project 12a

Project 15/12b

Blog Post #11 NOLA

The driving question for this blog post was, "What can we learn about teaching and learning from these teachers?"

The first video was Back to the Future, by Brian Crosby. His video was about a project that he did with his students that integrated technology in many ways. He felt that curriculum has been narrowed over the years and that it is keeping students from having real life experiences. The main idea of his project was to send a balloon up into the air. His class did some reading and activities with pressure to get the project started. This got his students excited. He was able to get his students to incorporate various types of technology into his project. They embedded videos into their blogs, wrote about the science behind their experiments, learned to make wiki pages, used their class Flikr account to write stories about what it would be like to be the balloon, used free online software to design book covers, illustrated their stories with Flikr photos, did more work with their blogs, and made trading cards using free online software. Mr.Crosby also had his students write "high hopes," for their community, their school,and the world. Their blogs got many views which inspired them to ask other people from all over the world to write their own "high hopes." This taught the children to develop their own learning networks. The class also used google maps to track their balloon as it went into the air. By putting all of their work on their blogs, the class got to show off their work to other students. They are doing language intense activities which encourage them to read/write, to learn content, to clarify and share, and to tell a story. These activities encourage them to be creative, want feedback, articulate orally, connect globally/aware globally, want authentic audiences, and remember the science.

The second video was the Blended Learning Cycle by Paul Anderson. He turned his classroom into a video game. He moved from teacher-centered learning environments to one focused on students. He said the biggest obstacle he encountered was trying to get his students to learn independently. He designed each level of the video game around a blended learning cycle. He believes in the power of learning and questioning. He described blended learning as taking the compelling parts of learning: online, mobile, classroom learning and just blending them together in the classroom and using that technology in a powerful way. He said the five E’s of the Learning Cycle were engage, explore, expand, and explain all of which revolve around evaluation. He had a unique way of combining these methods with his quivars. Quivars stands for question, investigation/inquiry, video, elaboration, review, and summary Quiz. He uses the question part of this process as a hook to get his students interested. Next comes the students investigating by examining what is happening- you let the students experiment. You then use a video which frees you up for other things because the students can watch it independently. Elaboration comes when the students read about what they are doing or make diagrams for it. Then they review. He meets individually or with small groups and asks them questions to check their understanding. They can’t go onto the summary quiz until the teacher is sure they know what they are talking about. The quiz tests them on what they know and if they don’t know it, then they go back. He doesn’t think you’ve learned something until you can explain it to someone else. After they go through about five learning cycles, they have a unit test. The students do all the grading, but the teacher asks really good probing questions.

The third video was Making Thinking Visible by Mark Church. He had his students work in small groups to have a discussion about a video they watched. He wanted them to come up with a headline for what their unit was all about. He asked them to think about how their ideas/thinking were extended. He then wanted them to think about the challenge or the puzzle with the topic in general. He asked them to search for human origins. One of the students described his question as, "How could we sum up everything we have been talking about in just a phrase?" Every group had to have a couple of words to say behind their headline. Once they did their final project, he was going to ask them what the headline is now. He was doing this to get his students thinking how the story has changed and how their thinking has changed.

The fourth video was Building Comics by Sam Pane. He was teaching his students how to figure out what information websites might be after. He asked his students, “What kind of power does the internet give us?” He told them to be specific. They had a class discussion about this. He told his students that a digital citizen is a person who chooses to act safely, respectfully, and with responsibility whenever you are online. He then asked them to build a comic about their digital superhero. His class used a website which allowed them to do this. He showed his class how to make a superhero for about five minutes, and then let them do it themselves. He matched the lesson up with English language standards. The students are able to create a narrative between themselves and the superhero in order to put together a complete story. This project gave the students a sense of ownership. The students were able to analyze the situation that they were in and analyze the text structure of the comic book in order to build a complete narrative. He had his students take what he called a, “gallery walk.” This was his way of having them peer review. The children were very eager to share their comics with the class. The english language standards in his project were to write narratives to develop imagined experiences or events, analyze how visual and multimedia elements contribute to text, ask and answer questions.

