PLN Final Project

Here is my PLN final project. If you look closely you can see I have each section organized into fours and organized accordingly. The right side of the PLN is all my extra recreational sites I like to look at. The top middle are my email accounts and social networking sites. The middle bottom is my EDM class sites and medical sites. The left is all of my educational sites I like to visit! This by far was my favorite project and I will continue to use it, because it is so convenient.

Blog Post #14

1. Why did you miss the metaphor in Tom Johnson's post, or, if you "hit the nail on the head", why do you think you understood the metaphor and why do you think that others in the class missed the metaphor?
     I completely missed the metaphor in Tom Johnson's post mainly because I just wasn't paying attention. If I would have put into consideration that we are in a class built around technology, then I probably would have noticed that the pencils were actually the computers. That really explains why I was so confused when reading the post. I didn't really understand what the problem was with the principal getting mad about pencils. I do remember for a second thinking maybe it had to do with something else, but computers never clicked in my head. It all makes sense now, and I do think taking computers home seem scary and tricky but it can help the students. Suprisingly enough not all students have a computer at home, so if they can take them home then they can continue learning about technology.


2. What metaphors have you encountered since I asked you to create a log of them?
      These are some that I have heard lately-  "You are my sunshine", "I'm so hungry I might eat my arm off", "I look like trash", "I'm so tired, I am going to roll over and die", "She's poison", "it's like a zoo in here", "I would walk a mile on broken glass to fall at your feet." "She's shaped like a bottle", "I just ate a cow". These are just a few of the metaphors that we have all heard at least one time. I heard a lot in songs, actually that's pretty much all songs are is a bunch of metaphors. This post would be a mile long if I wrote down every metaphor I have heard in music recently. We hear metaphors all day everyday, we just don't always realize that they are matephors.

3. What other things can we do as educators to help our students to understand and to use metaphors?
       Well for starters, I think I need to start off with myself making sure I can recognize metaphors. I should have been able to target that metaphor when reading it, but I didn't have an open mind when I was doing the assignment. I had a one track mind and that was read the post and respond. As educators we can start by giving fun examples to students to help them understand what exactly they are. I remember learning metaphors with a cut and dry example and that was the rule for it and what was in the book. I remember learning the difference between similies and metaphors and to notice words such as "like" in between the words. It obviously didn't help too much, because I completely missed it. Kids always remember things when they have done activities with them and the lesson is made fun! Not just with metaphors, but with everything we teach our students, there needs to be fun involved.
4. Why do we use metaphors?
       We use metaphors as a way of comparing something and an exaggeration. Metaphors are also used to be humerous, because you will compare your hunger to eating a cow. I know I have said lots of metaphors that have made people laugh because they are so over exaggerated. They can be used to be serious, poets always use metaphors and compare them to serious things such as the world, sun, moon. They are also very mysterious, and are used to keep the reader confused about what exactly the story is about.

I really enjoyd this post, because it has made me have an open mind when reading or listening to things to see if metaphors are there. Metaphors can make a story have a complete other meaning if we don't pay attention to them.

Blog Post #14

For Blog Post #14 we looked at the ALEX-Alabama Learning Exchange. What a great website with lots of valuable information for teachers. I looked through the different subjects and looked through the learning standard rubrics of what was expected for each grade level. I looked especially at the Technology Education standards. I started with the K-2 grade level and things such as familiarity of the keyboard, mouse and monitor, position of your hands with the keyboard and computer were the requirements. I then looked at levels 9-12 and the requirements were more like learning how to access data and familiarity with the computer softwares. I then went on to look at the section with podcasts that have been uploaded about different subjects. There was a video by some students in Fairhope about how to use Microsoft Word 2003 and how set up your word for MLA format papers. It was a very useful video created by the students, because I know until I took a computer class I was pretty much clueless on how to do certain things with Microsoft Word. ALEX is really helpful in giving details about all the standards required by the state of Alabama. When you look at the rubrics, if you notice to the left there are hyperlinks that will take you to lesson plans that have to do with the certain standard.

