Social Learning Assesment

There are so many things that i thought i would get out of this class. and i accomplished alot of them. I  learnt so many things form this class and will take alot of them to my future career. I found that the blogs was a great way to interact with the students in our class. Throughout the semester it was hard not being able to see each other because i didn’t know who was who at the face-to-face classes. But over the course of the semester i found it esaier to get to know the people on  the inside rather then make a judgment.

Kristine and i were partners for the final project and this brought us to the use of technology in many ways. We emails, texted, phoned each other, and were in contact over msn. Technology made it so much easier to get a hold of each other in the case of our final project, which was a learnign experience all on its own.

Comment on our class blogs was a great thing to experience as well. it helped me get to know the other person and so did just reading their blogs. i didn’t however, get as much time as i wanted to comment on other blogs. I wanted to more but i just found myself running out of time by the end of the nights. It did bring me closer to some of the people in my class.

ECMP 355 Final Project

The semester is coming to an end. For our ECMP 355 class, Kristine and I have been working on our final project over the past couple of weeks and final have it all put together. Iw ould like to hear back from everyone to see what you think.

[This is a link to our project]

Mentor Assessment

For some time now, our ECMP class has been mentoring classrooms. I have had two classrooms that i was mentoring in Mavis Hoffman’s Grade 7 and 8 class, as well as in Chris Harbeck’s grade 8 classes.

I really enjoyed reading up on the students in these two classes. The mentoring was a good thiing to experience. And i will continue to comment on these class blogs because i think it is a great idea.

I found it really hard, however, to find the time to comment. I would give myself a 7/10 because i wanted to comment more and just didn’t have the time. I would however like to thank Mavis and Chris for allowing me to comment on these kids as they progressed through the semester.

MentorShip

Lately, i have been blogging back and forth with two classrooms. My ECMP 355 class was given the opportunity to blog with classes from all different places. The classes that i am mentoring, are very interesting students. They know their stuff and are not affraid to share it. They post their work online for all to see and they do an amazing job at helping each other out.

The greatest part about it that i find, is alot of the students explain the steps, step-by-step, which not only helps them understand it better, but also helps the other kids their age understand it better.

I encourage all to look at the way these kids do their work! It is a great way to incorporate technology in something like a math class. Mavis Hoffman and his grade 7 and 8 class have done some amazing work. As well as Chris Harbeck and his 4 grade 8 classes.

3rd K12 conference: “Traveling Through The Dark”

For my third K12 conference i watched the presentation entitled, “Traveling Through The Dark” 

This presentation caught my attention because it starts out with a guy, Steven Kimmi, travelling in a car in the dark. Steven is explaining how when he first set out for college he wasn’t planning on going into education. He says “Traveling Through the Dark” was a poem that inspired him alot. Steven gave a short plot to the poem:
A man travelling down a narrow country road, who encounters a heap in the road. He gets out of his car and discovers that it is a pregnant doe. At this point the driver realizes that he has a very difficult situation at hand. He can either stay on the road and help the fawn, or he can push the heap off the side of the road and go on his way. In the end, the driver makes a honest decision,

This was where his story ended. A quote popped up on the screen. “he best teachers don’t expect kids to learn the way they teach. The best teachers teach the way the kids learn” Dr. Pedro Noguera

It then goes back to Steven making reference to the poem “Traveling Through the Dark”, and relating it to being an educator and needed to make decisions. Steven says that more often then not teachers tend to take the easy way out.

“By glow of the tail-light I stumble” William Stafford

HE continues saying that teaches most often pick a path that they have been down already because it is easiest, they know what to do. Its all the same, easy. He says the world is constantly changing and if educators are always going down a path that they have been down already… we are not going to provide the next generation for their and our future.

Steven thought about his classroom and how he felt his students weren’t getting the best out of his instruction. He felt there to be more than just one problem, and he knew he needed to do something about it. He knew that somehting needed to be changed. He said he wanted to find out what the problem was… and he found it to be himself. He said he took a journey that week, and is still on today, and will probably always be on this journey. Because it is not about the end point, its about what happens on the way.

