Blog Post #13

ALEX

ALEX

stands for Alabama Learning Exchange. I have actually never heard of ALEX before now so I found this really interesting. The ALEX website is designed for future teachers and current teachers or anyone else in education. It is a great website because it has lesson plans posted for all subjects and for all teachers to see. I have seen others like this, but this is now my new favorite. The lesson plans are all led by the guidelines of ALCOS (Alabama Course of Study) as well which is important because as a teacher you already know that the lesson already meets the states standards. This also is a reason for being my new favorite. There are links on this website that go to podcasts, a personal workspace, and professional learning websites. Teachers are also able to design their own lesson plans with ALEX and other teachers can view them as well which is awesome to me because I have so many ideas of my own. I can see this being a very helpful site when I start to teach. I will enjoy seeing what other teachers are doing and the lessons they are teaching. I am interested to see the creativity as well. It will also be extremely helpful because all of the lessons presented follow the Alabama Course of Study which is necessary. I will no longer have to search through websites and find lesson that do no meet my schools or state requirements. I'm sure that this website will be a frequently visited website in my classroom.

Additional Assignment #5

Tom Johnson's Adventures in Pencil Integration


I really enjoyed reading all of Mr. Spencers posts. The first post I read was Just Teach Them to Solve for X. I really enjoyed this post. I loved the metaphor technique used in this post. The post was about the problems he was facing from using metaphors to teach. I can definately see where students can learn from this and it makes me want to one day use this in my classroom. I then read The Medium Shapes the Learning. This post was about keeping the students engaged. I think this is very important because if your students are interested and engaged in the learning process, the more they will take away from them and truly learn instead of just going through the motions. This should be a main focus for teachers. The post Sketch Portraits was very interesting as well. It was about describing the pencil as many different things. It is important to recognize that students will change from day to day or year to year and it is the teachers job to adjust to these changes. We have to still make sure the students learn regarless of change. The last post I read was He Just Likes the Class For the Pencils. Teachers need to have a healthy relationship with their students. We want our students to look up to you and trust you as a role model. It is important to let students know you care about them and want to help them. If they see that you care, they will care in return. In order to get respect we have to give it.

Project 15

Blog Assignment #12

Teacher Expectations Raise Student Achievement-
The Article "Teacher Expectations Raise Student Achievement" discusses the expectations of all teachers and how important it is for them to have expectations to meet. The article tells us that if we expect our students to misbehave and have failing grades then that is probably what is going to happen. Also, if we expect good behavior and good grades then that is also what will probably happen. A teacher's attitude can mean so much when it comes to getting positive or negative results from students. The overall message of this article is if you have high expectations, your students will have higher achievements. If you have low expectations, the students will only achieve what you expect of them. I think it is important for all teachers to understand this main concept and all teachers should have to read this article. I hope that when I am an educator I will have a positive attitude that will positively effect my students.

Expectations: The Self-fulfilling Prophecy-
Like the article, this video is a discussion about the effect of teacher expectations. It explains how important high expectations are for teachers to have of their students. As a teacher, if you standards are high then your students are more likely to rise to those standards of learning. It gives an example of a teacher telling a student that they were expecting a D from them and that is what the student got. This comment made toward the student could have had no positive meaning behind it, so a student is probably going to give the teacher what they expect. The teacher clearly implied that the student was less capable. To me, as a future teacher, expectations are a must in order to get positive results from my students. I hope to let my expectations reflect in the students work.

Form Results and Summary

SUMMARY

Out of ten respomses to my survey, 7 people were for gambling in the state of Alabama and 3 were opposed to it. The people who responded seemed to have a strong view on the subject of gambling. There were two written response questions and everyone seemedc to have in depth responses. The ten people were split on whether the voting should be reopened in Alabama for gambling. What was interesting was that only two people said that they sometimes visited a casino and the rest never did. It was interesting to see what different people thought about this issue and google forms made this very easy for me. It was so easy to make a form and send it to a group of people and then get a summary of responses. I am very impressed with this online tool.

Gambling in Alabama Survey -Lets see your response!

Progress Report for Final Project

My group has made some progress on the final project. I met with my group partner this last week and discussed details. We have discussed some different ideas with each other and are trying to decide what it is that we think we are best prepared for. We want our final prohect to best reflect on how much we have learned through this course.

Summary Post C4K comments 3-7

Comment #3

Semi is a student in 3rd grade at Pt England School in New Zealand. Semi posted on his classroom blog by creating a video on his own and also recorded his voice onto the video. I thought it was very interesting to see how students are learning even in other countries. All over the world students are using technology to advance their knowledge. Semi's video was very creative and very well put together using technology, especially for a THIRD grader. I was very impressed with his work!