ACCESS was designed to give all students an equal opportunity to distance learning such as foreign languages and technology in the classroom. One of the first objectives is to enhance technology in the classroom for the teachers and students to help better instruction. Another objective is to provide additional courses and electives for students to help meet individual educational goals. It is also intended to provide a comprehensive curriculum, which includes useful 21st century skills. There is also an objective to develop professional devolopment in technology for the people involved in ACCESS Distance Leanring. I noticed that alot of the objectives all pertain to the students and teachers having access to technology. It seems that ACCESS objective is to promote equality for all students in the public school system and also prepare students for the future. It seems that they are very aware that technology is in our future and the students need to learn as much about it as possible to be prepared!

C4K #7-10

C4K #7:
   For C4K #7 I was assigned to a post called "Haikus and History" on Mr. McClung's class blog. He had a history lesson on the Trail of Tears and had the students make haikus about the Trail of Tears from what they learned. He posted some of the student's work on the post. On this post it gave a brief history of the Trail of Tears and what exactly happened along with a picture. Mr. McClung then showed some of the student's haikus. The haikus were only a few sentences long, but got the point across of what happened in the Trail of Tears. I was so impressed with Mr. McClung's class blog and his students; he really knows what he's doing with his students!

C4K#8:
   For C4K #8 I was assigned to Mrs. Pike's classblog for Year 6 at Epping Heights. I was assigned to the student Cohen, but when I went back to look over it again I couldn't access his blog. I looked over the rest of the blog and left a comment. The students were learning about the rainforest at the beggining of April and they made this thing on "photopeach" with pictures of them doing tasks that have to deal with rainforests. They picture show would have pictures of the student's art work, blogging, workin together in the class, and other activities that go along with rainforest. I am going to go look up this photopeach, because I thought it was a really cool way to display your pictures!

C4K #9
   For C4K #9 we were assigned to Mrs. Yollis's class blog for our assignment. Mrs. Yollis reminded me alot of Mr. McClung, because they both have their students really involved in blogging. All of the students had great blogs that were very detailed and all correct spelling, of course! We watched the video on blogging and if I didn't know how to use blogs, the video would have been very helpful in how to blog. It was helpful to watch the video anyways though, because we learned how she likes for people to leave comments on their post. I never really payed attention that on firefox it shows you when your misspelling a word. I guess I never noticed the difference compared to what internet explorer does. I looked through the blog and I read one of the posts about copyrighting and she did a really good job of using an example of the student's art work with other people's names on it. The children were in the picture with mad faces because their art work had someone else's name on it. I just thought it was a great example that it's not okay to copy someone else's work. I also like the HTML code post, it was really helpful because I have a really hard time with the HTML codes. I always manage to break the code and it won't let me post. I can't ever figure out what I am doing wrong. She asked us if we thought blogging has an effect on your writing skills? I think it helps the students use their writing skills, because if their teacher requires it to all be correct then they are getting practice. The students don't have to write essays to get practice and prove they know their grammatical "rules". They can use their blogs to show their teachers they know the information. I know that I pay attention to it, especially on her blog. I made sure I was spelling everything right, because as future teachers we should be modeling correct spelling and pronuciation.

C4K #10-
   For C4K # 10 I was assigned to Miriam, one of Mrs. Yollis's students. The post I read was about her going to the Farmers Market and getting to try all of the fruits that were native to the island. They got a chance to cut open and try all of the different fruits, I wish I could do that with every food. I always say that I wish I could just try everything on the menu. On Miriam's post she listed numerous fruits with a picture and descriptions. She really knew a lot of information about all of the fruits she tried and had great pictures to go along with them. She had a picture of a star fruit and I think that one would be my favorite, because when you cut the fruit it is in the shape of a star. Miriam said that the star fruit was her favorite, because of it's shape and it was really sweet. The island really has some interesting looking fruit to eat, some of it I would have never throught it was a fruit, because it looked more like a flower.  The only fruit I had heard of or tasted was the avacoda. Miriam's post was probably the most detailed and well layed out blog I have looked at. When I first looked at the post I thought it was just talking about one fruit, but I scrolled down and there was at least ten more fruits that she wrote about.

