Comments4Kids: Assignment 3

-Me on Christmas Morning-
I read Savannah's friendly letter on Mrs. Goerend's blog and I loved it! Savannah decided to write about the holidays and how much she loves Christmas! She discussed Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's. I loved how she talked about all of the delicious candy bar pies she likes to eat during the holidays. Her blog really got me excited about the upcoming festivities of Halloween this weekend and all the holidays to come soon after. She was very creative and festive! I told her that Christmas is my favorite holiday as well- I just wish we could have at least one snowy Christmas here in Mobile, Alabama!

Post 26: ACCESS

Alabama Connecting Classroom, Educators, and Students Statewide (ACCESS) Program has a goal of creating equity through additional educational offerings for all Alabama public high school students. The project was launched in November of 2004 and since then has awarded 70 grants to Alabama high schools to implement a 21st century distance learning classroom! ACCESS is available to all Alabama public high school students.

Resources provided but not limited to are remediation modules for the Alabama High School Graduation Exam and Advance Placement Courses. They have a section you can visit where students can utilize practice tests, essay prompts, multiple choice assessments, and many different study resources to help prepare them for the required exams they must take.

ACCESS offers web-based and interactive video conferencing courses taught by Alabama certified and highly certified teachers. They also have e-teachers for online courses. Education is right at the student's fingertips.

Post 25: ALEX

Alabama Learning Exchange (ALEX) is a work in progress by the Alabama Department of Education that provides the best resources to meet the unique needs of teachers, administrators, parents, and students. This website indexes and shares educational materials and information through a time-saving, one-stop resource.

There are eight different tabs you can click on when you first enter the site- courses of study, weblinks, lesson plans, search, personal workspace, professional learning, podcast treasury, and help. Also each lesson shows what catagory it is listed under such as: Frequently Tested Standards, Achievement Gap Standards, and Hard to Teach Standards. I think this website is going to be very successful and very useful to me now that I am aware of it's existence.

Above all I like that it is located and connected to Alabama Courses of Study by National Board Certified Teachers.

Post 24: Dear Kaia

Kaia is a little girl who's father took her outdoors and let her observe and take things in through a different light- a beautiful one. Her father is a school teacher and had recently read The Last Child in The Woods, which is ironic because I wrote about that book in my last post. The book encouraged him to take his daughter outdoors more and so he did. She even took pictures of various things outside their home and the father uploaded them for her to look at on the computer. He posted about the adventure on his twitter account and a teacher here in the states viewed it and showed it to his classroom. The father actually Skype'd in and answered some of the student's questions, which was really nice of him.

I thought "Dear Kaia" was a really neat idea and I was inspired by this father who longed and put forth effort to be a part of his daughter's life. He spent time with her and it was so sweet. I also enjoyed reading his personal blog and plan to follow it. I express his same concerns about making our children available on the worldwide web. Are we putting them in danger?

Looking at this assignment makes me wonder what things my son will be doing when he is school. The technology that will be available is beyond anything I can imagine. I already can't believe the things I am learning in this classroom and will be able to use with my classroom one day.

Post 23: New Media Literacies Project

After researching the New Media Literacies Project, I found that it is a research initiative based within MIT's Comparative Media Studies Program, that digs deeper into how we may be able to equip students with the required social skills and competence to participate in media landscaping and raising public awareness about how important it is to be literate and involved in a "globally interconnected, multicultural world".
They offer learning materials, videos, strategy guides, blogs, and more to help you participate in this technological world. While reading an article available on their website, I found the answers to questions I had from a previous post of mine on here "Post 22: New Media Literacies". Here is what I found:
The new skills include:
Play — the capacity to experiment with one’s surroundings as a form of problem-solving
Performance — the ability to adopt alternative identities for the purpose of improvisation
and discovery
Simulation — the ability to interpret and construct dynamic models of real-world
processes
Appropriation — the ability to meaningfully sample and remix media content
Multitasking — the ability to scan one’s environment and shift focus as needed to salient
details.
Distributed Cognition — the ability to interact meaningfully with tools that expand
mental capacities
Collective Intelligence — the ability to pool knowledge and compare notes with
others toward a common goal
Judgment — the ability to evaluate the reliability and credibility of different information
sources
Transmedia Navigation — the ability to follow the flow of stories and information
across multiple modalities
Networking — the ability to search for, synthesize, and disseminate information
Negotiation — the ability to travel across diverse communities, discerning and respecting
multiple perspectives, and grasping and following alternative norms.

