Blog Post #7; Randy Pausch's Last Lecture

Randy Pausch

The "Last Lecture" that Pausch is known for, among many of other achievements, is not just about teaching and learning. This lecture is about breaking down the brick walls set in front of you and conquering your dreams. The viewers of this lecture heard Randy encourage all to make things happen, not just waiting around for them to be placed before you. The brick wall, Randy likes to use as a metaphor,is obstacles that come in our way and how we handle the obstacle is the true test.

Randy Pausch states,"Enabling the dreams of others is even more fun." It is so rewarding to help others in their quest to reach their dreams. I imagine as I continue my own dream of becoming a teacher, it will give me a chance to help my students reach theirs. As a teacher, I will be molding and encouraging all my students to focus on education. Like Randy, I also, feel that education leads to so much more than just a diploma. Education helps to overcome those "brick walls" and opens a multitude of opportunities.

Another important lesson I learned from Randy is that teaching should be fun. Randy in his classroom for over ten years did project-based learning. Project-based learning to me is how we, as educators, keep our students interactive and wanting to continue learning.

I took a lot of tips and lessons from Randy Pausch's Last Lecture. "We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand", Randy truly lived out the meaning of this. He taught us a lot about not just teaching and learning, but also, how we should live our life. Randy Pausch died on July 27, 2008, from pancreatic cancer, at the age of 47. He left behind friends, family, and a lecture that will touch everyone who watches it.

Lesson Plan Project 13

Legends and Myths of Ireland

Ireland Myths/Legends Calendar

Ireland Myths/Legends Lesson Plan

February C4K

Kids' blogs

In the first kid's blog, Adam wrote about what he learned from when his class had a Skype session with Sharky Gillian. During this session, Adam tells his readers how he learned various types of information about sharks. He then explains how sharks are being hunted down and made into soup. He continues with giving a statistic of "one hundred million sharks are killed each year and only about five humans are killed by sharks each year." If his statistic are right, it is unbelievable to think all those sharks are hunted down. Adam's blog post had lots of facts and showed how interested he was in the Skype session set up by Ms. Toal (his teacher).

In my second student's blog, Gavyn had a survey for each of the readers to fill out about themselves. I thought it was very interesting that Gavyn could collect data from the readers just by a simple Google Doc survey. I was hoping to go back and see if Gavyn did anything with all the questions and answers, but nothing so far.

In my third student's blog, Danny wrote about chapter two of Of Mice and Men. I am thinking the topic of this blog post was about what would he name the chapter of the book. Danny choose to name it "The Ranch". Danny explained the relationships between the two main characters and how they lived on a ranch. The two main characters names are Lennie and George. Danny explains how there is a mean boss, named Curley. Curley and Lennie get in a fight, which makes Lennie fired from his job. Danny does are wonderful job explaining the relationships and the rough times between each of them. I found this post to me a refresher, helping me remember exactly what happens in Of Mice and Men .

In my final student's blog, @thathippykid315, this post talks about what the student believes. What the child believes is that "the beach is not fun." He justifies his reasoning with a few examples from a trip he took with his sister. Like with all these bad experiences, such as: getting sick, to crowded, and that the water was scary, it was clear that he did not like the beach at all. I enjoy the beach, but I agree it could be over-crowded and the water is scary at times. I suggested that he should go back another times when it is not so crowded and when the water is clear enough to see his feet. The student, @thathippykid315, did a great deal on describing his experiences and focusing the reader how his emotions about the beach.

Book Trailer

Blog Post #6

Personal Learning Network

PLN, or Personal Learning Networks, are resources that will be used in my future teaching career. These resources can be professionals in the field, networks focused on helping teachers, and tools for students. All these resources will be used to help and provide assistance to me throughout my career. These resources are easy to come by, such as Twitter or even my professors, like Dr. Strange (@DrJohnHadley). My network is not that large right now, but it will continue to grow with more teachers I come in contact with and also, more websites that are being suggested to me.

For right now though, I love finding videos, images, audio and other great resources on TeacherTube, these will help integrate media with the lesson I am teaching. Another tool is blogging which was introduce to me through Dr. Strange and with his C4T activity, I am able to see other teachers' blog about techniques, tips, and what is going on in their classrooms, like Live the Conversation. Another resource for my PLN is Pinterest, I love this virtual sharing board, where teachers can share different crafts, SMART board activities, and even ideas for project-based learning.

I do hope to continue growing my personal learning network while here at South and also in my career. Dr. Strange tells us that we are lifetime learners, we should strive to continue to advance our knowledge.

My Sentences Videos.

My Sentence is...

My Passion is...

Blog Post #5

Conversations with Anthony Capp

In this post assignment, Dr. Strange assigned seven videos to learn more about project-based learning and tools to help educators in the classroom. In the first two videos, Project Based Learning Part 1 and Project Based Learning Part 2, it was interesting listening to a former EDM310 student talk about how he applies the projects we are learning now into his own classroom. Anthony Capps encouraged that the projects are used to help students learn the material. These projects are how the students were introduced to the new materials, like the cultures project with the narrative skit and the boy's science project that was useful for the whole class. Capps stated in part two, "Projects create opportunities for the students to go beyond."

iCurio and Discovery Education

iCurio from my understanding is a search engine for pure educational purposes. This search engine is easy for the students to use for school projects. Then the video, Discovery Education, is website that is sourced with visuals for science and social studies related. Anthony proceeded to say that Discovery Ed. multiple media types to support the field of study. For example, if a student wanted to look up a plant not only will Discovery Ed. give a picture, but also a video of that certain plant.

