Blog Post #10

The video Do You Teach or Do You Educate was so great. This video blew me away because in just three minutes they summed up what a teacher should be. This video also talked about the difference between a teacher and an educator. A teacher is someone that feels a student with a lot of knowledge and then sends them on their way. An educator attempts to lights a passion for learning inside of all of their students.

I want to be a educator that my students will trust. I want to teach in a way that helps kids know that success is not out of their reach. I want my kids to know that even the hardest things are achievable with a little hard work. This is how all teachers should feel.

In the post Tom Johnson's Don't Let Them Take the Pencils Home there are two educators talking about how a student should not take their pencils home. This is, of course, has a deeper meaning than just pencils. Students might use supplies such as computers at school and how but that does not mean that all students will abuse those privileges. For instance if you want a child to do a project on the computer but you do not want them to just sit there and play you can do a few different things to avoid this. Give them an activity that involves a website that students their age uses. Yo can also monitor what their doing as they are working. One other option is putting a strict time schedule on when the assignment is due. This will encourage the students to stay on task.

Another thing that I saw in this post is how it pointed out how standardized testing does not give an accurate scoring of a students knowledge. In this post one of the characters was trying do base a decision on the scores from this one test by itself. The information from this teats should be backed up by more accurate tests.

C4T comments #3 part 1-2

In the first part of my C4T I went to Michael Smith's post NCLB Made Us Better. He talked about the positve and negative things about No Child Left Behind. He talked about how it has improved us a bit and others had left comments that agreed with him. I told him that I think that NCLB has done more harm than good. I ended by asking if their was any thing that can be done or are our hands tied.


In the second part of my C4T I went to Michael Smith's post A Bad Day at School is Still a Pretty Good Day. I really enjoyed his post about how school can get a little boring and tiring. In my comment I talked about staying more positive. It is not any fun to be unhappy all the time so I am going to focus on the good and make the best of a hard situation.

Project #13 Smart Board Project

Blog post #9

For Blog Post #9 I decided to go with Mr. McClung's What I've Learned This Year 2008-2009 and What I've Learned This Past Year 2009-2010. In his first blog from 2008-2009 I saw that every teacher has to start from scratch and learn that do student teaching is completely different from being responsible for a whole group of people for real. He talked about how teachers need to be patient with their students and not try to hold them to an unreachable standard. Two of my favorite things that he talked about were how he told us that we need to learn how to communicate. Mr. McClung said that communication is a teachers greatest resource. I believe with all of my heart that this is true. The other point that I liked was when he said that we need to continue to learn. He said that we are always trying to get our students to learn but we are not willing to learn.

The second post that I read was from 2009-2010. He learned even more from his second year of teaching. A few things that stuck out to me was his ability to change the way that he teaches so that he can make his class a place of learning. He talked about how he started off his history class by giving them busy work and he new that he was not acting like the kind of teacher that he wants to be. He that something had to change. That is when he research different ways of teaching and he put a plan together that would help the kids to learn. He also talked about how we must learn to love what we teach regardless if we like that subject or not. Think of inventive ways to get your students excited about learning. One really big thing that really caught my attention was that what we learn after we know it all is the most important thing. We have the ability to learn every day of our lives but we have to let ourselves realize it.Mr. McClung reminds me that we all have so mush work that is left to be done.

Blog post #8

Richard Miller's videos were enlightening. He helps you think about reading and writing differently, then you ever have before. If you really sit down and think about it, how much has society gone digital?! The ever growing technological era we live in now has changed the way we do just about everything, including learning. Who writes with pencil and paper anymore? Not many people do. The majority of reading and research comes from the internet in this day and time. Books have now also taken on new challengers in the form Kindles and iPads.

Miller suggests that all educators should learn how to read and write with multimedia. We may be coming upon a time when books become obsolete. In the next few years we are possibly all going to be teaching with computers and other technology. We also need to learn it well enough to be able to teach it to our students. He also realizes that theses changes will not take place over time. He proposes the idea of changes in increments.

I agree with his take on incremental change. I believe there is an importance to learn the ways of multimedia, but it should come about slowly, but surely. One of the incremental changes he mentions is writing things with a print based and at the same time it being written multimedia based. For example, you could have a version printed in a book, and you can have a version posted on a blog. One thing is for sure, our society is going to continue to grow technologically. We need to grow with the times like all the other professions do.



Carly Pugh's blog post #12 was awesome. I really enjoyed reading it. The links she provided really gave her post some life. Her post was very informative, but also entertaining. She made it to where it was very easy to follow and gave the desire to keep reading.  Her post exemplified Richard Miller's lecture "How to Write with Multimedia". Her post was filled with multimedia, but it was not complicated at all.

Carly really gives us an example of how to write with multimedia. Before I read her post I was not really sure how to put Richard Miller's lecture into practice in and effective manner. Carly provided me with the formula of how to not only do it, but how to do it effectively. I now look forward to working on similar projects because it seems like fun.



The primary message ofThe Chipper Series was to not only do your work, but keep up with it and meet deadlines. It also demonstrated the importance of applying yourself to learning. If you do not do your work, then you will want to drop the course which could send your life in a downward spiral. The primary message of EDM310 for Dummies was to show that this course is not as difficult as students make it out to be. Any student can pass this course if they apply themselves to the proper steps and practice.

