Project #8 Book Trailer

Blog Post #6

Video Conversations with Anthony Capps and Dr. Strange

1. Project Based Learning Part 1: Experiences of a 3rd Grade Teacher (10:03)
2. Project Based Learning Part 2: Experiences of a 3rd Grade Teacher (13:45)
3. iCurio (8:08)
4. Discovery Education (4:33)
5. The Anthony - Strange list of Tips for Teachers Part 1 (12:59)
6. Don't Teach Tech - Use It (8:49)
7. Additional Thought About Lessons (3:25)

What I have learned from the above video conversations between Anthony Capps and Dr. Strange

My first thoughts after watching the videos is about how amazing I think it is for students at such a young age are able to use technology. I immediately felt a little unqualified and embarrassed when Anthony talks about how his students have no problem using iMovie. I for one, could not figure it out for a long time. It was not until, finally, after time well spent trying every possible action, was I able to produce my videos. I enjoyed hearing everything that Anthony Capps had to say. He willingly shared some great stories involving his students, their projects, his students' parents, as well as his administers.
I think the path that education is taking is just fascinating and exciting to witness. In a classroom today at O'Rourke Elementary I was able to observe how 1st grade students use the smartboard. The teacher would tell them that they earned an award for something such as "good behavior" or "working well with others." The students would then walk up to the smartboard and add awards to their name all on their own.
The "Anthony-Strange list of Tips for Teachers Part 1" had 6 extremely good tips: 1.)Be a constant learner, 2.)Teaching never ends and it takes a lot of hard-work, 3.)Teachers should always be flexible and always expect the unexpected to happen, 4.)Start with a goal, 5.)Engage 100% of your students, in 100% of their projects, and engage them all 100% of the time, 6.)Always reflect back on your work to make revisions for things to be better. I find all of these very useful to know and important to keep in mind. Teaching requires so much dedication and hard-work! I know though, teachers like Dr. Strange and Mr. Capps will ultimately help shape the future of our world by expanding and utilizing project base learning, the use of technology, and teaching students like myself the importance of this new form of education.

Project #6- C4K Summary for September

Summary for blog post "Birds" , by Shanika

In her blog post, Shanika explains how after seeing a bird she began to wonder about different types of birds. She decided to look on Google to find and learn more things about birds. She then created a wonderful list of bird names she knows. Shanika also incorporated a nice picture of a bird in her blog post.

On September 14, 2014, I left this comment on Shanika's blost post named "Birds":
"Shanika, you know way more bird names than I do! My absolute favorite type of birds are hummingbirds. My grandmother and I sit on her patio and watch her hummingbirds all the time. She used to tell my sister and I that we were a lot like hummingbirds, quick and quiet. I love that you put a picture of a bird and how you centered the text."

Summary for blog post "Pizza chicken strips", by William
In this blog post William describes a new food that he would invent and he would call it pizza chicken strips. William's tasteful invention would include: chicken strips,cheese, ranch, and pepperonis. I personally think that this is very good idea and it shows creativity as well as realism.

On September 20, 2014, I left this comment on William's blog post:
"William, my name is Kela Miller and I am a student at the University of South Alabama. I would love to try your invention! Pizza and chicken strips are two of my favorite foods and this combines them into one. Perhaps I will try to cook some pizza chicken strips soon. I would love to know of any other inventions that you come up with, especially food ones."

Project #7 My Sentence Videos

Part A: One sentence videos.

My sentence is..


My passion is..


Part B Two Movies As a Teacher

Project #3

Project # 3 - Google Presentation
Part 1


Project # 3 - Google Presentation
Part 2

Blog Post #5

Personal Learning Networks (PLN)
What are Personal Learning Networks (PLN)? How can they help you as a
teacher? How are they formed? How can you create your own PLN? Who will
be the first additions to your PLN?

The term PLN is very new to me because I have never heard of it before. After watching a few videos and reading about personal learning networks, I now understand how helpful they can be in broadening someone's learning horizon. According to my EDM310 teacher, John Strange, a personal learning network is those people, places, organizations and activities which enable you to learn. Project 6 - Developing A Personal Learning Network EDM 310 - Fall 2009. Basically, everyone is able to be in your personal learning network and some may say that you have always had your own PLN and not even realize it. Ever since all of us were little we looked for other people, whether it may be our parents, teachers, siblings, we looked to them for guidance and to teach us new things.

