Summary post C4T Teacher #3.

Jerrid w. Kruse

Mr. Kruse's post was about a process by Dan Meyer and his "3 Acts" that he has been following for quite some time now. Mr. Kruse thinks the reason Dan Meyer has so many followers is because his ideas are worth paying attention to. Mr. Kruse decided to focus on figuring out what makes "3 Acts" so effective. He concluded that the video helps make the problem more understandable and relatable to the students, which Kruse calls the "Developmental Learning Theory". Act 2, in Kruse's opinion, is the Act in which teachers struggle with the most because it cannot be planned for which forces teachers to react to student thinking. Kruse suggests that we need to encourage students to apply their thinking to new situations, which is where Act 3 takes over. Students are asked to apply their abstract knowledge to a new concrete situation. This was a very thorough and interesting post for me to read because I liked his correlations between the 3 Acts and the developmental learning theory as well as the Learning Cycle.

March C4K Summary Post

Grace B.

Grace's blog was about a dance she had just learned in school called Samoan Sasa Dancing. Grace mentioned that she was one of the tallest girls in her class which I can highly relate to because I am 5ft 10in and was always one of the tallest girls in my class as well. Grace was very nervous about their dance performance but ended up having a lot of fun. Grace shows her innocence in her blog by stating that it embarrassed her to have a guy as her dance partner. I enjoyed reading Grace's blog because I thought it was very well written and she seems to be a very outgoing and happy 12 year old. The last thing Grace mentioned was that today was her birthday; Happy Birthday Grace! :)

Project 14

C4T

Dianne Krause
Dianne created a post, Diane's post, in which she included links to her favorite sites and a slideshow that she created using PhotoSnack. However, I could never actually access the slideshow or her photos. I don't know if her links just didn't work or if it was something wrong with my laptop but I asked her about it when I commented on her post to ensure that her links were in fact working. PhotoSnack seemed like a great site for creating slideshows for networks like Facebook and I will definitely look into this.

Dianne also created a post on podcasting. She stated that when she first thought of podcasting she immediately thought it would be complicated, expensive, and just plain technical. However, after researching it and becoming familiar with podcasts, she soon learned just how easy and cheap it actually is. I commented on her post and told her what I had learned about podcasting in EDM310 so far, including that podcasting allows interaction outside the classroom, parental involvement, higher level thinking, and promotes creativity and innovation, etc.

C4K Summary for February

Cesar
Cesar wrote a story about a trip he took to a lake with his father, step-mother, and step-sister. In the story, Cesar made it very clear that he wasn't exactly fond of his step-mother or step-sister, therefore he wasn't very excited about going on the trip. Cesar makes a comment to his step-sister (in the story) encouraging her to committ suicide. This comment concerned me so when I commented on his post, I asked if there was any truth to his story or if he just made it up for fun.

Eldridg
Eldridg wrote a post on South Africa about where it is located, how long it is, the languages that are spoken there, and what types of animals live there. She had some grammatical errors but seemed to know a good bit about South Africa. When I commented on Eldridg's post, I told her I enjoyed reading it because I wasn't aware that there were so many different languages spoken in South Africa and I also asked her if she had ever been there.

5P4MG
This student's post was a poem he/she had written about teachers. There were some spelling errors but the poem was creative. I commented on this post and said that I enjoy poetry and write poems myself as well. The most recent poem I have written was one about my grandfather, who recently passed, and I read it at his funeral.

Blog Post 7

"The Networked Student" by Wendy Drexler

After watching The Networked Student, I wouldn't say that I am necessarily prepared to be the teacher of networked students but I do know that I like to push myself and I am not afraid of a challenge. I think teaching a networked student would be good for me because it would broaden my horizons in the teaching field and open up my eyes to the ever growing technologically advanced world. Sometimes it's good to step out of your comfort zone and be willing to take a chance.

As teachers, our goals should include pushing ourselves, setting limits, and once those limits are reached, set new ones. I am not positive that I would like the student-oriented teaching style verse the teacher-led, traditional style. This would definitely be something that would take some getting used to for me since I am more old-fashioned in my ways.

However, I am a strong advocate for more concrete, hands-on interation for learning rather than the standard "busy work". I believe that students learn more when they are physically involved and testing theories in real experiences rather than reading material, memorizing it, and spitting it back out, better known as the "burp back method" by Dr. Strange. It is a bit intimidating but never-the-less, I am excited and anxious to take on "networked students" and also see what they can teach ME because we all know that we learn from our students.

