Video to Parents

Blog Post 7

There are undoubtedly many things that go into your preparation for becoming a teacher. One of the most important is being technologically literate and being aware that it’s constantly changing and evolving. In the resource We All Become Learners by Dr. Strange, Mrs. Bennett told us that a kindergarten student helped her with something on the iPad. We have to realize our students have never known a world without technology and they could help us out sometimes. With that in mind, we need to make sure 95% of the time, we know what we’re doing when it comes to technology. It’s a bad position to be in when the students start to doubt you. Yes we can learn from them, but it shouldn’t be an everyday occurrence.

            Another thing to keep in mind is the capability of these students. In the resource  Using iMovie and the Alabama Virtual Library in Kindergarten by Dr. Strange, Mrs. Bennett told us that at Gulf Shores Elementary, kindergarteners are using iMovie. 5 and 6 year olds are using what we college students are using. We need to keep an open mind with these students and never doubt their abilities.

            Students want structure and they want to have a set of rules (whether they say it or not), however, they thrive from independence as well. That’s something I’m definitely going to stress in my classroom. I’ll show them what to do and monitor them, but I really want them to have complete creative control of what they do. When we use technology, I want them to explore on their own after I explain whatever program we’re using. They gain so much from independent learning. I want them to say, “Mrs. Hendricks, look what I found! Did you know…” That’s my goal with technology in the class room.

            All in all, technology is the future of education; we need to be fully aware of that. In high school, I had some teachers who refused to use it and still taught using a chalkboard. I believe that one day teachers won’t even have the option. We need to explore every resource given to us and really utilize them and see what all they can do. Technology can help us immensely in the classroom if we let it, but it can also hurt us immensely if we don’t. 

C4K

So far I have commented on four student’s blogs. One of them was actually pretty funny and I’m glad I got to read it. The first was a book report on Percy Jackson the Lightning Thief. He just explained what the book was about and it was overall a good post. I talked about my history of taking mythology courses and asked him if he knew anything about Greek mythology prior to reading the post. The next one was a kid talking about a science experiment he did one time. The post has some spelling and grammar issues and I politely suggested he proofread more carefully next time. The 3^rd one was a girl talking about her passion for soccer. It was very cute and reminded me of my own passion for the sport I love. The last one was hands down my favorite. It was actually about a dog dying so it was sad but the kid was a high-schooler and the way he wrote it was so funny. The title was “My Dog Tequila R.I.P” so that right there made me raise one eyebrow. He explained that his dog ran in front of a car and that he was very sad about it. He ended it with “That’s bae. That’s bae forever.” Bae is a slang term people use to refer to someone they really care for. It doesn’t sound as funny now typing it but just read it for yourself. My Dog Tequila R.I.P. Obviously I didn't laugh or anything in the comment, I expressed my condolences and told him I've never had a pet so I couldn't imagine what it must feel like.

Blog Post 6

I learned a lot of new things I can implement in my classroom after watching the resources given in this assignment. But one in particular stood out to me. This would be iCurio in the resource iCurio: Conversations with Anthony by Dr. Strange. This is an awesome tool that I didn't know even existed. This gives students the ability to search the web freely while also filtering out things that they don't need to see. The students can also start learning how to organize themselves online. It gives them the chance to learn how to organize websites, images, and videos so that they never lose a source they found and can very easily come back to use it. Here, they can start learning how to make virtual folders and what to place in them and how to arrange them. This is very important because I didn't learn how to do that until early high school. Anthony listed many features it has like Timeline or Historical Figure directory and I'm curious to explore it and learn more about this resource. Anthony said this was good for practically any grade level so no matter where I end up, I could use this. iCurio was by far my favorite resource given to us in this assignment.

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Blog Post 5

PLN's

A PLN, or a Personal Learning Network, is an amazing resource to help you expand your knowledge and ideas while also giving your own to virtually anyone. My favorite thing from all the resources was a quote by Michael Fawcett in his YouTube video Michael Fawcett Discusses his PLN. He said, “[t]hey’ve given me opportunities to communicate and to connect and to collaborate in ways that just weren’t there for us a year ago.” Granted Mr. Fawcett published this video in 2010, it really shows how opening your eyes to a new resource can be very beneficial for everyone involved.

