For project 15 Jamie and I used Google Docs and Google Chat to collaborate. We created and shared an outline of our lesson in Google Docs. We both downloaded SMARTnotebook and created our separate pages for the lesson. Then we shared our saved lesson pages with each other via email. Later we added comments on the Google Docs and added our pages together. I really like the convenience of Google Docs and it definitely helped make the collaboration process go smoothly.
The organized OCD person inside of me loves using Symbaloo to keep all of my new resources and links to teachers' blogs in one place. It's great to have everything in one web and you can even create webs based on subject. I've followed more teachers on Twitter. I've added fellow classmates as friends on Facebook and will continue to communicate and collaborate in the future with them. There really is no end to a PLN. My has grown since beginning this course and will continue to grow for years to come.
Are college students actually reading their text books? Well at Texas A&M professors are getting answers to this million dollar question. With the help of new technology from CourseSmart, faculty at Texas A&M and eight other colleges are tracking students’ reading habits with digital textbooks. CourseSmart creates an evaluation for each individual student and sends it to the instructor. Now professors are able to see how their students’ study habits compare with their grades.
As a future educator I think this technology would be very helpful. I would be able to see if and when my students are opening their textbooks to do a reading assignments or study for a test. Since the program sends evaluations for individual students I would be able to see which of my students need help adjusting their studying habits.
As a student I think CourseSmart would definitely help make me open my textbooks and read them on a regular basis. I will admit I have a tendency to by the required textbooks for a class and either never open it, or I only open it when I’m cramming for a test. I’ve also taken several courses where the professor had a required textbook but quizzes and test where solely based off of their lectures. I think this program would be great to help professors evaluate whether or not they’re students need to buy a $100 book in order to pass their class.
Questions I have for the teacher of the class:
Will students be graded based on their reading reports? Is the information helping you adjust your class instruction?
Questions I have for the students: Does this program force you to open your textbooks more? Do you take hand written notes when you read, or do you use the e-readers highlighter and note program? Do any of you cheat the system and simply open the book and thumb through the pages?
My comment would be that although I think it’s great to see a read-out of your students’ book usage, I think it’s pretty obvious when students aren’t reading based on their grades. The program seems like a waste of college funds in my opinion. Why spend money on a program that tells professors what they should already realize when they grade assignments and tests. Either your struggling students aren’t reading their books or they are.
This week we were asked to view Brian Crosby's TED Talk- Back to the Future. In Mr. Crosby's talk he addresses how today's curriculum is too narrow and doesn't allow room for students to imagine the possibilities. He says this system doesn't allow for schema and students find it hard to imagine what could be when they don't know what is. He goes on to describe how a typical science objective is taught in his class. He describes how he uses technology such as blogs, wikis, flickr, and skype to expand his class's learning experience.
I really enjoyed Mr. Crosby's talk. He's found a great balance between hands-on, in class learning and expanding that knowledge with the help of technology. My favorite part of this video was my realization that Mr. Crosby is also giving his student's a Mr. Miyagi wax-on, wax-off lesson and they don't even realize it. Not only is he teaching the benchmark, he's helping his students learn about new technology and improve their English speaking and writing skills.
Paul Anderson
In Paul Anderson's podcast, Learning Cycle, he describes how he flipped his classroom. He has taken a few different approaches and blended them together to create his blended learning cycle, QUIVERS.
QUestion- Mr. Anderson begins each cycle with a hook question in order to grab student's attention and jump start their interest. Investigate- At this point, students use the Internet and other resources to do some of their own research. Video- Mr. Anderson includes his own podcast for students to watch and review on their own time, freeing up class time to answer questions and review concepts. Elaboration- Here the students go in more depth with research and understanding what they've learned from the past steps. Review- Anderson meets with students to insure they understand what they're learning about. Summary Quiz- Students take a quiz on what they've covered in the cycle only after they've passed the review meeting with Mr. Anderson.
Being a Secondary/Science major, I really like Mr. Anderson's QUIVERS method. Science is definitely not a subject that is easily memorized and burped back. In his video, Mr. Anderson mentions his belief that you've fully learned something when you can explain, teach it to someone else. I completely agree with this and the set up of QUIVERS creates the adequate learning environment for students to achieve that level of understanding. I will definitely be keeping this video in mind when I begin teaching.
