Survey Results for Survey Project

I have used a workaround prescribed by Dr. Strange to report the results. If you would like it, email me.
One caveat is that all of the comments that are in a list format are not viewable. Other than typing it myself, I don't know how to display all the comments.

Jackie

What you had to say - Survey Results!

Survey Project

Week 12, Comments 4 Kids

Afio Mai and Welcome to Room Nine

This was an interesting assignment. I really wasn't sure how to approach this since the language propriety was so important. I hope I was not offensive by including a little bit of her language from the website. My comment pertained to Alarze's first post, which was not in English. She did well! My response:

Tēnā koe, Alarzae!

Kei te pēhea koe? Ka nui te ora

I am a student at the University of South Alabama in Mobile, Alabama United States of America. I am learning how to teach children math when they are 11-18 years old. My teacher introduced me to your class blog where I was able to learn a little bit about your language. It is beautiful.

You should be proud of your first post. You did very well! Continue the great work.

Have a super day!

E noho rā

Jackie Gorski
University of South Alabama, USA
Secondary Education/Math Student
EDM310 Technology in Education

my blog : http://gorskijacquelineedm310.blogspot.com

Week 12 Blog Post : Kaia, Her Father and Mr. C

Let me first start by saying that this was a great example of how we are fundamentally just people, regardless of culture, age, or geographical location. Here is Kaia’s father, with concerns no different for his child than those of us in the United States would have. And then his philosophies on education, learning and the outdoors are really common to those in our class and others here in the United States. I like that the blogs allow us to share ideas and see the commonality of people across the globe.

I truly enjoyed reading the posts. Mr. C’s class really hit a home run to find someone so curious and insightful to help the project be more than it was intended to be. I enjoyed Kaia’s fathers many mentions about taking risks to learn and to do that with people around the world.

Google Guide for Teachers - A find I had to share!

Check out Free Technology for Teachers and subscribe to the RSS feed for some really good stuff that you will want to have in your teacher's bag of tricks.

PLN tip : I have every blog that I follow in my Google Reader so that I can quickly browse through resources and with little time choose the posts that I am interested in. This one came to me today and caught my eye for two reasons. We all may be able to use this one day, if not now, and I think it may be a good candidate for the Alumni Blog.

Thomas Byrne is a Google Certified Teacher. Read his blog post describing why and how he wrote this guide.

Click here for the Google for Teachers guide.

Mathtrain.TV Podcasts

Check out this posting on The Innovative Educator, "Kids Teach with Mathcasting." The key words are KIDS TEACH. This is really a great example of using technology in the classroom.

Within the posting is a link for Mathtrain.TV where the students' math podcasts reside. The podcasts are really well done. Check them out!

The Innovative Educator - Sir Ken Robinson - "Eureka! We've Finally Perfected Educating Students for the Past"

I know we are supposed to post our Comments4Teachers at the end of week 12, but I don't think I could wait that long. This was a good clip, which talks about meeting kids needs individually as no two people are alike. He touches on standardized testing and how we can't evaluate the success of a student with a one-size-fits-all evaluation.

I was intrigued by a comment posted by a gentleman who calls himself "Marksrightbrain." He made some comments that I either don't understand or am just in such disagreement that I can't see his point (not always an endearing quality of mine :)). If you have a chance to read his comments, then my response, I would really be interested in your feedback. Click here to go to this posting on The Innovative Educator.

Thanks, Jackie

Below is the clip.

Morgan Bayda: An Open Letter to Educators

My hat is off to Morgan Bayda. All I can say is : ENERGY! I'll be checking out her blog often. She may be great to collaborate with on the Alumni Blog.

I loved Dan Brown's video. I wish the K-12 kids had a say in the education they are provided. Free and appropriate.. That 's the education their supposed to be getting, but all of this fact memorizing makes my stomach turn. It's up to us to give them more than that!

I'm curious about the alternative education path that he will either find, or most likely create for himself that would grant him opportunities for employment. Is he looking for another university? Wouldn't it be interesting to know if there were universities out there with the programs that he describes?

