My farewell

Well Dr. Strange and everyone else, it has been a great semester and it is very hard to believe that this is coming to a close. I have been truly blessed by being in this class and been able to learn everything I did. This blog will remain active and I will continue to write in it as well as my professional blog. Follow me if you want to keep up to date on this. I hope everyone has had a great semester and a safe and Merry Christmas!!!

EDM 310 reflection

1. Throughout this class we have learned about many things such as blogs, presentations, google, podcasts, videocasts, and many other things. Each of these things has a special place in our heads as we will take bits and pieces and put them to use in our teaching. I learned a whole lot of new things and relearned and got new information on some things I already knew about. I came into this class with a pre-hatred for google with really no reason and I now love google and all of its uses. iTunesU I found to be very useful. Everything we covered in class with the exception of Twitter, I have found to be very useful in my life, not only in my becoming a teacher but in my daily life as well and I hope to continue my education on each of these things.
2. In this class, I would have liked to learn more about Google Earth and all that google has to offer, even though I know it is a lot.
3. There really is nothing in this class that I learned that I wish I had not learned. Everything I learned was and is beneficial to my becoming a teacher.
4. This class really did excite me for many reasons but one main reason was that I learned so many new things that I might not have ever learned elsewhere. I learned the importance of blogging and the usefulness of it. There were the low points in the class but as a whole, it was exciting.
5. There really wasn’t anything in this class that was “intellectually challenging.” I understood or caught on to everything we did in the class.
6. There were times that I was bored but in all honesty, it was because I did not have the motivation to do some things. If I had the motivation, then I would not have been bored at all. I just lacked the motivation at times to do the work.
7. The thing I would change about this class is something that you discussed at the beginning and that was making it into a lab class and coming to the classroom only when needed, there were numerous times where I felt like if I missed class then it would not be a big deal because there would be instructions on the class blog on how to do it. I really do feel like this should be like a lab course.
8. I do believe I am Technologically Literate at the moment. I would love to someday be greatly literate but for right now I think I am in the medium category, all thanks to this class!
9. I will improve my technological literacy by continuing my education in technology. I will continue researching and following some of the blogs that we learned about in the class. I will not only research and follow but I will continue to learn and practice.

Project 11

Podcast

Our podcast for a comparison on "smart" cell phones. click here to view our podcast.

My PLN

At the beginning of the semester when we went over a PLN (Personal Learning Network) I was very confused and thought to myself, that I'll never ever use this and just wrote it off completely. I was later thinking about it and decided to give it some more thought. Now my PLN is no where near the length of Dr. Stranges' but he has been doing this a lot longer than I have. I do not have a twitter account and honestly do not want one, but maybe one day I will. Right now, the basis of my PLN is my facebook. On my list of friends is family, classmates, old friends, coworkers. As my career grows, I will add to my PLN and make it more beneficial to me but as of right now, I'll stick using my facebook list of friends as my PLN.

comments4kids

I really enjoyed comments4kids. It was always so interesting and fun to see what other students are learning around the world. It also made me realize how many teachers are actually using the web and technology to teach their students. Reading other students blogs from across the world was really inspiring and I have gotten great ideas from these teachers and hope to use them in my classroom when I become a teacher. I think that Kaia was my favorite as I’m sure she was a favorite of most. All in all, comments4kids was one of the greatest things we did in this class and I’m so happy that we were all a part of other students blogs.

New Classroom Rules

New Classroom Rules:
The Education Innovation website has offered some new rules to apply in the classroom. Here are my two favorites on the list.

1. "Leave your seat only when necessary, which should be often to go collaborate with others or demonstrate something to the class." -Education Innovation
I like this rule because it's important for students to work with each other. I remember being in school and not being able to get out of our seats at all unless it was to ask the teacher something at the desk and I have always thought that it is important for students to work together and share ideas with each other. Not only does this help students to learn the material, but it also helps develop social skills.

2. "Know what you're supposed to be learning, why, and what you will do with the knowledge." -Education Innovation
Students have a tendency to just study the material for a test, and then completely forget all the information after the course is over. I know this firsthand, especially when the information is not really interesting; students just memorize it for a test and then forget about it right after the test. I try not to do this because then I can’t recall the information when needed. I try really hard now to figure out what I’m going to do with this knowledge and then I try to use it.

To view other classroom rules, click here.

Seven Brilliant Things/Stupid mistakes

Seven Stupid Mistakes/Seven Brilliant Things
Mr. Johnson wrote a list of seven stupid mistakes, and seven brilliant things that are used in the classroom. Many of his points are legitimate, and very true. I picked two of what I thought to be the most important from each of the lists.
Here are two from the seven stupid mistakes:
1."Not supervising computer-using students." I picked this one as my number 1 choice as the most important mistake. I picked this because it is necessary for teachers to monitor what students are doing online and especially in the classroom. When I was in high school, if any student was caught on any website that was not on the list of “appropriate” websites, we got a zero for that class, not just for the day. When I was in high school, facebook and myspace were not really heard of but now that those are very popular I think it is very important for teachers to supervise the computers because a child who is not allowed a myspace at home may create one at school and something bad could happen to the child such as going to meet someone they met online and then they get killed or something else and I think that would be on the teacher and the school for not properly supervising what is going on.
2. "Thinking technology in schools will go away." Technology is here to stay, go get over it! There is no way a person can get through without some knowledge of the technology used today. Students today know more about technology and some teachers may not know about technology, therefore they do not use it or try to just use a little of it and that is only hurting the students. Technology is here to stay and you can’t change that. Click here to view the rest of the Stupid Mistakes.

Seven Brilliant Things:

1. "Accept the role of a co-learner." I think this is very brilliant. It is very important for teachers to have an open mind at all times and always be willing to learn new things about teaching. A teacher that is closed minded and thinks they know everything is only damaging the students. I fully believe that a person, teacher or not, never stops learning.
2. "Empower kids with technology." Teach your students how to use technology and learn with them, if you don’t know how to do something, learn with the students. Just like the above statement, be a co-learner. If you don’t teach your students, then who is going to? I know you will want your students to succeed in life so give them the tools to succeed! Click here to view the rest of the Brilliant things.