Our group, January, has held one in-person meeting to discuss and decide how we would split task for our final project. We plan to make a video tutorial on how to navigate through setting up a blog on blogger. We plan on recording the finished product on Tuesday.
This week we've been assigned the task of creating our own blog post assignment geared toward our own areas of specialty. Being a fan of blogs before taking EDM 310, I've been dying to do a blog post incorporating a very popular topic in the blogging community: Five Things Friday. For those who don't know about five things Fridays, you post five things, topics, blurbs, or random thoughts on your blog every Friday. However, since my area of specialty is science and EDM 310 is a technology class my five things will not be random blurbs, but will be related to technology I'd like to use in my classroom as well as examples of what my future Five Things Fridays posts may consist of.
Instructions
1. View some examples of blogs containing Five Things Friday posts. Feel free to Google and find other examples if you'd like! Life As Lexa- She's a fellow education major studying at Mississippi State and her Five Things Friday posts were my inspiration for the assignment. The Polished Teacher The Brown-Bag Teacher
2. Find and share FIVE subject related topics in a Five Things Friday blog post.
*Your post must be related to the subject matter at head. For example, you can choose to find Five interesting science experiments to talk about, five science questions you'd like to bring up in class discussion, or you could write about five current events happening in out in the field.
3. Be sure to include pictures and links to any resources you used.
Five Things Fridays 1. Google Earth
I've always been obsessed with traveling around the world and seeing new places. However, being a college student I don't have the financial means to make my dream a reality so I've settled with cyber-backpacking with the help of Google Earth. But the great thing about Google Earth is that you're not limited to just Earth! The application actually includes the option to switch between the Earth, Sky, Mars, and the Moon. I'm taking Astronomy right now and have been having a blast searching for the stars and nebula we've been discussing in class. And there are tons of extra links and picture included so your cyber-field trip is basically never ending, much like the Universe. 2. PhET Interactive Simulations- University of Colorado at Boulder
My high school physics teacher actually introduced me to the PhET simulations. He frequently used their simulations to help explain difficult topics. There are several different categories of simulations to choose from and each category contains fun and interactive learning experiences. These simulations definitely helped me grasp the concept at hand and I will definitely be sharing them with my future students.
3. Staying Informed
New discoveries and scientific breakthroughs are happening 24/7, 365 days a year. In order to keep somewhat up-to-date on events, discoveries, and breakthroughs I like to use twitter. I follow tweets from NASA, National Geographic, and the Smithsonian. I've actually created a separate profile where I've only followed science related tweets so that the updates and information is nicely organized together in one place. I'm really excited to share daily Galaxy pictures posted by @dailygalaxy and other interesting topic related tweets with students. If you're not a fan of Twitter, sites such as Science News For Kids, Discovery Kids, and National Geographic Kids are equally as good and student friendly.
4. Did you know?
Starfish(sea stars) have no heart. Maybe that's why the Crown of Thorns Sea Star is causing major problems in The Great Barrier Reef. Check out the video below about reef destruction caused by the Crown of Thorns Sea Stars!
5. Fun Photo
Here's a photo taken by the Hubble space telescope of a star nursery. Here new stars are beginning to form from dense, compact pockets of interstellar gas called evaporating gaseous globules(EGGs)in the Eagle nebula. Source: Hubblesite.org
Mrs. Cassidy In Mrs. Cassidy's video Little Kids, Big Potential she gives viewers a peek into how her first graders are using the Internet and technology in class. Throughout the video the students show how they're using laptops, SMARTboards, blogs, and wikis to expand there learning and improve their writing skills. I think it is amazing how computer proficient Mrs. Cassidy's first graders are. It is wonderful that they are getting the opportunity to start using helpful tools like wikis and skyping experts at such a young age. I really hope that I am lucky enough to be in a school that isn't afraid of today's technology. I definitely would love to have my students have a class blog. It is a great way for the student's to track what they've learned during my class and see how they've improved throughout the year. I also liked that Mrs. Cassidy had a class verbiage. A class web page would be great for communicating with students after school is out. By posting links that I've found to it, I can be sure my students are finding safe and informative information. In her Skype interview with Dr. Strange Mrs. Cassidy mentioned that teachers need to change their way of teaching because the world has changed. I know that students today LOVE technology, I'm one of them, and that if I refuse to embrace that fact then I'm only hurting my students. I agree with Mrs. Cassidy, we have to take advantage of the tools and technology around us in order to keep from handicapping our students. I know it won't always be a walk in the park and there's bound to be a few speed bumps, but that's life and there's usually a lesson to be learned in the process.
