Additional Assignment #5

Just Teach Them to Solve for X
Mr. Spencer is really great at making his point using metaphorical and slightly sarcastic speaking. In this post he creates a conversation that seems to represent the way some people view teaching or learning. "Gertrude" is insisting that he shouldn't make the children understand and make sense of what they are doing. Mr. Spencer is arguing that there are metaphors all throughout life and students should be taught how to deal with them and think instead of just "copy processes".

Sketchy Portraits: 8th Grade Identity and Pencils
This post was confusing the first time I read it. But then I realized that he was talking about how misunderstood 8th graders can be. He shows that some teachers would rather just write them off as rude instead of considering what they are going through. I think this is a great post and Mr. Spencer really understands his students.

He Just Likes The Class For the Pencils
I really like this post. In this one you can really tell that he means computers when he says pencils. He is making the point that the way you treat your students will in turn effect the way they behave. Also I think he is hinting that a classroom should be a place of respect and purpose not shame and meaningless busy work.

The Medium Shapes the Learning
In this post Mr. Spencer is talking about mediums. Changing the medium can be tricky. He seems to be saying that you must pay attention to what new things you bring into the classroom because you may get a different result then you intended. Also that things must be added to our way of teaching but we should be fully aware of their purpose.

Project 15

Blog Assignment #13

The Alabama Learning Exchange (ALEX) is a website for teachers made by the Alabama Department of Education. Its purpose is to provide teachers as well as parents and students with web links and lesson plans and activities for each subject in each grade level. When you first arrive at the website you are on the home page and there are eight click able blocks, each taking you to a different type of help offered. The first four block contain links to the web links, lesson plans, a course of study menu, and a search option.
The next block is a personal workspace where you can create an account and store all your lesson plans and activities. Then there is a block called professional learning where there is information for furthering your knowledge of ALEX as well as links to other places to further learning. Then there is a Podcast treasury block where you can watch educational podcasts about different subjects. The last block is called Alexville. There you will find the Alex blog as well as other helpful links that contain more information about what ALEX has to offer.
I think that the ALEX site is a great tool to have for teachers. I can definitely see myself using this site to get lesson plan ideas as well as activities to improve the learning experience of my students. I think that this is a great site and will surely serve its purpose!

Google Form Summary

I made a survey of questions about college students choice of food and places to eat. I asked questions like where do you go grocery shopping and what is your favorite close to campus restaurant. I also asked some yes or no questions like do you have a meal plan and are you a vegetarian. For these two questions I had expected slightly different outcomes. For the meal plan I had expected a fair number of students to have one but only 1 out of my 18 participants claimed to have a meal plan on campus. Also I thought there would be at least one vegetarian out of the 18 people, but there were none.
By doing this survey I learned that 56% of participants eat three meals a day. Also I learned that 72% of the participants shop for groceries at Wal-Mart. When I asked the question, "What would you say is the basic college food?", I was not surprised by the answers. Although there were a few Strange responses such as lean cuisine, the most common answers were pizza and ramen noodles. The favorite close to campus restaurant among the voters was the Mellow Mushroom, with The Shed and Hungry Howie's tying for second. Overall I think that the eating habits and food choice of the students were pretty much what would be expected.

Progress on Final Project

My group which includes Nicole Kelley and Carly Dougherty are doing our project on Technology in Intercity Schools. We plan to make a video interviewing  teachers in  intercity schools in our area. The participants will answer questions about the use of technology in their schools or how they would use technology in their schools if they had access to technology. We have started planning out our interviews and deciding what schools we can interview. Our video will be an insight of how teachers would like to use technology given the chance.

Blog Assignment #12

Watch this video by coolcatteacher about the fear of technology. Write a two paragraph response on the context of the video as well as the visual tactics used.


Read this Blog post by Matthew Needleman. http://creatinglifelonglearners.com/?p=700
Write your response to this post and explain how reading it will help you as a future teacher.


Technology Fear Factor in Education
In this video the topic of fear of using technology in teaching is brought to light. They make the point that not using technology is holding back the students. Also that instead of fearing technology itself we should be fearing all the students who are technology illiterate going out into society. Also we should be teaching students about the positive and negative of the internet and blogging so that they are prepared and can use the technology in a positive way.
The way the visuals of this video are set up is very interesting. I really like the way that they make their statements at the beginning by pointing to letters and buttons on a key board. Its neat that they use what they are talking about (the computer) to ask their questions. It was also creative when they said the metaphor about "releasing the millions of students into shark infested waters of the internet,"  they showed a clip of a shark grabbing its prey. The visuals in this video were creative and interesting while still stressing their topic.

