Blog Post #9

What I've Learned This Year by Mr. McClung

Mr. McClung is a tremendously down-to-earth person who shares his experiences as a teacher with others. Sharing his experience about his first year of teaching and what new teachers can expect and to not expect was so helpful to me. Mr. McClung explained in his post that teachers are not going to be perfect with each lesson and sometimes the lesson will not go well, but as a teacher we have to deal with it and know that there are other ways to improve their lectures. In other words, a teacher need to learn how to be a flexible teacher who creates new and better ways to explain a lecture.

One of the things that Mr. McClung talked about was that teachers should not be afraid of technology. As Mr. McClung stated, some adults feel that technology is something that is taking over the world, but technology is a tool that is more like a friendly neighbor who lends a helping hand. Even though, technology is a continuously growing tool that never stops evolving, it creates many new functions for the creativity of a teachers lesson.

One of the most important things that I feel is very crucial to whether a teacher exceeds in the classrooms or not is to listen to their students and what they are saying. Even if it is rambling things, I think listening to a student talk about different things helps that student to get an understanding that you as a teacher cares about them, and you want them to exceed and most of the time that student will respond in a positive way.

C4K Summary 4-6 (March)

I was assigned to comment on three blogs that were blogs by kids. The kids blogs that I commented on was Crusader, Damien, and Grace. Crusader is a very outgoing young boy and in his blog he talked about how excited he was to get a new Netbook for school. Crusader said that this Netbook would be a tremendous help with his studies at school and he is so grateful. The second kid's blog that I commented on was Damien. This particular blog post was about volcanoes and it was very interesting and was filled with many instructive facts. One of the main points that I remembered about his volcano post was that the Roman god of fire was called Vulcan. The third kid's blog that I commented on was Grace, and she talked about Blocky and Talky. Blocky was the person who built things and talky was the person who talked a lot. In her post she called the two persons blockhead and talkhead, which I thought was very interesting and funny.

Skype Interview Project # 12

Project #13 Summary and Analysis

The responses that I have received so far have been very interesting and overall good. The form that I made was a quiz that was given to the students after they have viewed the lecture from my Smart-board Project presentation. The summary of my responses were ninety-four percent correct. The lecture was mostly based on the basic concepts of music theory. The students seemed to understand the concepts once my group finished our lecture and they were very enthusiastic about learning something that was new, which included pictures of stave's, various notes, and a keyboard.  My lecture was aimed towards students who are in middle school are in the freshman or sophomore years of high-school.

What did I learn from this? Teaching a student takes planning, time, and creativity. If a teacher wants to be successful, he/she needs to think about what type of lecture should be given to their particular age group. I learned that explaining the concepts of what you are talking about, and showing the students the facts visually can be combined to make effective learning students. Some students can learn by what they hear, and others can learn by what they see, so as a teacher I should be willing to make these adjustments at anytime. Another thing that I learned is to be patient, if a student asks me a question during my lecture, I should thoroughly explain the concepts to that student in a way that the second time that it is explained that student will understand the concept well.

Blog Post #8

Richard Miller: This Is How We Dream Parts 1 and 2

The video that I watched described the different ways that will help people and students to research and find results of different things on their own. Without even leaving your house students can research and find academic facts about Virginia Tech like Richard Miller did.  With multimedia tools we can now do print documents, visual documents, and sound documents. The different things that can be done with your computer is compelling. Richard Miller talked about how recordings can be done by using ITunes U and students can follow professors that are giving academic lectures. With multimedia you can find what city is the happiest city in the world, when Richard said this, my jaw dropped.

I think that I am somewhat prepared to write with multimedia. Since I am familiar with the basic skills of making something creative on the web, I think that this digital material will enhance the quality of my school work that is based on multimedia. When I begin teaching I will like to teach my students the basic concepts of doing things that are with multimedia. Even though, most students who I will teach may not know anything about multimedia, I think that I am responsible for giving them the insights of how it should be used and what they can do with it.

Composing with this digital material helps people to be more creative in their work. This digital material makes compositions beautiful and much more compelling. I think that this tool is a great innovative tool to help students to become better educators and to share what they have created or have learned with others. I think that people should not just have a desktop or laptop that sits and they do nothing with it. With a computer people can do more than what their minds may not even think that could be possible to do.

The Chipper Series and EDM310 for Dummies

I really enjoyed these two projects, they were very interesting to watch and had a very positive outlook for students who will take EDM310 and for current students in this type of class. I would like for my video to be about students not giving up so fast. I have many friends who have felt that the work load in many classes is just to much and they just stop coming to class and say that they don't care about their grades anyways. Sometimes students will say things like I don't need any of this stuff that these teachers are talking about, but they don't understand that in their future lives all of these things that the teachers are discussing will be dominating in the classrooms. There are many students who think that learning should be quick and easy, but learning sometimes takes time and practice until you get the concept. As a musician if I say that I want to play an instrument, but I don't want to learn. Well, a church or group is looking for a musician and they tell you to play amazing grace, whether you are playing by ear or notes you have to learn and you have to practice, there is no other way out of this. Students should be more of a role model so that others can see their accomplishments as they continue their journey in life.

The two videos that were presented for this lesson was a great example of why staying in college is important and how EDM for dummies can relieve the stress that students may face in their EDM310 class. As in the video chipper, the young lady thought that the teacher is suppose to teach in a way that she does not have to learn. Life is all about learning, and taking things and analyzing it. When you were a baby you had the courage to learn how to walk. That is just what we suppose to continue doing throughout life is to learn and to never stop learning.

