Project # 9a

Blog Post #4

I really enjoyed listening to all of the podcast by Eagle's Nest Radio and Class Blog. The children spoke very well and they took a lot of interest in their topics. I really enjoyed the podcast interview the students did with Mr. Ward about sharks. The students were very excited and had great questions. My absolute favorite podcast was Roamin with Ancient Romans. It is so amazing to see third graders present detailed information of their subject. In doing my podcast the only thing I would change is the volume to the background music. It takes a way a little from the students discussion.


Langwitches


This post was about first grade students who learned how to use podcasting in their classroom. They created their podcasts from scripts their teacher wrote for them. The scripts were based on books that were read to them in class, and their teacher designed the books so that the students could read along as the podcast was being played. Once their teacher finished writing the scripts, she allowed the students to record them in their own voice. The blog mentions how the students enjoyed rerecording the podcast, if they did not like the way their voice sounded. It seems to me the students really enjoyed this activity, and will benefit from it in the future. Teachers such as this one really encourage me to incorporate tools such as podcasting in my future classroom. This will introduce my students to using technology at an early age, and give then the courage to be involved in classroom activities. 


 The Benefits of  Podcasting in the Classroom, by Mr. Joe Dale was very informative. The benefits he discuss are as listed: 

• An effective way of interacting with students outside of the classroom 
• a form of learning students of today are familiar with and therefore makes it relevant to them 
• it allows for differentiation and project based learning students can access the higher order thinking skills in Bloom's taxonomy 
• it promotes creativity and innovation
• it can offer distance learning opportunities for absent students 
• the process of creating and uploading audio files is easy students can record role plays in character making their learning more memorable 
• parents can see and hear what their children are doing at school I believe pod casting can be very useful in classroom. 
• From personal experience, I was introduced to podcast by communicating with a teacher on a day to day basis, listening to lectures outside of class. The students explained the information they learned with your fellow classmates through podcasting. To me, pod casting is way better than typing long emails, with a disadvantage of getting your entire point across. For example, at a previous college, any questions the students had from the lectures, we were required to ask them in a podcast and post them in a discussion board. From here the entire class could hear them. Anyone who was able to answer the question was allowed to explain it in a responding podcast. This way we were able to get a clearer understanding of our questions and responses, and we were able to incorporate fun into learning. I think methods such as this should be used in all classes. If so students will learn another great way to incorporate technology in learning.

Project #6

Project #5

The presentation is also viewable at "Uniquley Me".

BLog Post # 3

"It's Not About the Technology" by Kelly Hines
 
Before I read the post ,"It's Not About the Technology" by Kelly Hines, I thought I would totally be against this idea. After reading the post, I kind of agreeded with Kelly Hines's article. She believes there is nothing wrong with technology and it is great to use and learn, but "If a teacher can find ways to prepare students with the capacity to be creative and innovative, those children will be well prepared to face the future. Teachers who customize the learning experiences of their students to involve critical thinking and problem solving are doing their students a greater favor than those who misuse technology as a means of facilitating learning.(direct quote)"
I believe  if a teacher has what it takes to teach her students to be great students and teach them the things to prepare them for their future, then technology may not be that necessary. Ms. Hines mentioned four things that should charaterize a good teacher, and they are as listed:
1) Teachers Must Be Learners
2) Learning and Teaching are not the Samething
3)Technology is useless without good teaching
4)Be a 21st Century Teacher without the technology

Gary Hayes Social Media Count

The social media count was a great visual aid to see how technology is increasing. To see the rate these counts increase by the minute was mind blowing. Keeping up with technology in todays world is somewhat manditory because technology will increase more in the future at a much faster rate than it is doing so now. The only Media Count that I really questioned is the comments made on Facebook within the first few seconds. I personally thought the numbers would actually be higher. Facebook is a huge social network and there are not  many people who are not Facebook users.

Michael Wesch A Vision of Students Today

In Michael Wesche's Video, A Vision of Students Today,I realized that many of the statements written, relate to me. For instance,the ratio of students to teachers in my past classes, were outrageous. One semester, I took a economics class that had more than 100 students present. I was so aggravated when I realized, I was not going to receive much help from my professor. I went to the professor's office during office hours, to get help with an assignment, only to find a line of students waiting for help also. After about 45 minutes, I gave up and returned home to get prepared for my next class. Situations such as these are very discouraging and eventually becomes a problem. Its also scary to actually raise your hand to ask questions with more than 100 students directing their attention on me.

