Project 12 Skype Interview

Follow this link to check out Mr. Pitner's Class Wikipage

C4K Summary 4,5, and 6

In comment number four I was assigned to comment on a post by a student in Mr. Wolfe's fourth grade class in Birmingham, AL. The post I was assigned to comment on was titled African and Indian Elephants. The student did a great job of research on the elephants. They asked what our favorite animal was and I answered Giraffes. I gave them a link to a encyclopedia article about giraffes so they could learn some more.

In comment number five I was assigned to comment on a student named Selena a Pt. England School in year seven in Room 20. Unfortunately I was late with my post I just never saw it earlier. She created a survey using a Form in Google Docs to ask her classmates where they would like to travel to. She then used the data she collected to create a pie chart of her results. Check out her Blog to see what the students said. I told her out of the locations she gave the option to go to I would have chosen Russia.

In comment number six I was assigned to comment on Ryan's Blog Post Egypt. I was unable to find out much about the kid that authors this blog, but from what I can gather he is a preteen or teenager. He commented on the situation in Egypt and equated it to the American Revolution. I was very impressed to see such a young man interested in what was going on over there. I posed to question to him that although it is great that the people of Egypt gained their freedom, don't you feel that the example they gave to the rest of the nations of the region may pose a threat to our national security. I am very glad a young person is paying attention to current events.

Blog Assignment 9

In Mr. McClung's post, What I Learned This Year, he summarizes some of the things he learned during his first year of teaching at the elementary school level. He touches on points such as reading a crowd, being reasonable, and never stopping learning.

Mr. McClung's first point of his reflection was how he learned to read a crowd. He states that during his college career he became so focused on the content of the things he was to learn and write about that he lost touch with the fact that when he became a teacher the lesson no longer involves only him. I thought about this for a few minutes and realized that is exactly what I do when I write a paper. I forget that what I am putting on paper needs to be directed at an audience that may know nothing of the topic I am trying to write about. When we become teachers we have to be able to make our lessons understandable to our audience. Students are most likely learning what we are presenting to them for the first time. It is paramount that we remember our audience when creating our lessons.

Another of Mr. McClung's points was that we have to be reasonable in our expectation of our students. We must remember that our students are learning the things we've already learned. I have had an experience once before, when I was coaching middle school baseball several years ago. At the beginning of the season I got frustrated that the children I was coaching had a tough time grasping concepts that I thought were simple. It took me several weeks to realize that these kids had not had the experiences that I had already had. Once I grasped this concept I was able to be more help to my players, as opposed to being just mad at them for not being able to do what I thought they should have been able to do. I was able to use their mistakes as learning experiences that would make them better in the future. In the process my stress level decreased, and both the players and I had more fun and won more games.

The last point of his essay was to never stop learning. He said that we expect our students to learn everyday, so we should do them a service and continue to learn as well. We owe it to our students to be open minded towards new ideas and ways of doing things. We should make it a goal to learn something everyday from our students, our peers, and our superiors. We don't know everything!

I will save this post to take a look at when I become a teacher so that I will not forget these valuable lessons. I'm sure that between now and then I will lose touch with some of these concepts, and I want to be able to reflect on them when I get into a classroom.

Blog Assignment 8

Dr. Millers video This is How we Dream is a great video that brings to light the change our world is undergoing. For centuries our education system has been set up around print documents that are largely being lost. Our world is now going to all digital based documents, and unfortunately the education system has not caught up.

We as teachers have a responsibility to learn how to create these web based documents not only to teach our subjects curriculum but to also teach how to create them. In order for our students to survive in the business world they need to learn how to write and share their ideas on the web. I believe the major point of this video is the idea of sharing. Ideas are no good if never told to others. We need to share what we are thinking to get feedback and get something out of them.

I am not sure that I am prepared to write with multimedia just yet. However, I am learning more and more everyday in EDM310 that will make me more prepared to write with multimedia. We need to make a real effort to learn these techniques. Don't take this class lightly. Make an effort to really learn from this class and when the class is over, don't put up your computer and forget what you've learned. Use It!