Comments4Kids Project

I really liked this project! I loved reading what the kids wrote about and sharing my comments with them. Ashley D. wrote about a day that was recognized as "International Act Like a Monkey Day"! She said that everyone would start jumping around and swinging from monkey bars as they acted like a monkey all day! Sounds good to me- I could use a day monkeying around! This life is way too serious.
Rachel B. shared with everyone her love for Jimmy Buffett and how excited she was at one of his concerts. She loved his song "Margaritaville". "Incredible Pizza" was a cute blog by Chelsei T. that shared her day at this pizza place that had go-carts and all sorts of games to play where they could win prizes. I think this place is much like our "Chuck-E Cheese" so I could relate to her on how much fun it must have been!
An anonymous student wrote "Dance Like A Dancer" where everyone danced all day long and could not get in trouble for it. Sounds like a good day to me! My favorite blog entry was "The Campout", where Anna R. had a camp out in her backyard with her friends. They had a tent and even a fire pit to cook smores on. I liked how she included her parents cooking mac-n-cheese and grilling for all of the girls. She even included her adventure of chasing a grasshopper. Too cute!

A Personal Adventure creating My Personal Learning Network

Today I am going to take you on route with me as I begin creating my personal learning network.

First, I google "creative writing" because I am going to be an English teacher and have a special interest in creative writing. I want to find tools and resources to help me be a better teacher for my students. The Internet as well as a personal learning network can help me do this.

Google brings up the results and after scrolling through some of the results, I see Sydney Writers' Centre blog that lists all sorts books written by different teacher's or just books in general that are good reads for teacher's to use in their classrooms. There was two books that stood out to me- "The Puzzle Ring" which is a book that has just been released and was written by a teacher named Kate Forsyth ; and "Once" by Morris Gleitzman which is about a child during the Holocaust. This book reminds me of a teaching lesson I read about in "A Curriculum of Peace: Selected Essays from English Journal". It is about a little Polish boy during the Holocaust. I decide to follow this blog and then I go visit Morris Gleitzman's page and see that he has some recorded video chats about his book available on the Puffin Books website, so I watch those and then visit the "Wondrous Reads" blog where there is a review about the book.

I follow the blog and read every one's comments on the books. I click the button to go to the author of the blogs' "Twitter" page and decide to go ahead and join Twitter. My name is "bloggerbaby11". This makes me laugh.

I see where a guy posted that educators have a new conversation about the art in education and I click on the link. This leads me to "edutopia" so I become a member of this edutopia community so I can leave my comments and read others. After searching for a little while, I find a blog on there that is about the benefits of taking students outside to inspire writing, posted by Stephen Hurley. I read the comments posted by the different teachers and saw where a teacher used the book, " Last Child in the Woods" which talks about the effects outdoors has on education. I go visit the author Richard Louv's website and find all sorts of articles and interviews about education. After reading through some of these articles, I decide that I liked Kate Muir's article "The Dark Ages". Muir just so happens to have a twitter and facebook account. I ask her to be my friend on facebook and I follow her on twitter. The next time this girl writes an interesting article, I will know and can check it out.

While I'm on twitter again, I decide to check out Beth Still's (she was listed on Ms. Averitt's handout) page and click on a link she has provided "Avenue4Learning" and get some ideas for classroom lessons using "Photobucket" where I am already a member. The lesson talks about students using photography to write poems and how the students get really involved when writing assignments use photos to make things more interesting. It was very creative I must say! I subscribe to the site by enrolling my email address and happen to notice her Blog Roll that includes "Drape's Takes". I go visit Drape and am especially interested in his take on why every teacher should blog. I watch his podcast video and his videos available on YouTube. I read his poem, "If I were you" and thought it was really cute! I told him so after I subscribed to his blog.

Being a part of all these people's blogs, twitter accounts, facebook pages, and more will allow me to have access to teaching resources as soon as they are made available. These people will be there in my technology world to answer questions I may have, give me good ideas, let me share my opinions and teaching ideas with them, and more. I enjoyed the journey.

Post 22: New Media Literacies

I think that the new media skills covered in the video were interesting. I think to a certain degree they are the skills that will be needed to be effective artists, citizens, and workers of the 21st century. Alot of the creative ideas I get usually are prompted from things I have seen online. Also, when you think about it most of our teaching ideas come from online. I think I possess simulation, performance, collective intelligence, judgement, play, and problem solving already. Mainly I think I possess play. I am unsure of what they meant by multitasking on the video. I already know how to that without ever touching a computer. I think I will acquire the other skills discussed by first learning what they meant by them.

