Final Reflection

Additional Assignment 5

I enjoyed reading more of Tom Johnson's blog. I definitely feel like I understand him more as a teacher than I did the first time that I read his blog. It took me a couple of times to really understand his use of language. He uses a lot of metaphors and is very sarcastic. I like this about him though. I like the methods he uses while teaching and those that he doesn't use, no bribing or scaring. I think that he has a lot of interesting things to say and I am glad that he has shared them with us.

Project 13: Smartboard Lesson

Project 16

For Project 16, we did a slideshow depicting the different technologies through the generations.  Enjoy!

Final Report on My PLN

I have really enjoyed using to Symbaloo to creat my PLN. On my PLN I have The Facebook and Twitter as social networking sites. I am also following quite a few people whose blogs I have enjoyed reading and would like to continue to follow after this class. These people's blogs have very useful information on them in my opinion. Some of these blogs include:
Matthew Needleman, Jeff Utecht and his blog "The Thinking Stick", Mr. Clung's blog, Dorothy Burt's blog "Manaiakalani", and Eric Langhourst's blog. I also have a few other sites on here which I was introduced to from this class and they include The ALEX website, The ACCESS website, the Google Squared website, and the Wolfram Alpha website. I hope that through my PLN I can keep in touch with these people and continue to follow them and gain knowledge that will help me in the field of education.

Summary Post C4K 9-11

I love reading the kids blogs because they are so different...you will never find two that are alike.

The first blog that I looked at was Phoebe's and she was in Gaudet 60 but I did not know her grade level. She wrote about her Halloween experience in her post. She told a story of how she went to a party and at the party there was someone dressed up as a joker that kept trying to scare her and her friends. She said that it was annoying because the person was not scary and that she just had bad breath. I think that this is so funny because from the whole night of Halloween that is what stuck out to her the most.

The next blog that I read was from Mrs. Melito's Class and I read Kelly A's blog. In the post that I read Kelly informed me about a mathematician named Andre Weil. He was a very talented mathematician and did most of his work in the area of algebraic geometry. Weil taught at a Muslim school in India, he was an author and then finally taught at Princeton. She had very good information in her post and I enjoyed learning about him.

The last post that I read was from Mrs. Huebner's Class and I read Amy's blog. In her post she had written a story called The Wild Doberman. This story was about the journey of a dog from one owner to another. The dog had run away from its first owner to what he thought was an abandon house but it turned out that the house was not abandoned. The house had an older couple that lived in it and they loved their new dog. I enjoyed reading Amy's story because she used her imagination to write it.

Summary Post C4T #4

I followed Matthew Needleman's blog titled "Creating Lifelong Learners." I really enjoyed this blog and all of the information that Mr. Needleman was able to share with me. Through this blog Mr. Needleman offers elementary teachers practical and useful tips. I read two of his posts, the first "3 ways to Download Movies from YouTube." This post gave three tips for downloading videos from YouTube to use in your classroom. He informed me of two ways the first being Zamzar.com. He suggested to use this one for only downloading a few movies and then he suggested to use browser plug-ins such as Download Helper for Firefox or Download Youtube for Safari. He says that these are best when you are trying to download a lot of movies. I have not needed to download very many movies from YouTube but I was glad to know of these tools for when I may need to.
The second post that I read of Mr. Needleman's was "Six Ways Teachers Can Improve Education This Year." I really enjoyed reading this post because it had some great tips on it that you may not always think about doing. His first tip was to greet your students at the door each morning. I think that this is a must for any teacher and if you are a teacher and do not do this you should be ashamed of yourself. In my opinion, this is something that starts anyone's day off in the right direction. His second tip was to eat in the faculty lounge. This to me was something that I would have never thought about but once he made his point about why it made perfect sense. Mr. Needleman says that if you don't eat with your faculty it is hard to be a "family" and that all teachers in a school are a "family" and this brings them closer together. His third tip was to teach authentic writing. His fourth tip was to teach art as a discipline. I fully agree with this idea as well. It is not enough to teach art only one day a week. Art allows students to be themselves and use their imagination and their creativity and this leads to higher level thinking and learning. It is crazy to me that so many schools do not allow any time for this now. It is a must in schools and should be used DAILY! His fifth tip was to incorporate multimedia into every lesson. This, too, is a must. We, as teachers, can only reach so many students by just lecturing but when we offer the information in multiple ways we are able to reach more of our students. His final tip was to teach test prep 2 minutes every day. This idea is one that I had not thought about but is a great one. We expect our students to do well on standardized tests but don't really ever prepare them to take them. Mr. Needleman says that we should teach them how to take these type tests.
I think that all teachers should read this post because it is very informative and useful. I will try to incorporate all of these ideas into my classroom when I am teaching and think that all teachers should do so as well!

Blog Post 13

For this blog post we were supposed to browse and explore the resources available to us on websites such as ALEX and ACCESS.  I really enjoyed doing this because these were sites that I knew existed but had never really taken the time to explore.  ALEX is a website that makes many resources available to the teachers in Alabama.  It was all of the state requirements and courses of study for education for all age groups and it also has an abundant supply of sample lesson plans.  This is great because it allows teachers to share their ideas with other teachers throughout the state.  ALEX also has a Professional Learning tab in which teachers can go and see what continuing education classes are being offered throughout the state and it also has links to where teachers can find new tips and tricks about the latest technology.  I would think that most teachers find this site very resourceful in their planning and I know that I will one day too! 

ACCESS is a site that I was a little less familiar with than ALEX.  The ACCESS site is a site geared more for students to use as a way of obtaining an equally challenging education no matter what the situation is.  The site says that their goal is to offer equal access to high quality instruction to improve student achievement through distance learning opportunities.  I think that this is a great site for students because it helps to bring opportunites for education to all different parts of the state.
I am really glad to see that the state is trying to provide multiple resources to our students and teachers to better the overall education of this state.  I hope that they continue to strive to do so more and more as time goes on.