Blog Post #7

After watching Using iMovie and the Alabama Virtual Library in Kindergarten, I learned that more and more Kindergarten teachers are using technology within their class. It's unbelievable to hear that they are doing some of the same things we as college students are doing for EDM 310. The difference is they seem to enjoy it more ha ha. Elizabeth and Michelle were telling Dr. Strange how their students can use iMovie to make book trailers, and how they love making the project their own. Michelle also mentioned how the kindergartners learn so fast that sometimes the teachers has to refresh herself about the program. That's amazing! The teachers also mentioned how the students enjoy editing their projects even when they've submitted the project.

They also brought up Alabama Virtual Learning. Alabama Virtual Learning is free to anyone in the state of Alabama. You can get your AVL card at any public library or you can log on any library's campus. Elizabeth mentioned how AVL is a great way to get students to research, and that the students actually enjoyed researching things.

In We All Become Teachers, Michelle passionately talks about technology and project based learning. She says technology in the classrooms has changed learning. Now, it's teachers teaching students and students teaching teachers. Teachers are getting students to teach them things. Everybody is a learner. Michelle shared a story about one of the students actually teaching her how to do a project and how the student was very proud about that. She says students are eager to show what they know and their work. I also learned about an app called Padlet that Michelle highly recommends to be used in classrooms. 

This video discusses what Chicago Public School officials think about iPads in the Classroom. Most believe there are benefits to having iPads in the classroom. An education director believes that the iPad is an excuse to really look at teaching and learning. One teacher thinks the iPad is effective because it takes students on a virtual field trip. She also likes that it user friendly for the students. Another benefit mentioned is how the iPads are portable and how students can really manipulate things on the iPad. Lastly, teachers seem to believe that having iPads in the classroom keep the students much more engaged. So I learned that easy access, manipulation and creation are the benefits of having iPads in the classrooms according to these teachers.


Top 10 Reasons to Use Technology in Education

1) Students love using technology
This keeps students more engaged in classroom.

2) Engages 4 components of learning; active engagement, participation in groups, feedback and connection

3) Profession Development
This allows students to learn and use other skill sets.

4) Makes life easier for teachers

5) Improves test scores
Students can work at their own pace.

6) Helps students with low attention span
Students with ADD or ADHD can be helped with different methods and activities to keep them interested.

7) Learn from experts
Students as well as teachers can learn from the smartest and best teachers in the world.

8) Encourages homework
This is the flipped classroom approach.

9) Saves money
Teachers don't have to spend more money to get things for their classroom.

10) Removes obstacles

Two Movies As A Teacher

Parents





Students

C4K Summary for February

C4K #1 Olivia
Mrs. Smeby's Class

Santana Mullins (University of South Alabama EDM 310)
Hello Olivia! Only seeing 2 clues has intrigued me. So the two clues from your story are that there are 2 dogs, and one dog likes to dig while the other dog likes avocados. I have a few questions for you. Are the dogs the only characters in the story? What are the dogs names? Do the dogs have owners? Where is the setting of the story? Are the dogs play around? Are the dogs searching for avocados?



C4K #2 Abigail Z
Mr. Boylen's 8th Grade LA Class

Santana Mullins (University of South Alabama EDM 310)
Hello Abigail Z! Great post! This is a powerful list to read when beginning your day or even throughout the day. Motivation, self confidence and inspiration make for a productive day. I personally would print this list and put it on my bathroom mirror and repeat these things each morning before I left home. Of course, everyday will not be all butterflies and lullabies, but waking up and starting my day off positive is key.The world needs more posts like these.


C4K #3 Joseph
Mrs. Leatherwood's Language Arts Class

Santana Mullins (University of South Alabama EDM 310)

Hello Joseph! This is a good informative post about the planet Mars. I've always found Mars interesting due to the fact that growing up I always thought Martians lived on the planet ha ha. Did you also know that Mars is home to the tallest mountain (Olympus Mons) in the solar system?

C4K #4 Lucero

Mrs. Maslowski's Class

Santana Mullins (University of South Alabama EDM 310)

Hello Lucero! Good post about KeKe Palmer. I am of fan of her as well. She is an intelligent and very multi-talented young woman who can sing, act, and dance. Did you know she was recently cast as Cinderella on Broadway, and was the first African American actress to do so? She was also the youngest person to ever have her own television talk show as well.

