Blog Assignment #6

      There are many things that any teacher can learn from the videos of Dr. Strange and Anthony Capps about problem based learning and things to do in the classroom. From the first video Project Based Learning Part 1: Experiences of a 3rd Grade Teacher they both talk about how students should be learning, but not making them show what they already know. That being said is very true because if a child is just showing what they already know than they are just regurgitating what they have heard or been taught instead of actually learning on their own. Also children should have projects that deal with also meeting the required materials that the state wants students to know. If a child is not up to the standards than how will it help them in the future? The second part of the video, Project Based Learning Part 2: Experiences of a 3rd Grade Teacher, is to let children know about problem based learning and be excited to talk about it. Children having a better understanding of what they are doing will help them also get a better understanding on what they need to do and how it should be done. Projects may not always go well, but learning and taking notes on the way we as teachers describe them will only help.

Dr. Strange & Anthony Capps

      Anthony Capps talks about two programs he uses in his third grade classroom quite often. The first mentioned is that of iCurio. I personally had never heard of it until it was talked about between Dr.Strange and Anthony Capps. It is an online tool that allows students to safely search the internet and lets them store things they find on the search browser. It sounded really neat and useful to not only the students, but also for teachers to use. The other one they mentioned was Discovery Education which gives students a more visual way to learn. The website will give videos of experts that will give the students they need to know to help give a deeper learning. Dr. Strange even mentions how most students seem to be listeners/watchers when learning than readers/writers.
      The next few videos was about tips and tricks of teaching. From the video The Anthony-Strange List of Tips for Teachers Part 1 they listed a number of things for first year teachers to learn. One of the most important I thought was that of knowing surprises will happen and teachers should be very flexible. The video Don't Teach Tech- Use It gave me a lot to learn from. It taught me that I should not introduce the technology all at once, but introduce things week by week and eventually give students a projects that uses everything at once. The other most important thing I learned was what Anthony Capps called the "Russian Dolls" from the video Additional Thought About Lessons and that is a lesson should be no more than 4 layers.
      I gained a lot of learning from watching these videos and will for sure use it when I become a teacher within the classroom.

Project #8

Project #3 Presentation

Project #7 Part A

This Is My Sentence 

This Is My Passion 

Blog Assignment #5

     A Personal Learning Network (PLN's) is what teacher use to help build sources that will potentially help them be a better teacher. I created my PLN through Symbaloo which is a great basic way to start. One of the best things that comes from Symbaloo is that I can personalize the order I would want my resources to be in. I have a habit of always having the a website's icon I like most on the left side of my screen. By using Symbaloo it allowed me to do just that. The PLN's are great to use for research purposes. It also will keep track of websites that I may want to come back and look for at a later time. Another neat thing is that if I want I can personally contact someone such as a professor, writer, or even scientist. So far I am still trying to figure out just exactly how it is used, but I am finding it useful.

Projects #15 Search Engines

1. WolframAlpha
This search engine seems to deal more with equations and the preciseness of things. If I were to use this search engine I would use it more for help on a math problem, science related, or maybe even trying to purchase something for the house. When I came to the page there was a black space that asked what I would like to know more about or calculate. My first search I typed in car and it gave me the metric and standard weight along with the length of a standard car. It does not give much information and details or other websites, but simply the basic facts.
http://www.wolframalpha.com/

2. DuckDuckGo
When I first heard the name of this I kind of chuckled, but I actually like it. For DuckDuckGo I used the same word car for this search engine, and it brought up a lot of websites that either had car in the title or in the description. This search engine seems close to Google. I would probably use this one if I had to look up things for a project or get the answers to something. This search engine also apparently does not track so if someone is looking for one like that then this is it.
https://duckduckgo.com/

3. Dogpile
This search engine actually says it is presented by Google and Yahoo, so I am guessing that is where a lot of the information is pulled from. Dogpile I would use for anything very basic. It does not give a lot of useful feed back, but just random websites. When I typed in car it did not even pull up the main website cars,com like most other search engines do. This one does however have a tab for videos, pictures, local, and news.
http://www.dogpile.com/

4. WOW
Before I even typed anything in there was a list of icons of websites below the search bar that was quick links to popular sites. The links also seemed to give a wide variety, and the website covered the most popular ones on my feed. On WOW it also guesses what someone may type like Google does. Unlike a lot of other search engines this one only offers the web, photos, and videos. I would use this one if I am just wanting to look something up real quick or quickly go to a website since it has that option at the bottom of the search bar.
http://www.wow.com/

5. Ask
Ask seems alright, but I personally do not care for this search engine. I would probably not use this website much for anything. It does not give that great of websites when I used different words to search either. It does however have a Question and Answer section that lets other people posts comments to and a lot of other search engines do not have that.
www.ask.com

