Sunday, March 29, 2015
Saturday, March 28, 2015
C4K Summary for March
C4K #5
Per 4 Tamari's Blog
Santana Mullins (University of South Alabama EDM 310)
Hello Tamari! Great post! Yes, Maya Angelou was a great writer and civil rights activist. Did you know that she was also a dancer, actress, and singer? I love all her work, but my favorite work from her would have to be Phenomenal Woman. It is a poem that relates to every woman in the world. It talks about what society thinks a woman should look like as far as beauty and how we act. You should check it out because I think you will enjoy it.
Per 4 Tamari's Blog
Santana Mullins (University of South Alabama EDM 310)
Hello Tamari! Great post! Yes, Maya Angelou was a great writer and civil rights activist. Did you know that she was also a dancer, actress, and singer? I love all her work, but my favorite work from her would have to be Phenomenal Woman. It is a poem that relates to every woman in the world. It talks about what society thinks a woman should look like as far as beauty and how we act. You should check it out because I think you will enjoy it.
C4K #6
Santana Mullins (University of South Alabama EDM 310)
Hello Steve! This is a good post on Friday the 13th. I actually did not know there was a word for the fear of Friday the 13th. Reading your post, I now know paraskevidekatriaphobia is that word. What a word! Did you know that we will have a Friday the 13th three times this year? Two of those will be back to back (February and March), and the other one is in November.
C4K #7
Santana Mullins (University of South Alabama EDM 310)
Hello Ethan H! I was assigned to read your blog post. Great post! I've never read this book, but reading your blog has got me very interested. I will definitely put this on my to read list, I love basketball, so this is right up my alley. Are you a fan of basketball? Good job and keep up the good work!
Saturday, March 21, 2015
Blog Post #10
What can we learn from Mrs. Cassidy?
There are so many things we can learn from Mrs. Cassidy. The first thing I learned automatically is how passionate she is about technology in the classroom. Mrs. Cassidy talks about technology and how she got into it. She says technology is not going away, and that we have to change because the world is constantly changing around us. She thinks every teacher should be technology literate. Mrs. Cassidy believes teachers who don't use technology in their classroom are handicapping their students by not taking advantage of tools. We need to keep up with what is happening with new tools. In order to keep up, we need to direct our own personal network. We have to keep learning, and find a way that works for us. Mrs. Cassidy says that we should start with what we're interested in. For example, if a person likes to write, then they should start by blogging. If a person likes to take pictures, then they should start with Flickr and so on.
Mrs. Cassidy tells how she started with technology. She had a classroom years ago that only had 5 laptops. Well, she wanted to find a way to let the students use them within the class. She started to figure out how to make webpages which lead to her blogging. Now, Mrs. Cassidy has a classroom blog. She likes blogs because of the audience factor. Before she allows her students to use technology in the classroom, she sends out a form to parents. The form asks the parent's permission to allow their child to use computers. She protects her student's identity by only posting their first names, so you cannot match a name with a picture. Mrs. Cassidy uses her student's blogs as online portfolio of their work. She says it also helps with their writing process. The kids love it. They particularly love that the whole world can see it and the feedback they get. Students love seeing how many times people have viewed their page, and what they have written. Mrs. Cassidy and her students also communicate with people who comment on their blogs through Skype, so they are getting writing, video and audio lessons.
I may use a few of Mrs. Cassidy's techniques in my class one day. I like the idea of a class blog, and being able to communicate with people using different tools. I also like the idea of sending out permission forms to the parents because you don't want to have any problems with any of the parents or students. This is a good idea just in case a student has some reason, be it religious, culture or whatever as to why they can't be online. Mrs. Cassidy has many other good ideas for her classroom, and her students seem to love them. Check out this video of her students talking about technology in the classroom.
Friday, March 20, 2015
Monday, March 16, 2015
Blog Post #9
What can teachers and students teach us about project based learning?
In order to answer this question, I had to read a few articles and watch a few videos. The first article I read was 7 Essentials for Project Based Learning. This article talked about what every good project needs. It needs to have two key ingredients. First, it needs to be a project that students will enjoy and really put their all into. Second, the project should be educational, so students can learn as well. The Buck Institute for Education provided a list of 7 elements to help create a group project. The 7 elements includes A Need To Know, A Driving Question, Student Voice and Choice, 21st Century Skills, Inquiry and Innovation, Feedback and Revision, and A Publicly Presented Product.
In the video, Project Based Learning for Teachers, Tony Vincent also talks about Project Based Learning. He has a list of elements that are consisted with PBL. Those elements are that the project has a purpose, addresses an audience, crafts a driving question, identifies learning standards, creates a rubric, groups students, has brainstorming questions, and meets deadlines. He gave a few ideas so that teachers could take advantage of what technology offers. Tony suggests that teachers get away from the "busy work" and get ready for PBL. He recommends PBL because it involves being open minded and creates problem solving which makes students think deeper and work harder. Tony says "think of PBL as questioning, investigating, sharing, and reflecting".