Project #8 Book Trailer

Blog Post #6

What do you learn from these conversations with Anthony Capps?

Project Based Learning: Experiences of a 3rd Grade Teacher Part 1

I learned about how to approach being a Project Based Learning (PBL). PBL is a means to show what students have achieved, and it is also a mean to get students to learn things. PBL get students excited about learning and what they create. The goal of a good project is one that has an authentic audience and keeps the students motivated to create good work. Content driven is also a good component of a good PBL project as well as projects that interests students. And also make sure students know the content that they are required to know. Reflection and revision of work is key in PBL too. Last but not least, teachers should be learners as well.



Project Based Learning: Experiences of a 3rd Grade Teacher Part 2


I learned in this video that everything will not always go well, so make sure you are prepared. Teachers should never limit their students, but more importantly create an opportunity for them to look beyond what they believe they can do. Listening to Anthony Capps, I understand that PBL involves a lot of planning and work in order for it to be successful for students to learn. Students enjoy doing projects that are meaningful. And only time students do not really enjoy doing the projects is if there are mishaps within collaborations. While students enjoy these projects, their parents are surprised by the outcome of seeing what their children have created.


iCurio


iCurio is an online tool. It allows students to safely search sites that have been filtered for educational purposes. iCurio allows teachers and students to store content and organize things online. iCurio has many features such as a timeline feature that allows students to search by date criteria (historical figure directory). It also saves work and allows students to continue where they stopped in case they had to stop working. iCurio is also great for students with disabilities or blind students because it has a feature that reads to them.


Discovery Education


Discovery Education is a nice source for teachers. It covers many different subjects. Discovery Education brings experts of certain topics into the classrooms through videos. Using Discovery Education, teachers can compare and contrast what students are reading to what they are seeing. Students are more listener watchers where they listen and watch more than they read and write. Discovery Education enhances these things.


The Anthony - Strange List of Tips for Teachers Part 1


1. Prepare to learn yourself (teachers have to consistently learn and model their behavior).
2. Teaching is hard work, but fun if you allow it to be, and very rewarding.
3. Be prepared for surprises (be flexible and respond to the unexpected).
4. Start with an end goal.
5. Make sure students are engaged and motivated (have content that they care about).
6. Reflect. Self-Evaluation. Share.


Don't Teach Tech- Use It


Teachers shouldn't teach technology, but they should introduce technology. They should focus on one technology at a time. They should use technology to get students excited about what they are doing. Teachers should use technology to also allow students to share what they are doing. Don't expect perfection, and let the students have time to reflect on their work so next time they will do it better. Teachers should also use the technology themselves so they can understand the questions students will ask. This helps with showing the students problem solving.


Additional Thoughts About Lessons


Teachers should remember a lesson has at least four layers. Think about a lesson in terms of how it fits within the year. Make sure all standards are covered. Stretch lessons out into units. Within that unit, devise weekly so that you can get things done daily. Daily lessons are things to keep students engaged, so that you teachers can see what the students have learned.

4 Components to making a successful lesson
1. Daily
2. Weekly
3. Unit
4. Year

My Sentence Videos

This Is My Sentence....









This Is My Passion....

Project #3 Presentation

Blog Post #5 Part #1

PLNs What Are They?


Reading Developing A Personal Learning Network in EDM 310 was very insightful to me for this post. So what are PLNs? PLN stands for Personal Learning Networks. PLNs are learning networks of people whom you interact with about ideas and thoughts related to your professional interest(s). PLNs can help build relationships with other educators around the world. You can share your knowledge about the things happening throughout your classroom and within your life and vice versa. You can share and bounce ideas off each other, and also see how other educators use tools and technology in their classrooms the same or differently. PLNs can be formed by searching throughout social media outlets or tools and then sharing those things you learned. For example, you can use Twitter to form a PLN. On twitter, you can ask questions or tweet certain things about a topic that interests you. You can also follow people that relate to the topic as well as search hashtags related to the topic. I most likely would start with Twitter when I create my own PLN since I'm very active on the site. The first addition to my PLN would be educators as right now I follow a few professors from the University of South Alabama, particularly Ms. Paige Vitulli. She tweets many thing pertaining to education and art of course, but she also tweets to many different people around the world. I've seen her interact with George Rodrigue, the creator of the Blue Dog series, many of times. She's tweeted artwork from her class of them creating their own "blue dog", and George Rodrigue has re-tweeted her. She seems to have a well established personal learning network.

