C4K Kid's Blog Summaries

The kids blog I commented on for week 4 was Kevin, and he was in Mrs. Reuter's class. In his blogs he develops stories that are honestly very creative. When I read his blog post it reminded me of a video game. It was about a man being called for a secret mission out of the blue and having to go wherever they sent him and he could not tell anyone. He ended up going into war, and was fighting for his life. The fight was very brutal and violent, and he saw some excruciating things. He ended his story with a cliff hanger, very clever. This made me want to go back and keep up with his blog to know how the rest of his story would go. So yes, I am still keeping up with Kevin's blogs today. He is a truly talented writer, I shared with his to keep being creative and keep up the good work!

For week 5 I was suppose to comment on a students' blog names Phillip, but he did not have an active blog so instead I commented on Anika's blog who is in Mrs. Little's class. For her blog on that week she wrote some wonderful poems. She has three poems that she shared, and they all were different. One was titled sadness, and it was just that. It was a little dark and sad, but to write something like this is truly takes a lot of gut. Her second poem was titled “Forest”, this poem was my favorite of the three as I shared with her. This one was fun, and the words were spread out throughout the page and some were in bold. It was definitely an attention getter, she paid very close to detail which is important for writing! If the eyes are not interested then it is hard to stay focused. Her third poem was titled lily, and was very about a flower, and was very simple and to the point. They were all great, and I shared with her to keep the writing up, and to keep her imagination roaming!

For week 6 I commented on Latice’s blog who is in Mrs. Miller’s class. In her blog she compared reading books to what she would see in movies. The movie she was talking about was not mentioned, but she said she liked watching the movies better than reading books because she found them easier to follow and understand. After reading this, I mentioned to the student how important it is to read books and how reading more books can enhance ones writing skills. With this being said, after suggesting this, I told her that her thoughts were normal for her age and to keep writing and updated the blog!

For this week, I commented on Ashlie’s blog who is in Ms. Frahm’s class. She did a color poem for this week and the title of her poem was “Tropical Bloom” and it was about the beach. Her uses of adjectives were wonderful to read. She made going to the beach sound very enjoyable! I told her to keep writing poems, and blogging!

Blog Post #7

What Can We Learn About Teaching and Learning From Randy Pausch?

This week for our blog we were told to watch the video Randy Pausch Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams. Randy opened up his speech with what he called, "introducing the elephant in the room". He told the audience that he has cancer, and has about 5 months to live. Instead of being or depressed about the manner, he explained that it was pointless and he would rather live the life he has left to the fullest. Upon hearing this, I felt absolutely inspired. The driving question from this blog is, what can we learn about teaching from Randy Pausch. Well firstly, this man has a wonderful outlook on life, and even though he is in a bad situation in his life right now he is making the most of it. I think that is definitely a lesson learned right there. In his presentation, he talked about his goals when he was a kid and how his goals either came true or at least something good came out of them. The main teaching moment I saw from his video is that it is important to make goals, and stick to them. No matter how outrageous they may be, stick to them because worst case scenario "Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted". So no matter what, try for it and live your life to the fullest! I think if anyone who hasn't yet seen this video, then they should definitely watch it. Randy's dedication, and determination are truly inspiring, and a lot can be learned from this wonderful video. This is a video that will take some time to watch, it is over an hour long, but do not let the time get you down. It is totally worth it! I hope many individuals can learn from him and remember all the wonderful things he has done and accomplished.

Blog #6

What is personal learning networks? Or PLN.

PLN consists of different networks for both teachers and students to share ideas and needed tools constructed to help him or her. One of the great thing about PLN is that one can design this for their needs and create whatever it is that will further help them throughout their career. Even after watching these videos I can tell there is still so much more I can and need to learn about this subject. I am excited to have this technology provided for me when I start to establish my teaching career. This is a subject I am very interested in learning more about, and even more interested in using one day! My professor Dr. Strange has definitely helped us with this because he has introduced us to the C4T blogs we are doing, which introduces us to different teachers and gives us the opportunity to see what they are doing and most of them provide either positive or negative feedback they have learned from their trial and error. Without even realizing it, I have already started using some sort of PLN cite with Pinterest. On this app it allows people around the entire world add things to boards of interest whether it is apparel, food, or teaching ideas. This is a very useful tool I have discovered, and I cannot wait to find out more cites like this along the way that will help me in my career! With doing this, I will try my best to share my findings along the way to help more people in their careers as well! Here is a very fun, and informative video I found on YouTube about personal learning networks, I hope you enjoy!

Project #8 Book Trailer

Blog #5

What do you learn from these conversations with Anthony Capps?

