Blog Post #7 - What Can We Learn About Teaching and Learning From Randy Pausch?

Randy Pausch's Last Lecture was very inspirational to me. Chasing and even achieving your childhood dreams can make such a difference in your life. In his lecture, Pausch tells that he has been diagnosed with an incurable cancer and he only has a few months to live. So he makes the best of it and gives one last lecture to his students and many others. Unlike most other people being told that they only have a short amount of time left to live, he is in high spirits and he doesn't let it bring him down. Instead of being depressed in his final days, he is happy and enjoying life. He spent his last days the same way he lived his life: having fun. He was told by President Cohen to tell his students to have fun, and Randy said "that's like a fish talking about the importance of water. I don't know how to not have fun, I'm dying and I'm having fun." When he said this, it really spoke to me. There is no excuse to not find fun in anything. As a teacher, it is our job to make learning fun and enjoyable for our students. There is no reason why it shouldn't be fun.

His teaching style is very interesting and enjoyable to watch. I have had many teachers whose lectures were boring and I would often find myself dozing off or daydreaming, but I wouldn't mind sitting through a few of his lectures because he makes it interesting and easy to pay attention. He gets his students engaged in what he is saying and it keeps them interested and focused on the topic. He also uses many visual aides and props to keep his audience's attention. As college students, you wouldn't think that giant teddy bears or costumes would interest us anymore, that was only for elementary school. Wrong. Connecting what you are talking about to a real life item makes the lecture come to life. He used pictures as demonstrations and that also draws in more attention than just reading bullet points off of a slide. Also, he was constantly moving around and being active, and not just staying in one place. When a teacher moves around while teaching, the students' eyes tend to follow him/her and they generally pay more attention. I really liked his way of lecturing, it was very different than what I've experienced lately in college.

Another interesting point that he brings up is the concept of the brick wall. Many times when you are chasing a dream or a goal, you run into a brick wall. It is not there to keep you from achieving your dreams, it is there to make you prove how bad you want to achieve these dreams. If you give up after hitting a brick wall, then you didn't truly want to achieve that goal. If you want it really bad, you will keep working and break through that brick wall. I found this concept to be very eye-opening; I have hit my brick wall and I have thought about giving up, but now I know that there is something on the other side and I just have to break through. After watching this video, I feel more confident and excited about chasing my childhood dream because I know it is possible, I just have to get past the brick wall. It has always been my dream to become a teacher, and I couldn't be more excited about this path I am going down. Randy Pausch's story and his last lecture are very inspirational and could be life changing to children (or even adults) who are afraid to chase their dreams.

C4K for February

For the first week of February, the student's blog that I was assigned to was not able to be viewed. So I decide to comment on Samantha's blog in Mrs. Reuter's class. Samantha wrote a blog post about a cartoon/comic generator. It was well written despite a few grammatical and spelling errors. She told about the problems she had encountered with it and she also described the many things she liked about it. All in all, it was a very interesting and well written post.

In the second week of February, I was assigned to Colin's Blog in Mrs. Caddy's class. Colin wrote his blog post according to a writing prompt that I am guessing his teacher had assigned to him. The title of it was Writing Prompts. His first paragraph was stating what he wanted to be doing in 15 years; he wants to be a fighter pilot. His second paragraph described what he did over winter break. In his third paragraph, he lists a bunch of things he would buy. In his fourth paragraph, he explains what would happen if he was stuck in his favorite department store. In his final paragraph, he tells what his favorite type of weather is. Colin has a very nice writing style, very clear and concise. There were just a few capitalization and punctuation errors. Other than that, it was a great and interesting post to read.

In the third week of February, I was assigned to the same student I was assigned to in the first week and I was still unable to access her blog. So I had to choose another student's blog to comment on. I commented on Harley H. in Mrs. Gelde's class. Her post was about her birthstone because they had learned about birthstones in science that week and she also provided a picture of it. Her birthday is in April and her birthstone is a diamond. She also prompts her readers to share what their birthstones are and what month their birthdays are in. Although it was a short post, she had great writing style and did a good job of getting her readers to interact and comment.

