Blog Assignment #11

What can we learn about teaching and learning from these teachers?

      Blended Learning Cycle Paul Anderson uses this cycle to mix different learning styles to help his classroom learn. The steps are questions, investigation/inquiry, video, elaboration, review, and summary quiz. With this blended learning cycle you as the teacher can get as creative as you want. Mr. Anderson even said he styled it like a video game at one point.
       Learning is Messy Brian Crosby shares a videos about the students in his classroom and

compares how they started off at the beginning of the year and how they progressed throughout the year. I loved his message in this video because it showed that if you try and really work with struggling students, then you can truly change their life around. He did many PBL projects with his students which help their overall learning.
      Making Thinking Visible by Ron Ritchhart is a book about changing the way we teach and learn in the classroom. He writes about how he would like to see schools stop basing intelligence off of test scores and instead base the intellectual development off of how a child plans, creates, thinks, and can actually be engaging with other students while they are learning. I have always thought that test scores never show the true potential of a person. I plan on using this idea of Ron in my classroom to see how my future students learn best and to check and see if they are grasping the concepts.
       Sam Pane 4th Grade builds a comic that is fun for the kids, but also a great learning experience as they talk about safety. I like this activity because the students are not only doing something that is fun and intriguing, but also learning quite a bit about making comics and writing along with many other things.
        Project Based Learning shows a school that does not focus on one subject particularly, but in fact on multiple ones. They are also using project based learning to create projects involving these multiple subjects. I like this idea because they are getting, what I think, a well rounded education on the difference of subjects instead of having a big focus on certain ones.
         Roosevelt Elementary PBL program really just sums up how I want to teach my future students. I am going for elementary education and hope that I will get the opportunity to get to use many of the ideas all of these videos showed.

Project #12

Smart board Tutorial

Project #4 C4T #3

Two Writing Teachers

#1 The Share Time
So this blog post I recommend to everyone, especially if teaching students to read and write is important to you, which is should be. So in this blog the author is giving out some wonderful tips to try on a classroom for when your students are writing and sharing their writing.  I told her how grateful I was for the tips and I'm not going to spoil any of them. Go check it out!

#2 Work Smarter
Once again this blog is blowing me away! In this post we are told some great tips on grading students papers. I plan on using these 7 tips for my students. Here they are 1.Turn off all noise. 2. Skim through entire pile. 3. Use rubric or checklist. 4. Be sure to give positive comments. 5. Go digital.
6. Plan instruction based on variety of papers. 7. Minimal marks for spelling. I commented saying thanks for the awesome tips!

Project # 6 C4K #2

C4K #4 Pixl's blog
Pixl wrote the most amazing chapter for a book she is working on. It is in the genre of sci-fi, which I love. Click on the link above and read please! I told her how much I loved it and that she should become a writer. I could visualize everything she wrote in this short chapter.

C4K #5 Cylie's Blog
Cylie wrote about some changes she would make to her school. Some of these changes were choosing her own classes and schedule, and even being able to start school later. I replied telling her about her great ideas and that choosing your own schedule would be amazing because you would get to take classes on things you are interested in.

C4K #6 Jenna's Blog
Jenna embedded 2 links to some pictures of a church and some animals at the park. She then described everything see saw. I told her that I was amazed about her linking the pictures and enjoyed her descriptions of them.

C4K #7 Sulieti's blog
Sulieti posted a blog about her trip to the museum about the Maori. At the museum they learned about the different foods and some new words. I told Sulieti that it sounded like the museum was fun and said how much I love museums myself.

Blog Assignment #10

What can we learn from Mrs. Cassidy?

1st graders in Mrs. Cassidy's class

Interview with Mrs. Cassidy part 1.

