Blog Post #10

I'm a Papermate. I'm a Ticonderoga

In this blog post of Mr. Spences, I'm a papermate. I'm a Ticonderoga. It supposed to be a mock of the, "I'm a Mac and I'm a PC" commercials. The papermate is the PC and the Ticonderoga is the Mac. As you notice in the picture above, the PC is the heavier character and the Mac is the slim "cooler" looking character.

Why Were Your Kids Playing Games?

I love how this story is told and the sarcasm within. The basis of this story is that the principal walks by and sees a classroom where the kids were laughing while playing a game. The principal then calls the teacher into his office to talk to him about what he saw in his classroom. The teacher begins to explain that the students were working on an advanced simulation and the kids were drawing and reading. The students were engaged and having fun. The principal interrupts the teacher and explains that games are not allowed in the classroom period!

When students are engaged in the subjects they're learning it encourages them to actually want to learn what you're teaching and to put forth an effort in their work. No student likes "burp back" education, meaning doing the same routine everyday where teachers lecture, and students memorize the material and recite it back. It is important to make learning fun and keep your students engaged.

Don't teach your kids this stuff. Please?

In this post Mr. McLeod talks about the challenges that teachers face with dealing with social media. How the older generation looks at computers and everything that comes along with them to be bad, that children are not trustworthy. They will abuse the freedom of using the Internet in the classroom. However, as teachers it is our job to educate students on both sides of the spectrum, the good and bad that comes with social media. Although as teachers, we will not be able to educate students on every bad and good thing that comes with multimedia, it is worth it to teach students everything that we know and can learn together as a class. Multimedia is constantly changing and as teachers we need to not be afraid on jumping in head first and taking the challenge to learn all that we can to benefit our students.

 

Project #11

Project #14 Smart Board

Project #12

Blog Post #9

Mr. McClung started teaching in the fall of 2009. After his first year of teaching he decided to summarize his experience and what he has learned over the school year in a blog post. In his first post, What I've Learned This Year (2008-09) starts off with an important decision that Mr. McClung tried to model throughout his first year as a teacher, stay positive! Mr. McClung starts his summary off by talking about, how to read the crowd. He explains one of my worst fears as becoming a new educator, creating a mindset that was all about the teacher. Meaning, he was so focused on how he was being assessed by his superiors, that he lost track of the most important thing of all, his students. That is one of the things I fear most when becoming a teacher, that I will be so focused on what my superiors will be thinking that I will lose track of my students comprehending what I'm actually teaching. Mr. McClung's summary goes on to talk about how no lesson is perfect. The lesson you teach and the one you plan are always different. And how important it is to remember that when things go wrong, simply work with it and try to better the situation and ALWAYS do it with a smile! Another important thing that you are always to remember as an educator is to always listen to your students and show interest in what is going on with their lives. It is important to do so, so that you can build their respect. When Mr. McClung shared what one student of his wrote on a survey:


I know my teacher cares about me as a person when he
- Listens to what I say

This really touched my heart because he points out something extremely important that most teachers forget about. "Listen to your students because you may be the only person who does."
The last thing that Mr. McClung writes about is, it is never too late to change your way of thinking. As teachers we are continually in a learning environment so we should soak up all we can, we owe it to our students.

In Mr. McClung's latest summary, Version 4 (2011-12) he talks about two things that he has experienced throughout his fourth year as a teacher, the first thing that he talks about is how he was looked at by his peers. Over the years as a teacher Mr. McClung has never taken into consideration what his peers thought about him. He was always concerned about what his students and his superiors thought. He goes on and talks about how this thought drastically changed his mood for the worse throughout the school year. After getting over the anxiety that this thought has caused him he comes one conclusion, to stick to what has gotten him this far, which was making his students happy. As long as you stick to this rule and remember who you really work for then you should never divert down the wrong path. 

The second thing that Mr. McClung talks about in this reflection is, challenge yourself. Over the last three years Mr. McClung has taught social studies and Arkansas History. This year he really noticed that his core subjects that he taught started to become routine. He began to depend on old lesson plans and his creativity was starting to diminish. In other words he was becoming too comfortable with his teachings. Luckily he was presented with an opportunity to teach pre-AP civics and American Government. With teaching these new subjects it will challenge him to come up with better lesson plans and to be more creative than he was with social studies and Arkansas History. Mr. McClung stresses on how important it is to challenge yourself with new things so that you never lose sight of what is most important, which is to inspire your students and make them excited about learning and making them want to come to class.     

