C4K Summary for September

My first student that I had to comment on for the month of September was Emilee at PT England School. Her blog was entitled Math Whizz and was about how her class is learning for to do math problems with pen and paper. Math is not my favorite subject, but I am glad that they are learning how to use this helpful site to learn.

My second student was Selena, who is also a student at PT England School. Her blog is entitled Our Place, Our Team and is about her country of New Zealand. In her presentation she talks about many beautiful tourist attractions and the history of New Zealand. She closes with New Zealand’s Rugby team. She definitely wanted to make me visit New Zealand some day.

My third blog to read was by Martha Yim. It was entitled Discover Baldwin County, and is about how herself and Mr. Anthony Chapps wish to incorporate new technology into the class room in Baldwin County. This post states that she is excited for the first week. Her original plan was to just jump in and go for it, but she realized that she should take it slow at first. I agree with her. I think it is a good idea to ease the kinds into the project and new technology slowly at first. This project looks like it will be a great success.

I really like the comments for kids assignment. I think it is great to see how children around the world are using technology and get a feel for how other people around the world live. I really enjoy reading about what kids are doing around the world through their education.

Project #9a My Family Education Time Line

Blog Post #5

Don’t Teach Your Kids This Stuff. Please?

In this post Dr. McLeod lists many things teachers or parents shouldn’t teach their children. He makes very valid points, but, to me, the post isn’t necessarily telling you not to teach them. He makes the comment how if you are teacher who doesn’t teach their students different technologies, then you will be setting them back behind all others.

In my comment that I left to Dr McLeod, I said:

Hi Dr. McLeod
My name is Amanda and I am a student in Dr. Strange’s EDM310 class this semester. You have a very interesting way of getting your point across. I definitely agree that people need to see that we need to teach our kids the difference between how, when, where and appropriate uses of technology. I know that your kids will have a leg up, because you are teaching them right.

I found out he is an Associate Professor of Educational Leadership at the University of Kentucky. He is widely recognized as one of the nation’s leading academic experts on K-12 school technology leadership issues. He founded the Center for the Advanced Study of Technology Leadership in Education. It is the nation’s only academic center dedicated to the technology needs of school administrators. McLeod is also co-creator of the wildly popular video series, Did You Know? (Shift Happens).


The iSchool Initiative

In this video a high school senior, Travis Allen, discusses his solution to America’s education problem. He states how his high school is having massive budget cuts, how teachers are being let go, and class sizes are growing larger. He then shows a PowerPoint that he hopes will answer the question “Does technology belong in our classroom?” His PowerPoint begins with America’s future in education. The “iSchool” will be built on Apple’s popular iTouch platform. He explains how “iSchool” will save money and shows many different applications on the iTouch that are ready for classroom use. He ends by stating how with the “iSchool Initiative,” corporations, business leaders, and apple tech programmers can come together to modernize today’s education system.

I really enjoyed this video. The different applications that Travis showed during his PowerPoint seem really helpful. His whole presentation was well put together and he did a good job showing how his idea can help education as well as save money. His idea can also help teachers communicate better with students and parents.

Eric Whitacre’s Virtual Choir

This video is awesome. I love the thought that some many people, that don’t even know each other, can come together can perform “Lux Aurumque.” For a group of strangers to come together and produce this video, shows that technology has come a long way.

Teaching in the 21st Century


In this video Kevin Roberts explains what he thinks it means to teach. He shows how we need to encourage kids to be creative and support them in their future. Forcing information on students and then expecting them is to remember all the information is not a good idea. Mr. Roberts feels that if teachers and students applied themselves and use the resources at hand that the relationship could be better. He wants student to want to engage in education and have hands on experiences throughout their whole learning experiences. I agree with him and think that educators need to support students and encourage them every step of the way.

Project 6 My Sentence Video

Blog Post #4

Eagles’ Nest Radio and Class Blog

In this post, third graders post podcasts about what they are studying in school. The students take turns creating a podcast about the subject they are currently learning, and one title is “Eagles’ Nest Radio episode #3: Roamin’ with the Romans.” In this podcast children discuss Roman architecture, Julius Caesar, gladiators, and Cleopatra. The student spoke loudly and did a good job with pronunciation. After a student was done with their part they would pass to the next student.

The third graders who made these podcasts did a great job. They showed me how to be real creative with podcasts. I want to be creative with my podcast and make them interesting, so my listeners want to watch more and more.


The Benefits of Podcasting in a Classroom

In this post, Joe Dale talks about why podcasting is helpful in the classroom. Mr. Dale first talks about how children born after 1980 never experienced a world that didn’t have some kind of technology present. Podcasting is very effective way to interact with student outside of the classroom. Podcasting also allows for changes in learning strategies that help the children to learn better. When a teacher records a podcast of the lesson he or she has presented, they can upload the video and students that need to review the lesson, or are out sick, can watch it. This allows the student to not fall behind in class.