The fifth video was Project Based Learning by Dean Shareski. In this video, three teachers worked together to combine history, English, and information processing and embedded the principles of project based learning to create a unique learning experience for students. Project based learning helps to create engaged learners with deeper understanding. The teachers had to convince their administration that what they wanted to do with the students could really be beneficial for them. The kids use technology as a tool to bring the content to life in their classes. Their idea gave them the luxury of time: time to blend ideas into content, time to go deeper into learning, and time to provide quality feedback for students. They are able to give students multiple perspectives. The students love the projects and enjoy doing them.

The sixth video was Roosevelt Elementary's PBL Program. The video described project based learning as in depth learning that integrates thematic instruction based on real-world problems using research based projects and presentations. Project based learning helps to take away the fear of public speaking because children get used to it at an early age. They like to have the students make a lot of decisions on their own to create in themselves a sense of power. The teachers put trust in their students and give them ownership of their work which makes the students accountable. Students learn to work independently, cooperatively, how to solve problems, how to communicate with each other, and to support each other. It also helps children to learn in different ways because it incorporates many different intelligences and learning styles.

What we learned from these videos was that teaching with technology can be done in many different ways. These videos showed us that projects should encourage learning from students and that technology can be used to make classroom projects fun for students. These videos really showed us the diversity among techniques for project based learning, but with the same consensus that it is something we should all try with out own classrooms. We all enjoyed getting to see how experiments worked out for these teachers in their own classrooms and hope that we can someday develop such amazing projects as these.

Blog Post #10

The driving question for this blog post was, "What can we learn from Sir Ken Robinson?"

In Ken Robinson's video Bring on the Learning Revolution, he said that he knows people who drone through life miserably and he knows people who absolutely love what they do and wouldn't change a thing. He also felt that education sometimes keeps people from their natural talents. The main point in his speech was that education reform is not enough. He said that reform is not enough because all it is doing is trying to improve a broken model. He thinks that instead of reform, we need transformation or revolution.

Mr.Robinson's ideas were to challenge what we know and take for granted and innovate fundamentally. He thinks that people's biggest problem is that they get in a habit of thinking that once something is done one way, it simply can not be done any other way. He wants people to reconstitute their sense of abilities and sense of intelligence. He says that life and education should be about passion and what, "excites our spirit and our energy." His thoughts on revolution in education would be to model it on principles of agriculture and realize that human flourishing is not a mechanics process, that it is an organic one. His best advice was that we need to be like farmers and customize to our own circumstances.

What I learned from Mr.Robinson's video was that education really does need an entire transformation. I had not thought about education the way that he talked about until viewing this video, but I really do agree with him. This can especially relate to technology in the classroom. Teachers once only had chalkboards, textbooks, paper, pens, and pencils; but now, they have access to so much more through the internet and things like P.L.N.s. If teachers do not change their ways and try to incorporate things like this into their classrooms, their students really will be missing out. Teachers should take changes like this and learn to develop them for their students development and their own. Mr.Robinson's idea about being like farmers really stood out to me because if we as educators are like farmers, watching our students grow and adapting to the changes that they need, we will be able to in a way grow successful crops with our students.

Blog Post #9

The driving question for this blog post was, “What can we learn fromMs.Cassidy?”

The first video we watched, Little Kids...Big Potential, showed Ms.Cassidy’s first grade students. The video said that the students like to write on blogs because people see them and give them comments. The students think it improves their writing and they know the rules for commenting and know how to stay safe while using the internet. Their center time even involves technology. They are independent learners and even try to learn at home. They use wiki’s, make videos, use Nintendo DS, and use Skype.

This video was very interesting to me because it showed many ways in which technology can be used in the classroom. It was also interesting because I got to see the student’s opinions on technology in the classroom. It encouraged me to try to find ways to incorporate technology in my future classroom.

