Blog Assignment #16- Final Reflection

Final Project - Team Lunchbox

Blog Assignment #5 Part 2

         My personal learning network has grown so much! At the beginning of the semester, my PLN was not so strong. And from then to now I can say I have added a lot of resources to it. From doing C4T, I now have a list saved of all the teachers blogs I have commented on. I also have started following more education based pages. I also follow Mobile and Baldwin county school systems on all social media. My peers as of today have also been added to my PLN because one day, we'll all be educators. My professors, especially in the education building, are a great resource I plan to use in my future years. My personal learning network has grown so much, and I do not think that would have been possible without EDM 310. This class has really opened my eyes.

C4K- Summary for April

Mrs. Lombard's Awesome 7th Graders- Katy K.

          In Katy's post, she discusses tennis! I can definitely tell she loves tennis. She says its a great sport to play because you can play it indoors and outdoors. Katy likes playing tennis because sometimes you can miss school to go play and at the end of her blog she tells us she is actually going to a tennis tournament this weekend. 

         I wished Katy good luck and I hoped she would have fun at her tennis tournament. I told her about my experience playing tennis and how it did not go well. I also applauded her on how well she expressed her feelings about tennis through her blog post.

JHFI Class of 2015- Kamar 

         In Kamar's blog he simply states he has basketball tryouts today. I commented back and asked what position he was trying out for and how exciting it must be. I told Kamar I love basketball, sometimes like to watch it and other times I want to play. My favorite team is the LA Lakers and I wished him good luck at tryouts.

Room Three at Auroa Primary School 

         In Katelyn's post she has pictures of old fashioned cars. She then tells us on March 29th, she went to Kaupokanui beach, and that is where the old fashioned cars were. In my response, I said it looked like she had fun and I told her about Crusin' the Coast in Mississippi. I also asked her if her pictures were from the day at the beach. 

Blog Assignment #13

Share Your Experiences 

Try to think of a time when you personally saw there was a positive impact on the students using technology in the classrooms. What technologies were used? Describe the students interaction, and what were the teachers doing?

         I was observing a kindergarten classroom during a small group time. Some students were writing their sight words while others were reading their library books to each other. Although those students looked like they were having a lot of fun, the students using the Smart Board seemed to be enjoying themselves even more. They were calibrating the Smart Board using the writing tools and studying their geometric shapes. As the students continued their activities the teacher roamed the room, checking on their progress and offering small support when needed before moving on to the next group. 

C4T- Summary for Math Teacher Mambo

Post 1- Half Century

          In Ms. Shireen's Half Century post, she discusses what she has learned from 18 years of teaching. She gives us a list of 50 things she has learned because she is now 50 years old. Ms. Shireen talks about all things associated with teaching. She talks about motivation, other teachers, paperwork and most importantly, she talks about her students and how they have been such an important part in her teaching career.

           In my response to her, I said how much I enjoyed the post and can't wait to be able to have one just like it. I commended her on 18 years in a not so easy profession. And lastly, I pointed out specific things on the list I agreed with. I touched bases on why I agreed that for big projects there should be stepping stone grades, not just one big final project.

Post 2- Fractions?! Still?!
         In this blog post, Ms. Shireen talks about how puzzled her students were when simple fractions are in a math problem. Keep in mind, she teaches an AP Calculus class. To help her students with this problem, Ms. Shireen is going to change up her IR quizzes. Instead of the way she has been doing them, she will now incorporate a review of fractions so her students will be refreshed on them.
         My comment states how much I loathed AP Calculus when I was taking it in high school, and just reading her post takes me back to those treacherous days. While in calculus, I also struggled with fractions so I could relate to her students. I think it's a great idea to review the students on basic concepts because you will always need them to build on. 

Blog Assignment #12

The video Assistive Technologies for Vision and Hearing Impaired Students really shed light on how much extra time is needed with special needs children. As a group we never experienced having classes with vision or hearing impaired students and never fully understood the extreme importance of one on one time with each student, but after watching this video we are more educated. These videos and articles informed us about new technologies that are available for vision and hearing impaired students and how teachers can use them in their classrooms. Here is what we learned.

Hearing

HAT Devices

Remote microphone hearing assistance technology (HAT) delivers the speech signal from the microphone to other audio devices so students can have easier access to what the teacher is saying. HAT devices can bring the speech and sound signals from the microphone to your child in a number of ways:

1. Directly to your child’s hearing aid, cochlear implant or other hearing device via a hearing loop;
2. Directly to your child’s hearing aid, cochlear implant or other hearing device via a wireless receiver that your child wears;
3. To a strategically positioned loudspeaker that benefits your child and others in the room;
4. To a single, personal loudspeaker close to your child.

This technology does not only help the hearing impaired, but also others students that may have a hard time hearing from the back of the classroom.

Vision

In the video IPad Usage for the Blind, Wesley Majerus demonstrates how the vision impaired navigate the features on the IPad.

Here are the features Wesley uses:

• Voice controlled
• Uses gestures to navigate through all the features of the IPad
• Swipes finger across screen to determine what app to choose and then double taps to select the app
• Swipes three fingers across IPad to flip pages
• IPad reads the books to you and it is the only ereader that does voice control for books

Coming from Ipad owners, we did not know that these features were accessible for the vision impaired, but we believe that IPads are a wonderful tool for teaching through technology.

Teaching math to the blind discusses how reading braille is linear and this tool allows the vision impaired to vertically compute math problems, because number placement is necessary for students to be able to understand more complex math problems. With this technology, the vision impaired students are able to drag their fingers across the board and read the math problem just as any other student would be able to. It would also help non-impaired students be able to clearly visualize math problems.

Blog Assignment #11

                While watching Back to the Future, I really just kept thinking about the word dedication! He is an amazing teacher. Instead of just being mediocre like some of the teachers his current students have had, he is trying to integrate so much into his classroom. Things from Wiki, Flicker, computers for everyone and a class blog help to broaden the imagination of his students. Mr. Crosby really embodies the word innovation. He is trying all of these new technologies in his classroom to make learning fun for his students. I have learned a lot from him, but mostly, I take away that teaching is about making students love learning as much as I do.

                What a great video! Building a Comic was very enlightening to watch. He used PBL to perfection. He first starts off his video by discussing what it means to be a super digital citizen. Then his students were able to discuss what that might mean, and then the project came in. His students were allowed to create a super hero that embodied a super safe digital citizen. Not only are the students able to use new software to create these superheroes, students will then write stories about real life situations using their newly created superhero. This integrates language arts into a technology lesson. Mr. Payne’s students were able to use their own faces in their comics; he says this shows ownership to the student’s’ projects. The biggest thing I took from this video- student’s love to use their imagination in school, and as teachers we should give them outlets to do so.

                Segregated learning is not the way anymore. Three teachers at a high school have worked very hard together to integrate project based learning within history, English, and information processing. PBL is used to help engage students and allow for deeper understanding of the curriculum. The teachers ran into some problems when trying to start this integration. Because students were pretty much learning three subjects at once, daily schedules needed to be adjusted. I am so glad the administration granted the three teachers the opportunity to do this. While watching Project Based Learning, I was able to look at a different side of PBL-the side where the teachers try so hard to integrate PBL into schools, and how much dedication it takes from the teachers to be able to do PBL in schools.