Blog Post #15

Blog Post #1 Reflection

In my first blog post I was just being introduced to the world of educational technology. The basic ideas from my first post was good, but I now see how I can make them better. Making history fun and exciting for students is my main objective. When something is fun, comprehension explodes and learning goes to a different level. I want students to later reflect on their time in my class and remember how much they learned about history, very much like this last blog post is to reflect on what we have learned and can apply to our future classrooms and who we are as people. I want to make a difference on how students view history. I have a seventeen year old son that pretty much hates history because he was never truly introduced to history and how it affects his everyday life. It is all about the approach.

Blogging will be a great way for me to help students learn about history. Several C4K assignments were where students were writing on a historical place. The special tool I had picked in another assignment was virtual field trips. Blogging will be a key part of these assignments and projects. Glamorous social media outlets that all students now use daily will be able to be used to comment about a museum visit or a current event. Collective learning among classroom peers but also with networked peers will broaden student's learning vision and also create relationships for lifelong learning. Watching videos and reading blog posts by children from all over the world has really opened my eyes to the possibilities that are being missed in our local classrooms today. I am so excited to be a part of something new in Mobile County Schools. Our generation of educators will provide the 21st century classroom with an open mind to a new style of learning.

Leading and guiding students in the direction they need to go will be much different than the traditional "burp back" process of learning. History on all levels of learning including college is traditionally a lecture of facts and few opinions that are required memorization for an assessment on a later date. Upon finals time now I am in the process of memorizing facts to only spit them back out for a grade. However, as an adult I tend to remember a fair amount of those facts in my long term memory because history is a passion for me. Sharing that passion with students is why I am becoming a teacher.

Final C4K

At some point in April I missed logging what I wrote in a C4K, so I will summarize the two post I have logged. My first student was Ayden T in Mrs. Geldes class. Ayden wrote about Dr. Suess' book The Sneetches, and how its not right to judge others without really knowing their situation. In becoming an educator it will be very important that I do not judge students before I get to know and understand them. Students already have their peers judging them and when teachers join that it can ruin the self esteem of children and deflate their drive to succeed.

My second student was Olivia in Australia. Olivia talk about her Easter Holiday and visiting Melbourne with her family. She discussed how she wrote a lot on her school blog and even when she didn't have to she did anyways because she enjoyed it. It is important that students have the outlet of blogging to share their learning experiences with other students all over the world. Olivia's learning experience has been forever changed by educational technology.

Project #13 Collaboration

Nikki Rae Mooney, Farrah Deese, Ciara Deese and I used Google Docs and FaceTime to work together on Project #15 Smart Board project. We wrote an outline on what we were wanting to teach and what lessons could be done based off of the state website. We used Google Docs, and it was a great help to us because we could collaboratively edit our ideas at our own pace. The use of FaceTime allowed us to get a feel of how the lesson should be taught and how effective it would be. Meeting via Facetime saved us time when it was time to shoot video. We were able to work out any possible problems beforehand and discuss ideas from other Smart Board lessons. We wanted it to flow smoothly and know who was going to teach what. And the last stage of production we met together in the Education Building to film our Smart Board project # 15 video.