Blog Post #5

The iSchool Initiative
The iSchool Initiative from Travis Allen is great. It outlines all the great ways an iTouch or iPad can be used in a school setting. Travis has great ideas to use these devises in a school setting. He shows some of the apps that can be used. The apps will not only help teachers and students, but these will help parents stay in touch with both. Also I love that this is just a taste of the apps that can be used for students and schools.
I would suggest that iPads be used rather than iTouchs. I think this would make it easier for students to be able to see documents and be able to do work. I think that Travis’s idea of limited internet access is a great idea! I know that with the entire internet at their fingertips students might be tempted to surf when they should be doing schoolwork. Also there needs to be no way for the iTouch or iPad to be linked to the student’s cell phone number. The student then will not be able to receive texts. There also needs to be some way to watch the student’s email because if the students cannot text each other then they will email each other.

Eric Whitacre's Virtual Choir - 'Lux Aurumque'
Eric Whitacre's Virtual Choir performing 'Lux Aurumque' was amazing. When I found out that all the performers have never met and never performed together, I thought this was a great feat. I was curious how the people were picked to be a part of this project. I looked up Eric Whitacre’s blog to see the answer to my question. He held auditions online. He uploaded a new video recently with 3746 videos from 76 countries.



Teaching in the 21st Century
I thought Kevin Roberts video of Teaching in the 21st Century was interesting. One thing he said that caught my attention was that “Teachers are no longer the main source of information; they are the filter.” I really like this quote. With all the information out there for students, it is hard to decipher which website is telling the truth and which is not. Roberts also makes a good point in that it is not just our job to help students remember. It is also a teacher’s job to help a student understand, apply, analyze, evaluate, and create as well. Similar to what I am doing as a student in my class now, I would like to incorporate this in my classroom. I would like my students to be able to do their homework online, communicate online, and be completely at ease on a computer. So when it comes time for them to be in a class like EDM 310, they are ready for it or at least have a start since my students are to be elementary students. Yet the way things are changing my classmates and I may be teaching a great more of technology than we realize.

Flipped Classroom
I am so excited about flipped classroom. This is an amazing idea. When a teacher flips his or her classroom, he or she will send videos to the students for them to watch at home. These videos will be the instructional portion of the lesson. The students normally will then complete a couple of questions about the video as well. When the students come into class, they already have knowledge about the lesson and can go into deeper learning, practice problems, and other ways of learning. I would love to do this in my class! I have gone to classrooms and seem the different groups of bored students, challenged students, and confused students especially in a math class. I am glad that Ms. Katie Gimbar put up the FAQ because her first one “What if a student does not watch the video?” was my question. I was surprised when she said she did not have a lot of problems with this. When a student did not watch the video they tended to ask to go watch it before, or if they only watched parts they would normally be peer taught. She did a second part to the question saying to other teachers not to re-lecture. Another question I did not have, but I am glad she covered was “How does this work for all learners?” She mentioned that the high level learners did well because they could move ahead, but the lower level learners were doing better as well because they could pause and rewind the information. I also liked to watch Ms. Munafo video about flipping. It was interesting to see a teacher describing this method for the parents. One thing I want to know is that the boards they are using. I know that the boards can be reused every year, but is there some way to use a smart board or something that is less waste? Another thing I am curious about is whether the school, Hilburn Academy, Ms. Munafo is from has incorporated additional subjects other than math yet.

My Sentence Video

Comments 4 Teachers #1

For the past two weeks I have commented on Dr. Buck’s blog Get Organized. I found his post very interesting and informative.

Do You Have This in Your Pocket?
The first blog post I read was called Do You Have This in Your Pocket?. This post was about how Dr. Buck keeps a memo pad with him at all times to help him remember things. As you can see from my comment below, I liked this idea. My comment was:
Hello Dr. Buck, my name is Maria and I am a current student at University of South Alabama. I enjoyed this blog post. I am one that likes to have a memo pad with me, but I am one that normally has one at my day time job. Why I have not thought about putting on in my purse or my wallet in not sure. I like to use the note pad feature of the Iphone, but a true memo pad, I believe, would be used more. I will have to go look for a memo pad to help keep my thoughts and my to-do list together.

The Case Against Multitasking
Dr. Buck’s second blog post I commented about was called The Case Against Multitasking. It showed an infogram that stated how the use of multitasking was not good for us. My comment was:
Hello Dr. Buck, Maria Eschbach from University of South Alabama here again. I really found this blog very interesting when I began to read this I looked up and saw that I had 10 tabs open on my browser. One thing I saw that the infogram does not mention is the effects of television on us as well. It mentions wireless devices, computers, and other electronics but with no mention of television. I wonder what changing the channel after every commercial is doing as well, or the combination of picking up your laptop during the commercial break. Thank you for the post. It was most informative.

