far. This was about a teacher who decided that she was going to do a podcast with her students. The fact that she made them a booklet to follow along with was an amazing idea. I also liked how she decided to put a sound at the end so that they knew when they were starting a new page. I think that this integrates technology into schools at a very young age and it encourages creativity, and creativity is something we definitely need more of in our schools today. It was interesting to see that the students decided to follow along with the podcast by placing their fingers on the words on the page. I think that this shows that they are definitely interested in technology at a young age. This is something that makes learning fun. I can use this in my own podcast because I now know that I need to use interesting ideas, such as making a booklet,(not for my class project but for future podcasts) to keep the audience intrigued.

Listening-Comprehension-Podcasting
This was a very interesting blog post. I love how she introduced podcasting to the students by allowing them to take part in the podcast. I am sure this made it much more interesting for the students. It is definitely a good thing to integrate technology into schools at such a young age, but also a good thing to allow the students to partake in the making of the podcast. I can't understand Hebrew, but when the students recorded the story in their own voices, their teachers made sure to mix up each part of the story so that it was in a different order. Then they hooked the computer up to the smart board, and the students were able to put each of their own parts in the correct order by listening to each part over and over. Once they were finished, the story of Purim was created in their own unique voice. I think that I can use this in my own podcast and future podcasts because one, I now know that I can use a smart board to allow the children to match the parts of a story to the correct place, and two, I can make it more fun by allowing the students to get involved in the making of the podcast.

This Is My Sentence

Life the Way I See It-Project 5

C4T post 1

What Ed Said 
The first blog post that I commented on was entitled "What Should We Tell the Children". It was about how she found a picture of her Great Aunt Ada in a photo album and her 91 year old mother remembered a story about how she was never told that her Aunt died. She had tuberculosis and once she died, her mother was sent to a neighbors house while the adult family attended the funeral. She ended by stating that although her mother is 91 years old, she still remembers how she was never told properly that her Aunt had died. In my response to this blog post, I stated that children are more perceptive than we give them credit for and  that we should always be honest about things with our kids. Sometimes we have to water things down to where they are more age appropriate for them if they are younger, but if you're not honest, then it only makes it harder on the children in the long run.

Learning by Playing

This blog post was about how her grand nieces came to visit her and she allowed them to video each other while playing and she videoed them as well. She then showed them an app called cartoonatic, where they can edit the video themselves. She mentioned that they had a great time and the learning skills that they practiced were: thinking, communicating, reading, cooperating, creating and presenting. She then asked if we thought that laughter was considered a learning skill. I responded by saying that laughter was definitely a learning skill. It teaches that we are to be creative and happy! I also mentioned that I have a 2 year old son that loves to take video of himself and our family. I always catch him going through the videos on my iPod Touch and watching them over and over again(yes, he knows how to do this at the age of 2)! I wrote that I hope to be able to use apps and things like she used to make learning fun for students when I become a teacher.

Blog Post 3

Technology in Special Education

I found this video to be very interesting. Special needs children have a special place in my heart and so do the teachers who work with them. These children wouldn't be anywhere without the use of technology. I had a guy in one of my college classes who was blind and he used a computer to help him take notes as well as scan documents that the computer would read aloud to him. If these students didn't have this type of technology then they would take twice as long to complete assignments and they would never be able to feel like they could fully function on their own.
This video shows me how to help special needs children that I may encounter in my classroom in the future because it showed me that by using a computer I can change the attitude that my students may have towards learning. I am sure that it was very discouraging for the students in the video to have to take that long on assignments, but with the help of computers they seem to be happy about doing their work. I know it has to give them some sort of a sense of accomplishment as well as help them feel good about themselves.

How the iPad works with Academics for Autism

This video was about a little boy named Braden who is autistic and his father decides to help him learn by using technology. I am so glad that we have parents out there who are willing to help their children. The use of an iPad helped Braden learn to count, spell, read and write words. It is amazing how you can take something like a computer and totally change the way a child learns. They actually want to learn things when it is fun for them and this makes it fun.
If I had to choose one specific app to help special needs children with learning, I think I would choose the Alphabytes app. It really depends on the age of the child as to what app would be appropriate for them, but with this app I would be able to teach children the alphabet, reading, writing and help them with memorization. It has a wide range of variety. It also teaches uppercase and lowercase letters by showing them how to trace the letters on the screen. It also helps children because they associate letters and words with visuals, which we all know works because of the amazing Your Baby Can Read videos that came out a few years back for toddlers. I think that this app would be great because of the wide range of variety it offers to children and it also creates a fun environment for them to work in.

Gary Hayes Social Media Count

The changes that happen every minute globally could be a bad or a good thing. I am very glad that we are growing and learning new things. It is astounding how many hours of youtube videos are uploaded per day as well as how many  new internet users we have globally. I always automatically assume that everyone uses the internet already, but I guess not since we have so many new users. This is something that can be scary for a future educator. In my own personal opinion, it is great that so many people are interested in technology. Technology can take students to places they've never been before and teach them things that they would never know unless they had access to the internet.
This site basically shows how many different people join different sites on the web or upload videos to youtube as well as other things that take place on the web. I think that this has an effect on my profession of becoming a teacher, because I still have at least 2 years of schooling left and things are maturing in such a fast rate as far as technology goes, that I have no idea where it will be within the next two years after I graduate. I need to be sure that I am up to date on everything so that I can offer my students the teacher that they need and deserve.

