Monday, December 12, 2011
Sunday, December 4, 2011
Final Report: PLN
Between the last progress report and today, I made a few changes to my PLN. To begin with, I've added a couple of links to my Symbaloo account, my favorite of which is probably to the Box of Tricks list of free technology. I hope I find it to be a valuable resource when I begin teaching.
As far as people, I have added a couple of principals, Dr. Alan T. Lee, Baldwin County Superintendant, and Derek Roh, Baldwin County Technology Coordinator to my list of contacts. Furthermore, I am very friendly with the marketing director of the Daphne Chik-Fil-A, and as you may know, Chik-Fil-A is a great supporter of area schools.
As far as people, I have added a couple of principals, Dr. Alan T. Lee, Baldwin County Superintendant, and Derek Roh, Baldwin County Technology Coordinator to my list of contacts. Furthermore, I am very friendly with the marketing director of the Daphne Chik-Fil-A, and as you may know, Chik-Fil-A is a great supporter of area schools.
Blog Post 14
For our final blog post, we were asked to explore "Box of Tricks", a blog run by Jose Picardo, who according to the "ABOUT" page, teaches Spanish and German at Nottingham High School. He encourages teachers to take advantage of technology to help students learn.
He has an "A to Z List of Internet Resources for Education" listed on his site. He has over one-hundred different websites and resources listed for teachers' use. Best of all, the resources are free! I added this page to by PLN.
Picardo gives "Ten Tips for Using Technology in the Classroom" in this video. I thought his tips were interesting - for example, using music - popular music - to your advantage. He suggested using Skype to communicate with students and experts elsewhere. He seems to also find YouTube to be an excellent resource for teachers.
Like the schools here in Mobile County, he encourages teachers to use interactive whiteboards effectively and to go to classes to learn how to do so. Furthermore, he suggests using social networking, specifically Facebook, to communicate with your students.
Like Dr. Strange, he seems quite fond of podcasts, wikis, and blogs. He suggests using them to highlight all of the wonderful accomplishments your students have. His final tip is to make the most of your students' gadgets - such as iPhones.
At the end of the video, he says, "Use technology only when it helps you achieve your education objectives. How true! Technology does not have to be in every single moment of every single day - but it should play a big part.
His tips are very interesting and could be quite positively used in a classroom. Some, such as the use of YouTube and Facebook, are currently blocked by area schools. This could be rectified with forward-thinking administrators.
He has an "A to Z List of Internet Resources for Education" listed on his site. He has over one-hundred different websites and resources listed for teachers' use. Best of all, the resources are free! I added this page to by PLN.
Picardo gives "Ten Tips for Using Technology in the Classroom" in this video. I thought his tips were interesting - for example, using music - popular music - to your advantage. He suggested using Skype to communicate with students and experts elsewhere. He seems to also find YouTube to be an excellent resource for teachers.
Like the schools here in Mobile County, he encourages teachers to use interactive whiteboards effectively and to go to classes to learn how to do so. Furthermore, he suggests using social networking, specifically Facebook, to communicate with your students.
Like Dr. Strange, he seems quite fond of podcasts, wikis, and blogs. He suggests using them to highlight all of the wonderful accomplishments your students have. His final tip is to make the most of your students' gadgets - such as iPhones.
At the end of the video, he says, "Use technology only when it helps you achieve your education objectives. How true! Technology does not have to be in every single moment of every single day - but it should play a big part.
His tips are very interesting and could be quite positively used in a classroom. Some, such as the use of YouTube and Facebook, are currently blocked by area schools. This could be rectified with forward-thinking administrators.
Friday, December 2, 2011
Project 3: C4T #4
For this C4T cycle, I visited the blog of a teacher named Henrietta Miller, of Sydney, Australia. There are several unique things about her classroom - for one, she teaches at an all-girls private school, according to her "About Me" page, and the fact that grades are not given in her Year 5 classroom - instead, they write comments to and about the students to help them learn more effectively, according to my assigned post, "To Grade or Not to Grade?"
I must interject here and say that I love it when teachers give comments, especially on things that are written - a note highlighting strengths and weaknesses is much more effective (in my not-so-humble opinion, at least on this topic) than a simple letter. Can they be used in conjunction? Certainly. But I don't quite see how A, B, C, D, and F cue students to learn.
Interestingly, students seem to want grades quite badly - probably, as she highlights, due to competitiveness and the fact that there may also be parental pressure involved. She also is letting students assist her in assigning their final grades by using a portfolio. How wonderful would it be if this type of behavior could become the norm (or at least acceptable) here in the States?
For my second and final week, I read a post called "Out of the Mouth of Babes", a post which chronicled the thoughts of 10-11 year old students on what they would change in the classroom if they were teaching.
The first one she posted kind of cracked me up, as students wished for more drama and art. It made me think of Ken Robinson's lecture, "Do Schools Kill Creativity", where he asserts that creative subjects should be taught right alongside math, english, science and other like subjects. It would be nice if there was time, wouldn't it?
Putting aside the more comical ones, students seemed to like interactive projects, such as one they did where they made movies about Math instead of simply doing problems. They also seemed to recognize that the standardized tests are a bit unnecessary. Smart children!
I must interject here and say that I love it when teachers give comments, especially on things that are written - a note highlighting strengths and weaknesses is much more effective (in my not-so-humble opinion, at least on this topic) than a simple letter. Can they be used in conjunction? Certainly. But I don't quite see how A, B, C, D, and F cue students to learn.
Interestingly, students seem to want grades quite badly - probably, as she highlights, due to competitiveness and the fact that there may also be parental pressure involved. She also is letting students assist her in assigning their final grades by using a portfolio. How wonderful would it be if this type of behavior could become the norm (or at least acceptable) here in the States?
For my second and final week, I read a post called "Out of the Mouth of Babes", a post which chronicled the thoughts of 10-11 year old students on what they would change in the classroom if they were teaching.
The first one she posted kind of cracked me up, as students wished for more drama and art. It made me think of Ken Robinson's lecture, "Do Schools Kill Creativity", where he asserts that creative subjects should be taught right alongside math, english, science and other like subjects. It would be nice if there was time, wouldn't it?
Putting aside the more comical ones, students seemed to like interactive projects, such as one they did where they made movies about Math instead of simply doing problems. They also seemed to recognize that the standardized tests are a bit unnecessary. Smart children!
Project 7: C4K (Month of November)
For my first week, I visited Ms. Yollis' 365 Project Blog and her classroom blog. Click here to read my thoughts on her classroom blog. On the 365 Project Blog, I visited post 294: The Earth Assembly. This post had a picture of her class with a giant, inflatable globe. According to a comment, students were taught to say a few words in different languages. I commented and said that I would have loved to have been taught Geography with a method like this! I shared a story about a museum I once visited with a giant, inflatable, walk-in map of the night sky.
For my second week, I visited the blog of Sosaia from Pt. England School in Auckland, New Zealand. I read a post entitled "Fifty Words to One Tree Hill", where Sosaia seemed to be summarizing a story about climbing a hill into fifty words. I told her that I had always had trouble putting stories into a small amount of words and congratulated her on the neat picture with her post.
For my second week, I visited the blog of Sosaia from Pt. England School in Auckland, New Zealand. I read a post entitled "Fifty Words to One Tree Hill", where Sosaia seemed to be summarizing a story about climbing a hill into fifty words. I told her that I had always had trouble putting stories into a small amount of words and congratulated her on the neat picture with her post.
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