I really enjoyed doing the C4K this semester, it's great to talk to people around the world, especially young students. When I become a teacher, I am going to try to get my students started with blogging. It might be hard if the computer access is limited, but I will work with what I have! I am really excited, because I know that blogging and technology is such an awesome tool in the classroom. There's so much to learn and now we can talk to other students and teachers around the world to learn even more. I think students blogging with other students around the world makes it exciting to learn for them. I know I would get so excited to be able to talk to other students in another country. Thanks for this oppurtunity!                                                      

Progress Report on Final Project

Me and my partner, Trey Moehler have looked over Dr. Strange's suggestions on what to do for our final project. We are deciding between a couple of ideas, between involving teachers and students and teaching them with technology. We haven't decided which one to choose, but I think teaching a teacher about technology could be really useful for them to teach their students. As we have seen in many of the videos we have watched, more teachers need to be technological literate!

Blog Post 12

Social Media in the classroom- Watch this video by Eric Langhorst on how Social Media can be used in the classroom through technology. This video is very helpful in describing how to make use of twitter, facebook, flickr, and other social media sites to use in the classroom. This video is about his history class and how they can use the social media to learn and discuss history with people from all over the world the social media.

I really enjoyed this video and I think ya'll will find it very helpful if you are still having any problems with understanding social media and how they all work. Also go to his website http://speakingofhistory.blogspot.com/ to look at his other helpful tools on how to use social media.

project #15

Blog Post #11

 The first graders are really lucky that they are given an oppurtunity to have computers in their classroom that allow them to learn about technology and be able to blog and use other networks. I think computers should be in the classroom for every student, because I think technology fascinates children and keeps them interested. Going to computer class in elementary school was always something I looked forward to doing, because it was something different then staring at a chalkboard all day. Children are so fortunate to have technology like they do these days. It's such a dramatic difference within the past few years of what technology has brought to the classroom. I never thought there would be a touch screen interactive board that replaced the chalkboard. Those weren't around when I was in school and that was only a couple of years ago. I can't wait to see what technology brings to the classroom by the time I am a teacher!

Mrs. Cassidy's skype interview gave some great advice about how to "get to know technology." Like we have learned through many other videos we have watched, they all say "technology isn't going anywhere, it's here to stay". Technology is different than it was five years ago, and teachers need to learn how to use technology to help develop the use of technology in their classroom. I don't think teachers realize how much can be done through technology to help their students in the classroom. She gave some great advice, that we need to find what fits for us to get started being involved in technology. If you like to watch videos than get a youtube account and start searching videos that your interested in. If you like photography than start using flicker. If you like to read, then maybe blogging is good for you to keep you interested. After you get a good idea of what's going on with these websites, you can then start to play around with the websites to help you learn. It's not going to mess up your computer or hurt anything to just try and figure it out yourself. Twitter is also very useful for people to use to stay connected all over the world. I still have a hard time getting used to twitter, but I am starting to learn how to use it a little better and grasp the whole concept of twitter. There was recently a episode of Grey's Anatomy that was all about using twitter and how tweeting in the operating room helped save someones life, because they were constantly updating the tweet of what was going on, then fellow doctors would give advice and ideas of what to do. I think that's what really opened up my eyes to the use of twitter.

Project #14-Teach someone

Pln

View more presentations from welchashley1390.

I decided to teach someone how to make a Personal Learning Network. I chose this because it has been my favorite project we have done in EDM 310. I found that the Personal Learning Network was very useful in helping me stay organized with my websites. I hope you find the instructions on how to create a Personal Learning Network helpful and useful in creating your own!

C4k Assignment-Special

Mr. McClung's class blog is full of so much useful information, not just about education but extra curricular links. I really enjoyed reading his section about him, it makes him more personal. When I say that, I mean that his blog is very serious, full of details about educational, technology, and other useful links. When you read about him and what his interests are, it kinda opens it up that he's just like any other person who likes to have a good time and loves music. He has alot of same interests that I do in music and movies!