Learn to Change, Change to Learn

I think that many of the arguments stated in this video describes things that could help students to become smarter and to help teacher to become better educators. Schooling to me should be connected through the communities, because this is where the kids come from. I agree that if teachers are provided with the tools to make great things happen and they are taught how to effectively use it than the students will be able to succeed. Schools are now looking for ways to build a school society that develops brave children and genius learners. Schooling should be about children understanding the concepts, working in groups or teams, being around other cultures, and using their artistic abilities.

The Secret Powers of Time by Philip Zambardo and Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by David Pink

The Secret Powers of Time is a great example of what is happening in schools today. As in the video it stated that a child drops out of school every nine seconds, which in my eyes is a disaster and this needs to be changed. In the video boys tend to be the ones who are most likely to drop out of school than girls, and their time is mostly used on videos games and other leisure stuff. So, for a boy to be productive in a classroom he needs something where he can be continuously active. One of the key things that I learned from this video is that children minds have been digitally rewired and the traditional schooling will not work. This message will help teachers to understand and to develop newer concepts in their classrooms. If teachers of today can start doing these things, I think that they will be more successful as an educator and as a person.

The experiments that were done seemed that it could be something that could be used in the classrooms. As people say, the better the award the better the student will perform. Well, that did not go well in this video, the more rudimentary the award, the students performed poorly. When students had to do more and the work began to get more complicated the work was done poorly. They have found that people who are willing to do things instead of receiving big pay and they do it for free do great things and sometimes the things that they do are incredible. This purpose motive helps them to be more innovative and to be better at what they are doing. These things are done to make the world a better place. I think that these ideas and facts can make educators to become better in their work ethics, and will help people to be more successful even when they may not understand it.

Project #13 Smartboard presentation

Blog Post #7

Randy Pausch's Last Lecture

This video was very interesting because it was talking about Randy's Childhood dreams. You may think that listening to someone talk about their childhood dreams is not worth to even listen to, but if you really think about it, childhood dreams can be a motivation to students who have always had a dream to become someone popular and they thought that they never could. I am going to discuss three of Randy's childhood dreams that has made him to become the person that he is today. In those childhood dreams their were people to correct him at times, which made him to become a hard worker.

The first childhood dream that Randy talked about was "Zero Gravity". Well, you can somewhat assume that it has something to do with space or a prototype of a space shuttle. Randy always wanted to float, not necessarily going into space to the moon. When he got older he was able to form a group and float in a space shuttle called "vomit comet". This particular dream came true because he kept believing in the things that he wanted to achieve.

Randy's second childhood dream was to be in the NFL, which is very typical for boys. Even though, he did not go to the NFL he went to the little league. While in the little league he had a coach who was really hard to deal with. Randy said that a guy was at his practice one day and said that coach is being really hard on you, Randy replied and said, "Yes". That guy told Randy when coach stops being hard on you when you have screwed up, then he has stopped caring about you. This particular saying should be a lifelong lesson to all teachers who really care about their students and they want them to excel. Randy said even though he did not go to the NFL he learned a valuable lesson.

The third childhood dream that Randy discussed in his video is to become an author of an encyclopedia.  Being an author to him would make him feel that he was on top of the world. This is a dream that many people think about, but they do not believe. Randy got a little older, but he never stopped dreaming the dream, and one day he was able to publish his first encyclopedia that was actually a virtual book. Randy went beyond his child dreams to accomplish the things that he has today. Dreaming the dream and believing is the key to achieving the dream.

C4T #2 Summary Post

The teacher that I was assigned to was Dianne Krause. Her blog was very helpful in many ways, especially when she found new and innovative ways to teach subjects and new ways for students to do their homework.  The first post that I commented on was about students using Evernote. Before reading her post I had never heard of Evernote, not even for my college English classes. Evernote is the ultimate research tool for students who are in classes that require research and the usage of writing research papers. In Evernote students are able to spend less time on researching and more time on writing their papers. Evernote users are able to type in key words for their research papers and evernote finds all the best quality sources and sites that would fullfill the requirements of what they are researching.

The second post that I commented on was about Digital Discoveries. Dianne Krause found websites and games that would help students and teachers to learn more and to have more fun while doing their work. One of her Digital Discoveries was the music games. Games like Classics for Kids helps younger children to begin naming notes while keeping a steady rhythmic beat. Another game that was mentioned in her post was MyBytes music mixer, this game has students to begin their lessons by composing a five track composition, which can include different instruments like Bass, Drums, or a Keyboard. Skype usage in the classroom was another digital tool that was discussed in Dianne's blog. She explained how students and teachers are able to interact with other students and teachers that are from another country and they can ask questions and talk to each other.

Project #10 Personal Learning Network (PLN)

When I first heard about a PLN, I did not get the full understanding of what it was. Now that I know, I have had a wonderful experience with my progress in developing a good PLN.  Even though I am still learning more and more about the Personal Learning Network it is easy to understand, especially if you are someone who has heard about it, but did not know what it was.  A PLN is a very helpful tool for teachers and students who want to make their teaching career more successful and more organized. PLN's helps you to be a better organizer and it helps you to find things on projects that can be saved in personal folders. The things that I found that I could do with a PLN is incredible. Having my Twitter, Facebook, and Skype accounts organized in such a way that it is much easier for me to access and I am able to embed websites into folders that I can personally name. You can have all the top websites right in front of you like one of your favorite news highlights. You can store all of your favorite encyclopedias, books, and music in folders that you can access at anytime. Having a PLN is a great tool that will help teachers to continue their journey into the future.

Project #11