C4K - March

My child for this week is named, Bitner. In Bitner's post, he talked about going to his Nana's house. He had a short video about what he did over the weekend at his Nana's. He said that he slept in the big chair, and it was really fun. He also drew a picture on Kid Pix (This looks similar to the paint program) of him at his Nana's. Bitner is now learning to write sentences independently and correctly in New Zealand.

The next child I was assigned, is named John. He is a year 5 student from New Zealand. In his blog post called, "Mapping", he posted a map with an assignment on the side. It would ask him to state the location of a symbol, or to draw a symbol in a certain location. I understood what it was right away. It's awesome to see children do things the same, all the way around the world.

My new child is Shanika. In her latest blog post, she created a table. This table has different math facts in it. I do not understand all of it, to be honest. I'd love to know more about it and maybe I could use it with my future students. It includes, "Groups within 100 Doubles and Halves", "2, 5 and 10 Division Facts", "How many 10s, 100s, 1000s in these numbers", "3x, 4x, 6x, 7x, 8x, 9x Tables", "Decimal and Fraction Sequence (carry on the sequence", and "Ordering numbers (Use symbols to put fractions/numbers in order smallest to largest)".

C4T #3

Wesley Fryer's post this week is called, Preparing for a Stopmotion Art Project. Wesley talks about how the art teacher at his school makes stop motion videos with the students. She created a stand for their classroom iPads out of cardboard and duct tape. This stand holds the iPad upright so that they can do the video. They used the Stop Motion Cafe application for iPad to make this movie and it is completely free for all that they needed to do. Here is a video that they made in the class:


In Wesley Fryer's latest post, The Evolution of BYOD for our Church Session, he talks about how many organizations are allowing people to bring their own devices to meetings. At his church, they just started bringing their own devices. They used to send out needed documents through emails. Now, they use dropbox, and just send the link to the dropbox to everyone in an email. It's much easier to do it this way. He stated that a lot of school boards are now allowing students to bring their own devices. Of course I can see where that can be good and bad. Wesley is curious to see who else uses the method of BYOD (bring your own device) also.

Project #15

Road Sign Shapes Lesson Plan

This lesson plan involves shapes found on road signs. Students are given a list of shapes, and must find those shapes throughout town and take a picture of them. Once they have all their pictures, they must make a PowerPoint or Google slide presentation with the pictures. On each slide they must name the shape and tell where they found the sign. I think this is a great hands-on way for students to learn about their shapes that they see in everyday life.

Project 12 - Part A

In this video, myself and two of my fellow group members demonstrate how to use Smartboards.

Blog Post #10

The question is: What can we learn from Sir Ken Robinson?

In Sir Ken Robinson's video, Bring on the Learning Revolution, he talks about our education system. Education is currently reforming. He states that reform is bad in this case. Reforming means that we are just improving a broken model. We are trying to fix something that already does not work properly. We do not need evolution, but a revolution in our education systems. Through a revolution, we can transform the education system into something else, that is more effective.

I learned from Sir Ken Robinson, that education can often take away from people's natural talents. Most people have talents and do not even know it. If they do know their talents, they often times don't use them. Talent is so diverse in this world, and education needs to foster that talent. For this reason, he believes that students don't always need to go to college right away. They can go later, once they know their talents and wants in life. He then talked about a man that wanted to be a fireman all of his life. His teacher didn't take him seriously, and called him out in front of the class. The teacher told him that he was wasting potential, and that he should go to college and actually do something good with his life. The man was embarrassed and in shock. After the man lived out his dreams and became a fireman, he ended up saving his teacher's life in a car accident. He gave him CPR and also ended up saving his wife. Everyone has different talents, and we need to understand that as teachers.

Another thing that we can learn from Sir Ken Robinson is that our education is becoming like the fast food industry. It is very standardized. The food from the fast food industries is depleting to our physical bodies, just like education is depleting students passions and talents. Education no longer feeds passion. He explains that his wife recently wrote a book, and would disappear for hours on end. She felt as if she was gone for no time at all. Whenever you have passion, and love what you are doing, time flies by so quickly. Everything is so standard in education now, that it does not help students flourish. We cannot predict the outcome of human development, but we can foster the conditions of the students, so that hopefully, they will flourish. As a teacher in the making, this video really helped me put things into perspective. I will always need to remember that everyone is different and has different talents. Being different is not a bad thing, and I need to help those talents flourish.

Blog Post #9

What can we learn from Ms. Cassidy? Well, I don't know about you, but I was surprised at the amount of things that her first graders are doing in her classroom. In the video, First Graders in Ms. Cassidy's Class, I got to see all of the things that she has her students do in her classroom. I really loved how the students told how the technology benefited them. They stated that they use blogs to show their progress in writing. A student even said that their writing gets better every time that they post. They use wiki's to ask questions, and people from around the world can give their answers. They leave videos on their blogs, so that it can act as a portfolio, and their progress can visually be seen. They use Skype to talk to other classes around the world- I bet the students really enjoy this. The last thing that I thought was really cool, was the use of Nintendo DS's. I have never seen them used in the classroom before. Students said that the DS's help them with sharing and problem solving skills. It's fun and beneficial!