As an educator, he is definitely going in the right direction, he ensures that his classroom has a good time while at the same time learning how to take school seriously. He allows technology to to help the kids learning in the classroom. He's a great educator that I am more than sure has great success with his students.



He is definitely strict in the classroom, he gives the children a few chances to turn in their work; still with consequences though and that consequence is a dropping letter grade every day that it's late. He also requires the students to be up to date on their classblogs. Their classblog is what they use as their classroom newsletter for the students and parents to read. I think that it is such a great tool to use, so parents can know what's going on in their children's classroom everyday. Children often forget things that they are supposed to go home and remind their parents about, but with the newsletter available at anytime with classroom updates gives the parents a chance to be involved. This is also a better way to get in touch with the teacher, because I know that can be hard trying to get your parents in touch with the teacher. The parents can just comment on the page and ask questions that can be answered quickly, instead of waiting on a phone call. His classroom rules seem very laid back and easy to follow. I think it's really great that he uses gestures in the classroom to get his students involved. It makes it a little more exciting in the classroom if the teacher requires you to make gestures in response to him to let him know your paying attention. His rules seem a little bit more strict than Dr. Strange's, but like in the video we watched about procrastinating; having late work is not encouraged and their will be penalties. I think it's funny how one of his rules are to make his "dear teach happy".



Everyone needs is the first thing under the syllabus and the first thing is a planner. I'm not sure if this was another metaphoric thing that were supposed to look at since part of the assignment is to comment on what everyone needs means. I know that if the planner was one of them that we are supposed to look at, then a planner is a must in the classroom to help the students stay organized. Planners are always important to help students stay organized through their classwork.



What he hopes to accomplish with this classblog is to share his classrooms work and have people be able to view what is going on in the classroom. He writes that he welcomes comments on their blog, which I think is really good that he encourages them because sometimes I wonder if people enjoy comments we post. I viewed down his wall and I noticed where he thanked Dr. Strange's EDM 310 class for all the comments. I noticed that they print off the comments and put them on the map. I'm sure the kids really enjoy reading the comments from older college students from Alabama.



I looked under the useful links and the two that I really liked were two websites; convince me and twitter news. Convince me is a website and it's about debating, topics are put up and you can vote which side you agree on and then comment with a response that can convince person to see your side of the argument. The twitter news was really cool, because you can have a newsletter set up that shows you twitter updates that are interested in what you like. I looked at one for Forbes and it had updates all about Forbes.



I liked the Edublog, I am not sure about the differences that blogger can use compared to Edublog. His blog has some really cool things on it; like the availability to chat with him, live feed tracker, google translate, song of the week, facebook like button and many more things. I like the live feed tracker, because it shows when people around the world have viewed his blog. I really want totake the time and learn how to put all these things onto my blog. Learning about these blogs really makes me want to have my students involved in blogging.



These students differ from other ones, because this blog is very detailed and you can tell the children are very technology literate. This is such a great knowledge to have in the classroom, these children will have no problem communicating through technology when they are through with Mr. McClung's class. I noticed the slideshare application that he uses for his classroom newsletter. I'm going to look further into that, because I really liked the set up. Mr. McClung is going to be a successful teacher and is a great educator. I would love to be a teacher like him one day, his classroom is reaching out to people around the United States and world showing great examples of how technology can improve the classroom!!