For my third C4T I was assigned Jennifer Brokofsky. She is an Instruction Consultant with Saskatoon Public Schools. The first post I read was titled Reading in Mathematics? Absolutely!. In it Mrs. Brokofsky writes about the need to make connections between reading and mathematics. She writes that since both subjects strengthen thinking, it only makes sense that teachers use the same/similar strategies and teaching methods to strengthen thinking and understanding in math that are used in
teaching reading. I commented that I have always struggled with word problems in math. Her comparison chart was very helpful and definitely had me rethinking how I approached reading in math.
The second post I left a comment on was titled Subitizing-A Fundamental Skill For Primary Mathematicians. Mrs. Brokofsky explains that Subitizing is "the ability to instantly see how many in a small collection of items without counting." For example, when you roll a dice and know that it has landed on five without having to count each individual dot. Mrs. Brokofsky writes that subitizing is a fundamental skill for supporting student's understanding of number and ability to perform number operations. I commented that I had never realized how often I subitize in my life and was unaware there was a technical term for the skill. Although I'm not a math education major I found her post interesting and agreed that it is a skill that we should continue to teach.
C4K#5 My fifth C4K assignment was to comment on Spencer's blog post titled Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry. His class had just finished Mildred Taylor's Roll of Thunder, Here My Cry. He wrote that the novel was a little hard to follow,but he became more captivated after reading further.
Hey Spencer, I’m a college student at the University of South Alabama studying to be a teacher. Have you read any other works by Mildred Taylor? This is a good post but make sure you don’t forget to add necessary punctuation so you don’t have any run-on sentences. Sincerely, Paula McKinney He also replied to my comment stating he hasn't read any other novels by Mrs. Taylor. He also said that he too noticed the run-ons in his post and figured someone would catch them.
C4K#6 The next comment I left was for Austin. Austin's post was titled Life 101. The post was about a game that mirrored the board game Life. Austin and his classmates traveled to different stations in their gym learning about salaries, taxes, and the effects certain money choices have on life. My comment to him is below: Hi Austin, My name is Paula, and I’m a student at the University of South Alabama. I really liked that you made sure to explain how the game worked and defined some terms as well. When writing a blog, it’s important to give a small summary to give potential readers a better understanding of what your assignment or activity was. I think it’s great you’re getting to learn how to make smart financial decisions. Speaking from experience, you will definitely appreciate the chance to practice making decisions with saving and spending money. Keep up the great blogging!
C4K#7 In my seventh C4K I commented on Jabezv's blog post Why do we have Easter eggs? He is a7th year student in Auckland, New Zealand. He wrote that we have Easter eggs as a representation of Jesus's resurrection. The egg's shell represents the sealed tomb and breaking the egg represents his resurrection.
Hi Jabezv,
My name is Paula McKinney and I'm a college student at the University of South Alabama in Mobile, Alabama. I have always wondered why we had Easter eggs but never knew the meaning behind them. Thanks for sharing and keep up the great work!
C4K#8 In my 8th C4K I read Laycee's post Intro. to Russian Students. She wrote a little bit about herself and her interests, including that she had never been out of the United States. She also wants to be a nurse in the Navy.
Hi Laycee, my name is Paula and I'm a student at the University of South Alabama in Mobile, Alabama. I too have never been out of the country but I have always wanted to travel to the United Kingdom. I think it's great that Algebra is your favorite subject, not many people like math class. Keep up the great blog!
I really enjoyed Mr. Crosby's talk. He's found a great balance between hands-on, in class learning and expanding that knowledge with the help of technology. My favorite part of this video was my realization that Mr. Crosby is also giving his student's a Mr. Miyagi wax-on, wax-off lesson and they don't even realize it. Not only is he teaching the benchmark, he's helping his students learn about new technology and improve their English speaking and writing skills.
Instructions
For my third C4T I was assigned Jennifer Brokofsky. She is an Instruction Consultant with Saskatoon Public Schools. The first post I read was titled Reading in Mathematics? Absolutely!. In it Mrs. Brokofsky writes about the need to make connections between reading and mathematics. She writes that since both subjects strengthen thinking, it only makes sense that teachers use the same/similar strategies and teaching methods to strengthen thinking and understanding in math that are used in 
C4K#5
