C4T#5 and Blog 10

Blog 10:

My PLE:

This was really neat to learn about this 7th graders PLE. I didn't even know what a PLE was in 7th grade! She used Symbaloo, while I choose to use Portaportal, and I'm thinking that I like Symbaloo better. Symbaloo seems to be a little more organized and up to date. Seeing that even a seventh grader to use the internet in such a successful way makes me that much more eager to have a technologically savvy classroom of my own.

Two Questions That Can Change Your Life:
What is my sentence? I'd say my sentence is "Listen to the fish and learn." This is from Job 12:8 in the Bible, but I think it says a whole lot about how we teach. Imagine the fish are your students, and you have to listen to them just as much as you listen to yourself to have a successful day in the classroom. I like the other question we are to ask ourselves daily because it goes with my theory about motivation. We must motivate our students to want to learn, but we must also motivate ourselves everyday to want to teach our students. Teaching is an infinite cycle of MOTIVATION! It's the most important thing to keep a classroom functioning. Without motivation students become bored, and we the teachers become frustrated and angry. I feel like it is a must to check yourself daily when you begin teaching and make sure that you are more motivating to your students than you were the day before.

C4T#5:
Your Keys to the City-Denver

It was neat reading about the city of Denver; I have passed through it before but never have been able to stop and check out the scenery. The Keys to the City idea was a very interesting idea to get people from all around the city to live out their feelings through these hand-painted pianos. When I first read the title of this post, I was thinking car keys, or even computer keys since I am currently enrolled in the EDM310 class at South Alabama. I hope that maybe one day I'll get the chance to experience the city of Denver in the same enjoyable fashion you did.

C4K#3 and Blog post 9

C4K #3: The Little Rock Central Crisis

I really enjoyed this post. Is was neat to see that other students are using the Timetoast time line program in the classroom for school projects. I see that they made a draft first as a guide (or as a display to have in the classroom, then published it to Timetoast. It is great to see media being used for all subjects such as history, english, art, and literature. I am with Dr. Strange’s EDM310 class at South Alabama. Please feel free to check out my blog

Blog 9:
An Open Letter To Educators
My name is Anna Dumas and I am a student at the University of South Alabama taking part in Dr. Strange’s EDM310 class. I have read your post as part of an assignment for this class. I really liked Dan’s thoughts on institutional education. It really is a place just for professors to blabber facts to students. I love the EDM310 class I’m in right now, because it is helping to learn about technology in a way that I can use it not just to make an A in this class, but to also help me make A’s in my other classes. Communication is 100% the key to learning and getting the best education possible. One person simply cannot obtain all sides of a story, idea, or theory, in any subject alone. We need to rely on each other, and be able to look at something at all angles to understand the facts more fully. Technology is at our fingertips, and I am certain that there is about to be a change in the way universities all over the world teach those boring facts that get fed to us, and its going to to happen sooner than we think, or more people like Dan are going to be dropping out of school for the reason that it is interfering with our education! I have felt the same way as Dan and Morgan about the way universities are trying to teach their students today. It seems like all of these professors use the internet and its technology for personal use, but they cannot figure out how to, or lack the want and know how, to use it in their classrooms. I believe it is the key to a students and our students' success in this day in age. Students need to be able to communicate to each other and they need to be able to discover new ways of learning the material needed to be successful in the future. With access to computer technology being so affordable (if not free) to students, there should be NO excuse for a student to not have access to technology.

ALEX:
ALEX is a website for all teachers to explore and find things for their classroom. ALEX stands for Alabama learning Exchange. This is a place where teachers from Alabama can log in and create lessons and publish them in the lesson plan library. This is also a good place to search for new ways to teach your students and find new ideas.

The ALEX website includes several different options on the homepage. There are 8 different links to explore. 1) Course of Study, 2) Web Links, 3) Lesson Plans, 4) Search, 5) Personal Workspace, 6) Professional Learning, 7) Podcast Treasury, and 8) ALEXville. The Course of Study link shows the Alabama courses of study for all grades and all subjects. The Web links are a place to find helpful websites that coincide with the courses of study you are working in. Lesson Plans is a link with great lesson plan ideas for different grades and all subject levels. The Search link lets you search within the ALEX website for lessons and resources. Also, The personal workspace is where you can log in your personal account with ALEX. The professional learning link is where you will find useful tools to get you started with ALEX, and to get you started in your teaching career if you are a bit nervous about creating lesson plans on your own. Podcast Treasury is another link where a huge collection of podcasts are posted from schools all over pertaining to certain subjects. The ALEXville link is available to let you know of upcoming updates and different activities that are coming up associated with ALEX. I think this website will be very helpful to me when I start teaching. I was able to be a teacher's aid back when I was a freshmen in college and I know I was scared then, just teaching a small science lesson, so I know I will be nervous at first when I have my very own students and classroom.

ACCESS: ACCESS is a great way for students to be able to take classes online, that they would not otherwise be able to take. The classes available on ACCESS are more affordable for students with low-income, and these classes are available wherever a computer can be found. The students in the video on the website seem to be very happy that there is a website such as this that allows them to be able to take classes that are not otherwise available for them. One students even took a class for extra help outside of the class he was already enrolled in at a school so that he could get extra help to have a better chance of passing his Exit exams for graduation. ACCESS sees like a great way for students to have a chance at continued learning, or to get ahead, or even caught up in their education if they do not otherwise have the chance to do so. It seems like this is a great way for students to be exposed to using technology for education.