 I agreed with the statements about the prices we spend on books and computers. I find it to become very stressful, having to spend over 600 dollars on books that I hardly  open. When it is time to sell the books back I never get over 150 dollars back; thats if they decide to buy of the books back. In my opinion, technology, helps students in great ways of research, note taking and many ways of preparing for the future ahead of us. We as students spend more time socializing online than anything. I feel that if teachers made some classes a little more interesting using more exciting ways to incorporate technology into our lessons, we as students will probably actually pay more attention and be interested in learning by choice rather than by requirement. School to me is over rated!

Project # 2 Wordle

Blog Post #1

Hello everyone!!!

My name is KaShondra Rudolph, and I am 21 years of age. I am originally from Monroeville, Alabama. This is my 4^th semester attending South, and so far I am enjoying it.  I started out as a nursing major, but quickly decided to change my major to elementary education. I really enjoy working with children and hope to have my own classroom soon. I want to be a passionate role model for children and set a great foundation for their learning.

I started volunteering at a daycare center back home when I was 13 years of age. When I was 17, I was given a part-time job there. I worked at this daycare until I graduated high school and later became a substitute teacher at the local middle and high schools. Along with me working at the daycare and in the school systems, I became very dependable by helping my parents look after two of my younger siblings. Family is very important to me and my family consists of more children now than adult. I feel that without Jesus and family, who can you really depend on? I am just happy to be in school and have an opportunity to gain an education and career.

 Randy Pausch on Time Management.

 I really enjoyed watching Mr. Randy Pausch's video on Time Management. He states very interesting facts and give great tips on managing time and procrastination. He mention, at the beginning of the video, how Americans are really bad at dealing with time as a commodity but we are really good at dealing with money as a commodity. He goes on to discuss goals,priority, and planning; when there is something we want to do or plan to do, we should always ask our self, "Why am I doing this?" From experience as a child, my mother always told me, "Asking questions will get you farther in life than taking life's journey without knowledge of know why you do things. You should always know why you are doing it and what are the consequences of both doing it and not doing it." So I can relate to what Mr. Pausch is saying.

A statement that Mr. Pauch made, that I really want to elaborate on is, "Experience comes with time. It's really valuable and, there is no short cut getting it.  Many times we have assignments and decide right off the bat we do not want to do it. We may think its a waste of time, it is to long or we have a lot of other things to do. So we procrastinate and wait until the last minute to do it. Once we actually start on the assignment, we continue to think of a million reason to why we still do not want to do it. On some occasions, when trying to do last minute assignments, we are faced with technological issues or emergencies, and do not get the job done. We fail to realize that the only way we will actually learn from these assignments or learn the skills necessary we have to put in the time to do things. We can not be successful in our careers if we do not put in the necessary time needed to master the skills and knowledge. At the end of the video I was kind of surprised by Mr. Pausch's statement of doing the ugliest thing first on our to do lists. This makes a lot of sense and will avoid procrastination. Once you have the thing that seems the ugliest out of the way, everything else will seem to fall into place. This was a great video.

Test Post

This is a test Post

Final Project

Our group did our final project on "Are You Smarter Than an EDM310 Student?"

Blog Post #14

I did my blog post on  Pseudoteaching: MIT Physics by Frank Noschese.  Even though I went through everything to try and get this assignment done, I finally accomplished it. This was a very interesting article.

What is Pseudoteaching?
A term inspired by Don Meyer's pseudotext, pseudoteaching find textbook problems that appear to relate to real world situations. Mr. Noschese and Mr. Burk define pseudoteaching as something you realize you are doing after you have attempted a lesson that looks as if it should result in student learning. upon further reflection, its realized that the lesson was flawed and involve minimal learning. Basically Pseudoteaching is looking good and feeling like things are being learned, but in reality little learning actually takes place.

Mr. Noschese goes on to give an example of pseudoteaching done in the physics lectures of Walter Lewins at MIT. It is explained how Mr. Lewins makes his lectures look like good teaching and he appears to be full of energy and enjoy teaching physics to his students. the problem is, his students are not really learning from the lectures that appear to be "Good teaching". Many of the students do not attend class and many are failing. Why should they attend Class? Mr. Lewins is doing all of the work, all of the lecturing, and lets not forget the lectures are available online for the students. So the students really have no reason to show up for class. As a solution to this problem of pseudoteaching, MIT created interactive learning such as, Technology Enhanced Active Learning, at their school. The idea is to get the students more involved in the lectures so that they will actually learn and not just be"Lectured too". Mr. Noschese believes high quality technology in not really needed a lot in the classroom in order to teach and students learn. He think more whiteboards will do the trick.

I really do not agree much with decreasing technology. I do not feel that the tools used in teaching will really change what the students learn. I think the way the teacher presents the lesson and involve the students makes the greater difference. Less talking and more student interaction!!!