I like the idea of PLN's because it is a personalized way of learning and you can design it the way that best suits you. I am a very organized person so I particularly like how easy the categories are to find and how everything you need can all be accessed within one click of a button. Also, I'd like to note that this was a very well-spoken 7th grader!

Blog Post 6

Randy Pausch. Wow, what an inspiration! I thoroughly enjoyed watching his "lecture", Randy Pausch's Last Lecture. However, it wasn't necessarily a lecture in my opinion, it was rather enjoyable and I must say, a very fast hour. I thought it was interesting how he said he got more out of NOT accomplishing one of his dreams (to be in the NFL) than he got out of accomplishing all the others on his list. I think what he was trying to say here was that he was taught true discipline which can be a very strong foundation to form and live by. This, in my opinion, could be viewed as what Randy calls a "head-fake", or better known as a type of distraction or making someone think they are learning something other than what is intended. In this case, Randy thought he was learning how to play football but instead he was learning how to become a better person by developing characteristics such as discipline, team work, communication, courage, loyalty, etc.

Randy mentions numerous valid and interesting points in his "lecture" but one of them in particular stood out to me and that was when he was saying if someone stops giving you advice altogether or stops offering help then they have already given up on you. Which is a very bad thing! You always want critics in your life because there is always room for improvement but only if you know and are aware of what you are doing wrong or need to improve. Criticism is a great thing that many people take to the heart or take the wrong way which defeats the purpose of the initial critique; to make you a better person. Criticism is about to become a very big part of my life as I enter the candidacy program and begin student teaching. However, in all honesty, I would love as many critiques as I can receive because I know that they are only going to enhance my abilities and knowledge necessary to become a future educator for our children. I want to be the best that I can be so that I can offer the best to our children and, in return, form THEM into the best that THEY can be. "Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted". This statement speaks for itself and is pretty self-explanatory but is better known as "a lesson learned". The majority of people learn from past "experiences" or, where you went wrong, because you can take away something from that, learn from it, and move on. Mistakes are unfortunately often perceived as a bad thing but what people don't realize is that we all learn from mistakes and they only make us better and who we are as individuals today.

What determines where you will end up is how much motivation you have and how much effort you are willing to put in to make it to the top. This is where the "brick walls" come into play. Whenever these brick walls stop us dead in our tracks, we have to find any way that we can to get back up and fight to push through it to make it to the other side. This teaches us to never give up and never back down because once you DO achieve your goal you will feel like you are on top of the world and will immediately want to set another goal to accomplish. I will use this sense of motivation in our ever struggling economy. It is near impossible to find/keep jobs today and I will have to have the motivation to keep fighting for a teaching job no matter what it takes.

Another technique Randy mentions is allowing time to recognize the good in people rather than just always pointing out the bad. No one person is ALL bad. There is good in everyone, we just have to take the time to find it and see it. I will definitely use this in my classroom and with my future students. I want to try my hardest not to form initial opinions on my students and really focus on finding the good in them and what their interests, talents, goals, and dreams are.

I also strongly believe in "giving credit where credit is due" as Randy suggests. When someone does something good we should take the time to recognize it and applaud them for doing so because this only makes them feel good about what they have done and will make them want to do more of it. Encouragement goes a long way and is contagious so we should pass it on and pay it forward.

I have a 3 year old daughter so when Randy was talking about taking the time to enjoy the little things in life like letting our kids paint their own room, this really hit home with me. I have always been a strong advocate of noticing and enjoying the little things in life rather than the things that can be bought so this concept was very important to me. Life is truly just too short, as Randy sadly proves, so it's important that we live each day to the fullest and if our kids want to do something harmless like painting their own rooms, let them do it.

"Sell something worthwhile, like Education". What great advice. In today's society we seem to be losing all sense of innocence, imagination, and youth and it's a complete shame. I look forward and am anxious to become a teacher so I can offer something fresh and bring back imagination and creativity to children. Children are MUCH too advanced these days and exposed to things we could never dream of being exposed to when we were kids and this will only continue to get worse. I also strongly believe that we learn from our students so it's important to listen to THEM as well.

Last but not least, Randy points out that the best of the gold is always at the bottom of the barrel so it's important that we dig our way to the top, or in this case, the bottom. We have to push through the hard times in life to get what we want and never look back. Do the right thing and good things will follow, take feedback to heart, and always admitt when you're wrong. Randy Pausch, a true inspiration!