C4T #2

Mr. Guhlin's blog Around the Corner

Post #1
Slide Show Presentation on 5 tips to quizzing success in the BYOT Classroom

1. Schedule your quizzes 
2. Differentiate with small groups 
3. Experiment 
4. Pick the right Quiz Tool
5. Quiz for content and Insights 

Comment:
Hey Mr. Guhlin, my name is Jerica. I am a student at the University of South Alabama in EDM 310. I have been assigned to explore and comment on your blog.
I enjoyed watching your slide presentation. For our EDM 310 class it was mandatory that we had to set up a Twitter account, and to be honest I didn't like the idea of it and thought it was pointless. But now that I have started following educators my whole outlook on Twitter has changed and I now see why it is so important.
Also your 5 tips to Quizzing Success in the BYOT classroom were very insightful. I have never heard of Edmodo before. I will definitely be doing some extra research on this tool.
I am looking forward to your next video!

Post #2
#iPad video tutorials- Social Media, #Twitter, #Google, #FTP, #Dropbox, #Evernote and More!

Mr. Guhlin had a brief meeting on using Twitter, Evernote, etc. to build your PLN; He crafted an Explain Everything (iPad app) video. Then, while sharing it with a colleague, she started asking questions and he ended up throwing some other videos together.

These videos are helpful and are in no particular order.

1. Using Readdle Documents to Put/Get Files via Files Transfer Protocol (FTP) 
2. Using Readdle Documents to Put/Get/Manage Files (such as photos/videos in your camera role) on Dropbox.com
3. Content Curation with Evernote, IFTTT.com, and RSS
4. Sharing Evernote to iPad plus more stuff having to do with RSS
5. GoogleReader and the iPad
6. Twitter on iPad

Comment :
Thank you so much for posting these tutorial videos! They are easy to follow. I just recently bought an iPad and these tutorials have made it easier to navigate through the different Social Medias such as the ones you have listed.

Blog Post #8

Richard Miller: This is how we dream parts 1 and 2

Richard Miller starts off in his first video by talking about incremental change. Incremental change is described as having to change our work space from paper and pencil to the desktop. He talks about how students can do anything without even stepping into the library these days. Students are able to research the riches of the world from any computer or cell phone at anytime, from anywhere. One of the many beauties about teaching students in the 21st century is with using social networking tools the information updates instantly.

The second point that caught my attention was when Dr. Miller points out that as future educators we must be in the business of sharing ideas freely. It is important for us to be this way so that we can fully give our students the best education possible. Collaborating and building off others ideas allows teachers to be fully educated and well rounded in the classroom, which is key to any student's success.

Another great point that Dr. Miller points out is, "the limits and restrictions are largely ones that we put on ourselves." This is complete true! As a future educator I will always encourage my students to go above and beyond. Learning has no limits. That is why it is so important for students to interact with one another and share their own individual ideas about a project or an assignment so that they can challenge each other with new ideas and bring them to life!

Carly Pugh's Blog Post #12

For this assignment Dr. Strange gave instructions that we were to read Carly Pugh's blog post #12 and evaluate how close she comes to Dr. Millers hopes for writing with multimedia (shown above).

Carly's post gives a great example of using multimedia! She was very creative when organizing her thoughts on this post. Blog post #12 talks about her assignment she would create for edm 310. She thought outside the box so to speak. Her assignment was very catchy. Carly's idea was to create a YouTube play list that consisted of at least 5 of the 10 topics she listed in her post and the actual play list need to have a minimum of 10 videos. These videos are to describe your teaching philosophy and things you have learned in edm 310. With this assignment it allows students to collaborate by using multimedia with no limits as to how the students want to express him/her self.

EDM 310 is Different

These videos, The Chipper Series and EDM 310 for Dummies made me laugh, especially edm 310 for Dummies! This video made me laugh because it portrayed my reaction when I first started this class! I was a bit overwhelmed with all the material and had a hard time trying to keep up with all my different social media accounts. However, after watching these two videos the idea that popped up in my head was to create a student acting out two separate outcomes that any student could have in edm 310. The student could either follow all the requirements for edm 310 or not to follow all the requirements in edm 310. That way it would encourage students to stay on top of their assignments and focus on time management.

Learn to Change, Change to Learn

I agree with the message that this video is talking about. Most of our school systems are still teaching students with industrial learning. As in memorizing material and going over the same routine every day with in the four walls of a classroom or in other words the "burp back method." Industrial learning is what needs to change because students have a richer environment outside the classroom rather than inside the classroom due to technology. The reason for this is because many schools do not believe in teaching students through different technologies and using social media within the classroom, this limits and hurts students. It is important to change the way students are taught so that the role is switched to where students can get a richer environment inside the classroom rather than out.

Web 2.0

For the scavenger hunt 2.0 we were to find three items within this website and write about them. This assignment was created by an edm 310 student back in the fall semester of 2011.