C4T-#3

The blog I was assigned to was SpeEdChange, the owner of the blog is Ira David Sokol. The idea of this blog is "the future of Education for all different students in democratic societies." This first blog I chose to read about was about Unions. This teacher, Ira really gave a great explanation of what exactly a Union is. People are in Unions a lot more than they think are. Unions are what give people advantages today such as; livable wages, vacation time, lunch breaks, sick time, and working hour rages. Ira's mother actually helped start the "American Federation for Teachers" in her district back in the 1960's. It helped create tenure, jobrights, lunch time, and planning time. This union gave teachers a voice and helped lead to highly successful educational innovations. This blog was very informative on the Unions, I actually didn't know that teachers were formed by a Union and to do this day, I am assuming are still a Union because of our benefits. It's amazes me when people do things to help other people that actually end up changing history. I commented on his blog stating how impressed and awesome it was that his mother actually helped start that Union in their area. His mother helped to make sure that teachers got the benefits and were respected as teachers.
The next blog I commented on was called Pedagogy 101, it was a poem and I would like to share it on here.

Suited (I thought) and tied,

earnest as the day was very long,
I taught them when to be still,
why they needed to listen,
where Columbus was born,
how to answer textbook questions
and what the similarity was
between my decrees and their grades.
Sitting at bolted desks
while flies rambled on tall windows
they taught me when to shut my mouth,
why I needed to hear,
where they were coming from,
how to question textbook answers,
and what the difference is
between schooling and education.

If I read right, the first part of the poem is talking about the struggles of teaching the students and the second half is the struggle of listening to the teacher. This poem really gets to the point, because students are just expected to sit back and be quiet and listen to the teachers all day long. Students always wonder, why do I have to know all this, especially stuff that happened over 500 hundred years ago. The teacher actually learns from the students in the second part of them poem, it's kinda reversed. I really enjoyed this poem, I have it saved to my computer to go back and read because it relates to some of the other classes I have taken dealing with students and teachers relationship in the classroom!

Blog Post #10

An open letter to educators- Revolution of Technology. "The institutional schools need to get into the new revolution, if not they will one day fail." Every classroom should have the access to communication through technology. This is hard because not every school has the money to offer students the oppurtunity to have awesome technology in the classroom and unfortunalty some schools would prefer it stay that way. Internet saves people money, its free as he said. We can do things on our own now just by simply looking up on the internet, that we used to have other people to do for us. The community needs to help the institutional education(schools) get all the technological tools they need. This is like he used in the example, that the institutional schools are just like the days of "Kings and Queens" when only people with the most money or that were born into the kingdom got the best of things. Education is about creativity and empowering students. Dan Brown makes a good point that school is most of the time all about memorizing. I have had so many classes where I have just say in class and either played on my phone or wanted to fall asleep because I was so bored. I would do this in the classes where I knew all I had to do was get the study guide before the test and memorize the answers. This is not learning, because learning we can benefit from. Memorizing is only useful for about a week, if that to do well on our test. Usually after the semester is over we don't remember anything we learned in the class. Morgan Bayda also talks about falling asleep in the classroom and how it affects students. Social networking can open up so many opportunities for us, for her it helped her get a volunteering job in Costa Rica, that didn't cost her much money on top of it. Just by putting on twitter one day how frustrated she was, someone tweeted her a helpful website to use. As educators, we need to make sure our students are making good use of technology and we're not behind. There is so much available information on the internet we can use to help students in the classroom




Pencil Intergration- This was a very interesting post and the principal in this post seems very ignorant. I can't believe there has actually been a study done on whether or not a student performs better on standarized tests if he uses a pencil at home. That has got to be the craziest thing I have ever heard. It's not about the pencil when a student takes a test, it's about the knowledge that they know. The principal was just assuming the teacher was going to have low scores from the beginning because the students took their pencils home. This teacher seems like a great teacher, because he gets the students to be interactive at home and do fun projects. Students will be alot more interested in school, if it's fun for them. Thats why I think technology is going to be great in the schools for bettering education, because students love to be on computers. Especially for younger children, there are so many websites offered with games and lessons for the students to learn from.

