Blog Post 8

21st Learning and Communicating Tools by: Shakeya Andrews

In my classroom I would like to use tools like Funbrain and Classroom Quizmo. I chose an online resource and a board game to give my students variety in the classroom. I’m afraid that if I allow my students to use one type of learning tool they will become extremely bored and shut down. I chose Funbrain as one of my learning tools because it has many different subjects that the students can choose to work on. Funbrain is also an online website that includes some of the subjects included in the Alabama Common Core Standard like reading and math. On the Funbrain website there are a list of different math, reading, and fun arcade games for students to explore. There are also word puzzles, comic books, and fill in the blank stories for students to access on Funbrain. The website is not hard to access and the students do not have to create a username nor password to login in they simply go to the website, click on what they want to work on, and get started. I hope to spend at least an hour a week on Funbrain in my classroom or allow students the opportunity to use it during their free time. The activities on Funbrain includes work for children in grades kindergarten through 8th grade. Hopefully my second graders will find interest in the website and use it as a tool to use throughout elementary and middle school. I found funbrain resourceful because on the webpage there are grade levels listed and activities listed below each grade level so that students can work on a lesson that suits what they know. To me the page is organized well enough for a 2nd grader to be able to use without someone supervising them. I would also like to use Quizmo in my classroom. Quizmo is a board game that deals with math, phonics, spelling, writing, and much more. Find out what Quizmo has to offer for your classroom.

21st Century Learning and Communicating Tools by: Tracy Armstrong

The learning tool that I will use when I begin my career as second or third grade teacher is Spree Learning. This is website that has multiple educational games that promote learning, exploring, thinking, and questioning while bringing high levels of engagement. On spree learning games.com, you can search for games by subject, age or grade level. The site even contained games that were appropriate for children with autism. One of these games in particular Autism Emotions Game allowed the autistic students to adjust separate parts of the face to represent common emotions. Although, I am not planning to enter the special education phase, I know how important is is to be prepared and ready for whatever may come my way.I also think that one of the challenges of educating students with special needs is to be able to keep them engaged in the learning environment. I will use this tool to to help students acquire and practice skills that are needed to enhance their understanding of science, math, art and history. I will also use this tool as a review of subjects that the students are learning at the time.I chose this tool because I think it will allow me to have all of the students completely and totally engaged 100% of the time. This tool will also allow for the students to have fun while learning.

21st Century Teaching Tools by Emma Boren

This 21st Century teaching tool that I chose was blabberize. This website makes pictures talk. This way, I, as the teacher, could put up pictures that show what we are learning, and incorporate what they should say to help the students learn. I think this would catch the students attention in a way that I couldn’t. They could get online and browse through the pictures and take in the information. I know when I was growing up, I would have enjoyed something like this. It was so hard for me to pay attention all day in the classroom. I believe that I could make this website fun and informational for my students. Visit Blabberize for more information. Another tool I would use in my classroom would be instructional video games. Such examples are World of Warcraft, Civilization IV, and Diplomacy. These video games are educational, and they would definitely interest the children. In today’s society, all kids do it seems like is play video games. I believe that these games would be useful tool to put in centers and let the children play in their free time. I don’t think there is a better way to keep a child’s attention. I want my classroom to be fun, but I also want the kids to be learning. I think that these would be ways to make my classroom different and make learning fun! I also think it would be a good way to get the kids adapted to technology.

C4T #2

For my second C4T, I was assigned to read Joe Bower's blog. Joe Bower teaches in Alberta, Canada and his plan is to challenge traditional schooling while exploring progressive forms of education.

My Favourite Excerpt from Reign of Error

Summary:

In My Favourite Excerpt from Reign of Error Joe Bower demonstrates why the reform era won’t work in education. He also offers solutions to help with the problems, which are based off his experience and evidence. In Joe's blog, he explains that students who come from a background full of resources have an advantage in school. The resources that Joe is referring to is having a helpful family and being able to live a healthy lifestyle. He says that we must do whatever is necessary to extend the same advantages to every child who does not have the proper resources to help them through school. Joe believes that no matter what type of household a child comes from everyone should receive the same chances for a good life. In "My Favourite Excerpt from Reign of Error Joe suggest ways to improve the lives of the younger people and ways to create a stronger society. In order to create a better society, Joe Bower suggests that pregnant mothers should make sure they receive proper nutrition and see a doctor often because a healthy baby is a happy baby. It is important to take care of a baby even though they are in the womb because the child could be affected later on in their life. Secondly, he suggests enrolling children in pre-kindergarten classes to help build their social skills. In the blog Joe includes different types of stresses and the importance of establishing programs and goals to close the poverty and segregation gap in education. According to Joe society is what creates strategies and goals to help close the gap and create equal opportunity for our students.

