Project #12 Part A

C4K for October

Adriana's Blog
Adriana is a 6th grade students in Ms. Rivera's class. She wrote a post on a book she was reading called Insurgent. She gave her opinion of the book so far and came up with some theories of what she believes will happen.
My Comment:
Hey Adriana! 
I really enjoyed reading your post! I actually watched the first movie and I really liked it. I do agree that Tris risks her life a lot for no reason. I haven’t read any of the books yet, but I’m exited to start them soon! 
-Raven Williams

Karson's Blog

Karson K. from Mrs. Ripp's class blogs about a book he is reading also. He is reading a book called The 14th Goldfish. He talks about what he has read so far and what he feels will happen in the future.
My Comment:
Hey Carson! 
My name is Raven Williams and I attend the University of South Alabama. 
It sounds like you are reading a very interesting book. I’ve never read it but a grandpa turning into a teenager sounds really cool. I’m really glad you are enjoying the book!

Sophie's Blog

Sophie is a student in Ms. Essenburg's class. She wrote a post that summarized her life. She wrote about her family, her dog, her favorite food. She also wrote about Walt Disney World because it is her favorite place.

My Comment: 

Hi Sophie! My name is Raven Williams and I attend the University of South Alabama. I really enjoyed reading your post! What kind of dog do you have? I have a chow puppy and I absolutely love him! 

By the way: Pizza is my favorite food too!

Trinity's Blog

Trinity is a sixth year student at Pt England School in Auckland, NZ. She wrote a post about how she protects herself from the sun with a hat while she outside.

My Comment:

Hi Trinity!
My name is Raven and I am a student from the University of South Alabama. I'm glad to see that you know how important it is to protect yourself from the sun. Sunburn really isn't any fun!

What can we learn from Mrs. Cassidy?

Interviews with Kathy Cassidy

Kathy Cassidy is a first grade teacher that uses technology in her classroom. She started to get involved in technology ten years ago when she was given 5 computers for her classroom. The computers allowed internet access, but weren't able to download any programs. Ms. Cassidy searched online and found some educational tools that her students could use. I like that she talks about how she teaches her students to protect their identities on the internet. She teaches them not to use their last names and not to match their pictures with their names. Depending on her classroom size, her students blog once or twice a week. They also use Skype to video chat with other students or sometimes even experts. Ms. Cassidy posted on her class blog this past week about a Skype session between her students and a group of seventh grade students. They talked about moon rocks and how they were formed. They even got to see some examples of moon rocks. Ms. Cassidy says that she has a lot of support in the way she teaches, especially from parents. The parents of her students like that they can see an online portfolio of their child's work anytime.

Ms. Cassidy also talks about the tools we should use our classrooms. She says that we should start with technology that we would be interested in. She also talks a lot about twitter and the impact it has made in her teaching. She has made a lot of connections such as our EDM310 class. I've been actively using twitter for two years, but I am just now beginning to make connections in the education field. I've learned a lot over the past few weeks with my EDM310 twitter. 

I think Ms. Cassidy makes a lot of great points in her interviews. She comments on how she believes teachers should change their way of thinking about technology. She says that we would be handicapping our students if we do not teach them skills in technolgy. I agree because I think technology is a major part our lives today. We use it everyday in our personal lives and companies even use it for business purposes. It's important for students to learn these skills as early as they can because they're going to need it one day in the future. I like that she talks about using technology in physical education. I've thought about how I could use a blog for my students, but I wasn't really sure if it would be beneficial to them. I think that there are a lot of ways that I could use one now. 

Interview with Kathy Cassidy -Part 1

                                               Part 2

                                               Part 3

What Can Teachers and Students Teach Us About Project Based Learning?