Six Ways Teachers Can Improve Education This Year
This blog post is a list of six things that teachers should do to improve the school year for them as well as their students. The first suggestion he makes seems simple but is actually very important when you think about it. He says to say hello to your students at the door. He says that this may be the only positive interaction the student has with an adult all day. It also lets the students know that someone cares about them and is on their side. The next suggestion he makes is to eat in the teacher cafeteria. Since I am not yet a teacher I cant exactly relate to this one but I like how he says that you can be the positive influence to your discouraged coworkers. The next two tips are teach authentic writing and incorporate multi-media into every lesson. These two tips are very important parts of improving education because writing will always play a part in our society and multi-media keeps learning interesting for the students. The last two suggestions are teach art as a discipline and teach test prep two minutes every day. I think that teaching art as a discipline is my favorite tip because I think it is extremely important to incorporate art into learning and keep creativity alive in the students. I think I will carry all of these tips into my career and I am very thankful to Mr. Needleman for posting his opinions.    

Blog Assignment #11

First Graders in Ms. Cassidy's Class and Skype Interview
The video of Ms. Cassidy's first graders was so inspiring and motivating. The use of technology in her classroom by the students is great. The fact that the six year olds are blogging and using internet sources just like we are is proof that we have to become technology literate in order to teach them. I hope that the use of technology in the classroom will become just as frequent in our area.
The skype interview was interesting because we got to hear Ms. Cassidy's opinions and experiences with technology in the classroom. Hearing how she uses technology in her classroom gave me lots of examples of what I could do to use technology in my classroom in the future. I really like that she lets her students blog as a way of practicing their writing. That is very good experience for them because they get to share stories with many people and get comments that encourage them to keep at it. I think one problem that could arise from this is that maybe the parents would be uncomfortable with their students writing to be accessible to anyone. But Ms. Cassidy explains that you can protect their identity by not using last names and by not matching pictures with names. I think that what Ms. Cassidy is doing in her classroom is great and should be done in all classrooms.

Teach Someone Video

Summary C4T #3

I commented on the Cooperative Catalyst blog by John Spencer. He writes blogs about some of the different issues in education and his opinions and solutions. The first post I commented on was called The Real Cause of Burnout. In this post he explained the real reasons why teachers were leaving schools or giving up on the profession. He says that the reason is the lack of freedom from their superiors to teach in a way that students respond to. He says the pressure to prepare the students for all the standardized testing takes away the teachers freedom to really teach effectively. I responded by telling him that I agree that as a future teacher something has to be done about the constant pressure to drill information into a child's brain just long enough so they can pass a test that will make the school look like it's doing its job. I really hope this changes because the child's education and development as a part of society is more important than him memorizing a list of facts and spitting them onto an answer sheet.
The second blog post I commented on was called "What's the Purpose of Education?" In this post Mr. Spencer explains that he took part in a webinar where the purpose of education and how your life reflects that was discussed. He took a poll of all the people who attended and asked them to choose from 4 different explanations of their purpose for education. While #1 is the choice that you would expect to be most frequent( it includes achieving the American dream and "if you try you will succeed") it wasn't. the most frequent choice(79%) was #3. It included points such as finding ones own path and making meaning of the world. I responded by saying that it was very interesting to see the results of his poll. It is always good to see how the way we view the purpose of education is changing. It also made me consider my opinion on the subject. I really enjoyed his posts.

You can find his blog at http://coopcatalyst.wordpress.com/

Sumary C4K October

The first blog I commented on was MilliM's blog in GSandler's class blog. She wrote about her 100th post. She said her favorite thing about blogging is getting comments from people all over the world and then her class marks where it came from on a map. I told her that it was very inspiring for me that she was on her 100th post because I am new to blogging. I told her it was great that they mark the places on a map because that really helps them to become aware of places all over the world.

The next blog I commented on was Nya's blog from Ms. Naugle's class blog. She wrote about her class trip to the Washington parish fair. She described the animals they saw and what they did. I told her that she did a great job of describing the details of what she saw. I could imagine all the animals in my head. Both students did a good job on their posts.