I have never recorded a podcast, but I have watched many my past teachers have uploaded to iTunes U. I loved that they can do that. I found it very helpful, because many teachers touch base on topic they might not have been too clear on in class.

Practical Principal

In this post, by Melinda Miller and Scott Elias, Mrs. Miller talks about how she has conducted staff development training on podcasting for teachers in her district since May 2007. Mr. Elias met Mrs. Miller through Getting Things Done. They have been recording the Practical Principals podcast since the fall of 2007. The podcast are powered by FeedBurner and each podcast has a different topic. Many of the topics come from questions sent in by teachers. They also mainly discuss the different tools and technology that is helpful in the classroom.

I really like how these two professionals from two different states and came together to create these podcasts. They have really nice discussions on their topics. They did an excellent job explaining the topics in their podcast and how they are helpful to student learning.

Project #5 My Google Presentation

C4T #1 Mr. Howard Rheingold

The first post I read, Digital Media & Learning Conference 2012: Learning Innovations in a Connected World by Mr. Howard Rheingold. It is about the 2012 Digital Media and Learning Conference which “explores the deeper learning that is possible by the emergence of Web-enabled, mobile-based platforms that promote new modes of peer-to-peer learning, anywhere/anytime learning, blended learning and game-based learning, both in school and out of school.” The conference will feature the four core threads: democratizing learning innovation, innovations for public education, re-imagining media for learning, and making/tinkering/remixing. The chair for the conference is Diana Rhoten. She is the senior vice president for strategy in the new Education Division at News Corp. Before the conference, Mrs. Rhoten cofounded Startl. This is a social network specializing in starting new education technology and digital learning markets.

Mr. Rheingold held an interview with Mrs. Rhoten to speak about the conference. In the interview, Mrs. Diana spoke of the need for academic researchers, practitioners, teachers, technologists, entrepreneurs and investors to join together in the cause of a learning renaissance. Mrs. Rhoten said, “We are seeking to create a diversified audience and to really be provocative in the sessions so that we can go back on some of these assumptions that are unspoken...and get these different stakeholders talking to each other...so we can start figuring out how to do this in a collaborative fashion.” She also talked about how we need to bring technology into the classroom. We need to benefit the parents and teachers because they are the future and will benefit from this advancement. She stressed we need to reform technology, but no one can do it alone. Everyone must all get together and respect the differences each other has.

I thought this article was very interesting. I have never heard of this conference, and feel that this is a very good cause. We all know that technology is very important for our students’ future

The second post I read, Learning Reimagined: Participatory, Peer, Global, Online is about his project offering a "pop-up university" experiment, Rheingold U. Mr. Rheingold holds a five week online mini-course. He has run the course four times now, with approximately 30 co-learners each time. The co-learners come from all over the world. North America, South America, Europe, Korea, and Australia their backgrounds also vary from public sector, private sector, students, and educators. The ages also vary, but they are skew older, about 20% are students, grad students, or post doctorates, and about 30% are older or retired. One thing I really like about Mr. Rheingold is that he never calls the people who sign up for the course "students." He refers to them as "co-learners." This term acknowledges collaborative learning that he desires and turns his reading group into something more exciting.

Mr. Rheingold works from the beginning of his course to persuade people that it's possible for them to learn together as a community in a more useful way than if students take responsibility only for their own learning. He uses forums, blogs, wikis, synchronous chat and video, social bookmarks, mindmaps as the foundation for the kind of active, culture of conversation, self-directed collaborative groups that bring a peer learning group to life. Blackboard Collaborate is a browser-based environment for discussion, reflection, inquiry, collaboration. The blogs are about an individual co-learners voice. In the forum, the topic of discussion is the subject matter, but in the blog the topic of discussion is the individual's reflections. All the co-learners can participate in the forums and can comment on each other's blog posts. Using these tools to try to make sense together, they are able to co-construct their learning. The last week of their course is about re-examining our learning process, reiterating the most important things they learned, and redesigning the parts of the process that didn't work.

I enjoyed Mr. Rheingold’s post and reading about his online course. I think it is a great idea for co-learners to using technology and participating in peer learning. I did wondering if he ever thought of giving credit, like college credit, to the people who take your course. The co-learners do pay tuition of $250 for the five weeks.

Blog Post #3

In Kelly Hines post, "It's Not About the Technology", she states that learning in the 21st century is not about the technology. Many people disagree with this statement. Times are changing rapidly and teachers have to use the technology that students will have to use in the future. Mrs. Hines does not feel that technology is the first thing that needs to change. However, iPods, computers, wireless internet, netbooks, blogs, and podcasts are great tools; Hines says the issue is deeper.