Seven Essentials for Project-Based Learning

• Need To Know. A need to know is basically being able to engage your students. When you assign a project, you want it to be something that is going to grab their attention and encourage them to want to learn more about the subject.
• A Driving Question. The driving question is important because it gives a project a sense of purpose. A project without a driving question could cause a lot of confusion and result in missing the main purpose of the project. A driving question should be complex, open-ended, and be related to the subject of the project.
• Student Voice/Choice. It's always a good idea to allow students to have choices in some of the elements of a project. It could be the way they choose to present a project or the tools they use to develop it. Giving students choices makes the projects more meaningful because they feel more ownership towards the project.
• 21st Century Skills. 21st Century Skills are skills like collaborating, critical thinking, and using technology. Creating podcast, working in teams, and encouraging problem-solving are good examples of these skills. It's important that students learn these skills because they could need them in their future workplace and also in life.
• Inquiry and Innovation. Inquiry is students finding answers to the question they created from the original driving question. Students could easily form questions from the answers of a previous question. Students follow a trail of information and draw their own conclusions.
• Feedback and Revision. Feedback and revision is important because it is very rare that the first draft of a project is perfect. Peer editing is a good ways for students to revise their work. Rubric are also very helpful.
• Publicly Presented Product. The result of a product can be presented to an audience of peers, parents, or even the community. If it is published on the web then the entire world could be your audience. Students also usually work a lot harder when they know that an audience will be seeing their work. 

Project Based Learning in PE

I really enjoy posts and articles about PBL in PE because I plan on being a PE teacher. I really like the idea of creating a fitness plan as a project.  I have a personal fitness plan for myself right now and I haven't even thought about how I could use it with my students. I think if I were to do this project I would expand it a little. I would ask that the student would also create a fitness plan for someone else or that they had someone else test their fitness plan and compare their results. Another PBL I've thought of was to create exercise videos.

What Motivates Students?

I think that it is very important to know how what motivates students. Students that are interested and video, some students were motivated by rewards and some were motivated by positive feedback. One boy said he was motivated because pleasing his parents meant that he wouldn't be grounded.
motivated are going to be more engaged and enthusiastic about their work. It's important to know that different things motivate different students. After watching the

Example of PBL

Two students from North Liberty High School were asked to create something that was relevant to them. Tyler Richards and Jonathan Thompson chose ketchup caps. They both enjoyed ketchup, but not the water that comes out while squirting it. They did a lot of research and found that this was a problem for a lot of people. They created a cap that they call the "mushroom" or "the shroom". It is shaped like an upside down mushroom and traps water son only ketchup will come out. 

Project #14

USA State Facts: Lesson Plan

C4T #2

Inter.Connect.Ed

By: Ben Jones

Weathering the Storm of Education

Summary

Ben writes about how it is important to be surrounded by prfessionals. THe says "The real educational leadership challenge is how do we support our teams and colleagues through these moments to improve outcomes for all students and build their capacity as educational professionals?"

My Comment

My name is Raven Williams and I am a student in EDM 310 at the University of South Alabama. I think it is very important that we surround ourselves with professionals. I want to be around people that will help me grow as a teacher.

Bring Your Own Ideas...

Ben writes about BYOD. BYOD means bring your own technology. It is where students bring their own devices to class that they will use to learn. He includes an article that encourage BYOD and and article that talks about the negatives. He also talks about how he uses BYOD.

My Comment

My name is Raven Williams and I am a student in EDM310 at the University of South Alabama. I am very new to BYOD. I don’t really like the idea of it. I think that it is important that all students have the equal opportunity to learn by having the same materials in the classroom. I think having computers in class is great, but devices like cell phones should be left at home.

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

Randy Pausch was a professor of computer science, human- computer interaction, and design at Carnegie Mellon University. He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in September 2006, and learned in was terminal in August 2007. He gave his final lecture two months later. It was recorded and has been seen on YouTube more than 16 million times. He also wrote a book with the same theme that became a New York Times best-seller. 

