My group for the final project consisted of myself, Erin Holton, and Dustin Barsh. For our final project we decided to make a trailer for EDM 310 much like the book trailers we made. We thought it would be nice to really let the future students know exactly what their getting into! We used pictures of several of the websites and programs we use. Hope you enjoy!
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Summary Post for C4K # 7, 8, 9, 10
C4K # 7
This comments for kids assignment was special in that we would be commenting on Mr. McClung's blog Mr. McClung's World. Mr. McClung is an 8th grade teacher in Fayetteville, Arkansas and this is his third year teaching. I was assigned to read a post entitled Club Day in Mr. McClung's Lessons Learned section. In this post he told about something his school holds once a month called club day. Students pick a club at the beginning of the year. Mr. McClung is in charge of a Wii Sports club. One of his main reasons for liking club day is that it gives teachers a chance to build stronger relationships with their students. Having strong relationships with your students is so important and can really help grow learning potential in the classroom.
C4K # 8
My student for this week was Sira in grade six. Sira only had one post on her blog at the time and it was a welcome post just stating that she was new to blogging. You can visit Sira's blog here. I have visited Sira's blog since then and she has added on more post about things she likes to do on school holidays. I just asked Sira a few questions about school and encouraged her to keep blogging. I haven't got a response yet, but hopefully I'll get one soon!
C4K # 9
For this assignment we were asked to comment on Mrs. Yollis' Classroom Blog. Mrs. Yollis is a third grade teacher who is active in technology integration in the schools and she firmly believes in having a class blog and teaching her student how to creat quality comments. The blog post we were assigned to read was Quality Commenting During Family Blogging Month. In this post Mrs. Yollis posted examples of quality comments that had been left on the class blog, as well as individual students' blogs. April is Family Blogging Month and this post was to encourage more comments!
C4K # 10
For this comment I was assigned to one of Mrs. Yollis' third grade students Grace. Grace, along with two other students in her class, wrote EDM 310 a thank you note for all the comments we left their class. You can see their thank you note here. In the note they explained: why they have a classroom blog, how they earned their own blog, and why we should all get class blogs when we begin teaching. The specific post on her blog that I read was My New Mascot. In this post Grace introduced her 9-year-old stuffed animal bunny. She told a little bit about bunny's abilities like dancing and playing the piano. It was a cute and very creative post; she even included pictures of bunny doing her favorite things!
This comments for kids assignment was special in that we would be commenting on Mr. McClung's blog Mr. McClung's World. Mr. McClung is an 8th grade teacher in Fayetteville, Arkansas and this is his third year teaching. I was assigned to read a post entitled Club Day in Mr. McClung's Lessons Learned section. In this post he told about something his school holds once a month called club day. Students pick a club at the beginning of the year. Mr. McClung is in charge of a Wii Sports club. One of his main reasons for liking club day is that it gives teachers a chance to build stronger relationships with their students. Having strong relationships with your students is so important and can really help grow learning potential in the classroom.
C4K # 8
My student for this week was Sira in grade six. Sira only had one post on her blog at the time and it was a welcome post just stating that she was new to blogging. You can visit Sira's blog here. I have visited Sira's blog since then and she has added on more post about things she likes to do on school holidays. I just asked Sira a few questions about school and encouraged her to keep blogging. I haven't got a response yet, but hopefully I'll get one soon!
C4K # 9
For this assignment we were asked to comment on Mrs. Yollis' Classroom Blog. Mrs. Yollis is a third grade teacher who is active in technology integration in the schools and she firmly believes in having a class blog and teaching her student how to creat quality comments. The blog post we were assigned to read was Quality Commenting During Family Blogging Month. In this post Mrs. Yollis posted examples of quality comments that had been left on the class blog, as well as individual students' blogs. April is Family Blogging Month and this post was to encourage more comments!
C4K # 10
For this comment I was assigned to one of Mrs. Yollis' third grade students Grace. Grace, along with two other students in her class, wrote EDM 310 a thank you note for all the comments we left their class. You can see their thank you note here. In the note they explained: why they have a classroom blog, how they earned their own blog, and why we should all get class blogs when we begin teaching. The specific post on her blog that I read was My New Mascot. In this post Grace introduced her 9-year-old stuffed animal bunny. She told a little bit about bunny's abilities like dancing and playing the piano. It was a cute and very creative post; she even included pictures of bunny doing her favorite things!
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Project 15
Hey guys, for this project I did a book trailer for The Last Basselope by Berkeley Breathed. This is an adorable kids book about the almost extinct Basselope, which looks a whole lot like a hound dog with antlers. Your child will be guaranteed to love this book. It has a rather surprising end!
Blog Post 12
For this blog post I was assigned to create my own blogging assignment. For this assignment I thought about what we haven't already tackled in EDM 310 in regards to technology, there's not much, but I did think of one thing we haven't talked about and that is YouTube. YouTube, which was created in April 2005, is a popular site which allows people to upload and share their videos. There is no doubt what a huge success YouTube has become exceeding 2 billion views a day, but does it offer any educational value?
Read YouTube: The Next Major Teaching Tool? , written by Anushka Mohideen about the possible educational benefits of YouTube. Also read The Ultimate Guide to YouTube for Educators , which gives a tutorial for using YouTube in the classroom.