Upon watching the videos and hearing the conversations between Anthony Capps and Dr. Strange I found out a lot of very interesting details about teaching with project based learning. It amazed me the things Anthony shared about his third grade class. Thinking back, I don't think I was on the same level of learning as the kids are today. They are really expanding their learning knowledge, which is a wonderful thing! He talked about how he had his kids in his classroom do some research and write some letters pertaining to what they were going over in class at the time. After they had finished their final drafts of the papers, the students themselves got to critique the letters and choose the best ones out of the ones they had done. This is a wonderful thing and got the students involved, and made them want to do the best they could do so their letters could be the ones sent off! Anthony shared some wonderful information with Dr. Strange via video, that he so kindly shared with us.

Some of the very important things I learned from these videos is let the students be in charge, and do research on things that interest them most. If teachers do this, they will get better quality things from their students because they will be more willing to find out about the materials that interest them! Another very important thought received from these videos were when Dr. Strange shared that in order to be a great teacher, the teacher themselves have to be prepared to learn for themselves throughout their teaching process. Teachers cannot think that they know everything there is to know, or they will not be successful. Knowledge is ongoing and not one person can know everything there is to know about everything. Teachers also have to be very flexible and creative. Having a backup plan is essential! Especially with technology. Something always goes wrong with technology, without a doubt. So being flexible and having something else to keep the students entertained either while you have someone come and fix the problem, or you set up the next activity for them to do. This is something that is very important, because once a teacher has lost the attention of his or her students then it is hard to catch their attention back. Students, especially at a very young age, have very short attention spans. Having something for them to do at all times is essential.

C4T #1

My name of the blogger I am assigned to is Dianne. Her blog is called "Dianne's Digital Discoveries". From what I have seen, on her blogs she posts helpful videos to help viewers learn more about potential resources and cites that are very important/helpful to her. The first blog I commented on was published January 11th(which happens to be my birthday) and she put up a tutorial video of Adobe TV. I had heard of Adobe TV, but had not used this source, and also did not know very much about this at all. So, upon visiting her blog, I watched the tutorial videos and became better educated on the subject.

The blog for this week is about Newsela. At first glance, I had no idea what this was, and was not even sure what this would be about. I looked at the tags involved in the blog and they were: reading, comprehension, news, current events, literacy, and newsela. After reading the description in her blog, she explained that it is a relevant daily news cite for helping build students reading comprehensions. This definitely sounds like something very interesting and I will try it out! I will read more about it, and give some updates on how I like it next time.

Project #3 Presentation

Blog #4

The question for my blog this week is, "what do we need to know about asking questions to be an effective teacher?"

An important factor to remember while being a teacher is that, although we may think we do, we will not know all the answers! From asking questions, teachers should get the impression that their students understand the discussions going on in the classroom. In the article The Right Way to Ask Questions, a valid point has been made. While asking the question, "okay does anyone understand?", this is a way for the teacher to get any last minute questions out of the way before changing subjects or moving onto new task. The students either may be embarrassed to ask a question, or are not certain on if they understand or not. If this is the case, they will not have specific question about what was just done, therefore will not ask any questions and could be lost before the activity even begins. So, as teachers we need to stop and try to think of a different way to ask this question so we can better make sure all the students are on the same page. Maybe by asking more specific questions? Or even thinking of different strategies upon trial and error.

While reading the article "Three Ways to Ask Better Questions", the author shared the idea that "Good questions make students think, they encourage participation and I think they improve the caliber of the answers students give and the questions they ask". Following this, the 3 potential actions he shared to better improve this problem were: Prepare Questions, Play with Questions, and Preserve Good Questions. With preparing the question comes better understanding, and minimizes confusion. While preparing a lesson, the main focus is on the content, activities, and what the are wanting their students to get out of the activities. While this is normal, preparing questions that go along with the lesson can help with confusion, and if the students do not understand the question can help the teacher from being stuck on another way to rephrase their question. The idea with playing with the question, would be to not necessarily have students answer it right away, but have them think about it, and come back to it later. In this article, the author mentions that most students lose interest very fast, almost immediately after the question is answered they forget about it. With this method, they think it can get the student to either write it down in their notes, or even ponder on the question and have something to share in the discussion the next time the particular question is asked. This way they are better engaged, and will be thinking about it on their own, and they will participate in class! The third and final solution is preserving good questions, this solely comes from using the same questions(only if it is a great question) more than once, and taking note on how the answers to the same question change over time. This can also show how the students are learning, and their progress throughout the year. I think this particular article was my favorite out of all of them, and I will definitely plan to keep these ideas in mind when I reach my teaching career!