Post 21: The Networked Student

The Networked Student by Wendy Drexler was a cute video. I liked the simple graphics it used to explain today's networked student. Although I do not like the idea of having students only learn online, I see where it can be convenient for some. I think when I think about it, I am thinking of a 9th grade classroom, but for college courses such as the one we are in now, it is a very good thing. I have learned alot in this class already.

I liked how the video covered students having access to lectures from professors and instructors from all different universities available at the finger tips. I would not mind going on iTunes University and seeing if I can find some useful lectures for some of the classes that I am currently attending. I never thought of doing that before. I think her video is a really good video to show students, parents, and other teachers in order to explain how students are using technology as a learning tool today. It was a very simple and easy to understand video.

When asked, "Why does the networked student even need a teacher?" the answer is that the students still needs someone to be there to help guide them through the process of building a network, giving them guidance, and teaching them to communicate properly. No matter how much technology takes over, their will always be a need for teachers.

Post 20: This is How We Dream

Although Richard Miller's voice drove me nuts on these videos, they were really neat. As a future teacher, I am prepared to write with multimedia and I do think that my students will able to do so as well. It seems like every day the world becomes more and more electronic and technological. If you want to keep up with the world, your going to have to learn how to use computers and technological devices.

I was amazed at some of the things he showed in his videos. Sometimes I forget just how much I use technology on a daily basis. I remember playing Oregon Trail in second grade and being so amazed by the "apple" computer. Now, everything I do is on the computer: my hobbies, my recipes, my school work, and the assignments I take care of at my work place.

Kids today have had more access to computers than our parents had or even we have had. Alot of kids today know how to do more than we do, so yeah I do think they should have no problem writing with multimedia. I do wish that more computers were available in our schools- I have heard it is pretty hard to get grabs on the computer rooms with all of this advanced technology coming about. More and more teachers want to use it in their classrooms.

Post 19: iPods in Instruction

How in the world can you use iPod's in instruction? That was the first question that popped in my head. When most people think about iPods- they usually think about music. After doing a little research online, I realized that iPod's are more than just music. I found a Research Brief under the The Principals Partnership and it stated, "iPod is now deconstructing the border between education and entertainment. iPods are becoming study aids for students, allowing them to fast-forward to a part of a lecture they may not have understood the first time or review complicated themes before exams." I had never thought about using my iPod to study with. This is a great idea. The brief also discusses how some K-12 educators and schools have started using the iPod to enhance their curriculum and to support learning objectives in subjects such as mathematics, science, reading, foreign language, history, and more. Lectures and other audio resources can be recorded, placed on the web and then downloaded by students to listen to on their own time. Students can even do this recording themselves.

On another site I read that Duke University gave over 1600 first-year students entering their school iPod's in hopes of encouraging creative uses of technology in education and campus life. Can you imagine? I found another site that lists 100 ways to use your iPod to learn and study better that I found to be very neat and useful for not only students- but teachers as well. You can get different ideas on how to use an iPod in your classroom just by reading what some of the students are doing with their iPods to help them study. Check it out!

Post 18: iTunes University

Point blank... iTunes University is awesome! There are so many things that students as well as teachers could use that our helpful. As a students I could watch various presentations, videos, and slide shows that could help me study or do projects for school. I could even take a video tour of a potential college campus that I might be looking at applying to. As teacher, honestly the the oppurtunities are endless! I could record my teaching lessons and put them on iTunes U for my students to listen to while studying or if they missed class that day.

I can't help but think about disabled students who may not be able to attend school for the whole year. For instance, if a child becomes sick and keeps missing class- they would be able to use iTunes U to listen to what I taught over that time and I could make sure the got all assignments turned in. That way they would not fall behind the rest of the class. Students could even listen to other videos or recordings on the subjects they are studying in order to help them better understand and study for tests. The greatest thing is.... IT'S FREE!

Post 17: Dr. Christie

I am currently enrolled at USA in order to earn a degree in Secondary Education/English, so when I visited Dr. Christie's site, I came up with some ideas while looking through her photography section. In this section, the "Doc" shares photo essays with everyone. They are a collection of photographs that she took and put together in a slide. I thought about having my students make their own photograph essay that tells a story.

Then they could compose an essay telling about the pictures, why they chose them, and what sort of story they were trying to tell. It would for sure be a creative writing project. Dr. Christie had a lot of neat stuff on her site, but that specific section is where I was most intrigued. We as teachers cannot make students enjoy writing, but we can help make it more fun for them and can encourage them that writing is an important role in self expression.