Mrs. Hines has four basic objectives that must be met in order for a classroom to move forward in the 21st century. One, teachers must be learners. Teachers must do more than what is just mandatory for them. We need to be creative and willing to explore and teach ourselves while we teach our students.
Second, learning and teaching is not the same thing. Teachers need to remember that if your class doesn’t learn anything, then you have not taught anything. Third, technology is useless without good teaching. Teachers must be willing to learn and use the technology effectively in order to have an impact on the students. Fourth, be a 21st Century Teacher without the technology. If teachers develop the students’ creativity through giving them problem solving and critical thinking skills, and keep the hunger to learn alive and use technology, the possibilities are endless.

In Karl Fisch post, "Is It Okay to be a Technologically Illiterate Teacher?", he is clearly frustrated with teachers who are not willing to explore technology use in the classroom. He believes that not teaching today's children technology is equal to not teaching children 30 years ago to read and write.

I do agree that teaching technology is very important and teachers should be willing to learn how to use new technology. I don’t believe that it is impossible for a teacher to be successful without technology. I also don't think that students have to know how to use YouTube, blog, twitter, and other sites in order to learn. They do need to be taught how to use the internet as a tool, but certain subjects like English don’t new technology as much as other subjects do. I do feel that students should be required to attend a technology lab that teaches these skills. I had to take a typing class in middle school, and hated it at the time, but it has helped me greatly. I know that many colleges require a computer class to graduate, and I think that is a great idea. However, teachers have plenty of requirements they have to meet their subject area; they shouldn't be forced to teach computer lessons also. Although, they do need to encourage the use of technology and be able to help students has a question or needs help.

I was amazed by Gary Hayes post, "Social Media Counts". It’s crazy knowing how many people are on the computer posting on Facebook, YouTube, and other social networks. People need to learn how to use these sites as tools. It’s important to teach children how to use these sources to better their education, but we also have to teach them that there is more to life than updating their Facebook every five minutes. We have to teach students to turn off the phones and computers and enjoy life in other ways, besides looking at the computer screen. We need to be technologically literate, but know when and where to use and not use our technology.

In Michael Wesch’s video, "A Vision of Students Today", you can see how the use of technology has changed the way students think. Nowadays, students read emails, not books. They don’t write notes anymore; they type them on their laptops. They also bring their laptops to class, but not do class work-they will be on Facebook. This video shows me that we must communicate to our students through technology to get through to them.

Blog Post #2

Did You Know?
I have to say, I loved this video. It really put into perspective how important technology is becoming to everyday life. The video stated that one out of eight couples met online, the number of texts sent everyday is greater than the number of people in the world, and that every month there are thirty-one billion searches on Google. To me, this begs the question, ‘What did we do before all this technology?’
I knew that technology is important, however, I never realized how important. The video pointed out that the top 10 jobs of 2010 didn’t even exist in 2004. It also pointed out that half of what a college student will learn in their first year of school will be outdated by their third year of school. This shows me that technology is growing at an astounding rate. The video shows me it is important that teachers are technology literate, because kids are using more and more of this technology each day.

Mr. Winkle Wakes
This video is very cute. I love the fact that you can show it to a student and they will easily understand what is going on. When Mr. Winkle woke from his one hundred year sleep, he noticed all the new technology. He was scared and concerned. All he wanted was too see something normal, something he remembered. What he found was the schools were exactly the same.
This video showed me that, educators need to use new technology as well as lectures in our class room. With the growing rate of technology, students will need to know how to use basic skills they learn in school to help them with their future. As technology grows outside of the classroom, we need use technology inside the classroom to prepare our students.

Sir Ken Robinson
Sir Ken Robinson said, “If you not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.” He shows that kids aren’t frightened of being wrong. He points out that education kills creativity, because educators are educating students out of creativity. Every school around the world places emphasis on Math and Language subjects. The arts, like drama and music, are less emphasized. By doing this, we are only educating half of our brain, thus repressing creativity.
Sir Robinson also pointed out that intelligence has three parts. It is diverse, dynamic, and distinct. By suppressing creativity we are robbing some children of their intelligence. Just like the story Sir Robinson told about the young girl that had to dance to be able to think, many kids need other outlets other than a pencil and paper to show their true abilities.

Cecelia Gault
Cecelia Gault post states that the dropout rate in Finland is less than 1%, but is 25% in the United States. We definitely need to do whatever they are doing to keep our kids in school. Cecelia talked with Sir Ken Robinson on how we can change education in the 21st century; he said we need to change the curriculum and technology. He said we need to focus on balancing science and the arts. He also said we need to use more technology in education. Children today have grown up on technology. Everything they do has involved technology in some since, and this will continue to their children’s, children. By doing both of these we can ensure we are preparing our students for the future they wish to have.

Digital Smarts
In this video, Vicki Davis shows just how important technology is to students. Students are using technology everyday through the internet, cell phones, iPods, and computers. Mrs. Davis used all these instruments in her class room to connect her students to people around the world. She states that with paper and pencil only a few students really learn. Some students need more hands on learning strategies.
By following Mrs. Davis by using more technology, and making our students do some learning themselves, we are better preparing them for a future in a more technologically advanced world. We can connect our students to other people around the world, whom they might not have been able to meet and learn from.