Project #5 Presentation

Blog Post #4

1st Graders Create Their Own Read-Along Audiobook
On the Langwitches Blog, on the Blog post tilted 1st Graders Create Their Own Read-Along Audiobook; the teacher described how she made an audiobook with her 6 and 7 year old students. I thought this was an amazing idea. Not only is this getting the students to enjoy reading, but those that are having trouble will be able to have a little help through the audiobook. The teacher mentions that she took each student outside the classroom to record their part of the audiobook. I think that this is also beneficial to those students who are having trouble with reading. These students are having one on one time with the teacher, while another teacher is with the class.

Listening-Comprehension-Podcasting
Another post on Langwitches Blog titled Listening-Comprehension-Podcasting was very informative to me. I did not know that to learn a new vocabulary word one must hear the word and hear the word in its corrective usage seventy or more times. In the blog, she suggest when learning another language to record a podcast of the language learners voice so that they can “see their voices, read the sounds, manipulate the sequence of sentences, sounds can be deleted, edited, emphasized and re-arranged similar than a word processing program can do this with the written word.”
When the class recorded their own script in Hebrew for their Hebrew studies, the teachers recorded them out of order and had the students out them in order. I think this is a fantastic idea! This is making sure that the students truly understand what it is they are saying. I wish my Spanish teachers did something like this when I had Spanish.

Podcasting with First Grade
The final post I read was Podcasting with First Grade. First off, I love when she said that her students were “eager to record their own voices to get them ‘into other people’s computers and iPods.” I can only imagine. Similar to when the class was doing an audiobook, the class recorded about the Magic Tree House series. The class did a question and answer session with the two main characters, Jack and Anne. She mentions how she coached the students on speaking loud, clearly, and being able to act out the part. She also said that she “could tell a drastic improvement among students in their confidence level and voice expression as we progressed in the book.” She mentions that shy students were coming out of their shell. I like a project that does this. It gives the students positive feedback which builds their self-confidence. It also pushes some of them a little out of their comfort zone which helps as well.

Blog Post #3

Peer Editing
In the Peer Editing video, I liked that it started off saying that we should start with compliments. No one I know would like to have a comment from someone start off with a negative. Another point that I agree with is to be specific. Although, when I am being corrected, I may not like it. I like to know exactly where I made the mistake. So in the future, I will be able to learn from that and not make it again.
In Peer Edit with Perfection Tutorial, I enjoyed the examples the author gave throughout the slideshow. The word choice the author gave was clear on the suggestions for her audience. When she was speaking of suggestions, the author gave many of common comments that editors will give. The author would then write instead of writing this write something more precise about what you are suggesting. She also gave suggestions on what one should make suggestions about which I like. I find sometimes I do not know where to begin to look if there are any errors and having this slide as a tool will be helpful.
I delighted in the Writing Peer Review Top 10 Mistakes video. The top ten mistakes I can see all of us doing in many of my classes now and in the past. Such as Mean Margret or Picky Patty, I believe when some are editing we forget to give the positives on a person’s paper. Another is Speedy Sandy. Many want to be the first person to be finished that he or she is not worried about the advice he or she is giving.

Technology in Special Education
In this video, seeing the accommodations with technology made for children with special needs was very interesting to me. For someone like Kris, without technology he would not be able to talk. Before technology, Kris may have been written off. People may not have given him a chance to learn because he is nonverbal, but with the technology one can see all his wonders. I like seeing that a young man like Corbin who needs to have an audiobook during silent reading is able to sit with his classmates. I believe that if we continually take students with special needs out of the classroom, rather than accommodating them inside the classroom, it hurt them later in life. An example can be something as simple as thinking he cannot do something without special help because he has received it all his life.
The video pointed out that the students re more interested and involved in their schoolwork. I love this because like in A Day Made of Glass 2 where the students were so excited to learn while using the technology, the student who have special needs are no different. I am also glad that the teacher in video is not only has her students using technology, but she teaches them how to use that technology in the future.

How the iPad Works with Academics for Autism
The app I would choose to use in my classroom with students who have special needs would be the story builder app. This app helps the student story development. I would use this app to help my students with their paragraph expansion. Through this app the student does not realize he or she is forming an app until the end. The app does more than just helping the student improve paragraph development. I believe over time this app will help the students with answering a question better. When given a picture the students are given a question like, “Why is the boy crying?” The students then receive the first couple of words to the answer to get them started. Such as, “The boy is crying because…” The work when completed can be emailed as well. This link gives you a sense about story builder and two other apps that are created for students with autism.