Here he is below:

Comments4Kids Update

Week 9 Posts

Sustainability Digital is a blog hosted by 9th grade science teacher Ben Wildeboer. I commented on the alkaline earth metals video produced. The students produced their own videos pertaining to their subject. The blog contains comments from the teacher on the trials of the initial video project.


Week 10 Posts

http://2kmblog.globalstudent.au/ This is Mrs. McGeady’s 2KM class blog. Their teacher announced a contest that would involve blog posting tips. She asked that anyone who had something to add to the recommendations to comment. I added that it was polite to respond to a post made on your blog kindly to express your appreciation for their contribution.

Skype - Try it and You Will Love It!

Skype has been a great tool used for my daughters to communicate with family and friends that live far away. The three of us regularly Skype with my parents. Recently, my youngest, Olivia, turned five years old. It was quite special for her to open her presents from Grandma and Grandpa while they watched even though they couldn't be here. We occasionally Skype with a friend from Mississippi. I found Skyping useful when working with Tyler Mathis on our project. Skype is a great way to have visual contact with others when it is not possible to be in close proximity. And it’s free!

Comments 4 Teachers Weeks 7,8,and 9

Week 7 : “Augmented Reality : Does it have a place/future in education?” by David Hopkins.

Watch this video for a new development in experiencing history, architecture, geography, medicine, etc. into your home or classroom. I love this. Check out more about Augmented Reality on David Hopkins' blog, eLearning Blog Don't Waste Your Time.

Week 8 :
" Email Is So 1973” is a presentation on how email could become obsolete. The video introduces real time conversations as the preferred means to online discussion versus email. I’m not clear about the advantages of this versus video conferencing of IM’s. I may just not understand fully the real time conversation concept. It is evidence, though, of the constant progression of real time communication.

Week 9 :

See my previous post for the presentation called “Presentation Skills for Geography Teachers.”

Email Is So 1973

View more presentations from Red Magma.

Comments4Teachers Week9 - Late but Worth It!

Valuable Hints on Slide Presentations provided by David Hopkins.

Click on the link to check out this slide presentation that I found on David Hopkins' blog eLearning Don't Waste Your Time, entitled "Presentation Skills for Geography Teachers." I found it helpful in designing presentations. This post really points some of the psychology around student perception of information for slides. I commented to Mr. Hopkins that I really appreciated that the slide presentation shows how to market facts rather than just present them to students.

Alabama Learning Exchange - ALEX

Alex : Alabama Learning Exchange

**** Be sure to get down to the section about a potential opportunity for EDM310 students.***

By the title, I am assuming that ALEX is a site where Alabama educators can share information. Oddly enough, there is no introduction or information about ALEX that I was able to find. So one needs to “figure it out” by searching the site.

Let me move on to the positives I found. It appears that ALEX is a site where Alabama educators can come to get leads on educational resources such as web links, lesson plans, and a place where a collection of podcasts by subject has been started. There are also professional development resources available from grant writing podcasts to leadership and evaluation information to name a few.

This site link is on the Illinois New Teacher website as a resource. You can also follow it on Facebook.

Don’t miss this interesting potential opportunity :

Gov. Riley’s iChallenge Podcast Competition - Is this up our alley or what???

Governor Bob Riley’s Podcast Challenge Announcement

the iChallenge Website

The competition is open to Alabama teachers, higher education faculty, students (that may include us), and is designed, per the site, to get people involved in the evolution of technology use in Alabama’s education realm.

Gov. Riley with Apple iTunes U invites those who qualify to make podcasts that either deliver professional development or teach a concept. Maybe some of the podcast topics we presented over the past couple of weeks would qualify. At a minimum, we all had some really great information that would be nice to share with others getting started in the technology realm.

Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture

I first heard of this on 60 minutes a couple of years ago and had to have the book. Since then, I’ve given this book as gifts and recommended it to many. If you think you choked up during the video, then get a big old box of tissues for the book. He goes into more of his upbringing and teaching career in the book, but the video is a great tribute to the folks that helped him to achieve his dreams. In the book, he talks about his thoughts when he was diagnosed with 3-6 months to live. His biggest sadness was that he was not going to be there to teach his kids the life lessons that he was so privileged to have with his parents. That was probably his biggest worry. So, the book and his Last Lecture were his legacy for his children, the best he could do, to leave them with the things that he wanted for them to learn and live. Amazing, isn’t it?

When reading the book and listening to the clip, I thought that “this is one of the good guys we can all learn from.” As a person, as a teacher, a role model on many fronts. Randy Pausch attributed much of his success to the teachings and support of his parents. He carried that gift of opportunity through community with his students. I loved his dream to enable others to fulfill their dreams. Isn’t that what teachers are supposed to do? In addition to that, I feel teachers must help others to determine their dreams through exposure to know what to dream and then through the building of confidence and perserverance to achieve whatever it is they want. Randy Pausch did that. He inherently may have had that talent, but I would like to think that logically his talent to enable others came from his experiences presented to him by others. His community was good to him, and he reflected constantly to evaluate when to recognize the opportunities from this community.

The head fake – love it!! Millions of kids having fun learning something hard was so exciting to him. His courses were about learning and presenting an environment of discovery and few boundaries. His lesson from Andy Van Dam about what to do when his students just blew him away was fantastic. Don’t define the bar, and let them believe they can always do better is fantastic. So often we want them to meet the standard. How wonderful to set the course up for them to blow the standard away.

“Brick walls are there to let us show our dedication. They separate us from those people who don’t want to really achieve their childhood dreams.” In his anecdotes, he always seemed to never meet a challenge that he wasn’t going to overcome. This energy and determination must have influenced his approach with students. Their accomplishments must have been influenced by that can do attitude. It must have been contagious. I found his perspective in the comment “If you do anything pioneering, will get arrows in the back but at the end of the day, it was a lot of fun.”

A lesson at the heart of his courses was in cooperative education. I liked his pace to change projects frequently while causing people to work with different classmates each time. Most importantly was the self-reflection aspect through peer review. What a great experience that will carry over into their professional and personal lives. I agree with his statement “your critics are the ones who love you, who still care.” He says something along the lines of when you’re screwing up, and no one is commenting, that is a very bad place to be.” Without knowing how to reflect on how you are received by others, or being blind and denying criticism, you will miss out on opportunities and not grow. It’s a tough lesson to learn, but in the long run, very valuable. For those that have those critics, w each are fortunate to have a mentor that will take that time to tell us when we need to rethink and do differently.

Some other points I really liked :

“Wait long enough, and someone will always impress you.”

“Some brick walls are made of flesh.”

Beware of how you say things, or your message may not be sent the way you intend.

Learning Through Game Play

Jeopardy Labs

This site came across my Google Reader this morning. First, it's free! (I think that must be the most common exclamation amongst teachers!) This is a site that offers a template for a game of Jeopardy. You enter the questions and answers and then set it up for the number of teams that will play.
can see this being a means for test review, a game at centers that could change regularly, or a way to make not-so-interesting material fun to learn. It would seem that any subject or grade level could use it from Government and Ethics, to Math, Social Studies, Physical Ed and Health, to Scholars Bowl or Spelling Bee prep.

I made a quick and dirty "Test Game" with math questions to see if it was worthwhile. This is ROUGH, but check it out by clicking on "Test Game.

TimeToast Project Posted

Jackie's Sailing Career Timeline

This is the Time Toast Project completed today. It is just a simple example for myself to trial Time Toast.

Random but Important Questions for Fellow Future Teachers

Questionnaire : Random but Important Questions for Fellow Future Teachers


I need your help! This is one of our projects for EDM310, so I need you. Please go to this survey and complete it. It should not take 5 minutes. Your time is appreciated.

And please don't hesitate to ask me to complete yours, so I can help you as well.

I will post a summary of the results after break.

Thanks in advance for your time!

Have a great day,

Jackie