What I Learned This Year

First off I loved what he said about his goal for the year is to “stay positive”. I really need to work on applying that in my daily life. I think it was a really great idea to blog about his first year of teaching to helping other teachers that are just starting out. He was young and inexperienced when he began his first job as an elementary school teacher. One of his first mistakes was thinking that it was all about the teacher. He was so worried about how he was being assessed, and he did not make the lessons student centered. He said that a big mistake teachers make is that they become so concerned with the delivery and they are not checking for student comprehension. In order to be affective you have to be able to let your audience drive your instruction. Another piece of advice he gave was to always be flexible, no lesson is perfect. Communication is the best medicine; it is the best way to resolve an issue in the workplace and in the classroom. Another great piece of advice is to always be reasonable. Sometimes teachers build expectations to high for students and when they do not reach them they become upset. Also you have to worry about setting the expectations to low, the student will not reach their full potential if they are set to low. They are not perfect and neither are we. Also do not be afraid of technology it is a great teaching tool and it will keep students attention. I think it would be great to have a class blog and include technology as much as you can because it will be beneficial for the students. I think the best piece of adv ice he gave was to listen to your students. It is so important to listen and make them feel comfortable around you. Listening to your students will help them in a lot of ways. I really enjoyed this blog, it had some great advice that I will use in the coming years.

Who is Changing What on Wikipedia?

According to the NPR article on Wikipedia and the NPR podcast you cannot trust Wiki! I had no idea. Everything I want to know I turn to Wikipedia. Instead of saying just Google it, I say just Wiki it if you really need to know right now! I cannot believe this, I did not know that Wikipedia could be changed. Also according to this article they can track who is changing Wikipedia and it is not who you think. How did everyone know about this but me? I must have been living under a rock for the last 5 years! The companies, bands, or movie stars you are searching may have enhanced their wikipedia page to make their lives or music sound better or to cover up some of the bad things said about them. Even Wal Mart is making changes to their page! I really do feel quite dumb. My whole family knew about this. I am so glad I never used wikipedia in any of my papers my teacher would have laughed in my face.

Comments 4 Kids

This week my comments 4 kids assignment was quite funny. It was a young boy describing a beach scene that he saw in a picture that he remembered. He seemed like a very sweet little boy and the blog's design was so cute. It had a flower border in these different bright colors and palm tree's all over the blog. It was very eye catching, I really liked it. The content was great too though! I really enjoyed comments 4 kids this week.

Click to visit Shalom's blog.

Practice

Comments 4 Kids

Comments for kids was fun this week, I really enjoyed the blogs I got to read and the videos I got to watch. I am really enjoying this project and I hope the kids receiving the comments are enjoying it as well. The kids this week were very creative and so smart. My daughter enjoyed looking at all the pictures and listening to the students tell their story.

Randy Pausch's Last Lecture

The length of this lecture truly scared me to begin with; I thought I would never watch the whole thing. I thought I would skim through it enough to do my assignment and be done with it, but once I started it I realized it was actually going to be pretty motivating. He starts off talking about how sick he is, he has quite a few tumors and from what I understand they have spread throughout his body. He actually turns his sickness into a pretty funny joke and says sorry to disappoint but he is actually is great health, probably healthier than you! He then tells everyone with home remedies and supplements to stay away that this lecture is not about cancer or his family this lecture is about enabling the dreams of others and your own dreams.
He starts out talking about his crazy childhood dreams and how many he has had come true. There is actually one part in the lecture where he is showing a video of zero gravity where students get to see what it feels like to be up in space. They are all floating and suddenly they shut it off and everyone plummets to the floor. He also adds great quote when he is talking about one of his childhood dreams of being in the NFL. When you are screwing up and no one is saying anything to you or correcting you that mean that they have given up on you which is so true. If people are criticizing you they still care and love you.
Randy Pausch is a professor who has a class where they use virtual reality or virtual worlds to do projects and in the classrooms. The first project that they did using virtual reality there were only two rules no porn and no guns and killing. The boys were out of ideas! When everyone turned in their projects he was blown away because the work was outstanding. The students had five projects and they kept raising the bar with each project. There were 50 students in the class and the day they were presenting their projects there were 95 people in the classroom wanting to see the projects. Kids can have fun while learning something hard. Everyone should be helping others.

Did You Know?

Wow! I think I like this one better than the first one, it speaks my language, cell phones! I already knew that pretty soon everyone will have a smart phone that can surf the web because I work for Sprint and prices are going down on smart phones it almost standard on most phones these days. Your mobile device connection tool or cell phone fits in your pocket now, but in 25 years it will fit inside a blood cell? That is very hard to believe but very cool! One million books are published each year, but a lot of people who have iphones just download their favorite’s books onto their phone and read them there. 93% of adults have cell phones and I believe it! I cannot believe that there are 65,000 apps for an iphone! That is a ridiculous amount! It is insane the amount of text messages teens send a month, I would have never guessed over two thousand. I can believe that 250 million people visit YouTube and that these web sites were not even around six years ago. I think that everyone has been rick roll'd, that was funny! I cannot believe that 2 million people have T.V.'s in their bathrooms; I have to admit I would like one in my bathroom as well. I can imagine that print circulation is going way down, a lot of magazines are going out of business and I think our local paper is struggling if I am not mistaken. I really enjoyed this video! They are always very informative and enlightening!