The Anthony-Strange Tips for Teachers Part 1, Use Tech Don't Teach It, Additional Thoughts

In the videos, listed in the title, they all gave key tips for future educators. One tip was that educators need to learn to become flexible. To me especially as a future elementary teacher, I need to learn that lessons can change and there is always redoes (if I like the idea of the lesson, but doesn't quite work out I could fix the mistakes and try again). Another tip is that I need to embed myself with technology if I expect my students to use technology throughout year.

As a future teacher, I have so many tools that will engage my students and encourage them to go beyond just the classroom.

Project #3 Presentation

Blog Post #4: "What do we need to know about asking questions to be an effective teacher?"

The first source I choose to look at was The Right Way to Ask Questions in the Classroom. This post focuses on how the teacher is asking questions wrong and moving on before the students fully understand the material. Straying away from the traditional rising of the hands, or calling on a student right after asking the questions is not recommended. A technique the blog suggests is to pause after asking a question to the class as a whole. Then this allows each student to think of the question before calling on one specific student to answer. They suggest coming up with different methods of asking questions and having a discussion with the class to keep it interesting and to make sure the students understands the material before moving on.

One resource that Dr. Strange shared with us, called Asking Questions to Improve Learning explored the differences with how a question should be approached in a classroom. Throughout this article it was discussing how to ask questions, how to respond, and then gave examples of different types of questions to ask. At first, I thought this was silly having an article explain how an educator should ask questions, but as I continued reading. I thought just how right all these points are, such as: avoid asking "leading questions", have a follow-up question along with a "yes or no" question, and do not ask more than one question in a discussion. Some reasons behind the do's and don't's were simple, like: students are unsure of which question to answer when asked multiple questions at once and a "leading" question pretty much has the answer within the question. As the article continues with "responding effectively", points were brought up that should be clear, but may sometimes be pushed aside. One point was very true, do not interrupt students' answers. I know it drives me insane when I have the answer, but it is taking me awhile to search for the right words. Seeing that it is taking me a few seconds, they stop me. Then give me the answer, because they do not feel I know it. As an educator we should become more patient allowing the student to search for the right words to answer the question.

Going back to the main question, "What do we need to know about asking questions to be an effective teacher?" After reading all these points for improving the classroom discussion, I feel I will use these tips and treats to become a more effective teacher in my future classroom.

C4T #1

"Primary Tech"

My assigned blog teacher is Kathleen Morris. Her blog is called Primary Tech. She is based out of Victoria, Australia. She was recently on maternity leave, so the first post I read was from July. That post was called “Blogging and the Literacy Curriculum.” This blog focused on how important it is to incorporate multimedia into the classroom. She explained, “I have used whole class, small group and rotation structures to make blogging work in my classroom.” Blogs cannot just be an add-on, but needs to be integrated into the curriculum. She tells her reason for thinking this, “Our students need to become transliterate and develop the ability to read, write and interact across a range of platforms, tools and media, both traditional and digital.” Ms. Morris encourages that transliteracy becomes a daily activity in the classroom.

"Tips for Graduate Teachers"

There was a housekeeping post on the second time I went to comment, but she linked the readers to another blog she wrote recently. The blog was about Tips for Graduate Teachers. I loved this post she wrote. This post was to help the future graduating teachers and how to navigate through their classroom their first couple weeks. Her first headline in this post was Students, under this topic she encourages the teacher to really focus on getting to know the students. Kathleen even says, “Place getting to know your students above everything else.” How true is that? That we are building teacher-student relationships throughout the year and that is how we impact our classroom. During the process of building relationships she explains, “that we need to maintain a professional approach.”

Another topic she talked about was “Wider Education Community.” This headline was introducing the future teachers that our networking tools are not just the other teachers at the school we are in, but that we have other tools. These tools are twitter, blogs, and just a vast amount of knowledge on the internet. The more diverse my teacher network is the more tools I have to build a better classroom.

Blog Post #3: Peer Editing

Peer Perfection

While watching the video, What is Peer Editing? and viewing the slideshow, Peer Editing with Perfection, both of these tools describes the three basic approaches to peer editing. Starting the editing with an opening compliment keeps things in a positive light, letting the peer know that you are helping them not attacking them. After your opening compliments the next step would be providing suggestions to improve the work. Suggesting different word choices or elaborating on details will increase the value of the peer's work. Continue on to the next step of analyzing the writing. You should check for grammar, punctuation, spelling, and sentence structure for mistakes and make the corrections that are needed.

Nightmares of Peer Reviews

TOP 10 MISTAKES, portrayed different peer personalities. The video shows multiple students and wrong actions when being edited by a peer. For example, there was a student called "Off-task Oliver," Oliver had the problem of getting distracted and not focusing on the editing process. Also another student was "Whatever William," where William had the problem of not caring about the task at hand. One little girl stood out from the video and her name was "Picky Patty." The video showed that she was too picky and found every mistake big or small. But my question is "Isn't that a good thing?" Would you not to fix all your mistakes to achieve the best possible finished product? Though she showed being picky in a negative light, one can be picky in a helpful friendly way.