In the article, Project Based Learning and Physical Education, Andrew Miller talks about how valuable Physical Education (P.E.) can be when using Project Based Learning. Physical Education doesn't seem like it would work with PBL, but Andrew presents an idea to a group of students to show just how it can work. He told the students to create the best exercise program. The students could create any exercise program they thought was best as long as it met the standards of Physical Education.
In the video, High School Teachers Meet the Challenges of PBL Implementation, teachers from Sammamish High School in Bellevue are helping re-define curriculum within the school. They are re-designing 30 courses. English and Math are subjects that are more challenging to for Project Based Learning. This is because many people tend not to think about PBL with these particular subjects. The teachers think PBL is helping to keep students more engaged in the classrooms. Most of the teachers are buying into PBL because they like that they can create their own courses. They get to figure out how things looks within their own subject area. The teachers talk about how Literature is hard to create a PBL course for because of all the philosophical elements. Math is hard to create for as well, but the teachers just look to where it fits. All units of Math could not be covered using PBL. In order to make Math and PBL work, teachers allowed students to create games. This is a good idea because it allows the students to have a little fun while also learning.
In the video, PBL: What motivates students today, students talk about what motivates them to do better in school. Most students have the same answer which is they all want to get good grades so that they can have a better life. And by better life, they mean being successful in life in whatever occupation they choose. Rewards were also talked about. Rewards are big to students especially if they know what that reward is. When asked what reward(s) they would get once they finished a project, most of the students knew exactly what they could get. Most of the student's answers were either food, points, or being able to do a certain activity in class or outside the class.
So I go back to the question that I began with. What can teachers and students teach us about project based learning? Teachers can teach us that as long as you have a good and interesting project that students will be engaged. Students can teach us that just how motivated and interested they were in the project with their end result.
In order to answer this question, I had to read a few articles and watch a few videos. The first article I read was 7 Essentials for Project Based Learning. This article talked about what every good project needs. It needs to have two key ingredients. First, it needs to be a project that students will enjoy and really put their all into. Second, the project should be educational, so students can learn as well. The Buck Institute for Education provided a list of 7 elements to help create a group project. The 7 elements includes A Need To Know, A Driving Question, Student Voice and Choice, 21st Century Skills, Inquiry and Innovation, Feedback and Revision, and A Publicly Presented Product.
In the video, Project Based Learning for Teachers, Tony Vincent also talks about Project Based Learning. He has a list of elements that are consisted with PBL. Those elements are that the project has a purpose, addresses an audience, crafts a driving question, identifies learning standards, creates a rubric, groups students, has brainstorming questions, and meets deadlines. He gave a few ideas so that teachers could take advantage of what technology offers. Tony suggests that teachers get away from the "busy work" and get ready for PBL. He recommends PBL because it involves being open minded and creates problem solving which makes students think deeper and work harder. Tony says "think of PBL as questioning, investigating, sharing, and reflecting".
In the article, Project Based Learning and Physical Education, Andrew Miller talks about how valuable Physical Education (P.E.) can be when using Project Based Learning. Physical Education doesn't seem like it would work with PBL, but Andrew presents an idea to a group of students to show just how it can work. He told the students to create the best exercise program. The students could create any exercise program they thought was best as long as it met the standards of Physical Education.
In the video, High School Teachers Meet the Challenges of PBL Implementation, teachers from Sammamish High School in Bellevue are helping re-define curriculum within the school. They are re-designing 30 courses. English and Math are subjects that are more challenging to for Project Based Learning. This is because many people tend not to think about PBL with these particular subjects. The teachers think PBL is helping to keep students more engaged in the classrooms. Most of the teachers are buying into PBL because they like that they can create their own courses. They get to figure out how things looks within their own subject area. The teachers talk about how Literature is hard to create a PBL course for because of all the philosophical elements. Math is hard to create for as well, but the teachers just look to where it fits. All units of Math could not be covered using PBL. In order to make Math and PBL work, teachers allowed students to create games. This is a good idea because it allows the students to have a little fun while also learning.
In the video, PBL: What motivates students today, students talk about what motivates them to do better in school. Most students have the same answer which is they all want to get good grades so that they can have a better life. And by better life, they mean being successful in life in whatever occupation they choose. Rewards were also talked about. Rewards are big to students especially if they know what that reward is. When asked what reward(s) they would get once they finished a project, most of the students knew exactly what they could get. Most of the student's answers were either food, points, or being able to do a certain activity in class or outside the class.