Blog Post #8

This is how we dream- Part 1: "This is the time to be engaged into the literacy, I'm a person of the book"  He is very passionate about books, he grew up around books and that's all he ever wanted to do is be involved in books and his dream came true. Here is he, written a book and has it doing a video on books and technology. He says that pencils and paper are rarely ever used anymore, because we are always carrying our laptops around to do our homework or even work. The internet offers libraries all over the world, so we can do unimaginable research right in front of our eyes...sitting in our laps. Instead of going to libraries, we can actually look up valuable resources on the internet and locate libraries around the world. This also allows us to collaborate with other people around the world. We can use blogs and other social networking to do projects and write papers. Group work is now possible, without having to find a convenient  place and time for everyone to meet. Which we all now, can be very difficult.
Part 2:  Material on the internet is always changing right before our eyes. I learned alot more information in this video on ItunesU...one of these days I'm going to sit down and actually use Itunes U, it's amazing what all can be done through the program. "Ideas don't belong to us individually, but to us as a culture. We as educators need to be able to share everything freely." As educators we should always be more than willing to share information with other teachers and students that can help everyone. You never know when something you might do can be used for someone later down the road for research. One day students will be using the same digital work they use in the video to their homework and assignments. I would love to be able to do work like this one day on the computer. I must say watching him work with a Mac and using all the tools Apple has to offer, really makes me want to go buy a MacBook. There are so many features on a Mac that can help us better education through technology. This video really does help make sense of why we should want to live in the world of a new culture. I liked the example of the building, what would happen if we used that space for humanities with math and science instead of a parking lot. The building would be "inspiring spaces, teachers, and students" I have never thought about it like that, what could we do with all the extra space??
Chipper Stories&EDM310 for Dummies- The chipper stories video was funny, but got to the point about how we shouldn't be late on our work and procrastination. I also like the way she noted how on Wikipedia, just anyone can go in and change information whenever they want. The EDM 310 for dummies relates to the way I felt at the beginning of the semester so much. I'm not gonna lie, there are still times when EDM 310 drives me a little crazy, but it's not because there's an overwhelming workload. I'm more or less "scared" of the technology we have to use sometimes. I know it might sound crazy, just scared of sitting down and trying to figure it out and the possibility of having no idea what I am doing. That's what we have the lab for though! Once I go ahead and just sit down and do my project, I'm like wow...now that wasn't so bad.
Learn to change, Change to learn-  "Kids are rich content developers through social networks, but they are cut off" Like one man said, Technology is part of our world now. I am always saying that, we can't do anything about it, mine as well get to know it. Children learn online, not just in school. School can be used to help students get connected to the outside world. Kids these days, know so much just from the internet and social networking. So many adults are against technology and think that's all kids have to do and never benefit from it. Adults need to sit down and help explore with the children.
Secret Powers of Time- The way he described time zones was very interesting. Past, Present, and Future is a way of describing the type of person each of us are. "You need to trust when you make a choice about the future it's gonna carry out." I think as educators and students we need to always be future thinkers, because that way we will always want to think ahead and better ourselves. The study done on Sense of Duraton and the Pace of life was interesting, because it shows that culturals around the world are different. I can't get over the statistic that every 9 seconds, a child is dropping out of school. As educators this statistic should really open our eyes. Makes a good point that it's hard for students to concentrate in a analogue classroom. Especially for boys, who spend so much of their time either on a computer or playing video games...they like to be in control of something and in the classroom children are in control of NOTHING. There is no options for students to control anything in school, which bores them in the classroom. Children spend almost eight hours a day looking up at a teacher and listening to  what they have to say. THe attention span can only last for so long. "WE ARE A REVOLUTION IN TIME"
Drive, the suprising truth about what motivates us:  Reward vs. Punish.  The video starts out with how you get better results when you reward someone with something, but when you punish someone you get poor results. The results you get out of people depends on what the outcome looks like for them. What motivates them?!? The study showed that the decent pay resulted in better performance and the higher pay resulted in lower performance. Strange? They then moved the research to India to see how their results came out. The higher incentives, yet again lower performance. People for for the more simple tasks, even if there is a way to get more money. If the way to get more  money requires more cognitive thinking, most people aren't going to do it either way. Mastery, is alot like the "future verb tense". Mastery is all about moving forward and being able to accomplish something. When you are wanting to master something, your wanting to do better!

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