1. The first site that I found was called Voicethread. This site helps make it easy for teachers, students, and parents to communicate, collaborate, and connect. It can be used from any computer and web browser. iPads, iPhones, and iPods can be used to access this site as well. The benefits of Voicethread are, it is free, it allows individual creativity on the student's part, and it is easy to operate. This site can be used at any grade level from elementary school through high school. I could incorporate this within my class by giving out assignments that require my students to watch a video I have posted and have them upload their answers or opinion by a certain date. 
2. Animoto was my second item. This site allows students to make and share photos or videos online. This site breaks down how to make a video with three simple steps which will allow students to create, customize, and share videos. 
3. Last I created a poll asking, 

Blog Post #7

Randy Pausch Last Lecture

I absolutely loved this video. Randy Pausch was an amazing teacher with the extraordinary ability to inspire students to go above and beyond and to never give up on their dreams no matter what the obstacles. He was a very inspirational person never setting certain standards for his students. Randy Pausch always believed in being creative and working hard to achieve goals. He impacted millions of people around the world with his lectures. By watching this lecture it made me realize how fortunate I was to still be healthy and enjoy what God has in store for me in my future and to never take anything for granted. 

Randy Pausch's last lecture was very moving. In his last lecture he talked about his childhood dreams, enabling the dreams of others, lessons learned, and how you can achieve your dreams or enable the dreams of others. Randy Pausch started off by talking about his childhood dreams of being at zero gravity, playing in the NFL, being an author of the world book, meeting Captain Kirk, win big stuffed animals, and being a Disney Imagineer. When he talks about wanting to be at zero gravity he tells how NASA used to have this program called, "The vomit comet" for training astronauts. This allowed anyone who was in this to get twenty-five seconds of weightlessness. So he put a team together and submitted a proposal to NASA and they won. However, this was where Randy Pausch talks about hitting his first "brick wall." 

 

He talks about how brick walls are there for a reason, to give us a chance to show how badly we want things. This is very true and is a good quote to have in my future classroom. So that my students will be able to read and be reminded of how important it is to never give up on their dreams. As a teacher I will try my best each and every day to encourage my students to always find a way and to never give up. That if things don't work out the way they planned, step back reevaluate the situation and try another way. The important thing is to never give up!

Another valuable lesson Randy Pausch talked about, was when he was at football practice and his coach kept correcting him and punishing him by making him run drills all practice and when practice was over, his assistant coach came up to talk to him after practice and told him, "when you are screwing up and no one is saying anything to you anymore, that means they gave up." Dr. Pausch goes on to say that it is a bad place to be when you are messing up and no one bothers to correct you. Your critics are the ones that are still saying they love you and still care about you. I will always make sure to never give up on my students. I will do my best to be honest and critic my students mistakes to not only further their education but to hopefully encourage them to become better students. 

The thing that Dr. Pausch loved was being not only being a great father and husband but was also being a great Professor. Being a Professor is what helped him to help others achieve their childhood dreams. Shortly after becoming a Professor at Carnegie Mellon University, where he helped his students achieve their dreams by creating a class for virtual worlds. He didn't really know where to start with teaching this class, so what he did was split his class of fifty students into random groups of four and gave them two weeks to create their own virtual world. After two weeks the students were to present this work and he was blown away with what his students came up with, the work was completely beyond his imagination. This class exploded, students from all departments would gather at the end of the year to watch all the virtual worlds the students made. This class brought the University together! 

Last he talked about his lessons learned. He talked about the important role of parents, mentors, and students. Dr. Pausch also mentioned how he enjoyed working for each and every boss that he had. He reminds everyone to always have fun with whatever you are doing no matter what, "You can either be a Tigger or an Eeyore" and to always help others. Last, Dr. Pausch talks about telling the truth, being earnest, always apologize when you mess up, and focus on other people and not on yourself. These are great points to always remember and to always do your best to apply these with each and every day that you are given. This lecture was not about how to achieve your dreams it was about how to lead your life. It was very unfortunate that Dr. Pausch passed away during his prime from such an aggressive cancer but he did leave behind a legacy that will always be remembered and talked about for years and years to come. 

Project #9 Personal Learning Network

My PLN is slowly developing with each day that I spend time on it. I have to be honest; I was very overwhelmed with it at first and still am somewhat. I used Symbaloo to create my PLN. I really like the layout. All my resources are available for me to use whenever needed. My PLN has helped me to become even more organized than what I was before and it has also helped me work a little more on my time management. I will definitely be using my PLN throughout my teaching career. I will also expose which ever grade I decide to teach on how to set up and use a PLN for our classroom! 

C4K Summary #1

Ellie in Ms. McCall's class


I commented on a student that was from Ms. McCall's k-2 classroom in Phoenix, AZ. Her name was Ellie F. She told a story of a day swimming at the beach and how she was out in the water and a shark crept up on her. But she didn't panic, she swam calmly to the shore and went and ate snacks with her friends and had a wonderful day. I commented back saying that her story was very creative! And that I was glad she did not panic when she saw the shark. She was very brave!

Anphernee in Mrs. Miller's class

Amphernee wrote a post about things that expresses himself. He wrote the following, "I express myself by the hobbies I like and what I do on my free time. The things I do expresses that I'm just a guy from the country." I commented back to Amphernee saying, I express myself through hobbies as well such as reading and cooking! I asked him, what hobbies does he do to express himself?

Podcast Project #8