The Chipper Series and EDM310 for Dummies were very funny. I would like to put my vote in for an Academy Award right now. The Chipper Series made me think of my first venture in college and how I was such a procrastinator. This class has helped me with my time management and kept me on track with what I am supposed to do for this class as well as my other classes. EDM310 for Dummies was just comical to me. If I look back at how I felt at the beginning of this semester I felt the same way. By just doing the assignments that we were assigned early on I have learned how to do the things necessary to complete everything in a more efficient manner.

If I were to create a video for the next group of EDM310 students, I would create one that shows them how doing the work assigned makes things easier as you go along. I am now able to post videos, write blog posts with links, and many other things that make each assignment simple. We should let the new students know that this class is not all that hard, it just takes a little work.

Learn to Change, Change to Learn is a great video that gets you thinking about how our education systems need to change. I find it appalling that the education industry was ranked 55 out of 55 in level of IT intensiveness by the U.S. Department of Commerce. How is the education industry below Coal Mining? That is terrible. Our education system needs to get away from standardized testing. We no longer need to memorize facts and regurgitate them to be considered smart. We have the technology to find out anything we want to know by hitting a button on our smart phone and asking it a question. We need to give children the skills to use these technologies responsibly. There is no excuse for education to continue to lag behind. We need to evolve our industry, as every other industry has, to the point where it is ahead of all the others in the IT department. School should be where students learn the technologies needed in the real world. Don't you think that would make our economy more efficient? I do.

In RSA Animate's video The Secret Value of Time there were two ideas that struck me. First was the idea of how boys use video games to create there own world and that they are bored in a classroom because it is analog and not digital. We should use this knowledge and make the classroom digital. Children will be more excited to learn new things if we make lessons that allow them to create something. The second thing that struck me was the fact that only 20% of American families have sit down dinners. In my family we sat down to dinner together every night. My parents used that time to find out what we had learned in school and ask us what was going on in our lives. We should all have sit down dinners. When I have children I vow to sit at the table to eat as much as possible in order to stay in touch with what is going on in their lives.

In another video by RSA Animate Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us my ideas of how we are motivated were turned upside down. In economics classes we are taught that the almighty dollar is our main driving force for motivation. This video shows that is not the case. We are driven by knowledge. I feel that is what might save this country. I have alway wanted to just learn. I like learning new things and creating ways for others to learn. That is part of the reason I want to become a teacher. We are not going into this profession for the money. God knows that we are not gonna make a fortune at what we are doing. I want to make this world a better place. If we give our students the ability to create and seek knowledge on their own by directing them in collaborative projects of their own desire they will learn and be more productive. They will be much more enthusiastic about what they find because they found it themselves.

SmartBoard Presentation Project 13

Try out this little quiz to see what you learned.




Both members of the group we presented to made a 9 out of 10 on the quiz.

Short Movie Project 11: Why I want to Teach

PLN Project 10: 1st Progress Report

I am using Symbaloo to create my personal learning network. I like being able to use all of the different tile to create links to my favorite search engines. I am able to use the Encyclopedia tile to search for information on topics I need to research for EDM310 as well as my other classes. I have a paper to write in both of my other courses this semester and plan to use what I have learned in this class to complete both of them.

The best thing I have learned to use in this class to help me with my other classes is Evernote. I use Evernote to take notes in all my classes. It allows me to keep all of my notes in one place. I am able to access my notes all the time from my cellphone. If I need to study for a test I don't have to take out my notebooks. All I have to do is take out my cellphone and start reading my notes.

I am getting better with Twitter as well. I favorite tweets from teachers around the world that will help me learn more about PLN's and history. I am able to use the links they provide to expand my PLN.

I also have begun using Google Reader to keep track of what's going on in the news. I don't like to watch the news, because there is so much going on in the world to day that I don't care to hear. With Google Reader I am able to only read the stories that interest me. For example, I am able to read developing news of the unrest in the Middle East, and ignore all of this craziness about Charlie Sheen. I plan to use Google Reader to help keep my future students up to date on current events that will be relevant to my classes.

The one thing I have been trying to understand but can't seem to grasp is Delicious. I find it harder to bookmark sites on Delicious than to bookmark them on my browser. If anybody has figured it out and can tell me the best way to use it, I welcome the help.

I am looking forward to expanding my use of my PLN. Knowledge is power and I feel that this is the best way to learn more.

C4T 2 Summary Post

Surviving Dachau, Liberating Mauthausen from Wesley Fryer on Vimeo.

