Blog Post #6

Upon watching the provided videos involving Mr. Anthony Capps and Dr. John Strange, I have come to be more intrigued and invigorated by the ideas behind both of these men.  I was very leery about this course at the beginning of the semester.  I have come to understand that there are great things to be learned from this course.  I am doing thing on the computer and through internet and other venues that I never imagined I would be doing.  I am engaging myself and excited for new opportunities.  I think that Mr. Capps is a wonderful teacher.  You can see the passion he has for education.  The stories he tells of the students explaining to other adults that may stop by asking questions, and the students being the ones to give example, well that is just outstanding.  I know that times have changed since I was in the third grade.  We had absolutely nothing like the methods and equipment students have today.  I think that following the path of Mr. Capps and Dr. Strange is one that all educators need to embrace and explore.  It is beneficial to us as well as the students.

Project Based Learning is our future.  We need to better embody the ways to teach by utilizing PBL methods and ideas.  I feel like students as well as teachers learn more as well as being more engaged and interested in what they are doing.  I will admit to falling asleep or dozing off in several of my previous classes.  Had my teachers or professors done more to engage me, I may not have been so bored and might have actually learned more from the course.  Some of the ideas and lessons that Mr. Capps has created, could be useful in my own classroom.  I might also be able to improve upon them or take them to another level.  Teaching doesn't just stop at one lesson.  We all should work together and find ways to better each other.  Project Based Learning helps us to do that.

C4T Summary

Comments for teachers blogs.  I find it hard to be constructive to someone that I do not know well.  I do not want to offend or insult them.  I try to remember to keep my comments insightful and inspiring.  I would want someone to do the same for me.  Here are the links and post comments that I made.  Check out these blogs.  They are very interesting.

C4T #2 Angela

Erin Byrd says:

Your comment is awaiting moderation. 

February 19, 2015 at 6:16 pm

“I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it”, Pablo Picasso.

I love your post. I agree with you that sometimes we make things bigger than they really are. I am just as guilty of doing that as you seem to be admitting. I am taking my Praxis Exam tomorrow and I am psyching myself out over it. Most of my peers have taken it already and they say it is simple. However, I have been out of school for far many more years than they have, so I feel their perspective may be divergent from mine! I have decided that I am just going to do my personal best and improve upon that. I have time and I can retake the portions I am lacking in.

Good luck to you with your dissertation proposal! What a great achievement thus far to even be applying for it. Congratulations and I look forward to keeping up with your blog and your progress.

Here is the link to my comment

http://www.mymindgap.com/


C4T #1

Hi Andrea,

I am currently seeking my degree in Elementary Education.  I think the posts you have here are absolutely wonderful!  There are some great ideas for keeping students engaged and on task.  I am love the idea of using the cookie sheets and magnets.  Those would be such great manipulative tools.

Respectfully,

Erin

Here is the link

http://www.fortheloveofteachingmath.com/2014/08/05/revisiting-integer-operations-freebie/#comment-31436

Project #8

Project #7

My Passion is....
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My Sentence is....

Project #3 Presentation

Blog Post #5

A Personal Learning Network (PLN) is a established group of people and tools that you can consult, collaborate or ask for assistance when needed.  There are many ways to create your group or methods of help.  I have a PC and use Windows 8.  Everything that I have generally needed is on my Start page.  I keep the most useful or often used pages together at the beginning.  After looking into Symbaloo, I decided to create a page to keep the networks that I might need for my teaching career.  I think it is a very useful site and keeps all of my apps together and easily accessible.  I think this is a powerful tool to have at our disposal.  I am not as familiar with some of the sites that Symbaloo offers, but I can keep all of my old sites in the same spot as well.  This site allows me the opportunity to explore.  I already have Facebook and Instagram.  I have had a Twitter account for a while now, but have never really used it for professional networking.  LinkedIn is a very useful tool for professional networking.  I have had my account for several years and have maintained some very healthy professional relationships through it.  I encourage the use of the site for professional enhancement.  Organization is a very important tool for educators.  Without it, there is too much room for confusion and misunderstandings.  The use of a well organized PLN is crucial to a well networked teacher.

Blog Post #4

To learn more about Asking Questions: What questions do we ask? How do we ask?,  I explored the articles and videos, Asking better questions in the classroom by Joanne Chesley, 

Open Ended Questions, and Asking Questions to Improve Learning,  to better inform myself on the subject.

I have always thought the best way to get students involved more with their learning was to ask open ended questions.  In the YouTube video, Open Ended Questions, Mrs. Andi Stix gives us some great examples of how to properly ask open ended questions.  By doing this, we offer our students a broader question and in return we may yield  a broader set of answers.  Some examples would be starting the question by saying "For what reasons" or "In what ways".  This opens the question up for the students to create more of a list than just one simple answer.