My comment:
My name is Shakeya Andrews and I am a student in edm 310 at the University of South Alabama. My blog can be found Shakeya Andrews

I have really been informed by reading your blog. You’re right there is an educational gap in the school system and it all starts with the type of resources that are available to students. You stated that "mothers should receive good nutritution and go to the doctor often while pregnant." This statement was interesting to me because parents create the foundations for our students. When parents fail to create a healthy environment for our students it makes it harder for educators and future educators to close that educational gap. As I prepare to embark on this educational journey I look forward to seeing the educational gap close and more parent involvement.

Education Excellence Requires Equity

Summary: Education excellence requires equity explains how the rich and poor class are contributing to students success. The first video is called "Actual Distribution of Wealth in the U.S" and it shows how wealth is distributed and it classified the poor, middle class, and the wealthier people.It is said that the top 1% of the country has all of the wealth. The video shows that there is not much of a difference between the poor and the middle class. Also, the richer students seem to do well compared to the other classes. The second video which is called "For Richer for Poorer" is a tale of two Schools that explains how Canadians and Albertans schools are different from each other. Some schools in these areas receive more funding than others creating a better environment and closing the opportunity gap for each student in Canada. Patrick Airlie School is a public school that is much more different than Webber Academy which is the number one school in Calgary. Webber Academy is a private school with more resources for students to use. Even though Webber is a private school it is funded by the government and it provides students with a solid food program and nice labs for students to use. Joe wrote this blog to show the poverty gap and his goal is to lift people out of poverty and creating more opportunities for students.Read Education Excellence Requires Equity

My comment:
My name is Shakeya Andrews and I am a student in edm 310 at the University of South Alabama. My blog can be found atShakeya Andrews Watching the first video is sad because it is not fair that the economic equity isn’t divided into equal portions. Like the old saying says “the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.” Why is it that we have students living in the same country living in towns less than 15 miles away, but their schools are different and the opportunities that they are provided with are different? I agree we need to get our students out of the poverty gap. Find me on Twitter @educating_1

Gary Stager on Progressive Education

My Comment: My namne is Shakeya Andrews and I am a student in edm 310 at the University of South Alabama. My blog can be found at Shakeya Andrews I found your point “Parents and teachers should do everything possible to help kids get through high school without hating it” to be interesting. Parents and teachers have the biggest job when it comes to keeping students motivated. I’ve seen some parents that have had to help their kids get through elementary school without hating it. The workload that students are expected to handle is a lot now. It breaks my heart to see kids struggling in school because they know that they are not meeting the standards in the classroom and they begin to shut down. How would help get your students through high school without hating it? Find me on Twitter @educating_1

 Summary: In Joe Bower’s blog Progressive Education he lists some of the principles of progressive education, which was originally written by Gary Stager. There are three principles that Joe mentioned that I thought were interesting. 1. Strong progressive public schools are the bedrock of our democracy 2. Parents and teachers should do everything possible to help kids get through high school without hating it. It is important that educators and future educators know what our students need to help them be successful and how we can make that happen. Parents play a vital role in our children’s lives. Where the teacher is lacking in knowledge the parent should be a dependable resource for students to turn to. However, that is not always the case for children in our society not. Joe also stated that “The best thing schools can do is prepare kids to solve problems that school has not even anticipated.

Project #9 Podcast Video

First Progress Report On My PLN

I chose Symbaloo for my PLN because it has easy access to all the tools that I need to use for this class. It includes Twitter, Gmail, Pintrest, and a link to the class blog. It also allows me to use google search to find whatever I am looking for. I can consult students in my EDM 310 class as well as people on twitter for help using symbaloo. Symbaloo is filled with ideas from other people and at it also allows me to share some of my ideas.

Project 13

Blog Post 7

 Project Based Learning by the Derrain Group: Tracy Armstrong, Emma Boren and Shakeya Andrews.