I was assigned to comment on the blog Moving at the Speed of Creativity by Wes Fryer. You can follow him on @wfryer.

The first post I commented on was Teacher Blog Controversity in Pennsylvania Points to Need for Social Media Guidelines. In his post, Mr. Fryer talks about a teacher in Pennsylvania who had a blog that she used to describe her disdain for some of her students. Some of her students and parents found her blog and brought it to the attention of the school's administration. She used foul language and was not very nice in describing some of her students. The teachers blog post's that are under scrutiny have been taken down from her blog, but since the "scandal", as she describes it, occured she has posted several other things. In her first post's since her blog was discovered she describes how she feels her blog should have been private. In our class we are being taught how to provide a digital footprint that we can be proud of. This teacher seems to have no remorse for creating a deplorable digital footprint. I hope she is never allowed to set foot in a classroom again.

I commented to Mr. Fryer that the Mobile County Public School System has recently began looking into to new social media guidelines. I feel that teachers like this one will make it easy for the powers that be to ban teachers from being able to use blogs and other social media. It is my hope that this one teacher and the few across the country that don't post the way they should don't take the useful tools of the internet out of our hands.

In the second post I commented on, Surviving Dachau, Liberating Mathausen, Mr. Fryer posted a video of a lecture given by a holocaust survivor and a concentration camp liberator. I watched the 90 minute long video and was moved by the message of the Mrs. Eva Hance and Mr. Mark Geeslin. Mrs. Hance gave a moving speech about her horrible experiences in Dachau and how they have taught her that hate is never the answer. Mr Geeslin told stories of how he felt when he liberated Mathausen Concentrartion Camp. His regiment actually found Mrs. Hances father alive atop a pile of dead bodies upon entering the camp.

I thanked Mr. Fryer for posting this video so that all could see. I feel that it is important for our young people to hear these first hand accounts. History has always just been written words that could be lost very easily. Now with things like this being put into the digital world first hand accounts can be saved forever. There are some people, like Irans Ahmadinejad, in this world that still say the holocaust never happened. If you watch the emotion with which Mrs. Hance tells her tale you could never believe such a thing as false.

Blog Assignment 7

Dr. Randy Pausch's Last Lecture is one of the most inspiring things I have watched in a long time. If I am ever in the position he was in when he gave this speech I hope to be as happy as he is. His passion for what he has accomplished is inspiring, and I am glad that it did not die with him. He was truly a great teacher. I would love to be the kind of teacher that can inspire greatness in all of my students to the point where it can reach more than just the students in my classroom.

The first thing that caught my attention was what his football coach told him. "When people stop telling you you're doing wrong that means they don't care." I feel that the world has forgotten this concept. Teachers are forced to pass children because it would look bad if they don't. In my opinion a kid is not going to learn anything if you just let them off the hook when they do something wrong. I've always thought that you learn more from failing at something than you do from getting it right. Maybe this is why I love baseball so much. In baseball if you have a career batting average of .300 you have a great chance of being put in the hall of fame. To hit .300 you must get three hits every ten at bats. That means you failed seven times, but from those seven times you failed you learned something to help you get the three hits you got.

I love the analogy of the brick wall. "Brick walls are there for a reason: They let us prove how badly we want things." If something gets in your way it is not a sign that you should give up, it is a way to show whoever put that wall in your way how determined you are. We've all heard all our lives that life's not easy. Too often lately I have noticed that as a culture if we don't get what we wan't right away we give up. We need to be able to teach our kids to keep pushing. If someone tells them they can't do something we need to be there to tell them to prove them wrong. Like Jim Valvano, North Carolina State basketball coach, said in his 1993 Espy Speech, "Don't give up. Don't ever give up."

I was also struck by the comment he made about the advice his mentor gave him after the first projects he got back from his new class. His mentor told him to not set a bar. He told him to tell them that those projects were good but he knew they could do better despite the fact that he had been blown away by the quality of the projects. Thats a great way to approach teaching. No matter how well a student does if you tell them they can do better you are encouraging greatness. If everyone kept pushing themselves to do better and better no matter how great they have done in the past imagine what this world could create. I will try everything in my power to never tell a student that they have done the best they could. I will tell them they could always do better if they just keep trying.

Thank you so much Dr. Strange for having us watch this video. It was not only a great learning experience, it was also very inspirational.