How to Appear Technologically Literate....

Is It Okay To Be A Technologiclaly Illiterate Teacher by Karl Fish

This award winning blog regarding teachers and their technological abilities states emphatically that teachers need to be tech literate, that the administration and boards governing schools should be held accountable when teachers are not tech literate and universities or colleges graduating teachers that are not tech savvy should have their licences revoked.

His take, obviously, is that it is not okay to be a techologically illiterate teacher. Members of the educational community stating proudly that they are technically stunted and expect others to pick up their slack only slow the progression of education. Teachers need to be responsible for what goes on in their classroom including content, management and technology.

It's Not About Technology by Kelly Hines

Mrs. Hines makes many good points regarding how to use technology within the classroom. Her major point to me is that no matter how much technology is poured into any one classroom or on any one student, unless there is content being taught, learning will not happen.

Her first point regarding teachers must be learners is very true. Just because you receive a degree in any one area does not mean that more learning and investigating will not benefit you as a teacher. Using technology to gain more knowledge and be a continual learner is the correct use of the tool.

Always looking for new and innovative ways in which students learn is important. But that means the teacher is actively pursuing new technologies, methods and directions. That is what being a 21st century teacher means, with or without the use of technology.

Michael Wesch: A Vision of Students Today

I thought that this video was really good because it talked about some of the struggles we go through as college students. College is expensive, hard, and time consuming, but it is supposed to be hard and time consuming to get a college degree. This is my first semester back to college in two years and it has actually been a wonderful experience. I love all of my classes and my classmates, but I do have an extreme amount of homework in each class and I am trying to work part time. I work probably 38 hours a week so it is like a full time job, oh yeah and I also have a 2 year old!
My teachers are great, and most all of my teachers know my name. I am in specialized classes so the class size is going to be smaller. My books were very expensive but what has really been the most expensive for me is the fee's I have had to pay to take a couple of tests to apply for candidacy. It is rediculous! I really enjoy coming to school everyday, I have learned to take only a few classes in a row so I do not get burnt out over a long time period. I do own a laptop but I do not bring it to class, but I can do facebook on my phone. I do play on my phone sometimes in class, but I try not to. I could only add good things to the movie because I am having a good time, it gets me out of work and I enjoy anything besides going to work.

Comments 4 Kids

I really enjoyed the blog that I had to read for comments 4 kids. It was very funny and creative. I think that the blog that I read was written by a boy in middle school. It was was about police and fingers being cut off, but it had a little bit of humor in it as well. I really like this assignment we are doing, I think it is really neat. I hope I have more interesting blogs to come!

Comments 4 Kids

My daugher and I really enjoyed commenting on the blogs. They were really cute! I think that those students are very lucky to be able to learn about blogs and technology at such a young age. They were able to post science projects, pics from their school fair, and games they like to play to help them remember their times tables. I think it is a really fun way to learn and hope these kids enjoy our comments. I know my daughter and I enjoyed the blogs and we are going to continue looking at the blog and commenting on the stuff we like.

Should all Teachers be Technologically Literate?

I think this podcast was very good. It would be great if they had opposing views on the podcast and maybe a teacher that is tech savvy and one that was not to talk about why or why not they want to use technology in the classroom. I think it is very important for teachers to be technologically literate. I think it is great that everyone introduces themselves and tells a little bit about themselves and their major. I think it great that they site everything and say where this question kind of originated from. I think that resources are important because some schools do not have the same resources as others. They need to have the equipment and if the schools cannot provide it they said in the podcast where you could find it. I think this blog is great because they are having a discussion about it, and they all have great points. I like this podcast much better than the other one I just listened to because they have different views and they are voicing their opinions and it is very interesting. I like it how one person expressed the opinion that if you are not technologically literate you will not survive as a teacher which I think could be true. I like how they are stating their arguments and then discussing them. You just have to be creative in the classroom and I think keeping up with technology is very important. I actually really enjoyed this podcast.

Use of iTunes in Education

I think this podcast was great. It was a little monotone and they repeated the information they were giving a couple times but it was great information and I actually did learn quite a bit from it. They made some great points such as that itunes is free and it is also interesting to students. I think it would be a great way for students to learn and it would also keep their attention. In this podcast they all introduced themselves and told their major. It was great how they said everything that itunes is capable of, and how to get it if you do not have it. Giving websites is a great way to help teachers find the information they need to create a podcast. I would make this better by maybe throwing a little humor or something to make it a little more interesting. I think that using i tunes in the classroom is great because kids are always wanting to learn about new technology and I think it is so wonderful for teachers to keep up with the latest technology and use it in their classroom. Also if you do lectures your students can put it onto their ipod and their parents can be involved as well. They also mentioned that podcasts are great for group projects and they are cheap! This podcast has a lot of information and I think it was very good.