After finishing up reading about PLNs, I decided to check out the sites Symbaloo and Netvibes since they are good ways to start creating a personal learning network. I chose to sign up for Symbaloo, You can easily access your bookmarks and internet favorites on this site. It even teaches you the basics of the site. I like the layout and how everything is spread out in front of me, and I don't have to go different places for things.

Blog Post #4

What do we need to know about asking questions to be an effective teacher?

There's this urban myth that teachers know everything. When in reality, teachers don't always have the answers or even the right questions. I read an article by Ben Johnson titled, The Right Way to Ask Questions in a Classroom. In this article, Mr. Johnson discussed how teachers ask questions pertaining to students understanding things. The main question he said they ask is "Does everybody understand?" According to Mr. Johnson, this is probably one of the most pointless questions ever. In general, students are really thinking that question means, yes you understand everything and if you don't, speak or forever hold your peace. Most kids think that way, and they then become either shy or too ashamed to ask what exactly they don't understand. Then, what does the teacher usually do? She moves right along to the next lesson. So how does Mr. Johnson think teachers should approach this situation differently? His more effective approach to asking students questions insists of instead of asking the whole class as a whole about if they understand things, randomly ask students throughout the classroom. Call a student's name, pause for a few seconds giving them time to think, and then ask a question related to the lesson, This way teachers can see what students are engaged, and it makes it a little more easier to see what certain students aren't quite understanding. Here is a link to the article, check it out. http://www.edutopia.org/blog/asking-better-questions-deeper-learning-ben-johnson


I also read an article that I looked up titled, Teaching Students to Ask Their Own Questions, by Dan Rothstein and Luz Santana of Harvard University. It is a very insightful article as well. It talks about the Question Formulation Technique or QFT. This method focuses on helping students learn to ask their own questions. This method also teaches the students how to improve their questions and use them strategically. QFT can be used for all ages, and challenge students to think beyond. Students can learn how to research and analyze things on their own. According to Dan and Luz, there are 6 key steps to QFT.

Step 1- Teachers design a question focus
Step 2- Students produce questions
Step 3- Students improve their questions
Step 4- Students prioritize their questions
Step 5- Students and teachers decide on next steps
Step 6- Students reflect on what they have learned

Here is a link for more details about QFT http://hepg.org/hel-home/issues/27_5/helarticle/teaching-students-to-ask-their-own-questions_507


After reading these 2 articles and doing a little research, I go back to the question I began this post with. What do we need to know about asking questions to be an effective teacher? First, we need to have a plan on asking quality questions that will show understanding by both the teacher and student. Next, we need to make sure we understand that students aren't always going to understand what we are teaching, so we need to make the effort to notice those who aren't. Lastly, we need to have a platform where students are more confident in asking us something when they don't understand things. I really like the idea of the Question Formulation Technique for me as a future educator. Students asking questions is just as important as educators asking questions. More interaction between teacher/students in regards to asking questions is not only easier for the teacher to know the student is understanding things, but it also makes the student feel great about the questions they ask and answers they give as well.

Project #15 Search Engines

Search Engines

Search engines provide information for a given question or statement specified by a user. The internet has numerous search engines, so I have listed a few that I explored. Some I liked, some I did not like, but it is always good to have variety.

1. Ask.com
This search engine was originally named Ask Jeeves, but the Jeeves was dropped in 2005. It is most useful as a question and answer site. I have no bad words about Ask, but I don't see myself using it due to me using their top competitor's search engine more.

2. Bing.com
This search engine was previously known as MSN Search, and Windows Live Search and Live Search, but all those names were discontinued when Microsoft and Yahoo joined forces. They then replaced the Yahoo search engine with Bing. Bing is most useful for instant answers regarding any things such as sports scores, stock information, mathematics, translations, defining words, and local information. Bing can also be integrated Facebook. I tend to use this search engine a lot mostly for when I'm looking up sports scores or looking for translations of words.