In the Skype videos of Ms. Cassidy, there were several things that stuck out to me. She mentioned that technology is never going away. I do agree with her, but there are a lot of schools that need to upgrade their technology resources. That is really the main impediment I could foresee happening in my area. The school I observe at has Smart Boards, but not iPads for each room, and things of that nature. To fix these problems in my own classroom, I could apply for grants to get more resources. I could even write letters to the school board about my concerns. Another thing that stuck out to me, was when she said that college is the best time to learn technology. She is right, we need to learn as many things as we can in college. College is the best time for learning and growing in our future careers, and we need to take advantage of that. As for Ms. Cassidy's approaches, she has definitely went all the way. She uses technology in what seems to be all of her courses. I could picture myself using the blogs for my classroom. I think it would truly be a great way for students to improve their writing. Plus, students can get comments on their blog, and that always makes them feel so special. If you would like to view Ms. Cassidy's blog, it can be found here.

Project #9

My group was so much fun to work with in this project. We had discussed what we were going to talk about in the podcast, but ended up adding more things that we thought of as we went along. It was a real conversation. It was also a lot of fun and I hope you enjoy listening to us.

Project #14

Money Fair Lesson Plan

My lesson plan for project #14 is about showing kids how money is spent in everyday life. Students will be required to choose a product/good to make and "sell" at a fair at the end of the week in class. When making the goods, students will also need to have their parent/guardian take an instructional video on how to make the product. The day of the fair, students will be allotted five fake dollars to use and buy goods. After they have the fair, the next day, parents will be allowed to come to the classroom and watch the instructional videos with the students. This is a great way for kids to learn about saving and spending money and they should have a lot of fun in doing so!

Blog Post #8

In doing my research for this post, I found some really great sites and tools to use in my future teaching. I was asked to find 21st century learning and communicating tools. When I first read the objectives, I kind of thought it would be hard to find things I could use in the classroom. I literally googled 'education tools' and found a big board on Pinterest with so many tools to use! Pinterest is also a tool I have mentioned, and it always comes in handy.

The first learning tool I am going to talk about is TubeChop. One day in class this semester, I had a teacher tell me that she really wished she could let students see parts of a movie to get the meaning, but knew she couldn't because parts of it was inappropriate. TubeChop can take YouTube videos, and chop the video into certain parts that you want. This way, you can show children certain clips that can be educational.

Another great tool I found is very similar to Blogger. It is called, Weebly. Weebly is specifically made for teachers to create class websites. Students can even make them too and it is great for blogging. It is protected for the students, so they can only see appropriate content. There are also so many different gadgets you can add to the blogs. It is free, therefore, teachers should have no problems with using this site.

My favorite that I have found is Blendspace. On Blendspace teachers can create a class (They can make more than one if they teach other classes) and in that class, they can make lessons. Once you have created a class, you give your students their class code so that they can register in their class. On their class page, they can view lessons, take quizzes, and even do collaborative projects. Through Blendspace, teachers can track their students' participation. You can see how long students spent on different things. They can also do help requests on different resources that you can track too. You may also add other features for an additional price, but otherwise, Blendspace is free. The lesson plans I looked at throughout the website are so fun and creative. You can make videos, diagrams, voice clips, and so many other interesting things. Students can also reply to the lessons and post their responses in the same way. Blendspace has also just added an application for iPads, making it even more convenient. Blendspace is very new to me, but from what I have learned through this research, it seems like an extremely great resource to use in the classroom. I think students could get really creative on this website.

These are only a few of the great resources I have found. I could probably go on forever if I had to. There are so many new and exciting things that teachers can be using in their classrooms, and I will take advantage of these things I have found when I teach. By the time I start teaching, there will be even more new and fun tools to use you. If you want to learn about even more useful tools for the classroom, check out Eric Sheninger's, "Web 2.0 Tools for Educators" board on Pinterest.

C4T #2

Henrietta Miller writes about the "No hands up" approach to asking students questions. This approach is just to simply not call on children by them raising their hands as most teachers often do. Instead, put their names on cards or popsicle sticks, or even use apps for it. She explains that whenever teachers rely on students to raise their hands, they basically give students permission to not participate if they don't want to. Most students won't even raise their hand unless they are sure that it is the right answer. Some students just like to talk, but their are the others that are shy and don't like to talk at all. I wholeheartedly agree with Henrietta, we do not need to allow students to shut off, and stray from learning. If we randomly call on students, we will be able to make sure they are listening and are engaged.

Henrietta Miller's next blog post is a question.. "Who owns your classroom?" Henrietta explains that her students normally do not care to keep the classroom neat. She is wondering whether it is because they have no ownership of the room. She tells how another teacher at her school lets her students hang their own things on the walls, and lets them sit wherever they please. Does this give the students more ownership of the classroom they are in? She asks for others' thoughts on the topic. In all honesty, I would think that students would react more to their own things on the walls, rather than perfect displays that they don't pay attention to. One thing I really loved in elementary school, was having an "A" wall. If you made an A on a test, it got put on the wall. Students felt special when they got an A, and it gave them incentives. If teachers let students have a little more ownership, maybe they would care more about the classroom and learning.

Project #13

The Renaissance Projects
In our lesson plan for 9th grade World History students, we decided to let them get a feel of the Renaissance. This project is in two parts. In the first part of the project, students will be divided into groups of four and assigned a Renaissance artist. They will create a slideshow to tell about the artists life, with a ten slide minimum. In the second part of this project, we like to call it "The Michaelangelo Project". Students will get to tape paper under a desk or table, and lay on mats to get a feel of what it was like for Michaelangelo to paint the Sistine Chapel. They will get to recreate one of his works of art in the Sistine Chapel. Students will not be graded on the aesthetic properties, but on their participation and effort. I feel like this project is very hands on, and will be so fun and interesting for students - I wish my teachers in the past had done something this creative!