Through reading the article, Asking Questions to Improve Learning, we should ask clear, specific and direct questions.  Being specific in your questions will demand more specific answers from your students.  Sticking to one question at a time is also a good concept.  Asking more than one question in a lesson can confuse students and cause them to just stay silent and not answer any question at all.  Making sure you are clear on what you are asking is important for them to compose their conclusion. Here is the link to the article, http://teachingcenter.wustl.edu/strategies/Pages/asking-questions.aspx#.VNgxKmh4ra4

In my humble opinion, the answer is only as good as the question asked.  I think that if you expect a great answer, you'd better ask a great question.  In the YouTube video, Asking Better Questions in the Classroom by Joanne Chesley, my point here is validated.  Here, she says, "we are getting exactly what we ask for".  This is where I agree with her.  If we ask closed ended questions we are only going to get short yes or no answers and we will not be giving our students the encouragement to think beyond the question.  Asking questions that are inviting or require thoughtful types of response are the kind of questions that we as educators should be asking our students.  Here is the link to her video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFMfEVdfDys

If you are trying to engage and inspire your students with strong questions and debates, you need to also be prepared for what they actually do respond with.  If their answers are way off, maybe we should take time to explore why they may have come to the conclusion that they did. Preparation is one of the best tools a teacher can possess.  You should always have your outline prepped and ready when you walk into a classroom.  How can you expect your lesson to be beneficial to your students if you are ill prepared to administer it.  I think that having your questions lined up and studied, you will have a better chance of making them more valuable to your students. 

Project #15 Search Engines

Here is my list for 8 different search engines.  I have taken time to try each of these out or explore them in some way.  I have included the links and a brief description of their uses and how they may be useful.

#1 Wolframalpha
On this site, I entered the words 'artists of the Baroque Period'.  This yielded numerous different tables with dates, areas involved, people involved, and a timeline.  You can click each time, name, etc., and it takes you to another result page with information on that topic as well.  I find this site to be very easy to maneuver and am very please with the quick results.  You are not overloaded with numerous different sites to go to and you have more of a simplistic start page.  http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=artists+of+the+baroque+period

#2 Dogpile
This page offers something that I do not see on some of the other search engines.  You have the option of a white pages tab to search.  I entered the search for Tyler Candles.  I had the same result that I get from other engines like Bing or Google.  I liked the layout most for this search engine.
http://www.dogpile.com/info.dogpl/search/web?fcoid=417&fcop=topnav&fpid=27&q=tyler+candles&ql=

#3 Bing
I searched the name Carrie Washington.  Up came several different and interesting tidbits.  This search engine is fabulous.  There was a biography with her name, place of birth and other pertinent information. There were also several different sites to click on to find magazines or other publications containing articles on the actress.
http://www.bing.com/search?q=carrie+washington&qs=HS&pq=carrie+washi&sc=8-12&sp=1&cvid=27d8684073454c2c898af9b55156283b&FORM=QBLH&ghc=1

#4 DuckDuckGo
Here I searched for essential oils.  I liked that there were not any other search engines that popped up, (that I could see).  It gave me straight forward results and easy access to find the best essential oil brands.  I think this would be a great site to use if you don't want to have to worry with going to other sites to compare.  I think that this is a fast and easy site to use.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=essential+oils&ia=about

#5 Yahoo
I find this site to be very busy!  There are different tools to find out about everything from travel and movies to dating and health.  There are gadgets with sports scores, NASDAQ, and weather.  I just find it to be a one stop shop for anything you want to look up.  However, if you are just looking for something simple, you may end up with more results that you have time to explore.
https://www.yahoo.com/

#6 ixquick
I searched for baseball.  Here I found easy access to only what I searched for and not extra sites to search that may just contain the word baseball.  This has places to go to find the history of baseball and baseball-themed math games.  I think this is a fantastic place to find something different.  It is accurate and fast.
https://ixquick.com/do/metasearch.pl

#7 Aol
I searched lacrosse here and found all the information that I needed.  The official lacrosse website, what type of shoes, and the best helmets and pads for the game.  I am more familiar with Aol from use in the past.  I have always like this search engine.  It always finds the best sites to go to for what you are looking for.  These days, it is very similar to many other search engines.  I just tend to tryst things that I am familiar with.
http://search.aol.com/aol/search?enabled_terms=&s_it=comsearch&q=lacrosse&s_chn=prt_aol20

#8 Ask Jeeves
This site is cool.  It gives you a question of the day on its home page.  It may not be something you would normally think of.  I find that interesting.  You can search anything like a normal site.  I just find that to be a neat feature.
http://www.ask.com/?o=10181&jr=true