As far as my PLN progress is going, I’m on my way to figuring it out. I have my EDM310 blog which is a great resource. If I were to put that on my resume, I feel like principals would be impressed with my experience with technology and all the resources I’ve looked into. Also, I have a personal story about PLN’s. I’ve been a competitive cheerleader for 8 years now and I made a twitter page about 4 years ago. In these past 4 years, I have met so many amazing cheerleaders from all over the country. Some of these people I consider my best friends. Through our mutual interest in cheerleading and also having a twitter page, I was able to find these awesome people and get to hang out with them at the big national competitions we all attend. One day, I will leave cheerleading behind me and step into the professional world of teaching. When that day comes, I know I can use Twitter as a PLN to help me find other teachers the way it has helped me find countless cheer friends.

C4T

The first blog post that I commented on was titled “Science Experiments Via Video Conference”. The teacher is a 5^th grade teacher and they video chatted another classroom from a different state. Each classroom performed a science experiment while the other class observed. I thought that this was an awesome idea especially with today’s expansion of technology. I made a point that our society has gotten to the point where you could have something as serious as am interview over video-chat so it’s an awesome idea to expose these kids to that resource as early as possible. The second blog post that I commented on was titled “Eggsercizes!!”. It was Easter and instead of filling the eggs with candy, the teacher printed out strips of paper with different exercises on them like “10 push-ups” or “10 sit-ups” and the student had to do them before looking for the next egg. I thought that this was awesome. We have an obesity epidemic happening in our country so any chance to take out unhealthy things and replace them with something active is great. I told the teacher this is definitely something I’ll keep in mind for my classroom.

Search Engines

The eight search engines I found were WolframAlpha, Bing, DuckDuckGo, DogPile, Yahoo! Search, Ask, Webcrawler and MyWebSearch. I’ve visited each search engine and concluded the following:

WolframAlpha: This search engine seems to be for math inquires. I started to type in “cars” thinking it was just a normal search engine but the first suggestions it gave me when I typed in “car” was “carbon” “carbon steel” and “carbon dioxide” so off the bat I could tell it wasn’t your average search engine. In the frequently asked questions page about this search engine they describe themselves as “[A] computational knowledge engine: it generates output by doing computations from its own internal knowledge base, instead of searching the web and returning links.”

Bing: This search engine is a lot like Google. You type in a phrase or a word and it searches it for you. I do not like this search engine. The home page brought up a giant picture of a buffalo and it is not very aesthetically pleasing. It gives news stories at the bottom which I guess could be useful, but if I’m going to Bing specifically to search for something, I wouldn’t be interested in reading news stories at that moment.

DuckDuckGo: This search engine has the slogan of “The search engine that doesn’t track you”. I’m not sure what that would be useful for unless you were being sneaky about something but I guess that could be useful for some people. I personally would not use this search engine.

DogPile: This is another one very similar to Google. You type in what you want searched and it searches the web for that content. I like the theme of this search engine. It has a little dog on the bottom of the page with a ball in his mouth and when you search for something you click on the button that says “Go Fetch!”. It’s a neat theme and I wouldn’t mind using this search engine.

Yahoo! Search: I like this search engine a lot. It also has a standard Google-type set up. However there are a couple things that set this one apart. It has news stories on the page, trending topics, and my favorite: the local weather.  It’s nice that it includes weather because turning on the TV and waiting for the local weather forecast could take a while. It also gives a 3 day forecast as well which is really nice.

Ask: This is a cool search engine. It has little trivia questions on the homepage which is really neat. For example, the question of the day was “Which taste can a cat not experience?” and I learned that cats can’t taste things that are sweet unlike most mammals. Without visiting this webpage today I would have never known that.

Webcrawler: This search engine says it combines results from Google, Bing, Yahoo! Search, and Ask. This would give you a wide variety of websites to choose from. I would use this search engine if I were having a hard time finding what I was looking for.

MyWebSearch: I do not like this search engine. It’s layout is basic and boring and it says “powered by Google” so you may as well just use Google. The only good thing about this search engine is that it has quic