He then goes on to say how he started into technology. He has yet to bring it into his classroom because he figures, as an educator, he should be know a lot about the ins and outs before he integrates it into his classroom. He  uses a camera in his grade 5 class to make what they do real for the students. So they know that others are seeing what they are doing.

His closing statement was, when we do take the final step out into the darkness, take others with us.

This presentation left a big impact on my veiw of technology int he classroom because i am going to be starting out like Steven. I will have the background but i won’t know enough about blogging, flickr, and igoogle to bring it into my classroom right away. I agreed with him on alot of topics and really enjoyed alot of his quotes. I definitely encourage all to watch this presentation.

2nd K12 Conference: “Free Tools for Universal Design for Learning in Literacy”

For my second K12 conference i watched the presentation on free tools for universal design for learning in Literacy…

This conference was mainly about discussing the ways that you can support literacy using free toosl on the internet. First, Jennifer Kraft talked about 2 student examples. The two examples show what students lives were like prier to technology support in Literacy, as well as what their lives were like after receiving the support.
Jonia is the first of the two students. Before Jonia received the technological support, she was struggling with reading, attends tutoring, worked forever on a small homework assignment in tears, and is unable to participate in hands on activities because she can’t do the seatwork part of the assignment. While Jonia is having troubles with school, her classmates are reading regular novels and moving through seatwork activities fairly fast.
After Jonia received the technological support, she listens to a book on CD, reads a book on microsoft reader, in math, she uses a reading pen, she has a USB card that has all of her textbooks scanned onto it for homework purposes, she uses Microsoft word text-to-speech so she can hear an answer that she types, she is now a functioning classmate with lots of extra time.

The second student is Pablo. He is in 9th grade and falling far behind his classmates. He doesnt know where to start when he has more than two projects on the go, Cant concentrate on long lectures, and is reading at a level 5, Pablo does not finish his homework and struggles with textbook lessons.
After receiving his technological support, Pablo listens to lessons on Mp3, USB card with textbooks as Mp3, Narrates paper through speech recognition program, he listens to books while he is running, and plays game on the computer to increase his attention. With this support Pablo is caught up to his classmates.

Both of these students used, text-to-speech, word processing tools, and online books to read.

Some specific tools that Jennifer talked about after these examples were:
Text to speech–> this program will read the text aloud for you to hear. It is a free program that can be updated
Text to Mp3–> This is for easy storage on an Mp3 Player, computer or in  a file.
Speech to Text–> With the support of a phone, this option is available. The website provides a number to be called and you can leave a message for someone and this message is turned into a text, email, or messsage to who ever you want to send the messsage to
E-Books–> can be put on a program on the computer that will allow the book to be read outloud. For struggling students, this is a good idea because they can see the word as it is being said.
Research Tools–> many tools allowing kids to do research. Taking notes is the best way to research… Using igoogle, google docs is a very good thing to use, for individuals and groups.
and Concept Mapping–> list of free software for concept mapping… Bubbl.us, Mindomo, Gliffy, Dabbleboard, Freemind.

Combining some of these tools with other tools causes more of an affect on the outcome of the student… for example: Bubbl.us+Firefox+CLiCK, Speak =Concept Mapping Read Aloud

I felt that this was a very important presentation. It showed numerous ways to helping students with different learning styles, get involves in classroom activities and not fall behind. This presentation gave me some good ideas for helping out my students who struggle with some of the problems that were listed in the presentation.  I found htis presentation very interesting and i am hoping that you watch it too!

“Free Tools for Universal Design for Learning in Literacy”

My future Classroom

After talking to all the guests that we had in our ECMP 355 class… i got to thinking about my future classroom… One of our face-to-face meetings, we were able to get into small groups and learn about the smartboard… we were given the opportunity to play around and explore with all the different gadgets on the smartboard. I feel that this is a very good idea to have in a classroom.
I also like the idea of classroom blogging. We have been mentoring classroom blogs for the last little while and i think it is an amazing idea. The kids’ voices are heard from someone other then friends, family, and their teacher. i just think that it is an awesome idea for motivating the students to do their best… knowing that someone out there is still listening to what they have to say.
Technology is a very huge part today, in the learning of children today. They have grown up around technology. It is a huge part of their lives, and so should education. Therefore i believe that bringing technology into the classroom wherever possible is a good idea.