6. Ixquick
This one is neat since it has tabs to the left that allows someone to see posts as far as the past year. It even has the past 24 hours which would be neat for if something just recently happened. I would probably use this website for wanting to know something that is news related or something that maybe just recently happened in Hollywood. I like how the tabs are there though to only check certain time frame on posts.
https://ixquick.com/

7. Bing
I know a lot of people use Bing over Google now-a-days. I like how it does have the tabs at the bottom of the page for the most recent "news" whether it be in Hollywood or around the world. Bing also has many different tabs to search something under such as pictures, videos, maps, news, and much more. I would use Bing if I had a research project or something as basic as checking the weather. I would say this is my second favorite search engine.
http://www.bing.com/

8. Web Crawler
This seems like another basic search engine. This one does list most recent searches, and I am assuming that it is from other people across the world. It gives some websites that are popular, but also some that I have never really heard of. If I needed a certain number of sources, or I needed a source someone else did not use for a paper I would more than likely use this one by looking at the things that pop up under different searches,
http://www.webcrawler.com/

C4T Cooperative Catalyst

     Cooperative Catalyst is actually a blog site where many teachers have posted to it, but the most recent posts have been those done by Aaron Eden. In his posts he talks much about technology and how students should start learning on their own.
      In Aaron's most recent post "Teaching Without Knowing, And Finding Problems to Solve", he says how it is okay for teachers to now always know the answers to questions students may have. Aaron states that most students turn towards teachers for the answers because all their lives they are taught to go to the teacher if they do not know something. Instead he thinks students should research on their own and do the problem solving themselves. I agreed with a lot that he had to say. With becoming a teacher so much is being changed now a days who knows what the real answer is to anything. Have kids learn on their own though will allow them to be better problem solvers and learners.

       Aaron's second post "Online Education is Not the Disruption" is more about how some people may go against online learning. He states that even if the entire class is not online that some online learning can help students actually learn better. When students are always in the classroom they are mostly taught to "cram-and-regurgitate". With that being said I like what Aaron had to say about how the technology is becoming. The online learning is not the disruption, but they way things are taught is. Sure students may learn more if they are in the classroom, but if they have to look up the answer for themselves or even do online based learning they may end up learning more. 

Blog Assignment #4

      As teachers we are known to ask questions, but what if the questions we ask are not really benefiting our students? In Ben Johnson's post "The Right Way to Ask Questions In the Classroom" he mentions how teachers are always assuming things from the answer of a child. Teachers usually ask the question "Does everybody understand?" just assuming that if the class responds with anything but a no, then yes everybody understands. Johnson, however, says that in fact the student probably does not know that they do not understand.

   To also be an effective teacher by asking questions we need to be able to give more open ended questions. In Andi Stix's video "Open Ended Questions"she says that teachers need to change that "solid" question to an open ended one. Having more open ended questions allows the students to think more not only on the question, but the answer and facts to support it. Being a teacher does come with some tough times on asking questions since maybe we would not know how exactly to word it to allow it benefit the student. Also to be an effective teacher asking questions to maybe one certain child could also help.
Some students do not want participate or would rather let the smarter kids answer it so they do not have to so calling on a child would not be calling them out, but helping them.

     With also asking questions asking a student to even simply draw or self express about something could be an effective way of teaching. In the video "Questioning Styles and Strategies", they have fifth graders draw about what they pictured from the book "Bridge to Terabithia". The students were able to give feedback about what they pictured from the book would let them express themselves in the sense to let other students what they thought. Having drawings will also help the teachers in a different way to possibly see how the students are seeing things in the way they are learning them.

     Everyday teachers ask questions, but effective teachers ask the  more deeper thinking questions. To truly help students by questions we need to get them thinking, but also more engaged within the learning process. Asking simple yes or no questions does not help benefit the child as say an open ended one. Also drawings will get the students involved and can be something different to do every once in a while to change things up. To be an effective teacher we need to know the right and wrong ways to ask questions to our students.
   

Blog Assignment #3

     What really is peer editing? In the YouTube video "Peer Editing", it tells us that peer editing means working with someone your own age to help improve their own writing. When approaching peer editing a person's writing there are three rules to always remember. The top three steps are complimenting, suggesting, and correcting. From the PowerPoint "Peer Edit with Perfection Tutorial", it is mentioned that when complimenting it should always be positive, but would be good to do at the very beginning of the edit. Along with starting with compliments, it also mentions how to be specific when making suggestions.

     I will follow the three main rules of complimenting, suggesting, and correcting when peer editing my classmates in not only EDM310, but other classes as well. I will also remember the different "personalities" that can come from peer editing that were demonstrated in "Writing Peer Review Top 10 Mistakes". The most important thing that can come from peer editing is that it should only make a person better. It is there to help us to become better writers, but to also think about how to possibly change our writing style. Peer editing is a great thing to learn to help apply to an everyday process.