Randy Pausch started his lecture by talking about his childhood dreams. His dreams were to be in zero gravity, Play in the NFL, write an article in the World Book Encyclopedia, be Captain Kirk, win stuffed animals, and become a Disney Imagineer. In some way, he accomplished all of these dreams. He accomplished being in zero gravity when he led a team of students to win a contest with NASA. He never played in the NFL, but he did become a coach. He said he was always more comfortable on a football field than anywhere else. He wrote an article for the World Book Encyclopedia about virtual reality. He never became Captain Kirk, but he was able to meet him. He won may over sized stuffed animals at amusement parks. He brought a few of them on stage to prove they were real. He became a Disney Imagineer and helped create the Aladdin project. He also talks a lot about the brick walls that he  encountered while he was trying to achieve his dreams. He says that the brick walls prove how badly we want things. 

Randy Pausch was also involved in a lot of new developments regarding virtual technology. He helped develop a program called Alice that allowed students create virtual worlds and learn programming skills. Alice is being used at many schools and 10% of colleges. He also created a class called Building Virtual Worlds. Students were put into groups and completed the project of building a virtual world. They had 2 weeks to complete the projects. Randy was really impressed with his student's work and said that he would have given them A's if it was a semester project. He also partnered with Don Marinelli to create the Entertainment Technology Center. It partnered computer science and drama students into groups so they could create together. The CTU offered a 2 year Masters degree in Entertainment Technology. 

Project #9

Project #13 - PBL Learning Plan

The Biography Project: Lesson Plan

Video to Students and Parents

Video to Students

Video to Parents

How do we all become learners?

Part of preparing myself to be a teacher is accepting that I will not know everything when I begin teaching. I will be constantly learning from new technology, my peers, and even my students. I think that Michele Bennet had a great example when she learned how to use a new tool from one of her students. When she didn't know how to add an image to padlet, a student volunteered to teach her how. She and the student were both proud of this accomplishment. I think one of my strengths is that I can learn how to  use new tools pretty quickly. It doesn't usually take me too long to figure something out. One of my weaknesses is procrastinating. I always wait until the last minute to try and do everything. During the time I have left in college I plan to find ways to incorporate project based learning in my classroom. There aren't that many PBL examples for PE classes but I'm determined to find and create some that I can use with my students. 

Using QR Codes

QR code to My Blog

I've seen QR codes almost everywhere. You can see them on all kinds of products in grocery stores, restaurants, and other places. I never knew what they for or how to use them. I definitely didn't know that I could create my own QR codes. Michele Bennett's tutorial on how to create a QR code was very simple and easy to do. She uses Record MP3 to create an audio URL. After she copies the URL, she creates a QR code using QR Code Monkey. I think this is very useful for students. They can create QR codes that will take them directly to their work. I think using QR codes would also be beneficial for teachers. Instead of having to type out long websites, teachers could just give students QR codes to scan. They could also be sent home so parents could see what their child is doing in class.

Popplet

Popplet is an app that students can use to capture and organize their ideas. It helps students learn and think visually. Students can capture thoughts, images, images. They can also use Popplet to create relationships between them. Ginger Tuck uses popplet with her students to create a web for a book about careers. They chose to create a web on veterinarians. They included pictures and pages from the book to create their web.

Alabama Virtual Library and Using IMovie 

AVL is the Alabama Virtual Library. It is a website where students can log in and find resources form many different sources. Ginger Tuck used AVL for an assignment with her class. Her students were given a list of transportation methods that would find information on using AVL. Information on AVL can sometimes include videos or audio recordings. Her students had to write a sentence for each different method transportation. You can gain access to the Alabama Virtual Library by visiting any public library.

Elizabeth Davis and Michele Bennett talk about the technology they are using in kindergarten classes. I was really surprised to hear how efficient they were with IMovie. They were spending hours creating and editing their book trailers. It took me hours just to figure out how to use IMovie. I think it's really important to never underestimate what you think your students can do.

Discovery Education Board Builder

The board builder is on the tools that Discovery Education offers. Tammy Shirley used this tool with her students for an assignment about the moon. Her students:

• Watched a video about the moon on Discovery Education
• Wrote facts about the moon
• Worked together building a board on Discovery Education

I really liked that one of the students was involved in the video. She explained how she used Discovery Education and built her board. I think it was a great way to show how much of independent learners her students are becoming.