                                 
My final thoughts about the PLN is very POSITIVE!!!! I really enjoyed using this resource and organizing all of my different websites onto symbaloo. I arranged my personal websites such as, Facebook, twitter, craigslist, and YouTube onto my PLN. I also arranged my class websites such as EDM310 blog and different teachers website on my PLN also.  I have introduced my PLN to my brother, who also find it a great organizer.

Final Video Reflection

C4T Summary

I was assigned to Mrs. Kathy Cassidy's blog. I really enjoyed reading her post entitled Learning: It's Easier Together and On Being Learners and Being Teachers. in the first blog post, she talks about how she allows her students to  record each other and watch each others videos, this was a learning experiment for her students to observe different things from their peers and see what their classmates are learning.

Her second post was about her students switching roles and being the teacher. They were able to use skype and share things that they knew with people who didn't know. They were asked a particular question and I was shocked to hear their answers. the question was Why do you skype with other people/classes? They students responded with 1)Because we learn 2) Because we get to meet new people 3)Because we help other people learn 4) Because we don't have to go to their town to talk. this was so amazing.

Blog Post # 13

Jose Picardo's video Top 10 Tips  Using Technology in the Classroom, was very educational. It gives really helpful technology tips that can be used in classrooms. The funny thing about this video is, this is the same video I chose to use  for by blog post #12 Teach somebody Something. How ironic?
Mr. Picardo's ten tips are:
1. Use Streaming Video
2.Use Music more often
3.Use teleconferencing tools- great for meetings with colleagues in other countries or states.
4.Create your own interactive exercises- this gives you the opportunity to share your interests.
5.Use your interactive whiteboard more efficiently.
6.Create your own podcast.-this is a great communication sharing tool
7.Start a blog or a wiki.
8.Use social networks- we can connect with people around the world with similar interest
9.Use internet tools.
10.Make the most of your pupil's gadgets.
Many of these tips we use in edm 310. I will definitely use the majority of them in my classroom. My students will have the advantage of actually learning the technology that they will use in their future jobs, along with connecting with others around the world.

Blog Post #12

Watch Top Ten tips for Using Technology in the Classroom. After watching the video, explain in your own words rather or not these are effective tips to use in your future classroom. Also explain how the tips in the video are similar to the technology you use in EDM310.




This was a great video!!! As seen in this video there were many things such as creating blogs and creating videos that we are already familiar with. This video is a great tool for future educators to use to gather ideas for their classroom.

Final Project Progress Report

My group members for the final project are Brad Goldman, Clemente Brooks, and Sherrelle Grimes. All I will really say is the project is going to be awesome. Are you smarter than an EDM 310 student?

Project #15 Book trailer

Book Trailer


The Book I decided on was called THE INVISIBLE ALLIGATOR. By Hayes Roberts.

Project #14

For this assignment we were asked by our teacher Dr. Strange to teach someone something. I decided to teach my cousins how to use Skype                                 

                    

                                                        

My  Complete Summary

I taught two of my cousins , both age 10, how to use Skype. Neither or the two children knew what Skype was nor its purpose. First I explained to them that with Skype, they could connect with other students, in their school or across the world and even with their teachers. I also explained to them that when they attend college, they will probably use Skype to connect with other teachers around the world.After explaining to them different purposes of Skype and how to use it the process of teaching them how to use it on their own began. I created a second Skype page to use for an example and asked them to follow along with creating theirs. They both created the accounts. they set up their user names, passwords, and put in most of their personal information. I then went on to show them how to Video chat, and allowed them to chat with each other form different rooms in the house. They called each other with video call ans they also communicated with IM messages. One of my cousins caught on fairly well and one had time keeping the call connected with out having fun playing around with the different features. After the wonderful tutorial I have found my Skype account ringing everyday because my wonderful cousins call to talk to me every night to show me their homework grades and just to conversate, since I only get to visit them once a month. I have also learned that each of them now calls me all by them self.  One of my cousins told me that they were able to call one of their friends on Skype to go over homework assignments that she needed help with. This was a fun Project.

Blog Post # 11

Little Kid....Big Potential and  the Skype interview between Dr. Strange and Mrs. Cassidy were very interesting videos. Mrs. Cassidy seems to be a very dedicated educator.  Her students really enjoy writing on their blogs and doing other things using technology in her class. She is doing an excellent job with teaching her students the benefits of using technology. The students are able to practice their writing skills through blogs and are able to comment back on their classmates blogs. This give them the opportunity  to express their own  personal opinions and enjoy technology at the same time. Not only are the students benefiting form the use of blog in Mrs. Cassidy's classroom, but the students parents and guardians can benefit as well. Parents can keep up with what their children are learning and they can also learn more from other educators around the world. This will give parents the opportunity to take part in his or her child's education. This can also help parents improve their child's learning. as a future educator, I will be sure to incorporate the use of blogs and  other technology in my classroom.

Project #13