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