In the final week of February, I was assigned to BC Pitcher in Mrs. Miller's class. I was a little confused with the two most recent posts, the formatting was different than what I have seen before and there were very few words. I didn't quite understand what was being discussed or told so I wasn't able to comment on either of those. However, I did find a post from January that I was able to comment on. It was not in typical blog post fashion, but I was still able to understand it. It was titled 50 Things About Myself. It was a collage picture with a bunch of words that described him. Words such as: Baseball, Hunting, Alabama, Football, School, Swimming, and many others. I thought it was a very unique and interesting way to describe himself. It caught my attention and I even learned a few things about him. That is a major part of blogging, capturing and keeping your reader's attention; and he did a very great job of that.

Project #8-Book Trailer

A Frog in the Bog

Blog Post #6 - PLN's What Are They?

I have come to learn that PLN's are very important and very useful to teachers. PLN stands for Personal Learning Network and it is a way for teachers to connect with other teachers and share their ideas and stories. Before the internet, teachers could only connect locally, whether it be in the teachers' lounge with colleagues or at a coffee shop with other teachers of a local school. There wasn't much room to expand their contacts and make connections with many other educators. The connections that they could make may not have shared similar ideas or teaching methods that they had. So you can imagine that before technology and internet, it was hard to connect with other teachers.

Students have their own ways of connecting with other students, mostly through social media like Facebook or Twitter. But also new media tools make it easier for students to connect not only locally, but across the world. Looking back to a previous video we have watched for this class, I am reminded of Vicki Davis and her story about connecting her students with other students around the world. Since students are able to connect with other students and share what they are learning, teachers should be able to connect with other teachers and share what they are teaching and how they are teaching it. PLN's are a great way for teachers to not only connect with other teachers, but to also make long-lasting friends in the teaching world. I plan to have a wide variety of people in my PLN so whenever I need help with anything, I can always have a friend there to help. I look forward to making my PLN and connecting with others world-wide.

My Sentence Videos

My Sentence is...


My Passion is...

Blog Post #5 Conversations with Anthony Capps

In Dr. Strange and Mr. Capps' interviews, they discuss project based learning and its effects on modern day students. Our world is quickly changing and becoming more and more technological, and it is our job to keep up with it and ensure the next generation knows what they are doing and how to succeed. When I was in elementary school, we were lucky to go to the computer lab once a month, and now students have computers and iPads in the classrooms. We have come a long way in just a short amount of time. As teachers, we must first learn how to work with and use this new technology so we can teach it to our students. In Use Tech Don't Teach It, Mr. Capps iterates that technology should not be something that is taught to the students, rather it is something that students should use to learn the subject matter. It is a great way to teach students the material they need to be taught and they also learn how to work with technological tools by figuring it out on their own. These students are smart when it comes to figuring these kinds of things out, and they end up teaching us teachers a few things we didn't know. Mr. Capps also explained two very important resources that can be very useful to a child's learning process, iCurio and DiscoveryEd. iCurio is a safe internet search engine for students to research educational material and teachers don't have to worry about the students stumbling upon something inappropriate. It also helps narrow down what they are searching for and and to help organize, store, and save what they have found. To children, too big of a text or too many words can get so boring without pictures. A picture is worth a thousand words and as Anthony said jokingly, "a video must be worth a million". Students retain more information on a text when it is paired with a visual. On Discovery Ed, you can research anything and not only will it show you a picture, but it was also show a video explaining what it is and how it works. I think these are both wonderful tools to implicate into the classroom and further advance our students' knowledge.