What are your reactions to these videos? Do you believe YouTube has any educational value? If so, to what extent?
Progress Report on Final Project
For the final project my partner is Erin Holton. We talked about some different ideas for the project, including maybe a EDM 310 help video. We will be meeting later this week to finalize a topic and get started! Check out either one of our blogs May 1st to see the finished project!
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Teach Someone Project 14
For my "Teach Someone" project I taught my son, Micah, how to make playdough. We had so much fun doing it and it made for some good mom-son bonding time. Enjoy!
Blog Post 11
Mrs. Cassidy's Class
This week I watched a video from a Ms. Cassidy's Class out of Moose Jaw, Canada entitled Little Kids...Big Potential. In this video the students from her class gave a run down of what they do in their class. Technology is definitely being used in this classroom, but seems to be serving a very educational purpose.
The students each create their own blog to use for things such as writing and posting artwork. These students receive comments from their parents, siblings, and people from around the world. What a confidence boost for these kids to know that what they are doing is seen by other people. It seems like it would be good motivation for learning.
They also use wikis in their classroom to answer and learn about questions they may have. I can definitely see implementing this in my own classroom. As you know I am going to school to be a math teacher and I'm sure my students will have plenty of questions I am not able to answer and I would appreciate the connections wiki can create.
She also uses a class website for her students to access. I also would really like to implement this in my own classroom. I could use this website to share various resources with my class and they can access it whenever they like.
You can find out more about Ms. Cassidy's classroom, in her Skype interview with the fall 2010 EDM 310 class, here.
This week I watched a video from a Ms. Cassidy's Class out of Moose Jaw, Canada entitled Little Kids...Big Potential. In this video the students from her class gave a run down of what they do in their class. Technology is definitely being used in this classroom, but seems to be serving a very educational purpose.
The students each create their own blog to use for things such as writing and posting artwork. These students receive comments from their parents, siblings, and people from around the world. What a confidence boost for these kids to know that what they are doing is seen by other people. It seems like it would be good motivation for learning.
They also use wikis in their classroom to answer and learn about questions they may have. I can definitely see implementing this in my own classroom. As you know I am going to school to be a math teacher and I'm sure my students will have plenty of questions I am not able to answer and I would appreciate the connections wiki can create.
She also uses a class website for her students to access. I also would really like to implement this in my own classroom. I could use this website to share various resources with my class and they can access it whenever they like.
You can find out more about Ms. Cassidy's classroom, in her Skype interview with the fall 2010 EDM 310 class, here.
Friday, April 1, 2011
Comments for Teachers Summary Post 3
Blended Instruction with Blogs and Wikis for Young Learners
My teacher for these past few weeks has been Greta Sandler. Greta teaches English as a second language at an elementary school. She grew up in Argentina speaking Spanish and feel in love with the English language at an early age. The first post I read was telling her followers that she would be presenting an award for Blended Instruction with Blogs and Wikis for Young Learners at the CO11 Free Online Conference. She believes blogs and wikis are amazing tools that can help to engage students in learning. She also believes that they are powerful tools to help get parents more involved in their child's learning. I couldn't agree more. I think things like blogs and wikis can really interest parent and they have the ability to check in on their child's education anytime they desire. I really don't think parents, for the most part, aren't interested in their child's education I just think they are busy.
Creating Safe Learning Environments
For this post Greta shared a slideshow featured in a presentation she did for the New Teachers Reform Symposium. This presentation was on creating safe learning environments for students. In the presentation she describes a safe learning environment to be a place where students feel comfortable enough to participate, are motivated to learn, and feel confident enough to give their best. This is the kind of atmosphere every classroom should have. Why they don't I'm not quite sure, but it is definitely something every teacher should strive to create. If a child has a safe learning environment it opens the door to a new level of learning.
Greta gives a list of things teachers can do to create this type of environment in their classroom. Here is the list:
My teacher for these past few weeks has been Greta Sandler. Greta teaches English as a second language at an elementary school. She grew up in Argentina speaking Spanish and feel in love with the English language at an early age. The first post I read was telling her followers that she would be presenting an award for Blended Instruction with Blogs and Wikis for Young Learners at the CO11 Free Online Conference. She believes blogs and wikis are amazing tools that can help to engage students in learning. She also believes that they are powerful tools to help get parents more involved in their child's learning. I couldn't agree more. I think things like blogs and wikis can really interest parent and they have the ability to check in on their child's education anytime they desire. I really don't think parents, for the most part, aren't interested in their child's education I just think they are busy.
Creating Safe Learning Environments
For this post Greta shared a slideshow featured in a presentation she did for the New Teachers Reform Symposium. This presentation was on creating safe learning environments for students. In the presentation she describes a safe learning environment to be a place where students feel comfortable enough to participate, are motivated to learn, and feel confident enough to give their best. This is the kind of atmosphere every classroom should have. Why they don't I'm not quite sure, but it is definitely something every teacher should strive to create. If a child has a safe learning environment it opens the door to a new level of learning.
Greta gives a list of things teachers can do to create this type of environment in their classroom. Here is the list:
- Make Connections
- Clear Rules and Expectations
- Build Trusting Relationships
- Our Class, Not A Class
- It's OK to Make Mistakes
- It's OK to Have Fun
- Working Together With Parents
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