3. Dogpile.com
This search engine is a metasearch engine which means its uses other search engines' resources to produce results. Google and Yahoo are two of the main search engines that Dogpile uses to produce results. It is most useful for general queries. I didn't really like this search engine because I can pretty much go to one of the resources they use.

4. DuckDuckGo.com
This search engine is all about putting privacy first. This was my first time visiting this site. Duck Duck Go is a simple search engine There is no news, sports or blog sections. Just simply type in a statement, and it gives you numerous resources. I actually liked the simplicity of this search engine though I would like to see news integrated somewhere eventually.

5. FreeBookSearch.net
This search is self explanatory. It is used to find free books online. Free Book Search has many different digital libraries to find books for you. I like to read, so of course I would recommend this search engine.

6. IXQuick.com
This search engine like Duck Duck Go is very private, and IX Quick is considered the most private search engine in the world. It is metasearch engine meaning it also uses other search engines' resources. IXQuick is most useful for looking up data. I like this search engine because it gives you data from other resources therefore you don't have to go searching elsewhere for it.

7. Mininova.org
This search engine is the successor to Suprnova that was discontinued because of legal reasons. Mininova is used to search torrent files. I probably would not recommend this site since my security system warned me about it, but it is up to you.

8. WolframAlpha.com
This search engine computes answers. Wolfram Alpha is useful for mathematics, world facts and data. I had never heard of this site until I started on this project, but I will be using it for sure now. I will definitely recommend this to anyone especially students.

Project #4 C4T#1

Hello Mr. Edwards! My name is Santana Mullins, and I'm a student in EDM 310 at the University of South Alabama. I will be summarizing my visits to your blog with a post to my blog on February 5, 2015. My blog URL is mullinssantanaedm310.blogspot.com and our class blog is www.edm310.blogspot.com if you would like to check them out. First, I would like to start off by saying great post! The post really spoke to me because this pretty much sums up what my professor is teaching us about education in the 21st century. The interesting thing is I didn't necessarily always agree with your point of having technology be a major part of the classroom, but I have gradually grown to love the idea. EDM 310 is showing me that education in the 21st century is constantly changing and technology is a big reason for that. Technology has gotten students more captivated about learning. Just like students have to adapt to change in the classroom, teachers will have to learn to adapt as well.

The teacher I commented on was Mr. Daniel Edwards, and he is very passionate about learning and innovation. The first post I read about was titled Pedagogy First Technology. In this post, Mr. Edwards talked about how this is a great time to become an educator. He explains how students and teachers have so many more tools in the classroom these days in comparison to years ago. The reason for this being the rapid changes in technology. While students seem to be more encouraged and engaged in the classroom due to these changes, some teachers aren't to thrilled about these new tools and gadgets. Some teachers think these things are taking time away from their methods of teacher and are a distraction. This is where the term pedagogy comes in. Mr. Edwards believes that teachers should learn how to adapt to the new ways of learning and that pedagogy is first. What is pedagogy? Pedagogy is a premise of how best to teach. It is a very interesting post, click this link below and check it out. dedwards.me/2014//02/15/pedagogy-first-technology/

Hello Mr. Edwards, this is Santana Mullins again from EDM 310 at the University of South Alabama. Once again, another great and insightful post! This post is very informative for future educators like myself as well as present educators. Technology is being applied into so many schools now, and these are some great apps to use in the classroom. The iMovie app specifically caught my eye because I know I will be using that app for one of my EDM 310 projects. I've never used it, but I am excited to see what I will create. iTunes U is another app I believe I will be using in the future for this class. I've always wonder why that app was on my iPad and after doing a little research, I see that it is an app I will indeed be putting to use in the very near future.

In his post, titled Top 10 Apps in an Established 1:1 iPad School, Mr. Edwards detailed how iPads are used in everyday learning in schools. He listed his top ten iPad apps that are appropriate for school. He explained how these apps worked and when they could be implemented in school lessons or projects. His top ten list included apps such as Explain Everything, Socrative 1.0 and 2.0, iMovie, iTunes U, Showbie, Edmodo, Notability, Keynote, Book Creator, and Pages. I personally downloaded a few of these apps and check them out as well. Click the link below and explore these great apps and how they work. The link to this post is dedwards.me/2014/02/08/top-10-apps-in-an-established-11-ipad-school/ Enjoy!