Ms.Cassidy got involved in technology because she wanted to find a way to make computers useful in her classroom. She is always trying to find new things to do with technology. She said the kids like not having to “power-down” when they come to school. She thinks technology is here to stay and that it is necessary for teaching children. She thinks the children really like the wide audience that their posts reach. She thinks that teachers really need to keep up with technology and said that a good way to do that is to keep your students p.l.n.’s growing. She thinks twitter can be valuable for teachers.

After watching the interview videos, I would say that Ms.Cassidy’s approach to the use of technology in the classroom seemed successful. She was not strict on the way things needed to be done; however felt that it was important for teachers to have technology in the classroom. I think the technology technique she used which I liked most and could potentially use in my future classroom would be encouraging students to blog. Based on her students’ reactions, it seems like it is beneficial to students to do this.

Blog Post #8

For this blog post,we were supposed to think about what we will be teaching and search for an appropriate tool that will be useful in our anticipated teaching situations.
I decided to Google technology tools that can be used in the field of english/literature. Google had some pretty interesting results. The tool that I decided to examine was developing inquiry-based webquests for literature.

This tool helps to bring reading to life for students. The website I found it on says it, "focuses on how a technology-rich environment can facilitate the reading experience and help students meet challenging standards while addressing essential questions that bring meaning to learning. Through the use of Internet-based WebQuests, students engage in problem solving, information processing, and collaboration. When these WebQuests are literature based, books become the focal point for reading-centered learning activities. The article describes creation of original WebQuests, but also explores how teachers can locate, evaluate, adapt, and integrate existing resources."

If that doesn't scream fun and learning for students, I don't know what does.

The Webquests encourage students to learn and enjoy while doing it. The website I found this information on was Reading Online.

I hope that I am able to take advantage of this in my future classroom and I really enjoyed learning about it.

Project #14 Project Based Learning Plan #2

I have decided to use the movie trailer idea from EDM310 and decided to use it in a lesson plan for my class. Since I am going to be an English teacher, I think this will be especially useful.

In this project, I would divide my students up into four groups with five students in each group. This project is for students in sixth grade. For the project, I would have my students read a book over the course of a week. They would all read the same book. Once the book was read, I would have the students break into groups and discuss what they believed to be the exposition, rising action, introduction of conflict,climax, falling action, and resolution of the story. Once they had decided those things as a group, I would have them create a trailer for the book. After the trailers were done, we would watch as a class and decide which parts of the book really were the exposition, rising action, introduction of conflict, climax, falling action, and resolution of the book. I would have the class self-evaluate the trailers using a pre-determined rubric to grade their own work.

C4T #2

I was assigned to comment on Karl Fisch's blog, The Fischbowl: "The New NCLB: No Curler Left Behind".

His blog was about the performance of Olympic athletes. He basically said that America should be kicking butt, but since we aren't he had ideas to help change that. His ideas included adding more world championships, changing the locations of the training facilities, changing the locations of the Olympics, changing the committees involved in judging the athletes, and changing the location of the Olympics. He was very opinionated about the ways we can improve our athletes.

My comment on his blog was, "You had some very interesting outlooks on the performance of athletes. I think you are right and that we should raise the car to encourage the athletes to do better!!"

I was assigned to the same teacher for this blog, but this time I viewed his post Inertia, Obedience, and Faith.

This blog was about Mr.Fisch giving a test that he does not enjoy. He said, "Is there anyone on the staff who honestly believes that the best use of our limited time with these students, this year, is spending it giving the TCAP? Or would it be better for them to be attending their regular classes, with their teachers and their peers, learning as part of the Warrior community?" He really felt that the test was unnecessary and took valuable time away from his students.

My comment on his blog was, "My name is Mallory Harris. I am an EDM310 student at the University of South Alabama. I felt like you had some good points on why this test was taking valuable time away from your students and that your frustration was just. I think your articles back up your point entirely and your viewpoint on this topic was quite on point."

Project #9

Project 13, Plan 1