A Vision of Students Today

This video was the best one that I have watched so far, it was all about how students these days are forced to sit through lectures and not really even learn anything from it. They buy books and never even open them, they take notes and cram for tests, never really learning anything at all. It was very interesting and he did a great job by showing us the facts in an interesting way. As a future teacher, I want to be able to teach my students in the best way possible. I think that a hands on type of learning is what will keep students interested. I don't think that they should sit in a classroom and listen to what I have to say, take home a study guide, fill it out, then cram the night before the test just so they will pass the class and then forget all of the information two weeks later. Technology is a way that we can do this.
All of these signs that these students held up for the camera were interesting. I know that most students who are allowed to bring laptops to class aren't doing classwork on them, I have been guilty of doing this as well. Many colleges tend to make students take classes that aren't even relevant to their field of study, so of course the student is bored in the classroom and decides to get on Facebook or Instant Message a friend. This is just something that happens when you aren't teaching students. You are "informing" them of what a book says, mostly books that are never opened(in colleges), as the sign said in the video. I don't believe that as teachers we should just push all these facts on to our students. They are there to learn, we are there to teach, and it is our responsibility to find out what works best for our students, no matter what that is.

Blog Post 2

Did You Know? By John Strange
This video was very interesting because it told many different facts about what is going on in our society today versus what was going on in the past. According to this video, English is becoming a universal language and the United States is the "smartest" country. According to the video, over 25% of the population of India with the highest IQ's out numbers the entire population of the United States. As a future educator I find this quite alarming. It makes me wonder what we are doing that is so wrong. Are we not pushing our children hard enough, are we pushing them too hard, or do we just expect them to teach themselves? It is estimated that 18 million Chinese speak English now and 300 million are "learners", according to the video, so that means that if the "learners" do speak Chinese fluently, there will be more Chinese who speak English than the entire population of the United States.

The video also stated that Youtube and Google are used quite extensively. More so than what we know. Every day millions of videos are uploaded and watched. We shouldn't fool ourselves into thinking that we are the only ones using Youtube. Millions of searches are also made on Google every minute. In the past years this type of technology was not even here yet. Children did not have cell phones or computers. Now 93% of 8-18 year olds have computers, including minorities. Technology has become more and more advanced over the past few years and only has more room to grow. Most of the jobs that are created over the next few years will be using new technology, technology that we don't even know how to use yet. As educators we will be responsible for teaching these students how to use these technologies effectively.

Mr. Winkle Wakes by Matthew Needleman


This video was quite interesting. It starts out with a man named Mr. Winkle who slept for 100 years and awoke to find that the world had changed so much. He couldn't get over the fact that people used computers, printers, and facetime to communicate. It was strange to him. He decided since he was feeling so bad that he would go to a hospital, but once there, he realized that the hospital was just the same as everywhere else. People were kept alive by machines that breathed air into his lungs and Doctors looked at x-rays and used lasers to help make people better. Mr. Winkle was not used to this at all.

After walking down the road a bit, he finds a school and decides to step inside. Once inside he decides he likes what he sees because there are no computers, only teachers who lecture the kids and they take notes. He liked the fact that after 100 years at least schools had not changed by adding technology to the curriculum. I like how the creator of this video brought up the fact that technology has not been brought into the schools like it should be. In our society today technology is widely used by children and instead of educators embracing this, it seems like they have pushed it farther away. These children need to be taught how to use technology because of the fact that our society is going to be strictly a technology based society, we are well on our way there, if we're not there already.


Sir Ken Robinson: The Importance of Creativity


This video was great. I have felt for a long time that we are completely ignoring the creativity that children have. Instead of embracing it, we are pushing it away and trying to teach them to mask it because they should act a certain way in schools. In this video he brings about many different valid points. He compares education to religion and money, these are two very touch subjects, but when it comes to education, people get fired up as well because they believe that things should be done a certain way, but only a select few will actually take the steps to achieve their goals. I agree with what he said about the fact that society today squanders the talents of children in stead of accepting them. There are so many talented people who don't use their talents because they are taught from a young age that they will never get a job doing something such as being an artist, or a singer, or a dancer. So they just steer clear of doing those things.

He stated that educators tend to focus on the head of a child. Instead of allowing them to use their whole body, we try to allow them to only use their heads. Children are taught that if they make a mistake or mess up that it is the worst thing that can happen. What they aren't taught is that you learn by making mistakes. If you never make mistakes, then you never learn from them. He states "If you're not prepared to be wrong, you can never come up with anything original." I love this line because society makes children believe that if they mess up or make a mistake that their life is over! This isn't so. The way you learn is by making mistakes. I have often wondered myself why the arts aren't put at a higher level in schools. Children are being educated in a world where they are taught that learning can't be fun. Creativity is not good so therefore children are ashamed of being creative.


A Vision for 21st Century Learning by

The main arguments to this video are that students are being forced to sit in front of a teacher that crams their heads full of facts that they more than likely won't remember a year from now. It is because they aren't learning. Most of these students, as the video said, have access to a computer before they are in Kindergarten. If they are using a computer efficiently before that then they will be bored by the time they reach grade school and they won't learn anything. Technology is a major part of our society today. Almost every job uses technology in some way or another. We are a technology literate society. If we aren't teaching these children how to be technologically literate, then we are falling short of what being an educator is all about.


Harness Your Students Digital Smarts by Vicki Davis

I agree with everything this video stated. There are so many students that cannot learn because they aren't the type of learner that can use a piece of paper and a pen to learn things. Many students are hands on learners and it is extremely hard for them to sit and learn by hearing a lecture. When students are taught by using a computer they are given a chance to learn things on their own. These students taught the teacher many things that she didn't already know herself.

These students were located in Georgia, and the stated that it was a very rural part of Georgia. Because this teacher stepped out and decided to teach these students many different things about technology they now know how to blog as well as use different technologies. These students have been able to read blogs by other students around the world and it has opened up the door for them to have access to other countries all around the world.