Interview with Mrs. Cassidy part 2
Interview with Mrs. Cassidy part 3

     There are many things to learn from Mrs. Cassidy. First, I want to express my admiration for how she brought technology into the classroom. I noticed that this was in 2010. Well I graduated from high school in 2009 and we were doing nothing even close to what these 1st graders were doing in her classroom. I hope to be at a school where my students will have access to their own laptops to use in the classroom and at home. This way I can get them to practice many of the things that Mrs. Cassidy had her students doing in her classroom. I hope that when I become a teacher I can incorporate blogging in my lesson plan while teaching my elementary students reading and writing along with many other necessary skills that they will need even at an early age. Another technological learning tool she had for her classroom was a webpage with links to educational games that her students had access to. I think this is a great idea, especially because most of the children I know, even younger than kindergarten, always have some kind of high tech device in their hands and are playing some game. This learning activity helps to spark their interest in education.

Blog Assignment #9

What can Teachers and Students teach us about Project Based Learning?

    In the video Project Based Learning for Teachers, by Tony Vincent, we are given a very helpful overview of what project based learning is. To incorporate PBL in the classroom, we must make a project with a purpose. This means not only must it grow knowledge, but it must mean something to the students. The students must address an audience to show what they learned or, better yet, teach other what they have learned. A driving question must be included, which is the question that their project is answering. Learning standards need to be identified as well so that you can be sure to stay with the subject matter.  Students need to be grouped together and brainstorm about whir project. Rubrics need to be used for evaluation. Deadlines must be met and students must focus on the process. And at the end projects need to be reviewed so that they may be refined if needed.
 Seven Essentials for Project Based Learning is a wonderful list to help a teacher put together a project for PBL. It states that "every good project needs a need to know, a driving question, students voice and choice, 21st century skills, inquiry and innovation, feedback and revision, and must be publicly presented." A need to know is chosen by the subject of the classroom and the level of the students.  A good driving question is one that portrays the main point of the project and focuses on solving a problem. Students get to pick how they are going to do their project along with learning 21st century skills like communication, critical thinking, and the use of technology.

 What Motivates Students is letting them have a choice in what they learn and how they learn. This helps get them involved and interested in learning.  Letting students share what they have learned about helps to give them a sense of importance. Being grouped together also will help motivate students because they get to share ideas and keep each other focused and on task.
    Ten Sights Supporting Digital Classroom Collaboration has 10 sights that seem to be pretty helpful. A few of these sights we use in this class. Titan pad and Google docs works a lot alike. They both are sights for storing and sharing documents. All Wisher and Corkboardme are very similar to padlet, the program we use in this classroom to do collaborative work. Today's meet and Skype are places "where students and teachers can meet and see only what needs to be seen".
    Wing Project:Crafting a Driving Question is a video that is explaining how to create a good driving question while also showing a group of teachers in the process of creating a driving question. I enjoyed watching the teachers brainstom over what question would work best for their project. its nice to see teachers doing this for a project instead of just the students! This helps make the projects fun and enjoyable and also helps teachers and students apply the learning standards to their projects.

Project #9

Video Book Commentary 

Implications and Teaching Opportunities in Technology and Learning

Part A
    Most people have a smart phone with them at all times. This means not only students, but teachers as well. Many of us use the camera on the smart phone almost everyday!
   Since we already have access to the technology, wouldn't these smart phones be a great asset to our learners in the educational field? They have many uses that we can take and put in the classroom. These uses can be from taking pictures for assignments to using search engines for gathering information for these projects.

Part B
   In my classroom I would have my students use their smart phones as a learning tool. Of course, there would be a set of regulations for using them for purposes other than education, but that's not what this is about. I would encourage my students to use their smart phones for many different situations in the classroom. As stated before, taking pictures and gathering information for assignment would be some of the actions I would have my students do. They could also use the to create videos and even other types of presentations because of the many applications they smart phones give them access to. There are many attributes that using a smart phone for education could bring to the classroom.

Blog Assignment #8

What Can We Learn About Teaching And Learning From Randy Pausch?