I would like to make a video of kids enjoying math. People make math out to be so complicated and frustrating. I want to show people that math can be fun while learning it. Yes math is very technical and precise with no room for error, but once a student figures it out it becomes less of a drudgery. Math is in the real world in every aspect no matter the field, so students might as well learn how to enjoy it.




The video Learn to Change, Change to Learn was very thought provoking. The most interesting fact that I have heard in this class was on this video. The statistic released by the U.S. Department of Commerce was based on their study on 55 industry sectors and their respective level of IT intensiveness. The Education sector ranked 55th, which is even behind coal mining. That is just shocking.

The fact that technology is on an ongoing process of growth throughout the world means that the Education sector should be ranked number one in IT intensiveness. IF the real world is growing with technology, how can a student be prepared for real life without the growth of technology in their education? I agree that the education sector should be pushing for change.

Project #11 Short Movie

Project #12 Book Review

Project #10 PLN Progress Report

This project has been my favorite by far. I thought that this project would be really hard but the web sight is very user friendly. I can see now how beneficial my PLN will be, now and when I become a teacher. I have found a lot of cool resources and I have figured out how to add my own resources. I am still working on finding people that will be helpful to my degree plan. I also want to find other math teachers that I can gain wisdom from. I believe that teachers should stick together and help one another to sec-seed. The PLN makes this possibly. You can take a look at my PLN my using the following link: My PLN

Blog post #7

Randy Pausch's last lecture on the video was great. It was very informative, but it was also very entertaining. He was a wonderful speaker. He was very upbeat and easy to listen to. He could really draw you in and make you interested in what he was talking about. He did a great job of using illustrations and examples. He used visuals very well. He livened the lecture up with humor, but never deviated from his points. I would have loved to be one of his students.

Randy's views on teaching were very interesting. He geared his classes toward working in groups on big projects. He would establish five projects a semester for his class. He would make sure there was a good mix of students that specialized in different departments. He would mix students from Art, Design, Drama, and CS randomly choosing teams per project. Each group would have two weeks to design, implement, and test their projects. At the end of each project, he would mix up the students into completely different groups for the next project on the schedule.

Randy believed in focusing his teaching on group projects because in the real world, especially in the entertainment technology field his students were in, they would work in teams. The fact that this was a master's degree also fueled his theory for the group project in his classroom. He believes in the four year's previously working on bachelor's degree, each student should have read all the books they needed to. He believed in challenging his students to work on actual projects and take what they have already learned in school and put it into practice.

I agree with his take on teaching. I will go further to say that group project learning is even great in undergraduate school. It is never too early to learn how to work in a group and how to coexist with a team. People have equal chance to learn from other students as they do with a teacher. Other people's ideas and skills can help you achieve your goals. How many times have you heard someone say something, or watch them do something and say to yourself I have never thought about it that way before? I have those experiences all the time. All and all I really enjoyed the video and hope that I can implement group projects in my own classroom one day.

C4K Summary Post(September)

I have enjoyed getting to see real students use blogs, videos, PLN's, and wiki to learn more about the world around them. I have talked to several kids.

I commented on a class about how great their letters to Lucy were. The kids were writing letters to tell Lucy buffet how happy they were and thankful for their field trip and iPads.

I commented on Andrea's, post about where she wanted to go and why. She talked about how she wanted to visit Paris. In her post she talked about how shse wanted to see their museums and learn about their history. I told her how awesome her idea was and how I hope that she gets to go one day.

I also commented on Gina's blog. I watched a video that she made about the importance of a blog. She talked about how a blog is good for showing people what you are learning and so much more. I agreed with her and told her that a blog is also great for meeting new people and learning new things.

Getting to do these C4K have been a great opportunity to see how other teachers are using this technology to improve their classroom. I hope that I am able to learn more from them so that I can use all that I have learned in my classroom.

Project #9b Wiki

Deena Martin and I did an awesome Wiki for project #9b. We hope that you enjoy it. To view Wiki please click on the link. My Friend Lucy

C4T comments #3-#4

I visited the blog of Mr. Chase and I read his post of Autodizactic. I can tell right away that he is a person that wants to make a difference in our schools. His blog post talked about how him and his team are working on changing K-12 grade libraries. He talked about wanting to challenge his team to come up with the best ideas possible. I am glad that he actually wants to take this position seriously. Someone needs to see the need for change in schools.


My second visit to Mr. Chase's blog I read about his theory about small schools are all around better learning institutions than large industrialized schools. He says that small schools help teachers function as a group better. He believes it allows them to plan together and focus on the same goal. He also suggests that they prevent any particular student from falling through the cracks because of the closer relationships with the teachers. He makes hints that he believes they should get rid of the larger schools and break them up into smaller schools for the benefit of he student and the teacher.

I responded to the post and said that I like his idea in theory, but would be to hard to pull it off. Funding would be a major obstacle. Government regulations on public education is a problem. But I do agree that smaller class settings would be more beneficial to students and their ability to learn. He has proven statistics that says smaller class settings produce higher graduation rates.