Final Report on PLN

I created my PLN on Symbaloo.com and I have had fun finding websites to put on it. Here are some pictures of my PLN:

My Future Teaching References

My Personal Websites

I will continue to add to my PLN even though EDM 310 is coming to an end. I want to collect as many ideas of things to use in the class room as I can. Hopefully by the time I become a teacher I will have a huge collection of websites that I can refer to for projects, lesson plans, and classroom tools. :)

C4T Summary #4

The teacher's blog I was assigned to comment on for C4Ts this month was Mr. Bryan Jackson's Adventures in a Gifted Classroom. Here is a piece from his "About me" which describes him some:

"I am a suburbanite teacher working at my old high school, exploring gifted and techno-learning with younger, smarter versions of my youthful self."

Blog Post #14

Questions:

1. Why did you miss the metaphor in Tom Johnson's post, or, if you "hit the nail on the head", why do you think you understood the metaphor and why do you think that others in the class missed the metaphor?
2. What metaphors have you encountered since I asked you to create a log of them?
3. What other things can we do as educators to help our students to understand and to use metaphors?
4. Why do we use metaphors?

Answers:

1. I “hit the nail on the head” with the metaphor because I am able to pick up on things like that. I am a writer and a reader and I have always been able to recognize metaphors and such. I think the class missed the metaphor because they were thinking too literally about what the author was talking about.

2. Here are a few:

            I’m drowning in homework.

            He eats like a pig.

            She’s so hot headed

            My work is piling up on me.

3. One thing I would like to do with students to help them understand metaphors is to get them to write a story using  a lot of metaphors. I will also try to make the lessons fun so they will remember them better.

4. We use metaphors to make our writing more interesting and to describe things in a memorable way. Saying “He eat likes a pig” is much more exciting than saying “He eats like a messy person.

Blog Post #13

The Alabama Learning Exchange (ALEX) is a very useful tool for teachers in the classroom. The website has links to Courses of Study, Lesson Plans, Professional Learning, and many others that can help teachers easily set up their curriculum for their classroom. Teachers can make an account on the ALEX website and this will allow them to have their own Personal Workspace in which they can create, save, and edit lesson plans that they want to use. This keeps teacher’s lesson plans in one spot and it also allows teachers to share lesson plans with other teachers.

I think that I would be able to use ALEX when I become a teacher and I also think it will be very helpful. Not only will I have access to “already made” lesson plans, I will also be able to make my own in a place that I can easily access from my home computer as well. ALEX will also allow me to view courses of study for individual grade levels and different subjects in each grade level. ALEX will be a very useful tool that I will use to the fullest of its potential.

  

C4K Summary

Our last C4K assignment was great! I enjoyed talking to so many children at one time about blogs. Here are my summaries of their posts and their posts:

Progress Report on Final Project

For my final project I am going to create a video about what it means to be a teacher in a diverse society. At the moment I am still planning how I am going to get my message across, but I will be partnered with someone who is not in EDM 310. I decided to do something with education in a diverse society because I am taking Dr. Juarez's class EDF 315 this semester and I have actually seen a lot of the things that she talks about in the classroom that I do my field experience in. I feel like our society is so diverse right now, and yet we are still so divided and I want to make a video that addresses these issues. I am excited to see how it turns out!

Blog Post #12

Blogpost 12 Due 4/17

Create a Stumbleupon account.

Stumbleupon is a website that allows you to install a toolbar that lets you “Stumble upon” websites that fit your selected interests. It is almost like surfing the web with just one click of a button. When you install the toolbar you will see a button in the left side of the toolbar that says “Stumble”. All you have to do is click this button and it will randomly “stumble upon” a website that you might like. There are a variety of interests you can choose to stumble through, which you select when setting up your account and can change at anytime, including: Education, Arts and Crafts, Hobbies, etc. (Many people have heard that Stumbleupon is a website to search for only Adult Content. This is not true. You select your preferences to show G rated websites. You will never see a website you do not want to see.) After you select your preferences and start stumbling, you can “like” a website that you stumbled upon and Stumble will then show more content that is similar to your like. Once you “like” something it is added to your favorites list on your Stumble account and you can access it at anytime. You also have the option of “disliking” something and Stumble will no longer show websites that are similar to your dislike. Stumble also allows you to select whether you view All of your interests or an individual one when you click the “Stumble” button, for example, if you just want to stumble upon websites about education, you would click the “Education” topic and from then on the only websites stumbled upon will be about Education.

Stumble is a great way to find Education websites and arts and crafts websites that you could do with your future classes. It can also be used as a wedding planner by looking at the Wedding topics, a helping hand to becoming a healthy person by looking at the Health topics, and many more unique ways of finding websites that fit your interests. It is also a great way to find websites to add to your PLN!

Go to: http://www.stumbleupon.com and click “Join for Free” and then follow the instructions.

After you have set up your account, choose “Education” as your stumble topic and click the Stumble button. Write a Blogpost describing the website that Stumble brings up.

Blog Post #11

Mrs. Cassidy’s methods to use technology in the classroom are awesome! I think it is great to introduce technology into the classroom as soon as Kindergarten, and Mrs. Cassidy’s first grade students are really benefiting from her enthusiasm of using technology in the classroom. I love that her kids already know how to blog and make wiki’s at such a young age, it really does help them learn in a unique and memorable way. I would like to be able to use Flip Cameras in my classroom in the future, like Mrs. Cassidy does, because I think my students would not only enjoy, but also benefit from, using the cameras for various projects. They will be able to video tape each other, which will help them learn how to work in groups and they will also be able to watch themselves speak on the recording, which will allow them to see how they are acting in front of others and will help them enhance their speaking skills. I would also like my students to use the Smart Board often. The first grade class that I am doing my field experience in gets so excited when they are allowed to go to the Smart Board and “click” something and I think it is so great when kids get so excited about learning. So I am going to get my students to use the Smart Board in groups and individually during lessons and for projects. I am going to use blogs as well in my classroom, by either making a class blog or having my students make individual ones. I think when students know that the whole world will be able to view their work, including their parents, they will work harder to make sure they are spelling their words correctly and that they understand what they are writing about. I cannot wait to have my own classroom to use technology in! I am already collecting ideas to use!

Blog Post #10

Morgan Bayda’s post “An Open Letter to Educators” was great. I really enjoyed watching the video by Dan Brown. Here is my comment that I posted on her post:

Morgan,
My name is Tiffany Fey and I am an EDM 310 student in Dr. Strange’s class at the University of South Alabama. I am majoring in Elementary/ Early Childhood Education and I really enjoy watching videos like the one you posted. It makes me feel liberated and empowered to change our education system. Like you said, I would not drop out of school like Dan did in the video, but I almost feel like dropping out after sitting in an hour and fifteen minute lecture where all I did was struggle to keep my eyes open! I hardly ever learn anything in classes like those, I memorize the material just long enough to take the test and then the information disappears. I learn much better in a class that actually allows me to be one-on-one with my teacher, whether it be through technology or in person, and be interactive with my classmates (Like Dr. Strange’s EDM 310 class). Thank you for sharing this video! It’s something everyone needs to think about. If you would like to view my blog you can click Here. Thank you!
Sincerely,
Tiffany Fey