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 I don't think that pencils and paper are out of date, and I still think that they should be used in schools, but computers should be used as well.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.