Comment #4

Brodie is a sixth grade student that regularly posts on his middle school blog. Although I didn't comment on all of his posts, I noticed that all of them are very educational. I could definately tell that Brodie was a bright young man. The post I commented on was a post on the Antarctic Stations, which I had no prior knowledge of before reading. It was a learning experience for me to read his post. the post lists all of the Antarctic stations and gives a brief discription of each mostly covering location and purpose. You can really tell that Brodie did some research on the subject. I thoroughly enjoyed reading his post.

Comment #5

Jake is a seventh grader who regularly posts onto his middle school blog. Like Brodie, I could tell that Jake was frequently using the internet to post all kinds of htings such as educational information or just posts about how he was doing or what his personal interests were. On his post that I commented on, Jake talked about his football team that he was a part of. He seems to be trying to win over support for his team by letting his readers know how successful his team was. They were the number one team in his division and had already beaten the number two team so he thought they would have smooth sailing. I'm sure his team went all the way!

Comment #6

Lucas H. is a sixth grader that I had the priviledge of reading his blog. I commented on a post of his that described a vacation that he had gone on to Frankenmuth, Michigan. He told me all about two water slides that were located at the hotel he was staying in. Another part of the trip that stood out to him was the smell of fudge when he walked outside. He later made a trip downtown and found some fudge that he thoroughly enjoyed. He also describes a store, Bronners, which he thought looked like Santa's workshop. I love how Lucas uses blogging to write about things that interest him.

Comment #7

My seventh comment was left on Mr. McCLung's classroom blog for a particular post on a race that his students had recently been apart of and been very successful. I thought it was awesome that he supported his students so much! I think it is a great idea for teachers to put posts like these where they are available to students, parents, teachers, and anyone else involved in the community. Mr. McClung was very proud of his students and certainly let them know how proud he was by posting a blog based on their success.

Blog Post #11

Little Kids...BIG POTENTIAL

What a precious video! During this video Ms. Cassidy has incorporated all of the different technological ways she is using to teach her students. I think it is great to have the students start using technology so young. It goes to show us that just because they are young doesn't mean they can't use it. I feel that teaching them young provides more expansion for learning in the future. I want to teach my students to use these tools, such as blogging, and let them explore learning in a new way. I think this was a great video because all teachers should be aware that no matter how young they are still capable of using technology to learn.

Discussion with Ms. Cassidy

It all started when Ms. Cassidy received 5 sunray computers in her classroom. The computers were unable to upload any type on program onto it so she had to find a way to teach six year olds using the internet. She uses blogs and other sites that the students can learn from. Ms. Cassidy starts at the beginning of the year and has a coordinator to help her with her teaching but mostly does all of it on her own. In order for her students to work with computers they must have a permission slip signed. They also have to have a permission slip signed to have their pictures taken and posted on their webpage or blogs. These things are understandable and smart. I feel as if I was a parent, I would want to know if my child's picture and such was on the internet. Also, as a parent I think I would love this because I could see what was going on in their classroom by just getting online. Ms. Cassidy also states the importance of moving forward and using more advanced tools to teach our students. A great factor in blogging is that the students get tickled to death about having an audience and getting to see what people comment to them. Ms. Cassidy makes sure to show them all the comments they receive and all the positive feedback using tools of her own. Something that has been stated over and over in this class, we must keep up with technolgy, is definately something that Ms. Cassidy agrees with. Ms. Cassidy is very enthusiastic on Twitter and finds it very helpful for homework. I thought it was great that the students in Dr. Strange's class asked Ms. Cassidy questions.

I think Ms. Cassidy in an inspiration for all teachers using technology. She studied and discovered ways to use the tools she had and make the best of her situation. She didn't hold back because of age and that is something all of us need to remember. I certainly plan to use blogging in my classroom one day not only because it is a great way for the children to interact with the world wide web but because I think it is great for parents to be able to keep up with their child's progress. I know I would certainly appreciate that as a parent.

Summary Post C4T Teacher #3

Dorothy Burt's Blog

A New Twist to Parent Engagement

This post by Dorothy Burt was very moving and tells a lot about Mrs. Burt's background and belief. It starts by explaining a project she did using 7 and 8 year olds. The unique twist about this project was that the students were the teachers and the parents were the learners. A lot of times we can learn more by teaching than being taught. Seh provides a video of a group of children teaching their parents. The part of this post that was moving was the prayer. This particular prayer was asking the Lord for help as the students entered their learning environment. It was particularly based around learning while using technology. She prayed for the students to thoroughly learn while she effectively taught. This prayer was awesome to me and a big indication of how great of a teacher Mrs. Burt is.

Student Internet Use in the Holidays

This post by Dorothy Burt was based on finding out how much access students had to the internet over the holidays and how they used their time on the internet. She also wanted to see what was popular in different age groups. She lists a set of questions that the students would be asked so that a survey could be taken. She not only wanted to know how much access the students had to the internet, but more in depth questions such as whether they actually used the mouse or were they just observing someone else use the internet such as a parent. This information can be very useful when teaching students using technology. We, as teachers, can have a basic understanding of their knowledge prior to teaching it.