PBL Part 1 
Project Based Learning allows students to create a project using all the contents that the state requires. Because the students have to know the state contents, PBL is content driven.PBL has an audience, gains student interest and involves the community in order to show real life scenarios. In PBL part one, Icurio was used to write Congressman Bonner thus covering the reading writing and social studies standards of ACCRS. The students really liked this project and they were very engaged. We also learned that reflection and revision are the most crucial parts of PBL. Watch ProjectBasedLearning

PBL Part 2 
In this summary with Anthony, he shared with us that not everything is going to go well so always be prepared to improvise. Anthony gave an example of how one parent did not approve of the assignment and because Anthony respected the parents concern, he allowed the student to create an alternate project. Anthony gave another example of how things can go wrong when he shared with us what happened when the state representative came for a classroom visit and the comic strip website was not responding. Anthony decided to incorporate some art tips that he received from Dr. Vitulli. Needless to say, when all the representative arrived, ALL of the students were engaged and Anthony and his class won their approval. We also learned to never limit our students and create the opportunity for them to go beyond what we are asking. Also, give the students a choice in regards to PBL because it gives them ownership of their work.By using PBL students know what they are doing and why they are doing it.Watch ProjectBasedLearningPt2

ICurio 
Icurio per Anthony’s definition, is an on-line tool that students can safely use to search websites that have been polled and filtered for educational purposes. Students can search for images, video, audio and texts. Icurio is good for all grade levels. One of the features of icurio is its storage capacity. This feature allows the students to store content that they find valuable. It also gives the students practice at organizing themselves on line via the folders.Icurio also saves automatically. This is good because students may have to leave in a hurry or they will be able to collect all of their material so that they can go back and finish it later if needed. Some more features are the time line and the historical figures feature. The latter is good for history projects or current event assignments. It allows the student to search by criteria. Icurio is learning disabled friendly. It contains a read aloud feature for students that struggle in that area.Watch ICurio

Discovery Ed In his Discovery Ed video, Anthony explained to us some of the advantages of Discovery Ed. One advantage is that it is good for visual as well as audio learners. Because the text article is coupled with visual materials, the students retain a lot more. This tool also enhances research material by bringing experts into the classroom via videos. Discovery Ed is a great tool for social studies and science. Anthony said that his students associate Discovery Ed with reading but on a higher level because of all the different kinds of illustrations. Watch DiscoveryEd

Additional Thoughts About Lessons by: Tracy Armstrong Anthony says that lessons should be four layers thick. The first layer being how the lesson fits in with your year. The second is dividing the layers into units. The unit projects are done in stair steps so that by the end of the 6-8 week unit, subject should be mastered. The third layer is the week. The week should be devised so that you can get everything done. In other words, set goals for the week. The fourth layer is the daily lesson. This layer is just as important as the weekly, unit and yearly plan. This layer should contain a hook that will keep the students attention while learning. During this part of the lesson, the teacher must measure what the students learn in one day so that he can know what do do on the next day. During the course of the year, all content standards should be covered and the curriculum must be written.

Use Tech Don’t Teach it by: Shakeya Andrews Anthony says that you should not teach technology. He believes that as a teacher you should not include a list of things that students need to get done using technology. I find this statement to be interesting because it is rewarding when you learn how to work a product or solve something on your own without any help. In the video, Anthony says that it is best to use Project based learning to help students learn how to use technology. Meaning allow students to use different learning tools such as Imovie and Podcast. Anthony allowed his students to use imovie, which is a tool that we have used multiple times in EDM 310 this semester. Just like our EDM 310 class Anthony did not teach his students how to use Imovie he allowed them to explore imovie and create a project by themselves. Trial and error is always a good learning technique to use because it allows students to be creative and find new techniques to use when learning. In UseTechDon'tTeachIt Anthony says that his students have learned to express themselves and be creative while using Imovie. Being creative creates excitement because when students are bored and frustrated from trying to follow instructions step by step they are unable to experiment and see what works for them. Also, Anthony informs us that is important to be aware that students will make mistakes when using technology, but hopefully with trial and error they will get better. Once our students master how to use technology, then they will be able to demonstrate what they have learned and how they learned how to complete the project or work the technology.