Personal Learning Networks can be extremely valuable and helpful for teachers! Obtaining a PLN gives you freedom to learn beyond your everyday circle of family, friends, educators, peers, and coworkers. Especially when you have established a personal learning network that involves the internet. The use of the internet is endless and so is the opportunities to learn new and exciting things. One great example of how teachers can expand their personal learning network is using Twitter. I never would have thought to use Twitter to help broaden my learning because I merely just use it to keep up with friends and to see news. I understand now though, that Twitter can be a powerful tool to use to find educators, experts, and others related to any given subject that I can contact in some way to learn more and collaborate with.

Here is a list of ways that educators are using their personal learning networks found on Once a Teacher…:
"– Professional development – learn from content-area specialists
– Locate resources for your classroom, such as free websites and software
– Get lesson plan ideas from master teachers
– Learn about new technology and how to integrate it into your teaching
– Find collaborative solutions
– Find interesting links to education news"

In order to create a personal learning network you must look for people and places that will help you learn. You can do this by using the internet to search topics that interests you. Searching will lead you to finding people who are well educated on the subjected and also those who are interested as well. Searching may lead to finding people on Twitter, Facebook, blogs about the subject, websites solely for the subject, etc. and then you can start connecting to those people and resources.
My first additions to my personal learning network will have be educators and teachers that I find on twitter. I plan to search and follow new people who have interests like me and others who are involved in education.

Project #4 C4T

C4T Comments4Teachers - Project #4

Summary of The Fischbowl by Karl Fisch C4T

The first blog post of The Fischbowl, by Karl Fisch that I read and left a comment on is "Leadership is a Choice, Not a Rank." This post contains a video of a speaker named Simon Sinek and the video is one of TED Talk. I enjoyed watching this video a lot. His key focus in this bog post is to provide sources that discuss trusting leaders, and explain the importance of having leaders that can be trusted and those leaders being able to trust us in return. He states, "I think that may be one of the two or three core problems in education right now."
I left this comment on "Leadership is a Choice, Not a Rank": "Awesome blog post. I do not watch or listen to inspirational speakers that often, nor have i heard of "Ted" and Simon Sinek, however, I enjoyed this video. Trusting others is certainly something people struggle with and having more trust within relationships and in the workplace can be a positive attribute."

The second blog post of The Fischbowl, by Karl Fisch that I read and left a comment on is "The Textbook Is Not The Curriculum." This blog post was created to inform and explain how he does not agree with how Littleton Public Schools Board is handling the matter of Agile Mind "Curriculum" (that is how the letter categorizes it, but is not a curriculum). His daughter is a ninth grader enrolled in Algebra at Arapahoe High School that is currently using Agile Mind materials. She, as well as other students were all sent home with a letter regarding the students to be able to partake in a survey regarding Agile Mind. Karl Fisch is not allowing his daughter to be involved with the survey and I do not blame him.
I left this comment on "The Textbook Is Not The Curriculum": "Hello Karl, my name is Kela Miller and I am a student at South Alabama. I am currently enrolled in EDM310 and I have been working on my blog, http://millerkelaedm310.blogspot.com/ . I must say that as a father and educator you are a prime example of someone who cares. I can tell that you want the best for your daughter and for the schools by reading this post."

Project #15 - Search Engines

8 Different Search Engines That Do Different Things

1) If you are ever wanting to find a great source for news, Yahoo News is place to go. This search engine is an excellent search engine to find out what is going on in the world today. Yahoo News offers different categories to help search such as news involving the U.S., the world, Science, Local, and health news. I use Yahoo Mail so I search Yahoo News quite often when I check my mail or just when I here about a story or event I will get online to use Yahoo News to read articles or watch videos to learn more about the subject. This is a very informative search engine and can easily by used.

2) WebMD is certainly a search engine that we may all have to use at some point in our life. I know I have used it plenty of times. Whether it may be to do some sort of research for school, a personal illness, or to learn more about a sickness a loved one may have, WebMD is there to help. This search engine offers so much! "We provide credible information, supportive communities, and in-depth reference material about health subjects that matter to you" is a little of what WebMD believes of itself.

3) WolframAlpha. I personally never knew of this search engine but I am glad I do now. If you have never used it before, I recommend to click on "examples" to see all of the categories it has so you will understand what types of questions you can search for. If you have a question on how to calculate a problem you can simply type it in and WolframAlpha will either help you to learn how to solve it or give you the answer.

4) Going on vacation or planning a trip? Tripadvisor is the go to place. This search engine is so beneficial when wanting to plan the perfect get-away. You can look for hotels, flights, vacation rentals, restaurants, and destinations. It is known as the world's largest travel site. Tripadvisor also offers "reviews and advice on hotels, resorts, flights, vacation rentals, travel packages, and lots more!"

