Progress Report on Final Project

My partner, Jeanette Kelley, and I have chosen to do the 10-15 minute movie. We think the title of our project will be "Taking a tour through EDM310" or something along those lines. We will be recording our video on Tuesday afternoon. We will be using a SmartBoard the do our presentation of some of the basic skills future EDM310 will use throughout the course. We are hoping to give future students a head start in understanding what all will be expected of them. At the end of our video we are planning to finish with a tour to the computer lab, assuming we have will still be within our 15 minute time frame.

C4K for November

First Student
My first student's name was Adrianna. Her post was about a book she is reading, The One and Only Ivan. In her post, she express that Ivan, a gorilla, was mistreated and abuse but she doesn't think that happened in real life. She said that no gorilla should be treated the way Ivan was in the book. I told Adrianna that I agreed with her and no animal should have to deal with abuse. They are defenseless to the acts of humans. I also commented on her photo and asked if that was a picture of Ivan, I am waiting on a response.

Second Student
My second student was a 10th grade student at Baldwin County High School name Zach Adams. I'm not certain of the assignment, I'm waiting on an answer. However, he seems to have made a "FaKebook" page. It was interesting to see how easily you can create a fake social networking page. Hopefully I will get a response this week so I will know exactly what his assignment was.

Blog Assignment #12

Blog Assignment #12
1. Watch these two videos by Dan Meyer: Math class needs a makeover.
(until 11:38) and Real-Life Math. In two or more paragraphs, express your thoughts about what you can do to keep your students interested in learning math? How can you use what Meyer talked about in your classroom?


Dan Meyer
In Dan Meyer's video Math class needs a makeover., he explains the five symptoms that you are teaching math reasoning wrong. He says that students lack initiative and retention. One thing that I could relate to was that students do not self start. Too many times in high school we have been asked to read the chapter before the next class yet hardly anyone does. On the event we did read it the chances of the entire chapter making sense and remembering it are slim. We as teachers have to remember this and emphasize the major points and leave out the fluff. Students need to be involved in making the problems and they will staying interested. He says we should make the questions shorter and to the point, which I absolutely agree with. If I look at a word problem in math and it is 6 sentences long the thought of weeding through the extra stuff to pull out the important information becomes overwhelming. I don't think we need to make it overly simple but asking questions that are long and drawn out are pointless in my opinion.
In the second video,Real-Life Math, Meyer talks about making math irresistible to your students. He videos himself shooting basketball and turns it into real life math. If students can associate themselves with the problem they will be more apt to stay interested into the problem. I think making math into real life scenarios could be extremely beneficial. I would have loved to put together a project in school turning math into real life. Given we have the right equipment I would like to incorporate some real life math into my lesson plans and experiment to see if my students enjoy it as much as I think I would have.

Project #15

Blog Assignment #11

Mrs. Cassidy
I think it is amazing that Mrs. Cassidy has such young kids blogging and expanding their knowledge of the internet and technology. I think those kids are probably retaining so much more information because it is given to them in a way they are interested in. I believe it is time for some schools in Mobile County to change a little something in the way they are teaching to continue to keep the students interested. I know that kids are learning so much in preschool now that when they get to kindegarten they are bored with the material, because they already know it, and that is when they start to get in trouble.


In the skype interview with Mrs. Cassidy she describes how she keeps her students protected and safe even though they are using the internet. I think that is extremely important and the ways she goes about it is wonderful. If I was a parent, I would have some reservations about letting my 6 or 7 year old use the internet, however, I think that Mrs. Cassidy does a good job of making sure the kid's identities are not out in the open for everyone to see.
I think that, of the techniques used by Mrs. Cassidy, the class website or blog would be the most beneficial. I have decided that I will have one to post homework, accouncements, and any other useful information my students will need. I have enjoyed having our EDM310 class blog and Sakai because I can always keep up with all of my assignments and grades. I hope my students will find the blog as helpful as I have.

Special Blog Assignment

In USA TODAY's 30th anniversary celebration, Martin E. Kilmer interviewed some of the world's greatest visonaries about what they think the world of tomorrow. In the article "A World Where Grades Will be Left Behind, Sebastian Thrun described the type of schooling that be is in love with. One where there is no such thing as being late for class, grades are nonexistent, the word failure is unheard of, and the process of learning is as fun as playing a video game. Udacity, the new school, is basically free education, with the exception of some fees for programs and projects, and is completely accessible to any who can afford a cell phone bill every month.
Thrun says you can take either a blue pill or a red pill. By taking the blue pill, you're asking to continue the traditional style of learning, but by taking the red pill, if you're like him, you are welcomed into Wonderland. He even said that this type of teaching and learning is not trying to overcome the traditional schools and colleges, it is just giving student's who are not traditional learners another option.
I think that this style of school could benefit some students tremendously. I know plenty of people who have dropped out because they couldn't keep up with the pace, couldn't get to class on time, or simply couldn't afford school. I believe that has we continue to become more and more technologically advanced, we need to keep up with the pace in education as well. Every student learns differently, and if Udacity is the way they learn best, then I'm all for it.

C4K for October

First Student
My first student's name is Jordan. He described the quality of his life since moving to his new school Wapita in Canada. He said that he likes it at his new school because of the freedom he gets. He was reevaluating the changes from his previous school to his current school. Overall, Jordan enjoys his new school, despite feeling a little uncomfortable. I told Jordan to hang in there, anything new is going to be a little uncomfortable for a little while. I told him about my experience moving to a community college out of town and living with five people I didn't know at all. I then told him how much fun we all had when we got use to each other and are very close even to this day.