The Anthony-Strange list of tips by Emma Boren
The video that I watched summarized Dr. Strange and Anthony’s list of what we should do as teachers (The Anthony-Strange list of tips for teachers part 1). As teachers, what can we do to better our classroom and the learning environment for our students. In this video, Dr. Strange and Anthony listed their top 6 things that we can do. The first is, “be a learner”. It is important for teachers to also be learners. We cannot teach withouday. Sometimes, changing your plan is necessary. It is important to be flexible and not worry that you aren’t on your set schedule. The next thing is “hard work”. Being a teacher is really hard work. A lot goes into the planning, the teaching, and the hands on of teaching. However, it is also very rewarding when everything goes right and your students get it. As stated in the video “it is hard work, but it is exciting!” Next is reflect; students need a purpose to reflect. This is why presentations can be helpful. Presentations make students go back and look at their work because they know they will be standing up and showing their powerpoint or talking about their topic in front of a bunch of people. I know that is true for me because if I have to get up in front of people to talk, I will look at the information over and over again until I think it is as good as it can get. Last was to start with a goal. I do agree that this is important. As teachers, we should definitely have a goal of what we want to accomplish in this school year. What do we want our students to learn? What do we want them to accomplish? What do we want them to walk away with this year? Being a teacher takes a lot of thinking and a lot of planning to give the students the best year they can have, but I think it will be completely worth it!

C4K for September

For my first C4K assignment I was assigned to read Buck's Blog.

This I Believe

My Comment for Buck: My name is Shakeya Andrews and I am a student in EDM 310 at the University of South Alabama located in Mobile, AL.

I enjoyed reading your blog. I usually express the way I feel through writing, but I found getting tattoos as a neat way of expressing your feelings. Usually people get tattoos just because but you described why you got your tattoos very well. While reading your blog, I knew that your tattoos make up a special part of your life. One grammar mistake I would consider fixing is “Your probably wondering.” It should be you’re or you are probably wondering.

Overall, good job explaining how your tattoos express your feelings. Summary:Buck gives us reasons why she has tattoos in her blog "This I Believe." In her blog she says that tattoos help express how she feels towards herself and others. Her first tattoo is dedicated to her dad, who died in September of 2010. Buck says that whenever she looks at her tattoos they bring back good memories. Buck has two tattoos but each tattoo has a different meaning behind them. Her second tattoo is dedicated to her brother who has been in prison for four years. To sum up Buck's blog she states that you can express your feelings in many different ways and getting tattoos is her way of expressing herself.

What is My Point of View

My comment for Austin:My name is Shakeya Andrews and I am a student in EDM 310 at the University of South Alabama located in Mobile, AL.

What is your point of view? Well in your blog you said you have a big red nose and big black boots. You also said you are funny looking. From reading your blog, I would say that you are describing yourself as a clown!

Shakeya Andrews

Summary: Austin P starts off by saying he looks like a nerd with big black boots and a red nose in his blog. He also said a guy came up to him and said that he is funny looking. I assumed that the student was referring to a clown because they have a red nose and they are funny looking. Lastly, he said that everyone gave him funny looks and laughed at him, which is what most people do to clowns. Austin's blog was written to see if the reader could find the point of view in the story.

Cinderella

My Comment: My name is Shakeya Andrews and I am a student in EDM 310 at the University of South Alabama located in Mobile, AL.

I liked how you used different colors in slide 2 and you were very detailed with your facts about Cinderella. I never knew she wore a size 4 1/2 in shoes. Good job in telling who the Grimm Brothers. Shakeya Andrews

Summary: Ashley, a student in Mr. Rhodus 6th grade Elsanor Elementary School gave facts about Cinderella in her google presentation. She listed Cinderella's shoe size, birthday, and she also informed us that Cinderella is a Disney character. On slide 3 of the presentation Ashley gave us information about Grim Brothers. On slide three she stated who the Grimm Brothers were and what stories they wrote.

How Much Does the Sky Weigh?

My Comment:Hi Angel! My name is Shakeya Andrews and I am a student in EDM 310 at the University of South Alabama located in Mobile, AL.

Wow! I never knew the sky was estimated to weigh close to 570,000,000,00 adult elephants. Good job explaining how much the sky weighs you used a lot of details to help me understand. "The air weighs more than you" really caught my attention because I never thought about how much the air weighed until reading your blog. Interesting post!

Summary: Angel explains how the sky is weighed in her blog. She stated that the sky is estimated to be 570,000,000,000 adult Indian elephants. She compare the weight of humans to the weight of air and informs us when we breathe in and out we are breathing in air. Angel explained how to tell the air pressure with a barometer and how low the pressure will be. I learned that if the air pressure is low then a storm could possibly be on the way.