So I go back to the question that I began with. What can teachers and students teach us about project based learning? Teachers can teach us that as long as you have a good and interesting project that students will be engaged. Students can teach us that just how motivated and interested they were in the project with their end result.
Thursday, March 12, 2015
Project #4 C4T #2
Hello Mr. Sladkey! My name is Santana Mullins, and I am 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 March 12, 2015. My blog URL is mullinssantanaedm310@blogspot.com and our class blog is edm310.blogspot.com. First, I would like to say great post! I love the idea of making ferris wheels out of piper cleaners to learn some basic Trig ideas. I sure could of used this idea in high school ha ha. I concur that students most times are so concentrated on what teachers are explaining that things just don't sink into their brains. Students tend to learn better visually than reading and writing. Math is tough as it is, and I love how you used a manipulative and project based learning in a way in order to keep your students engaged to DO MORE. Hope the test scores are great! Thanks for sharing!
Mr. Sladkey teaches Trig. Math is always better when you do more than just WATCH He wanted to find a way to get his students to DO MORE. He understood how hard it could be for students to concentrate and understand what he was teaching. So he decided to use a manipulative in order to get the students to DO MORE. He had the students make ferris wheels out of piper cleaners to learn basic Trig. He did not tell or show the students how to make the ferris wheel. He just gave them a fictitious story about a person being thrown from the ferris wheel and released into a moving tub of water. The students then had to answer a few Trig questions using the ferris wheel and the scenario
Hello, Mr. Sladkey this is Santana again from EDM 310 at the University of South Alabama. Great post about Google Docs! I really enjoyed the symbolism between the magic straw and Google. I must admit I had no clue what Google Docs was until I took my EDM 310 class, and now I use it everyday. I concur with what you said about it being so easy to use. I also enjoy no longer having to wonder if I pressed save or not.
Mr. Sladkey symbolized Google Docs into a story titled Doc and the Magic Straw. His purpose for this post was to show the benefits of collaborating. He wanted to show how you could present your project to others while also allowing them to collaborate on the project. No matter where the person was or how many people worked on the project, it was possible for everyone to contribute. The story was very interesting and went right along with what Google Docs does. The story was about Doc writing a letter to the mayor in order to save a tree. Doc began writing the letter, and noticed it would take some time, so he decided to send it to a friend with his "magic straw". Then, Doc had trouble finishing writing the letter and decided he needed help, so he created a "magic pen" for others to help him write the letter. Finally, after a collaborative effort, Doc was proud of the letter and sent it to the mayor. What happened next? Well you'll have to click on the link and see. :)
Blog Post #8
I watched Randy Pausch's Last Lecture and I must say it was an astounding lecture. It was a very inspiring video with some great messages. I loved that Randy Pausch was very enthusiastic and passionate about what he was saying. One of the first things he mentioned was to not take pity on him because of his illness, Randy was diagnosed with a terminal illness and had only a few months to live, hence the last lecture. Most of the video is about Randy speaking about his life as a college professor. He taught at Carnegie Mellon and the class he enjoyed talking about was his class that was based on virtual reality. His class was pretty much I've grown to learn about in my EDM 310 class, Project Based Learning. He divided his students into groups and instructed them to create a virtual game every few weeks for the semester. Of course, this class being PBL, there were no specific directions ore guidelines given. Students could create whatever they chose. After seeing the projects the students created, Randy talked about how surprised he was to see how creative his students were that he got to a point where he didn't know what to tell them to do next. So what did he do? He told the students their projects were good, but that they could do better. Hearing that is important to me as a future teacher because I know to always motivate and push my students further then they believe they can go.
So what did I learn from Randy? I learned that there will be times when you may hit a brick wall, but NEVER give up. As a future teacher, I know there will be obstacles I will encounter, but I know I must find a way to overcome those obstacles. I must be prepared to take on any challenge. Listening to Randy speak and knowing at that time he only had a few more months to live, but gave this astounding lecture showed me his passion and dedication as an educator. I believe passion is key for anyone's love of craft. This video was one of those things that I know will stick with me for many years, and something I know I will constantly be viewing as a teacher.
So what did I learn from Randy? I learned that there will be times when you may hit a brick wall, but NEVER give up. As a future teacher, I know there will be obstacles I will encounter, but I know I must find a way to overcome those obstacles. I must be prepared to take on any challenge. Listening to Randy speak and knowing at that time he only had a few more months to live, but gave this astounding lecture showed me his passion and dedication as an educator. I believe passion is key for anyone's love of craft. This video was one of those things that I know will stick with me for many years, and something I know I will constantly be viewing as a teacher.
Sunday, March 1, 2015
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