Second Student
My second student described the usage of ads on the internet. He also said how distracting they can be if you're trying to do research or a school project. He also put a blinking icon on his post to prove his point, and it worked exceptionally well. This student was introduced to pop up blockers through comments and was wondering if there was anywhere to search the web with no distractions. I told him that he did a good job making his point with the use of the icon. I also complimented his grammar and word usage.

Third Student
My third student uses the alias "EBchiefgamer" and is in Mrs. Middleton's class in Surrey, BC. This student's post was about his experience making a kite. He put designs all over it and said he flew it so high in the air he almost ran out of string. He enjoyed is so much he and some of his friends stayed after school and flew the kites more. They even played kites wars, unfortunately his kite broke and crashed into the ground. He fixed his kite and is as good as new. I told EBchiefgamer that I was glad he had so much fun with this assignment because when I was in fifth grade we had to make a kite also, but mine did not fly. I also suggested that he take a picture and put it on his blog so everyone could see what designs he chose to use.

Fourth Student
My fourth student's name is Lucy. Lucy is in the seventh grade in Mrs. Petersen's class. Lucy's blog was very heart warming. She wrote about family, not her family but family in general. She explained that you only get one and you should love them unconditionally. I found this extrememly inspiring that a girl of her age could give such a touching devotion on family seeing as almost every seventh grader I have known are in their "oh my goodness my family is terrible" stage. She backed up her blog with a scripture from the Bible. I told Lucy that her post was very inspiring and it was amazing that she could grasp the true concept of what family should mean so early in life. I continued to tell her after reading previous posts, I thought she was a phenomenal writing and wished her good luck in her gymnastics career.

Fifth Student
My fifth C4K was from Mrs. Vitulli and Mrs. Santoli . They uploaded a picture shot from the plane and the travel books they had on Ireland. They also said that they were going from Mobile to Atlanta and then to Ireland. I told them I thought it was awesome that they were going to Ireland. I also said to learn all they could learn but also have fun and make memories.

Sixth Student
My sixth student's name was Gia from Mr. Hadedorn's fifth grade class. Gia wrote about the sinking of the Titanic. She also posted a picture of the Titanic years after it has sat on the ocean's floor. I told Gia that I enjoyed learning new things about the events of the Titanic. I also complemented her on the picture she chose to use.

C4T #3

For my C4T for the next couple weeks I was assigned Miss Hadley, a middle school history teacher in Philadelphia. The first post I commented on was titled "Times Square to the Waterfall." She explained that when you are first entering the online world, (blogging, twitter, wiki, etc) you will feel was though you are the Naked Cowboy in New York. She further explained that you control what you put on the internet and you can put your ideas, any ideas, as you see them. She said the more you posted the less awkward, for lack of a better word, it would seem to put your ideas for everyone to see, creating a refreshing "waterfall feeling." I commented to her and told her that I was new into the blog and twitter world and it is a little out of my comfort zone to post my writings on the internet and that I wished the "waterfall feeling" would come soon. She replied almost immediately and told me to stick it and in time that would happen which was very comforting.

The second time I went back to Miss Hadley's blog she had not made a new post since the first time I commented, so I went to her earlier post. This post was the day after the National Day of Writing, which was to topic of her post. She explained that she had her Humanities class write for 40 minutes on a truth and stretch it until is become a lie, like the book Wild Girls by Pat Murphy. She said the students took a while to figure out what to write but once they figured it out, they didn't stop. She ended the post with a very powerful statement basically saying that the world is moving too fast and people are getting too caught up in it meaning they aren't taking time out of there day to listen to their creative side. I told Hadley that I was always the student taking the longest to decide a topic when I was in high school. I also said I agreed with her last statement about not stopping to pay attention to our minds and listen to our thoughts. I ended my comment asking Hadley if she thought the saying "If you don't use it, you lose it" applies here, I am still waiting on her response.

Project #11

Project #14

Blog Assignment #10

In John T. Spencer's comic he gave two descriptions on different types of pencils. He was comparing a cheap pencil to an expensive pencil. I think Spencer was saying you can take the cheap route and pay just as much replacing your supplies or you can just go ahead and pay a little more from the beginning and not have to replace your supplies as much, if at all. The way I viewed this comic is closely related to the saying, "It doesn't matter how many hours you put into it, what matters is what you put in the hours." No shortcuts.

Why were your kids playing?
In John T. Spencer post "Why were your kids playing?," he explains that his principal called him in his office because he had observed Mr. Spencer letting his kids play a game while they were in class. Spencer tried to explain that is was not just a game only meant for fun but also to reiterate what they were learning. As a student, I am a hands-on learner. If I can associate the lesson to a game or activity it sticks with me for much longer than just reading a chapter. I think there are plenty of students that learn the same way and we, as teachers, need to grab their attention in a way they can relate. At the end of Spencer's post he says he has found his solution to this problem he will integrate a game into what the principal is wanting him to do. A little bit of give and take has never hurt anyone.

Don't teach your kids this stuff. Please?
In Scott McLeod's "Don't teach you kids this stuff. Please?" He is pleading with the audience to not teach their kids or students the different arts of technology. While reading the post, I wasn't exactly sure why we were assigned this because McLeod was contradicting everything we have been told this semester. When I read a little further, I began to catch the sarcasm in the post. I think it was very clever the way the was telling everyone not to teach their kids technology because of the dangers and their being "no need" to, all the while he is giving his kids the upper hand by teaching them to be technologically advanced. I would have to say I agree with the message made my McLeod. I think if we refuse to teach our kid's about the different uses of technology we are only holding them back. Nowadays there are so many jobs that you have to use a computer, and use it well. We cannot expect them to pick it up in a week and be prepared to use it in their adult life. We need to gradually bring them into the technological world, explain the pros and cons and the positives and negatives, and let them explore and learn at an early age to better themselves as an adult.