Randy's Last Lecture

In Randy Pausch's tear jerking last lecture, I gained quite a bit of wonderful advice on how to become not only a teacher, but also an excellent learner. Randy is a professor as Carnegie Mellon and has cancerous rumors in his liver. However, this last lecture did not focus on the downside of this event, but rather how to lead your life. He starts off by talking about his childhood dreams and how, even though they were from his childhood, they are very important. They are the motivators for your future. These dreams lead you to learn lessons that help you to constantly grow. Getting the fundamentals down is the first step to accomplishing these dreams.
There are many things I learned from Randy's last lecture. My favorite was that experience is what you get when you don't get what you want. This ties in with another point he state about conquering brick walks. Brick walls are not there to keep you out, they are there to make you show how much you really want it. It takes time to make things happen and everything that will go wrong can go wrong.
We all know that the best way to learn is by having fun. This is one of the points that Randy really stresses. Following along with never losing the child-like wonder. These two things go hand and hand. Using that child-like wonder helps the teacher and students find ways to learn while also having fun!

Project #4 C4T #2

C4T Post #1 :Creating a Collaborative Learning Environment Part 2

In this post the blogger Lily Jones is recognizing David Olio for his analysis-rich classroom that he has created. Videos that she posted to this blog show how Mr. Olio uses collaborating in his classroom and how it creates such a great classroom work environment. I commented that I enjoyed her post very much. I think that Mr. Olio's collaborative learning environment is one that all teachers should be working to have.

C4T Post #2: How We Learn

In this post teacher Julia Chope is talking about their fall book club and the book they have chosen to read. "How we Read" is written by a science reporter named Benedict Carey. He works for The New York Times. The book is about research on how "distractions, repetition, sleep, and even study locations" have an alarming affect on how people take in information. I commented saying that this book looks like a wonderful read and plan on reading it myself. I think everyone can agree that we could all use some help when it comes to learning new information.

Project #7 Part B

Project # 13

Project Based Learning Plans

Lesson Plan

Long E Assessment

PBL checklist

Double E Song

Blog Assignment #7

How do we all become learners?

   To start off I would like to say all of these videos have given me great ideas for my future classroom. I plan on using basically all of the tools that I will soon describe in this post. I never actually realized how much elementary age students in this area were using all of the tools accessible on their iPads/MacBooks.
    How To Make An Audio QR Code teaches you how to create a QR code and also to make it an audio recording. I have never worked with QR codes before, but after watching this video I decided to play around with them. I found that they are quite handy. I plan on using them in my classroom for my students to use and learn from.
   In the video about iPad Centers Mrs. Tuck shows how she uses the iPad with her students to record themselves reading. After they record themselves, they review the video and follow along in the book to check for any mistakes. This is a wonderful way for students to self-correct themselves. I definitely plan on using this in my classroom to help teach my future students to read and correct their own errors so that they can become better readers!
   Poplets as a Center is another video Mrs. Tuck has that shows how to create  Poplets. Poplets is an app where children can design a web for whatever subject matter that is being covered. They can add picture and their own words. Poplets are a great tool for the elementary school age to learn with. I plan on using this app for my future class to help them learn to group different criteria together, whether is be letters or words.
   Mrs. Tuck also lets her students have an Alabama Virtual Library Center. In this center her class gets to use the AVL to search for different books for their reading level. On the AVL the students can find their books and even have the books read to them. This gives the child access to read along and helps them learn new words and pronunciation.
   Mrs. Shirley's first grade class shows us how to create a Board For PBL. These boards can have pictures and words explaining the criteria that the student chooses. In this video the teacher and the student are both teaching the viewer how to work the board in the DE. I think it is wonderful that not only the teacher is teaching, but also the student! You can tell that a child fully understands the content when they are able to do this.
   Mrs. Tassin's second grade Students Sharing Board Builders and Students Sharing Board Builders #2 demonstrates the students sharing the information that they found and created for their board. This gives the students an opportunity to teach their fellow students and even their teachers about the subject of their choice.

   iMovie and AVL and We All Become Learners taught me that their are many great technological tools that our elementary age students are using in today's world. These technological changes are causing students to not only practice more Project Based Learning but be teachers as well. The students are being the teachers which is causing the teachers to become the students. While watching all of these videos, I became to learner. I now completely understand how everyone becomes a learner and plan on taking this information with me when I graduate.