Project based learning is very effective in the classroom today. Growing up, I was always used to the "burp back" method (as Dr. Strange calls it), teachers didn't really get us involved in what we were learning. Yes, we did occasionally do projects; but the projects didn't teach us anything new, it was what we had already learned and we were "burping it back" to the teacher. A project should be a learning process, not a way of reviewing. Project based learning is designed to get the students to be interactive with their work and learn from exploring and researching on their own. Projects are exciting for kids and it gets them excited about learning, it encourages them to venture out and explore other ways to learns besides just normal lectures and worksheets. I believe project based learning is an important method of teaching that all successful teachers should incorporate into their lesson plans.

Project #3 Presentation

Blog Post #4 Asking Questions

Asking questions in the classroom is very important. Sometimes the questions may even be more insightful than the answers. The driving question for all teacher is what do we need to know about asking questions to be an effective teacher? What kinds of questions do we need to ask? And how do we ask them? Many teachers ask closed questions in which the most acceptable answer is a yes or a no. It doesn't really allow the student to think deeply about it and get a more in-depth answer. According to The Teaching Center at Washington University in St. Louis, teachers should avoid asking "leading questions." These kinds of questions are worded to where they are setting up the answer and leading right to it, not giving the student much to think about on their own. The best kinds of questions are the ones that allow the students enough time to thoroughly think about the answer and formulate it into their own words. Questions that call for an explanation best fit this requirement. It is best to plan out what questions you want to ask and when to ask them. If you think of the question and ask it on spot, it can be very unclear and the students may get confused and not want to answer. It is best to plan out what you're going to ask and fit it in where you want to ask it on your lesson plan. It is a good idea to spread your questions out throughout the lesson and not save them all for the last few minutes of class. Students are more likely to answer questions as they are learning about that topic, and they are unlikely to answer when they know class is almost over. It is a good idea to mix up different types of questions; between closed, open, and managerial questions. Closed questions can test comprehension of the information. Open questions are the most effective in encouraging discussion in the classroom and promote active learning, and managerial questions ensure that the students understand the assignment.

Response is key to providing effective feedback to a student's answer. First of all, you should allow enough time for the student(s) to carefully think over the question and formulate their answer. Do not interrupt their answer even if they are not on the right path, and show that you are interested in what they have to say. As a teacher, it is best to keep note of the questions you ask and improve upon them, because as a teacher you are still learning new things every day. Most importantly, try to avoid the types of "do you understand?" questions. Most of the time the students will give you the answer that you want to hear so that the lesson can keep moving forward and won't be delayed. Often times, students are afraid to speak up and show that they do not understand causing them to be lost and confused. So it is best to ask questions that really get the students thinking and not just thinking about yes or no answers.

C4T#1

In the first blog post I commented on for Eva Buyuksimkesyan, she shared many learning tools she had found online and they seemed like they would be very effective. Among these tools are: Buncee, Todaysmeet, Blendspace, Journal Jar, and Padlet. Buncee can be used for making lessons or students can use it make projects. Todaysmeet is a sort of chatroom where you can share ideas with your students and asks questions and have them answer the questions before class time. Blendspace is a content creation tool where you can make powerpoints or pdf files and they can be easily shared or printed. Journal Jar is a tool that gives random topics for writing or for presenting an impromptu speech. Padlet is an online idea board where you can post ideas on virtual sticky notes and you can print them all out on one page. I find all of these tools very interesting and in my comment I told the teacher that I look forward to using them when I become a teacher.

In Eva's second blog post, she talks about the time she was working on narrative tenses and writing a story with her class. She told them what needed to be done but some students were having problems writing their paragraphs. So she divided them into groups and the students who understood the assignment were able to help those who didn't. She switched the groups up a few more times and then sent them back to their desks and the ones who weren't able to make the paragraphs the first time were able to successfully do the assignment. I think this technique is very helpful because peer learning is a big part of how students learn. When students help other students, it helps them learn on a whole different level from when students get help from their teachers. This post was very interesting, although I did have some trouble understanding her speech or writing in a few places. Other than that, I enjoyed reading Mrs. Eva's blog posts.