CFT Summary for October

My first blog that I commented on was by Matt B Gomez called Classroom Terrarium. This was very intersting blog post about having a terrarium in the classroom. It lets you know how much the students enjoyed having one of these in the classroom. It gave the students a reason for wanting to learn and also taking care of the insects. He asked them to keep a journal and had them writing in it every week. This is a great way to get students invovle in the lesson.

My blog post was by Jabiz and was called Back From The Cutting Edge. This was a very good blog post about the use of technology. It gave yu the ideas that he had the children still use pens and paper and being old school. He let you know that he was trying to be a opened minded learner. It was a great blog post.

My next blog post was also by Jabiz and was called Building A Virbrant Reading Program. In this blo post he talked about having a better reading program.It really invovle the students more and helped them find better stories to read. It gave them feed back that made them want to read more. It also invovled the teachers in the readings more having being able to go over the books more.

Blog Post #10

We could take away a lot of new ideas from the interview with Mrs. Cassidy. I see that using a blog can really help with the students writing abilities. She really likes staying on top of the new technology.. Technology makes the world go around and it's here to stay. I saw that if you are helping your students to much you are not on top of the latest technology. She let me know that you should always explore new ideas and be open to learning something new.

I thought it was interesting that her 1st grade students were blogging like they were. This is something I would like to do in my class one day. I believe what Mrs. Cassidy said, this helps improve their writing skills. This will also get them happy because their work will be on the internet, and they will have someone to read thier work. They could have their parents comment or other parents and students to see what goes on in the classroom.

Project 12 Part A

Blog Post #9

Dr Strange asked the question, "What Can Teachers and Students Teach Us About Project Based Learning?"

I think teachers and students can teach us more about project based learning. I also think that project based learning is very useful in a classroom. It gets the students invovled in the learning experience. Dr. Strange gave us a fsome resources to use.

The first article is called Seven Essentials for Project Based Learning . This article gives good ways you can really use to ensure project based learning in the classroom. Like what you need to know about project based learning. I think that when teachers do not have an begining event to announce a project, it may seem like it doesn't matter to the student. To get the students interested in a project you really need to make it seem fun and motivate them before they get started on the project.

The next video called Project-Based Learning for Teachers. This video tells what project-based learning does in the classroom and what ways it helps students. This video does a good job in giving you ways to use it and just how useful it can be. This video shows ways that is basic and easy to understand. These kinds of projects will be used in my classroom when I start teaching.

The next article I used was Project Based Learning in P.E. This is a good choice for students using project based learning in their high school P.E. class. This teacher really invovled his students in their learning experience. He had his students to create their own physical fitness programs, after that they got to share them with the middle school students. I really think that this is really involving the students,and they are learning but also sharing it with others.

The next video was What Motivates Students. This video was about students saying what their teacher did to help motivate them. The kids were honest in this video. This video really showed me that encouragement from the teacher can go a long way with the students. If the teacher is likes it, most likely the students are going to like it as well.

The last video I used is Two Students Solve the Case of the Watery Ketchup By Designing A New Cap . This video was very inspiring. These young men used project based learning to create an great new product that could be sold in stores. This video really shows that students can really help in teaching others about their research. Students can teach us more about project based learning, I think that they have to be motivated in what they are researching.

Blog Post #8

What Can We Learn About Teaching and Learning From Randy Pausch?
When I watched Randy Paucsh's video, it felt good to want to become a teacher .Randy is a man that is diagnosed with cancer and accepts that he has to live with this. Although, he has this life changing problem it does not prevent him from doing what he wants to do. In this video Randy talks about 3 main points his childhood dreams, helping others fulfill their own dreams, and how to achieve the dreams.

His dream was to work at the imagineering team at Disney, but ended up being a professor. He choose to be a teacher instead of following his dream and help students find there dreams. He even told a student he had a dreamed of working on Star Wars movies, which the student did achieve after graduating.It was interesting how much happiness he found in inspiring others to learn. The ways that he found to make learning the hard stuff enjoyable was great and made me relize how important teaching can be. This made me feel that I can teach and motivate my children to do great and wonderful things,I hope. It would be great if I could motivate my students to do great things.

Implications and Teaching Opportunities for Camera Use in Teaching and Learning

We were asked to do this post by Dr. Strange about the data from Zogby Analytics to use.

1. 87% say their smartphone never leaves their side.