5) Fact Monster is a search engine that is geared more towards children. Fact Monster is ideal for a young student to use to learn more on a subject. This website offers games and quizzes as well to help teach various subjects. Very helpful and fun search engine for kids!

6)Cars.com is a search engine that is obviously all about vehicles. You can search for cars to buy or use this website to sell on. Cars.com sums up basically all it has to offer in one sentence: "Visited by more than 11 million car shoppers each month, Cars.com is the leading destination for online car shoppers, offering credible and easy-to-understand information from consumers and experts to help buyers formulate opinions on what to buy, where to buy and how much to pay for a car."

7)YouTube is the seventh search engine on my list. This is an excellent source for searching for videos and music. I personally enjoy using YouTube on a daily basis. I love to get on this search engine and just see what I can stumble across. YouTube was founded in February 2005 and helps people connect all around the world with videos.

8)When shopping is on the agenda, Amazon.com is the perfect place to visit. This search engine offers thousands of things to buy and ways to sell as well. I personally like to use Amazon when buying textbooks for school and certain birthday gifts for people. I know a ton of people who use Amazon.com continuously to do all of their shopping.

Blog Post #4

Asking Questions: What questions do we ask? How do we ask?

The driving question for this assignment is what do we need to
know about asking questions to be an effective teacher?


I love how Ben Johnson stresses how important it is to ask questions properly within the classroom in his article,The Right Way to Ask Questions in the Classroom. He also talks about how creative teacher may accompany the "wait three seconds after a question" technique with some sort of system used to call on students randomly. This way every student has a chance to answer a question. I know that a few of my teachers when I was growing up would use systems such as pulling pieces of paper with student names out of jar or simply marking student names off on a roll sheet. This is a very effective way to get everyone engaged in answering questions.

When I started to read Three Ways to Ask Better Questions in the Classroom By: Maryellen Weimer, PhD in Teaching Professor Blog, I liked how she described a good question: "Good questions make students think, they encourage participation and I think they improve the caliber of the answers students give and the questions they ask." She goes on to recommend three actions that teachers need to take in order to improve on asking questions.
Her first of the three recommendations is to prepare questions. Instead of just preparing the lesson by gathering information and facts, finding relations to the book, and organizing everything, be sure to create questions ahead of time. By doing this, the teacher will be able to make the questions clearer by knowing when the best time to ask each question will be within the lesson.
The second recommendation is to play with questions. This can simply mean to ask the students a question, let them have to think about, and then answer the question later. The question could be asked in the beginning of class, a slide show, lesson, etc. and the students can write it down, discuss it with other students, and/or gather more information to answer as more information on the subject is revealed to them.
The last recommendation from Weimer is to preserve good questions. An example of this is when a teacher is asked questions, he or she writes them down to remember them and then when another class comes in or years down the road the teacher can present the class with, “While you are thinking of questions to ask me and the class, let me share one that a previous student of mine in class asked about this subject.” This shows the students that the teacher cares and remembers what his or hers students have to say and ask.

Blog Post #3

How Can You Provide Meaningful Feedback to Your Peers?

1. Do the following after you read Paige Ellis' Blog Assignment #12 (Fall 2011)
a.) Watch the video, What is Peer Editing? Keep in mind that there will be no assignment or quiz as stated in the video presentation. This short video offers clear, simple advice on how to edit
effectively.
b.) View the slideshow, Peer Edit With Perfection Tutorial. 
c.) Watch the humorous video, Writing Peer Review Top 10 Mistakes. Don’t be a Mean Margaret or a Picky Patty!

After reading Paige Ellis' blog post, watching all of the videos, and viewing the slide show, I must say I leaned a few things. I really liked how Paige was able to do her post. She was able to demonstrate how peers can properly go about critiquing another peer's work without causing any sort of embarrassment. I loved how in both videos and in the slideshow a very important key element was being positive when peer editing. It is like that is the butter of peer editing, without it the outcome might not be as good and can end bitter. Being positive and providing compliments is definitely an important factor.

I understand that peer editing can be difficult sometimes because I was even a little nervous about it at first. I just would hate for someone to think that I am being a mean Margaret or picky Patty. I know that it is never acceptable nor necessary to hurt someone's feelings while peer editing. I strive to only provide positive feedback and to uplift a fellow classmate while I am peer editing by staying positive and complimenting them on the good qualities of their work.