Harness Your Students’ Digital Smarts
I like that in Harness You Student’s Digital Smarts, the teacher is talking in the terms of technology. She is making the students learn these terms. This will be a valuable tool for the future. I also like that she is saying word to her students that they may not know or may not understand. She has them look it up on the computer rather than giving them the definition.

Vicki Davis makes a great comment which I need to remember as I begin teaching. She said that we do not need to know everything to teach. She continued saying that the students get empowered when they figure out the answer on their own. I believed that when I became a teacher I had to know every answer to every question. Now especially with my EDM 310 class, I am learning that teachers can ask questions too.

Blog Post #2

Did You Know? 3.0 - A John Strange 2012 Version
In Did You Know? 3.0 - A John Strange 2012 Version, I found out many things that surprised me. One of the things that surprised me were that the people of India with the 25% highest IQ outnumbers America. I know we as Americans are not the smartest in the world. I know that a great deal of Asian is ahead of us, but I did not think of India. Whenever I thought of the Asian countries with higher GPA than the USA has, I thought of China, Japan, or one of the Koreans.
Also in Did You Know? 3.0 - A John Strange 2012 Version, I found some of things that I knew but have not thought about for a while. For instance, the video pointed out the that top jobs in ten years do not exist now. Most people know this, just from the booming of every sort of technology in the past 20 years or so. I will amaze me what the world comes up with next. Another point the video made was that as educators, or soon to be educators for me, we are preparing our "students for roles that do not yet exist". I remember my teacher telling me this in the seventh grade, and I did not think about it until reading it again. She told us something along the lines of, "I do not know what the future will hold for you, but I am preparing you for all outcomes."
Mr. Winkle Wakes
Mr. Winkle Wakes makes one think about how the schools are still in form of educating the students much like they did when schools were a one room building. With all the technology in the outside world, the schools have not caught up. The students have technology in their lives when they step out of school. The students are on Facebook and YouTube more and more every day. Why not take their interest in the internet and put it to good use.
I had the opportunity to shadow a teacher in Loganville, Georgia at Youth Middle School by the name of Ms. Sinje Butler. I loved being in her class and so did her students, most of the time. She taught eight grade math and used technology as much as possible. She would have quizzes using clickers, and she used her smart-board to electronically project the handouts given to the students. The students were more engaged than I have ever seen a class in math before. I think that is what technology can do for the classroom. It can help students to become more active in their education which in turn helps them to learn.
Sir Ken Robinson: The Importance of Creativity
The Importance of Creativity has a vast amount of quotable remarks made by Sir Ken Robinson. This is my second time watching this video, and I still find myself rewinding it to see his exact words on a subject. I think that one of the strongest points that Sir Robinson makes is that because of the way that we test many creative people believe that they are not intelligent. These people do not think in the same way that the tests are formed, so because of that they would receive low marks. I think that his point is emphasized by his story about Gillian Lynne. Many people, I believe have similar stories. Although, I am frightened that many students will leave a doctor’s office with a prescription for medication and not prescription for more dancing.
Sir Robinson says that, "creativity is as important as literacy," in the beginning of the video. I agree with this statement. There needs to be a balancing act between the right and left side of the brain classes. There has been a movement towards balancing the two out, but because of budget cuts, the arts or left side of the brain classes are starting to get cut as well. Sir Robinson goes on to say that, “we do not grow into creativity. We grow out of it.” I believe this also to be true. He says we are taught that “mistakes are the worst thing you can make,” but without mistakes we cannot learn to be original. I agree and will go one step further. Without mistakes, we will never grow. If we fear mistakes or being wrong, then we will never become a better person.
A Day Made of Glass 2
A Day Made of Glass 2 is a very interesting video. I would love to live in that world of technology and teach in it as well. The technology shown has such as hands on approach with the students that I love how active they would be. Although we have technology that is similar to this, like tablets, I would love to see something like the glass in schools. It makes me excited about teaching in the future and what technology will bring for the students I teach. This video also reminds me that I need to stay up to date on what is new, so that if something like this comes out I can try to be the front runner to get it for my students.
"A Day Made of Glass 2" reminds me of "Mr. Winkle Wakes". In "Mr. Winkle Wakes", the students were seen as uninterested and bored, honestly who can blame them. While in "A Day Made of Glass 2", the students were active in class, interested in what they were learning. There was new ways to learn something as normal as the colors. Technology can make students love what they are learning more, and I am excited about the possibilities.

Project # 2