My 4 slide presentation

This is me in four slides. hope you enjoy

http://www.slideshare.net/sweetkiss101/4-slides-presentation-769489

K-12 Conference Review #1

the first presentation that i watched was entitled “LeadingTheChange: there’s something here you need to know about!” This article talked about 5 critical topics. web2.0 tools, learning, collaboration, sharing, and invention. Nothing was pin pointed exactly, however they told stories to get the idea of each of these topics in the open.

In 2006, Stephanie Pace Marshall, a principal, wrote a book called, The Power To Transform. She believes that mind shaping is world shaping. If you change the story you change the map. If you change the map, you change the landscape. If you change the Landscape, you change your choices. If you change your choices, you change your mind… why does this matter you ask? Because if you change your mind (mind shaping) you change the world.

Another story that they talk about is a story about Denis Richards who served on a leadership councell. In the summer of 2007, Denis attended a conference on web 2.0. Here he met a Canadian educator that introduced him to the technological world we live in today. He learnt about things like… twiter, blogs, hyperlinks, tags, RRS feeds, and skype. He was interested in this so did some researching himself after the conference. He gave a presentation of his findings to his staff in the new school year. He got busy and lost focus on his research but when he attended a K-12 conference he was intriged again. He listened to conference while running, cooking, and during his everyday life for three weeks.  and leanrt that learning can be fun, exileratiing, meaningful, and challenging.  Denis’ life changed, he became a lifelong learner.

In the last story that they told, denis and his collegues committed to improving learning in science and technology, engineering and math subject and instruction. They set a goal for the students, it was to come up with good questions to ask a scientist about the climate change. they encouraged the students to create podcasts and post them to the world on the web.

The Arguement
-courage is compacity to claim what we imagine.
-imagine something better for the kids in your school
-Now it is time to transform education. Together.
-Learnign is mind making – Their minds are shaped to be learners forever
-think about what kids need for future, skills wise
-Need to be inspired by the educator
-Need to become a Web 2.0 Learner!

This conference was a positive influence on my veiw as an educator. You never realize how important the internet and the web are until you are faced to teach those who have it mastered. These kids that we are about to embark our lives on, have haad technology exposed to them since they could walk.  I really enjoyed listening to this presentation and seeing how technology has changed the past educators of our world. How it has formed their worldveiw, to see how it will change my own.

Podcast reviews

I am very into comedy. So for my first podcast i listened to TalkingCanadian:Check’n-outMen??? It was very funnny. They mostly talked about hockey. These Canadian guys just kinda hang out and dicuss the current issues. They get together twice a month and talk about whatever is currently happening. And right now it is Hockey season so the man topic is hockey and they are comedians so there is alot of other things they talk about. I do however think you gotta be Canadian to fully understand some of the things that they say. They alos talked about the States election and alot of other random things.

For my second podcast, i wanted to listen to something more educational. I found a podcast about teachers and being actors. He goes on in this podcast, entitled PsychologyInEverydayLife:ThePsychFiles about how actors do need to be somewhat actors in the classroom today. he says  that you don’t have to be a good actor to be a good teacher, but being somewhat energetic does help the learners to learn. He also talks about goal setting and also syllubus’s which was awesome to hear someone elses insite. The description of this podcast is:

“We often heard it said that teachers have to be actors today in order to keep the attention of today’s low attention span students. Well, in this episode I agree that teachers and actors do think alike in many ways – but not in the ways most people think. Join me as I explore how teachers and actors think alike in terms of objectives, obstacles, “raising the stakes”, and getting feedback from other actors/students.”

I liked this podcast and enjoyed listening to the interesting things that Michael Britt had to say