2. 80% say the very first thing they do in the morning is reach for their smartphone.
3. 78% say they spend 2 or more hours per day using their smartphone.
4. 68% say they would prefer to use their smartphone instead of their laptop or personal computer for personal use.
5. 91% say that having a camera on their smartphone is important (61% very important)
6. 87% say they use their smartphone camera at least weekly. 59% use their smartphone camera at least every other day. 44% use their smartphone camera for still or motion picture taking every day.
Also, Dr. Strange gave us this information as well:

"Cameras were added to smartphones starting in 2002. The first iPhone also had a camera. It became available in June 2007. Seven years later there are over 1.75 billion smartphones worldwide. (Source: emarketing) This means that 24.1% of the entire world population (7.263 billion as of 3:32 CDT 9/27/2014 - Source: World Population Cloc) now has a smartphone. Your students will have lived all their life in a world with smartphones containing cameras."

This data has made me understand that people are attached to their smartphones if they use them. These devices are used for everything like, social media, text, call, play games on, seach the web, and the list goes on. It also shows that most of the smartphones have cameras. When cellphones first came out they didn't have cameras on them in 2002.

Technology is a big part of the world that we live in today. With that being said, technology has to become useful in schools. Some schools use tablets and computers now on regular bases. I have heard that smartphones are used in classrooms in some schools. It would be a little different for younger children, but in middle and high school it could work good in my opinion. Most parents have smartphones in this day in age and they can keep up on what's going on in school through smartphones.

Smartphones can be used in schools to help cover the requirements for Alabama College and Career Ready Standards. They can be used to do alot of things like, reseach things on the internet. They also can help them by learning different languages because there are apps that can say a word in different languages. They will also be able to save more data when they go on field trips because they will always have a camera. This will help them be able to retain more information that they can go back to when they need to.

Video Book Commentary- Project #9

My group was assigned Topic #1 for our Video Book Commentary Project. We hope you enjoy.

CFT #2 Summary

My first post was with Ms Natalie Turbiville and was called Barbie Bungee Linear Extrapolation. This was very interesting to me because it was different ways to teach the children. It really made the learning fun and possible for the kids to want to learn more. It was a great blog and i really enjoyed reading it.

My next post was by Matt Gomez and was titled Classroom Terrarium. This was very interesting to me because I wish I had one when I was in school. The childern loved this and was able to write about the insects and keep up with them. They really enjoyed the time that they got to spend with the terrium being in the classroom. It was a great way to encourage learning.

Project#13 Group 6 TT2

Group #6 did our Project Based Lesson Plan on the Seven Continents. Take a look at the plan we compiled and the rubrics the students will be graded on!

Lesson Plan Project Rubric Individual Rubric Week Plan for Project

Blog Post #7

I think it's hard to say what my strengths and weaknesses are. My weaknesses are that I am very forgiving, meaning I try to help to much, I also feel that I can be a little bossy at times. I think that my strengths are having an open mind to things and also wanting to help other's out with problems. When I start being around children more I think I will be able to tell what strenghts and weaknesses I really have. I think going into classes will be very educational for me because I really don't know how to control a class of students at this time.

The How To Make A QR Code Video was different to me. I had never seen this before. Ms. Bennett's video instructions were very good and very easy to follow the instructions. This may help students learn better by being able to listen to their own voices.

The IPad Centers video taught me different ways to teach students how to read better. It was interesting how students were looking at themselves reading, and then correcting their mistakes. This is a good way to for children to better their reading skills.

The next video was Poplet as a Center. This video was very interesting because I have never heard of Poplet. It seems like a very useful tool that is easy to use. My step daughter uses this at her school.

The AVL As A Kindergarten Center video is about kindergarten classes using Alabama Virtual Library to help find information about things they are learning. I actually used this in college some. I did not know that Alabama Virtual Library would read to the students.

The video Mrs. Shirley's Discovery Education Board.. It was very interesting for me. This is something I never heard of before, and seems to be very easy to use. It looks like the information is easy to gain through the Discovery Education. The Moon Project was done great and the information was very informative about the Moon.

In the videos Mrs. Tassin's 2nd Grade Students Share Board Builder Project Part and Mrs. Tassin's 2nd Grade Students Share Board Builder Project Part 2, students learned how to do upload pictures and do research to the board. These projects in these videos were done very well. I did not know children knew this much about these things. I am in college now and I'm just finding out how to do this, look how far ahead of me they are.

The next video was Using iMovie and the Alabama Virtual Library in Kindergarten. It is so wonderful that kindergarten students can do the work to make iMovie Book Trailers. I'm just learning how to do that. The things the children are learning and being able to do is just incredible.

The video We All Become Learners has a message that is meant to say that everyone teaches someone something at some point in life. So by saying this we will always be learning, it will be a never ending process.

Project #7 Part B

Teacher Movie for Students



Teacher Movie for Parents